title:  John Oliver Started A Debt Collection Agency, And What He Did With It Will Blow You Away (VIDEO)
text: John Oliver, of HBO s Last Week Tonight, dove into the deeply shady world of debt buying and collection on his Sunday segment. But Last Week Tonight isn t just about giving out information. The show often does surprising things well in advance of an air date so they can make the biggest impact possible, and Sunday s episode was no exception. What they did will impact 9,000 people in the U.S.So what happened? Oliver started a debt buying/collection agency in Mississippi called Central Asset Recovery Professionals, Inc., or CARP, for short. He used it to show just how easy and cheap it is to get into this business: Debt buying is a grimy business and badly needs more oversight, because as it stands any idiot can get into it. And I can prove that to you because I am an idiot and we started a debt-buying company. And it was disturbingly easy. Not long after CARP incorporated, they were offered a portfolio of medical debt worth nearly $15 million, and given the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of the 9,000 people who owed that debt: We bought it, which is absolutely terrifying because it means if I wanted to, I could legally have CARP take possession of that list and have employees start calling people, turning their lives upside down over medical debt. The portfolio cost CARP $60,0000   they got it for pennies on the dollar. That s the norm for this business.CARP didn t start sending employees after these people like a regular agency, though. Instead, Oliver and Last Week Tonight got together with a charity called RIP Medical Debt, and forgave all $15 million of it. Those 9,000 people don t have to worry about what they owe to hospitals, clinics, and individual practitioners anymore. They might not even have to worry about whether they ll have to file for bankruptcy anymore.John Oliver just wiped out the medical debt of nine thousand people. Let that sink in while you watch the entire segment, which details out just how disgusting and grisly the debt-buying business is, below:We re the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn t have some form of nationalized healthcare available to everyone, and medical debt is the number one reason people file for bankruptcy here. In fact, more than 60 percent of bankruptcies in the U.S. have to do with medical debt. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for one necessary procedure. Cutting-edge cancer treatments can run into the millions.In English, our system is f*cked all to hell because of profit.This move technically cost less than the famous Oprah Winfrey show where she gave her entire audience a new car, spending roughly $8 million. But the impact, and the message, are far greater. Hats off to John Oliver for this.Featured image via screen capture from embedded video