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This episode takes you into the heart of the pharmaceutical industry’s ethics as John Rush, Dr. Kelly Victory, and Steve House discuss the startling realities behind the Purdue Pharma settlement. The conversation highlights how the $7.4 billion payout, stretching over 15 years, falls short of addressing the actual profits made through unethical practices over decades. What does this settlement mean for the victims, and could it change the future dealings of pharmaceutical giants?
SPEAKER 06 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 13 :
You are going to shut your damn yapper and listen for a change because I got you pegged, sweetheart. You want to take the easy way out because you’re scared. And you’re scared because if you try and fail, there’s only you to blame. Let me break this down for you. Life is scary. Get used to it. There are no magical fixes.
SPEAKER 06 :
With your host, John Rush.
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My advice to you is to do what your parents did.
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Get a job first. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference.
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Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
SPEAKER 15 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush, presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 11 :
Happy Thursday. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory joining us in this hour. Steve House as well. I’ll start with you, Dr. Kelly. How are you today?
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m doing great. Thanks, as always, for having me.
SPEAKER 11 :
Always a joy. Steve House, welcome as well. Hey, glad to be here, John. Appreciate you guys. All right, let’s start with this. I promo’d this and sent you guys some info on this, and we’ll dovetail into some of the other things that are happening along these lines as well. But 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and U.S. territories approved a $7.4 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, over the company’s improper marketing of opioids. So, Dr. Kelly, I’ll start with you. And $7.4 billion is a lot of money, or is it in this case?
SPEAKER 04 :
It actually pales in comparison to the amount they made in profits. They knew darn well that they were ultimately going to get hit with lawsuits on this and that they would likely lose in the end. And frankly, they didn’t care because the amount they’re paying in this penalty in this settlement is sofa change to them. They fraudulently marketed these drugs. saying that they were not addictive, that they did not cause the health issues that they did. They marketed it that way to physicians, and it was a total cover-up. It was fraudulent. It was corrupt. They knew they would likely get sued for it, and they weighed the difference between the profits they would make on these drugs and what they would ultimately pay in a legal settlement, and this is what they’ve done.
SPEAKER 11 :
And I also see in my notes anyways, and Dr. Kelly, you probably know more about this than I do, and I’ll go to Steve in a moment, but this payout, actually, if this is finalized, payouts are over the next 15 years as well. This isn’t a one-time payment, right?
SPEAKER 04 :
Correct. I don’t know the details exactly of how it was spread out, but yes, it happens over a period of 15 years. And what it is is just callous disregard on the part of this pharmaceutical company for the number of lives that were lost, hundreds of thousands of people who died of opiate-related issues. And this was really done thoughtfully. They did it part and parcel with the electronic medical records, for example. That added a place where doctors were obligated to put in, you know, with the patient’s pain scale, how much pain people were having. And it was all with the intention of motivating doctors to prescribe more and more opiates. So much to the point where you didn’t get reimbursed by the insurance companies if you didn’t adequately treat the patient’s pain. Even if you saved their lives, you may have saved the guy’s life. But if he said he didn’t get adequate pain medication, you didn’t get the reimbursement from the insurance company. And it was all bought and paid for by these pharmaceutical companies that were pushing, pushing, pushing opiates.
SPEAKER 11 :
Wow. Steve, I know this, again, is it racking the world? I wouldn’t go as far as to say that. Some of these things have been going through the court system now for a number of years, and everything Kelly said, absolutely spot on. I guess at the end of the day, and maybe you know more about this than I do, what do some of the people that have been ill-affected by this end up getting, or is it a pittance when it’s all said and done?
SPEAKER 14 :
No, I’m sure it’s not much. I mean, compared to, if you think about who loses when someone gets addicted to opioids, right? So you have the person, their family, the life insurance companies. I mean, how many claims were paid significantly earlier because opioid addicts, you know, overdosed and died? You know, how many people lost, you know, parents and grandparents and how many people lost workers and the communities that lost people to this I mean, I worked on an opioid task force for a while. It’s just really, really ugly, John. I mean, if you think about it, if 20,000 extra people died a year and, you know, the average, if you had just $10,000 in life insurance, you’re talking about a couple of hundred million dollars a year in life insurance paid out. $7.4 billion doesn’t take very long to get there. And it’s really just a slap on the wrist. And I think this is the typical thing we see with pharma and when they get hammered over. I mean, how much should the COVID vaccine award be except for we’ll never see it as an example?
SPEAKER 11 :
And, of course, Dr. Kelly, all the headlines are, you know, a historic and national settlement. Well, until you start reading, you know, again, to your point, some of the fine print and how does this actually get down to the people that were affected, and I haven’t gotten that far. I’m sure I will at some point. And I’m not sure that all of, I mean, it says if approved. So this isn’t a done deal yet at this point in time. So depending upon how all that is structured, you know, to Steve’s point, Dr. Kelly, you know, there may not be very much going to the victims at all when it’s all said and done.
SPEAKER 04 :
Correct. And the bottom line is these settlements need to be to the amounts that are going to discourage a pharmaceutical company from doing it in the future. And this simply isn’t, unfortunately. Not only is it not going to adequately compensate the victims, but the reality is it’s doing nothing to dissuade this from happening in the future. I have a Labrador retriever that if I told her not to do something, She looks at what she wants to do. She looks at me. And she’s weighing, is it going to be worth it? Is going swimming in that pond going to be worth it for the trouble I’m going to get in? And that’s how these pharmaceutical companies say. They’re like, look, yeah, we’re going to get smacked with a big fine. But given the billions and billions and billions of dollars we’re going to make in profits, who cares?
SPEAKER 11 :
And then the other question, too, that I’ve got is because the states have all agreed to this and the territories and so on, is this something that even, Dr. Kelly, goes back to the individuals that have been affected? Or does this go to some sort of a state fund that will help with addiction and things along those lines? In other words, is it really even, at the end of the day, going to the victims that were affected by this?
SPEAKER 04 :
I don’t know the details of it, John, and it may be on a state-by-state basis. I think you are probably correct that for many of the states, it’s going to go into some slush fund for opioid addiction treatment. So it’s going to be treating people, current victims or current addicts, but it perhaps may do nothing for the people who were harmed years ago. I don’t know.
SPEAKER 11 :
Steve, have you heard anything along those lines? And could I be, you know, on the right track? I don’t want to be, by the way, but could I be?
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, you may be, John, because what happens with this settlement with Purdue Pharma is that in all probability that states are settling it because they’re recovering money they spent from Medicaid. I don’t think it actually goes to victims, certainly not very much. I think this is all about the states suing to get a recovery on Medicaid, not to help victims get money reimbursed to them. Okay, and again, go ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
One other piece I think that’s just interesting here, Callie Means, who is the brother of the current nominee for Surgeon General Casey Means, and Callie Means is also a special federal employee right now advising both Robert Kennedy Jr. and President Trump with regard to things related to HHS. He’s way out of his league. He came from Big Pharma, just like Susie Wiles, by the way. And Callie Means has in the past bragged on his social media posts about how he was part of the cover up with the Purdue, you know, pharmaceuticals and Mackler family, that he was part of drafting the communication, how they would convince doctors that these things were not addictive, how they would convince people that. that the opioids were not as dangerous as they were. And I find it very, very concerning that this guy is now in a position of power inside the White House advising Bobby Kennedy and President Trump when he was involved with this in the past.
SPEAKER 11 :
I did read, finally, I dug enough here. And I tried to do this before, you know, coming on air. And sometimes it just, you know, searches and so on just don’t come up right. And sometimes you think about how to word something, you know, differently when you get a little further along and or you just read enough. And so, Steve, I did read. Did just figure out ABC News. There’s an article on there. It’s abcnews.go.com. The $7.4 billion will support opioid addiction treatment prevention and recovery programs over the next 15 years. So, yes, indeed, it’s going to the states, not individual victims and families.
SPEAKER 14 :
That’s right. That’s right. That’s why all the states sued. I mean, individuals may have lawsuits, you know, that they can get against them. I mean, this may be a precedent setter, right? I mean, they’re basically holding Purdue Pharma accountable. Well, now you could have victims and their families. sue them the same way, which, you know, I mean, they’re not going to get $7.4 billion, but that’s also no panacea. I mean, it could take forever for them to get through a lawsuit when you have a bunch of people. A class action lawsuit for victims might be the best strategy.
SPEAKER 11 :
And again, part of this, keep in mind, too, is there’s a bankruptcy going on. So given that fact, Steve, will that even, you know, could a class action lawsuit in a bankruptcy end of things even, you know, would that even proceed is my question. I don’t have an idea. Yeah, that’s right. It’s about getting pennies on the dollar, if anything.
SPEAKER 14 :
$7.4 billion. Again, I mean, if you look at the amount of profit… they made, maybe they’re still making under the banner of a different name. You know, there’s just no way that that’s anywhere near adequate, and it is a fraction of what it should have been. Yep. All right, great.
SPEAKER 04 :
Go ahead, Kelly. Just one last thing. To my point, if anyone remembers the Vioxx lawsuit, Vioxx was an anti-inflammatory drug that was known by the manufacturer, by Merck, to increase the risk of cardiovascular issues, strokes and heart attacks. They left the drug on the market, despite the fact that they had overwhelming evidence that it was causing these problems, knowing that they would get sued, and they ultimately voluntarily removed the drug from the market. They settled something in the range of 60,000 individual claims, adding up to… nearly $5 billion in payments, but that $5 billion was a drop in the bucket compared to the profits that they made during all those years that they let people suffer the cardiac risks from their drug.
SPEAKER 11 :
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No liberal media bias here.
SPEAKER 11 :
This is Rush to Reason. All right, we are back again. Rush to Reason, Debra’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory with us, as well as Steve House. And I don’t want to belabor this topic forever, Dr. Kelly, but I think this whole Oxy thing is just, to me, it’s mind-boggling. How a company could go that long, make the amount of profits that they did, have all of the… you know, sales aspects of things to your point earlier going on. And really, in a lot of ways, prey, I guess you could say, on people make, you know, they knew how addictive it was and so on. And again, I have, you know, mixed emotions on some of this stuff. I mean, where is their personal responsibility when it comes to You know, taking drugs and so on. And on the same token, things can get very addictive. It’s different for different people. I get all of that. But you got to look at this and think, good grief, how did they get by doing this for as long as they did? Because it wasn’t just a two or three year stint. They did this for a long time.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, absolutely. And I have no love lost for the pharmaceutical industry. And I agree with you that personal responsibility absolutely plays in. But the pharmaceutical industry at large is morally bankrupt. They will do anything for profits. This was a well-coordinated, corrupt, fraudulent sales pitch. As I said, they had entire teams set aside to come up with the communication strategy and how they would convince doctors to do this, how they’d convince patients. They worked hand in hand, as I said, with the electronic medical records and with insurers to make sure that capturing the information about the pain scale was there. It became what we called the fifth vital sign. It used to be blood pressure, temperature, pulse, respirations. you know, and oxygen saturation, and then all of a sudden there was this, you know, the new one, which is, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, what’s your pain, regardless of what you went in with. People went in with influenza, you know. People go in with something and say, well, what’s your pain scale? And so they did this in a concerted way that I think is absolutely evil.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I think the other thing, too, and Steve, they also came out initially. This I did read before today where they also claimed this was not an addictive substance. There was very low risk of abuse, if you would. They incorporated, of course, a marketing company that came in and wooed a lot of doctors into prescribing it. They did that with things we’ve talked about before, you know, the free trips and on and on we go. I mean, Steve, this thing became just a gigantic thing. cash cow for everybody, including the doctors prescribing it.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, if you really think about this, and I know Kelly knows this by heart, but so somebody comes out with a drug that makes you feel good, right? I mean, it takes away your pain. You feel good, right? I mean, Oxycontin makes you feel good. So does Dilaudid and other opioids. Now, the second thing you do is you have some concern about the fact that people might get addicted to it because it does make you feel so good. So what do you do? You get a couple of people to write papers about that say, you know, through lots and lots of research, it’s not addictive. You publish it in JAMA, the New England Journal. And then all of a sudden doctors, the same doctors who have the same sort of thing about the COVID vaccines will say, well, you know, I mean, the study says it’s actually working and that it’s not addictive. So you ride that train. Anybody else who brings something to JAMA New England Journal or anybody else, they reject a lot of those things as not being, you know, certified, not being peer reviewed, not being double blind. And it turns out you can hang on for a long period of time because doctors love their patients to feel good. And you know what it says right here? You’re not addicted. Maybe some individuals are. It’s all a very, very well thought out, well executed thing for the pharma guys to get what they want.
SPEAKER 11 :
And as you know, Dr. Kelly, this became something to where, you know, almost 500… A thousand people died. I mean, this isn’t something where there’s just a few hundred that died. This became really an epidemic, if you would, and yet they kept prescribing and prescribing for almost 20 years plus, I want to say, they went through this. And maybe people think it wasn’t that long. It was that long, if not longer, Dr. Kelly. All the while, they were making billions of dollars off of this.
SPEAKER 04 :
Absolutely. This was a cash cow for them. And that’s why I’m saying that this settlement is a drop in the bucket compared to the profits that they made over all those years, John. This is a nothing for them. And as a result, does not provide a disincentive, as far as I’m concerned, for any pharmaceutical company to do the same thing in the future, to simply, you know, they’ve got the accountants, they’ve figured out, you know, how much are we likely to have to pay in a settlement? even if we know that this drug is harmful, and compare that to the profits we’ll make for as long as we’re able to ride this train.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah. And then, of course, the other thing I believe happened, and this is where some of the accusations are flying around that, you know, they they, you know, Purdue and the Sackler who owned Purdue, you know, the family, actually, even though they were doing a lot of philanthropy, a lot of those organizations is where a lot of the money was, quote unquote, laundered to the tune of, you know, billions of dollars, by the way. So that money just got funneled over, which means now even with this settlement, a lot of that money, by the way, for those of you listening will be untouched, will be protected. In other words, at the end of the day, Dr. Kelly and Steve, and start with you, Dr. Kelly, the family won’t be hurting when this is all said and done.
SPEAKER 04 :
Of course not. In the same way that if there ever is any accountability, and I doubt there will be with regard to the damage done from these mRNA genetic therapies that were given to everybody for COVID, the reality is that it’ll be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount that was made in profits.
SPEAKER 11 :
Right. And Steve, again, you know, these organizations and again, not not faulting anybody. It is what it is. I mean, we have laws. You know, they use those laws in accordance to what they want to get done. And at the end of the day, they hide that hide is the right word. They funnel that money into things where they can have it. protected so that if something goes haywire, goes sideways, they at the end of the day still come out smelling like a rose, like folks that have worked at Enron and other places. And again, I’m not trying to be critical. It just is what it is. I mean, these are the things that those sorts of individuals do. Like it or not, they get by with it.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, yeah, I mean, there’s a couple quick things to think about. One of them is a car example, actually. The first thing to think about, though, is there’s like 85% more lawyers today than there was per capita, you know, 20 years ago. And lawyers are used not only to litigate and defend in court, they’re also used to stall, you know, so that, you know, Purdue Pharma can stall a long time before they have to pay it. So they can either, you know, get out of business, change their business, go bankrupt, save their money, do something else. So there’s that thing. The car example is relevant only because of the scale of the profit. Think about the Corvair, right? Way back when there was a Corvair. A few people, you know, roll it over. They die from it. You know, they decide basically to take the car off the market. They pay some settlements. But the settlements they pay are relative to, you know, a small number of lives. But the real issue is the amount of profits you make made on a car. It’s product safety. I made a product. I’m liable for it. But the profit level you made on that car versus the profit level they make on opioids is the scale is so dramatically different, yet at the same time it’s still a human life, and what’s the value of a human life?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, and you just brought up something, too, that I don’t think most people think about, which I hadn’t really even thought about. Let’s say, for example, you’re a drug company, and you’ve got the ability to, let’s use a round number. You somehow or another, Steve, could tuck away, I don’t know, we’ll use a round number. $50 billion, and you’ve got that tucked away. You’ve got it in trust. You’ve got it in philanthropy. You’ve got it in other places. And let’s say that you’re able to make even just a 5% return on that $50 billion, and you can delay an outcome like this, this $7.4 billion outcome. Let’s say you can delay that a decade. Because, by the way, I’m not exaggerating when I say that, Steve. You could probably delay it a decade. How much interest did you make on that $50 billion during that decade? Yeah. Well, probably no less than $50 billion, right?
SPEAKER 14 :
You probably made like $100 billion in interest if you invested. And that’s the point of having lawyers slow things down. It’s like Bill Gates committing to donate $400 million to something. What he really is doing is setting aside $400 million and giving him the 10% interest he earns on it every year over 10 years. He hasn’t spent any of his original… He’s getting more than 10% in his amounts going up. The issue is exactly what you’re talking about. They delay, delay, delay. They end up paying a number. There’s an acceptable loss. I sat in a room listening to a group of company execs who are CMOs, chief medical officers, say, you know what? We don’t want to stop heart attacks from killing people 52% of the time as the first symptom because we would have to pay a lot of medical costs if they survived the heart attack. That’s just reality and the money versus life scenario. And you’re 100% right about earning interest to pay the fine.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yep. So at the end of the day, Dr. Kelly, while it may look like this is a huge settlement, granted the company is bankrupt, and where will the money come from? Well, as you know, there’s money probably set aside out of the bankruptcy to handle this, and all the while that money is making money. So while this might seem really detrimental to this particular company and the family, honestly, I hate to say this, Dr. Kelly, it’s not.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, it absolutely is. And another thing I feel obligated to mention as a physician is the component that when you have a pharmaceutical company and this concerted effort to convince doctors as well as patients, but doctors specifically, that something is not dangerous. and it’s helpful. What it does is it encourages the doctors to write for it more. Now, if I’m a surgeon and I’m doing surgery on people all day long, the best way for me to not get calls in the middle of the night for patients is to make sure that they’re not uncomfortable. So rather than giving it, the reality is that most surgeries, and I’ve had a lot of them myself, so I don’t just wield the scalpel. I’ve been on the receiving end. Most surgeries, you need pain medication, narcotic pain medication, for somewhere between five to seven days at most. Even the biggest surgeries, abdominal surgeries, you don’t need narcotics for more than five to seven days, which means you should be getting a prescription for somewhere between 15 to 24 pills or something. But I guarantee every time I’ve had a surgery, you know, orthopedic surgeries, whatever it is, I walk out of there with a prescription for 60 vitamin tablets. I have an entire – my God. I mean, I shouldn’t say this out loud, but my medicine cabinet, I’ve got – the street value of this – because I only take it for maybe three to four days, and then I transition over to ibuprofen and Tylenol, and that’s what people should be doing. But when you give a patient 60 tablets of Vicodin, you are tacitly saying – It’s okay to take this. Go ahead and take it. And that is how people end up addicted. If you take opiates, I don’t care, Oxycontin, Dilaudid, fentanyl, if you take any of it by prescription for three to seven days, you’re not going to get addicted to it. You get addicted to it when you take it for a prolonged period of time.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, and the reason why I wanted to go through all of that, there was a method to my madness and kind of where I was going with the settlement and the money and how it works and so on, because Letitia James, who is New York’s attorney general, says that this plan will hold the Sackler family accountable for what she described as their leading role in fueling the epidemic of these addictions and overdoses. And my point with all of this, Dr. Kelly and Steve, I’ll start with you, Dr. Kelly, is no, it won’t.
SPEAKER 04 :
Any more than it would be that a fine like that would impact Elon Musk. No, it won’t. No, it won’t. Trust me, this is a sofa change to them.
SPEAKER 11 :
This is a lot of rhetoric coming out of Letitia James, but at the end of the day, Steve, this isn’t changing their life one iota. Not at all.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, and frankly, if you’re an attorney general of the state and you really are not doing this purely for political reasons, you got to go much deeper than this because of the victims. It’s not going to help the victims. It’s going to help people who are addicted to opioids going forward because there’ll be money to treat them with. But what about all the people that already suffered, who’ve already gone through it? If you really care, and Leticia James is not on that list of people I believe cares much, she just, you know, basically you would fight for everybody if you cared, but they’re not doing that.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s right. So the question I have for you, Dr. Kelly, along these lines, and again, I wasn’t going to spend this much time, but this is a great topic, and I think there’s a lot of people out there listening that are going to learn something from a lot of the things that we’re talking about because you could talk about this in a lot of other areas in big pharma, not just in this particular area. This is sort of a slice of the pie, if you would, Dr. Kelly, when it comes to big pharma. Because the other question I’ve got is, given all of this and what’s happened when it comes to Oxy and pain meds and so on, Does now some of the ill effect of this also now start affecting people that really, in fact, do need some pain relief because of something that they’ve taken? And how now does that have an impact upon them negatively?
SPEAKER 04 :
Absolutely. Well, now the pendulum has swung the other way. And so now a lot of times doctors are hesitant to write prescriptions for pain medications for people who legitimately need it. Furthermore, there’s a stigma for those people. There are certain people who are going to be, unfortunately, on chronic pain medication. We try or I certainly try to suggest other ways to deal with chronic pain medication. whether it’s acupuncture or physical therapy or other ways to deal with it, because living the rest of your life on opiates isn’t a great course. But there are people, I believe, John, who are suffering because of this, because of the stigma, because of now the hesitancy for doctors to write the prescriptions that patients need and limiting and giving people perhaps inadequate pain control.
SPEAKER 11 :
And that’s where, Steve, that’s where my fear with a lot of this comes in. It’s like, OK, I get it. We need to do something about, you know, these companies, you know, over addictive pills, et cetera. But Dr. Kelly’s point a moment ago, there are legitimate uses for this. And now what we’ve done is, you know, we’re going to take the baby, throw it out with the bathwater. And now those that really do, in fact, need it. You know, what choice do they have now? You know, what type of medication do they use?
SPEAKER 14 :
It’s a great question because, quite frankly, when you get older, into your 60s and beyond, there’s a lot of inflammation in your body, a lot of things that cause pain. Anti-inflammatories are part of it. Opioids are part of it. I mean, the beginning part of opioid addiction, certainly over the last 20 years, one of the biggest sources of opioid addiction beginnings is a dentist’s office because dentist’s offices give out 60 pills of Percocet, and that Percocet turns into an opioid addiction. Wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
And the biggest risk here, John, that we’ve seen, and most opioid deaths, to be clear, are not from prescription opioids. People may have gotten addicted to the prescription, but then when they are cut off. When the doctor says, look, your surgery was two months ago. I’m not giving you any more. They turn to back alley prescriptions, and that’s when they get the fentanyl overdose. That’s when they die. That’s when they buy what they thought was Percocet, and it ended up being laced with fentanyl. They bought what they thought was an oxycodone in the back alley, and it ends up being laced. That’s where the opiate deaths are happening. It is very, very uncommon for an opioid – death to occur by a prescription medication these are people who get addicted on prescriptions and then they turn to the back streets they start buying it illegally they start buying it on the black market and they get what is tainted it’s unclear what they’re actually getting and now that’s how most opioid deaths occur
SPEAKER 11 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 11 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 11 :
And we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House with us as well. Steve, you asked a question yesterday to Kelly and I both, and I did a little bit of research on this, and I know you are researching this as well because I think this is important for everybody listening to understand how the big beautiful bill and what’s going on right now in regards to you know that bill the cuts and so on and and there’s a portion of that bill that includes some cuts to medicaid which i think there’s a lot of confusion on even to people on the streets even maybe some people in the admin end of hospitals and so on in regards to the quote-unquote 800 billion dollars that they want to cut on the medicaid side The key is it’s really not $800 billion, and it’s sort of like this, you know, Purdue settlement a little bit ago. It’s not over one year. It’s over the course of a decade, and that’s the way I look at it. I believe it’s about $80 billion a year, and there’s those out there saying that if those cuts happen, it will reduce, you know, patient care. It’s going to ruin a lot of rural hospitals and so on. What are you hearing on your end?
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, I mean, there are a lot of people who believe that that kind of cut to Medicaid, although if you remember, we’ve talked about the fact that the health care bill in America is somewhere around $5 to $7 trillion. $80 billion doesn’t seem like a lot relative to that. I think that the bigger factor is that a fair number of the cuts are related to activity based on the patients so yeah they’re going to take 1.4 million people who are illegal aliens that are covered in states that choose to cover it and the state’s either going to have to cover 10 more of their medicaid expansion cut from 90 covered by us and our taxes to 80 or they’re going to have to drop illegal aliens from their medicaid rules i don’t think it’s incumbent on the emerging taxpayer to pay for illegal immigrants and their health care. They should be paying for it themselves. So that’s one thing. The other thing is there’s a work requirement, and the issue is if you don’t fill out the paperwork, if you don’t actually go seek work and fill out the paperwork, you can lose your Medicaid eligibility. Well, they’re counting that, a percentage of that, as an absolute cut to Medicaid. Well, it only matters if people don’t do what they’re supposed to do. So, A, I don’t think that it’s pure cuts, and B, over a 10-year period, you cannot tell me that people are going to actually leave this alone. I do not believe that. I believe it depends on who the next president is, who the next Congress is. Ten years is a long time. I’m not counting on $800 billion being cut.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’m not either. And, Dr. Kelly, I think this is where even the left is really… pushing, promoting. There was an article out today in one of our local liberal publications talking about how this is just going to decimate things here in Colorado. It’s going to ruin the workforce. There’s a lot of people right now that are much healthier and are helping out the workforce. There’s a net positive because of what we’ve done in Medicaid. And I guess, you know, Dr. Kelly, the way I look at it is You know, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle of these extremists that say it’s going to kill everything and it’s going to ruin the workforce. We have a lot more sick people running around, which, by the way, I don’t agree with. To the other side where it’s, yeah, we’re going to cut all of this. We’re going to save all this money and we’re going to be that much further ahead on the tax bill. I don’t know, Dr. Kelly, either extreme. To me, neither one is correct.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I agree with that. The liberals are always hollering, however, that the sky is falling and we need more money, money, money, and that money is going to fix everything. I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near the size of the cuts that they’re predicting, as Steve said. Furthermore, I think the idea that we are spending one penny on illegal aliens and their health care, I think, is preposterous. and it needs to stop, so I don’t care at all if people who are in this country illegally lose their benefits. I really don’t.
SPEAKER 11 :
Dr. Kelly, I’m going to jump in one minute, too, and go along the lines of this, because this is the other thing where I will disagree with the left on, I should say, is I also don’t think that able-bodied, willing people that should be out working, and I know there’s people here in Colorado, I did this the other day, there’s able-bodied, working, married families… that are making $75,000 a year that are still on Medicaid that I, as a taxpayer and supplementing, I have a problem with that as well, Dr. Kelly.
SPEAKER 04 :
There’s no question, and this is the reality, is people make choices. A lot of these people who are on the federal dole, whether it’s for food stamps, SNAP, or in this case, health care, look at the cars they drive. Look at the bikes they ride. Here in Colorado, they’re riding a $2,500 titanium mountain bike, and they’re on Medicaid.
SPEAKER 11 :
Or, by the way, they’ve got faster Internet speed and a whole lot more channels because of cable, et cetera, than even I do because I’m too cheap to pay for it. But at the end of the day, Dr. Kelly, I can look at all sorts of things that people spend money on that, frankly, the three of us are not.
SPEAKER 04 :
Precisely. And so I think that we need to look into that. But the bottom line for me is that putting more and more and more money into healthcare, what we call healthcare, it’s really disease care in this country, has proven to be a failed strategy. OK, we’ve got to put the money into health care, into things that actually make people healthier, make people better, make people less sick. And some of that stuff, believe it or not, is actually free. It’s things like returning physical education to the school system so that we could cut down on the vet. But right now, 40 percent of adolescents are overweight or obese. 40%. Think about that. A huge percentage of these kids have prediabetes. Something like reinstituting four-day-a-week physical education in the school system through high school so that kids are getting 45 minutes of physical activity a day would decrease both of those things fundamentally for free. You know, Putting spending more and more and more money on stuff and trying to stamp out disease is not the answer. We’ve got to focus on a better lunch program, more physical activity, getting more and more schools to go screen free, meaning that they kids either do not have their phones at school at all or that they are locked up in the locker during the entirety of the school day. These are the kinds of things that will make a difference. Getting kids to walk to school again.
SPEAKER 11 :
Steve, this came out of this article I was telling you about a moment ago. Legislation currently under consideration would require adults covered through Medicaid expansion and have incomes 100 to 138 percent of the federal poverty level to pay up to $35 for some health care services. This is a quote coming out of this article. Many of our patients can’t afford a $2 copay for their medicines. And Steve, I’m not trying to be heartless here. But I guarantee you these same people that can’t afford a two day copay are the very people Kelly was talking about a moment ago that have all of these other amenities, by the way, and or have more coming into their home in regards to entertainment than I, you and Dr. Kelly do on top of that. And I know this firsthand because I have been sort of that mouse on the wall, if you would, or that fly on the wall where I have heard different people that I know for a fact are are on Medicaid and that are receiving Medicaid benefits for everything from having babies to you name it, and yet I also know the last concert they went to, Steve.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, I mean, so first of all, you should eliminate the copay. There’s two possibilities. One is get healthier, right? I mean, just flat out get healthier. If you can’t afford to take the drugs, get healthier and try to get off of them. Now, there’s some people who have problems that are genetic in nature or otherwise can’t get off the drugs. get rid of the PBMs so there isn’t any copay because that part’s ridiculous as well. But again, it comes down to choices. I mean, people tell me all the time that, you know, we just need more money, right? We need more money for America to be healthy. We know that’s not true. We know it’s choices, the choices you’re talking about, you know, spending money on the internet, high speed internet, spending money on an upgraded car rather than taking care of your health gives you some temporary satisfaction, but it certainly doesn’t help you in the long run. And if you’re not willing to make an investment in yourself, why should I do that? Obamacare, they talked about this yesterday with Mazie Hirono and all these other different people in Congress. Well, they believe that everybody deserves affordable health care as a right in this country. I can tell you right now, my health care is not affordable. And it hasn’t been affordable since Obamacare went into play because there’s no incentive for being healthy. I mean, you can’t smoke in your reasonable age and you get some incentive, but that’s it. They screwed this up when they put Obamacare in play and made the deductibles high and the premiums high. Nobody has affordable health care in this country right now.
SPEAKER 11 :
Dr. Kelly, it seems to me like this whole conversation we’re having about the Big Beautiful Bill and you get all these different folks that are out there, including those that are even running some of these particular organizations, health care organizations, I mean hospitals and clinics and so on. It almost seems like – and this is what I was thinking this morning as I was reading through some of this – it feels to me like – We are definitely on the precipice of having either Medicaid or Medicare as, quote, unquote, universal health care. It’s gotten to that expectation now. I see it. I read it. Am I wrong?
SPEAKER 04 :
No, I fear that you are right. And people believe it’s the panacea. They believe it’s the answer. And it is not. True medical freedom, first of all, you know, people talk about medical freedom and autonomy all the time. In Dr. Vitry’s book, medical freedom means being well enough that you don’t need them.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, being well enough that you don’t have to go. I hope that the only time you go to the doctor is once a year for your annual physical, and other than that, you don’t call them, you don’t need them because you are well. And a big part of that, unfortunately, is about those personal choices. which the foods you eat, the activity you get, the sleep you get, how you manage your stress, and those sorts of things. Yes, there are many, many people who get dealt a lousy hand, have genetic issues, or get cancer for no reason of their own, have other medical problems. Obviously, that’s what the system is for. But there’s got to be a lot of personal responsibility brought back in. And then we’ve got to start funding those programs that actually enhance health. Don’t just make some pharmaceutical company or doctor or other program more money because they aren’t actually delivering health. They’re delivering disease care, which is not what we need. I am concerned that they are going to go to some sort of common platform and You will find that the greatest health care system in the world, which was the United States, is going to fall into line with everybody else where it is mediocre at best. It will also deliver the consummate two tiered system because there will always be people. Look at what happens in the UK. They have nationalized health, Canada, nationalized health. But there are always those people at the top of the pile. who can afford to buy out. And so you end up with a small group of people getting high quality care and the masses getting mediocre care.
SPEAKER 11 :
Steve, I don’t see us being too far away from that right now. You and I and Dr. Kelly have talked about this in the past. You and I talked about this even long before we had Dr. Kelly coming on our program five plus years ago. So the reality is we are that much, you know, we’re half a deck decade closer to the things that you and I were talking about a half a decade ago when it comes to the things Dr. Kelly just said a moment ago. And I’m sorry to say that some of the things that I see being, you know, how should I say, you know, being pushed through the big, beautiful bill and some of these cuts that are trying to be made are frankly stoking the fires of the very thing you and I talked about five plus years ago.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, they’re absolutely doing that. I think there’s almost a two-tier system here in a different way, right? So the two-tiered system in America is the group of people that exercise, that move, that eat reasonably well, that are working, they’re balanced in what they’re doing. And I want to exempt the people who have genetic, strange and difficult genetic experiences.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER 14 :
In reality, if you move around, if you do the things you need to do, if you keep yourself healthy, I mean, the difference between some guys that are in their 60s and some guys that, you know, other guys that are in their 60s and their overall health and wellness is dramatic. And most of it has to do with how they treated themselves. So the system is really dependent on how you treat yourself. For those who treat themselves well, the system works, except for they’re paying extremely high premiums and they shouldn’t. For those who don’t treat themselves well, the system doesn’t work all that well because it’s really about drugs, high costs, and medical bankruptcies for so many people.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, it’s really sad. This is, by the way, one of those topics I think we should come back to here in the not-too-distant future, and maybe we’ll do that once the bill ends up getting passed. I don’t think that’s going to happen probably until maybe middle to the latter part of July. We’ll just see how it goes. But, Dr. Kelly, again, these are things that even before you started joining us five years ago, Steve and I were talking about, and unfortunately we’re now closer to it than we’ve ever been.
SPEAKER 04 :
Exactly. And unfortunately, it has a lot to do with who we have in Congress. These are people who don’t have deep understanding of the health care system. It’s the same people who passed Obamacare, having zero understanding of how it was going to work. Anybody with half a wit who took the time could have done the calculations on it. In the back of a cocktail napkin, you knew that it was never going to pencil out. But that’s not what we have in Congress. We need a lot smarter people, and we need Steve in there making these decisions.
SPEAKER 11 :
Dr. Kelly, really quick, I’ve got to interrupt for a moment just because of the training I’ve had from you and Steve. So from you, Dr. Kelly, and Steve, I feel like I am more equipped than a lot of the politicians we have there right now. I’m not in the medical world. I literally am a talk show host, but I have learned so much from you two over the past five-plus years. I feel like I’m better equipped to handle some of those decisions than they are, Dr. Kelly.
SPEAKER 04 :
I agree. And our system is entirely broken, John, because I guarantee you whatever bill gets passed is filled with all this additional pork and all this other stuff that has nothing to do with health care. I guarantee it’s all baked in there. It’s everybody’s special interest. And this is unfortunately how our our decisions, our laws, our bills are passed. And therefore, it’s never in the best interest, truly, of the American people. It’s always in the best interest of the politicians and the big corporations that benefit from whatever decisions are made.
SPEAKER 11 :
Steve, it’s sad that it’s that way. And again, this is a topic we definitely will come back to because Dr. Kelly is right. We unfortunately, and I say this all the time, one of my biggest complaints, we have policymakers making, you know, we have policymakers that are there making policy in a lot of things, technologically speaking, financially speaking, health related, that frankly, Steve, I hate to say this, they’re dumb as rocks and have no idea what they’re talking about.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, they’re fed a bunch of talking points. I mean, I appreciate Kelly’s kind words. I think where we need to go here is we do need informed people, and I think, John, Rush for Congress sounds really good to me, and Kelly and I will both donate and help give you some more health care policy stuff so you can get it done.
SPEAKER 11 :
I think it needs to be you two doing that, not me. I was talking about your wife, not you, man. There we go. There we go. Good one.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right.
SPEAKER 11 :
With that, that’s a lighter way to end the hour today. And you guys, I mean, and I mean this sincerely, I really, I have learned so much from both of you that I feel like I not only can talk better on air about all of these things, but I can go to most any dinner party. And if these topics come up, frankly, I know far more about it than most doctors and lawyers do that end up in some of these parties. And that’s because of you two that I can do that. So, Dr. Kelly, I’ll let you go first. I appreciate you very much.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thanks, as always, for having me. I look forward to it next time.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you very much, Steve. I mean, what I said is because of you, really you, even before Dr. Kelly, that we’re here doing what we do today.
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, and I would tell you that your learning is something everyone else should do, too. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with investing in your knowledge of your own health and what’s going on out there. So I know you have the goods. You have the knowledge. So keep it up, and I love being on the show.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, do it. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate you very much. With that, let’s do this. Veteran Windows and Doors, 35% off up to three windows, 40% for four or more. Give Dave a call today. Find him at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 11 :
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SPEAKER 06 :
It’s time to leave your safe space. This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, that’s it for this hour. We appreciate all of you listening. And as I promoted earlier, Kevin Flesch, Flesch Law, will be with us here from 4 to 5.30 a.m. and we’re going to cover a lot of things regarding you name it. We’re going to get into what to do in a traffic stop, what happens if law enforcement knocks on your door, sovereign citizens, DUIs, you name it. We’ll get into all of that plus much more. If you’ve got a question for me, please send me a text message, 307-200-8222. We’ll be back here in a moment, though. This is Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
I’m a rich guy
