In this thought-provoking episode of Rush to Reason, John Rush and Steve House discuss the global perspective on America’s economic prowess and the challenging perceptions of wealth distribution. They delve into the contentious issues surrounding wealth taxation and the impact of misconstrued free services in other countries. The conversation also highlights the often-overlooked implications of mental health crises exacerbated by inactivity and societal pressures.
SPEAKER 10 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 03 :
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 11 :
With your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 03 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did.
SPEAKER 09 :
Get a job, sir. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 04 :
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 03 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 10 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush, presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 06 :
And welcome, Thursday edition, Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Normally we have Dr. Kelly with us during this hour. She is on a flight, I believe. She is traveling at the moment. Steve House with us, though. Steve, welcome. How are you? I’m good, John. How are you, man? Always a joy. Hope you had a great time off, by the way. We missed you.
SPEAKER 07 :
I did.
SPEAKER 06 :
Got to see a little bit of the rest of the world. Nothing wrong with that. So how is the rest of the world doing, by the way? What do they think of us Americans?
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, I think, I mean, I wouldn’t say it the way Trump says it, but I think that they view America as being powerful and productive now in a way that most countries are not. I think there’s some distaste for Trump itself, but then there’s a bunch of envy for the economy, the jobs, the different things that we have going on here versus the way it is in the rest of the world. Um, you know, and people, you know, like there was just something recent happened at some city council meeting where a woman said that every person in America should have to, um, publish their net worth and, and that they should be taxed to get their net worth below a certain threshold. So whatever that threshold is, it should be maximum. Right. Okay. So when you go, you go to Europe and you talk to people and you say, you know, how much do you pay for healthcare? It’s free. You know, how much do you pay for this? It’s free. And, like, there’s just no way you can possibly educate, you know, groups of people to understand that that’s not free when we don’t even have people in the U.S. who look at it as anything but free. They want everything to be free, and they don’t think it costs anything of anyone. And I just, it’s a real difficult standard to live with. And thank God we have the freedom we do because it just doesn’t exist in most places.
SPEAKER 06 :
I missed that City Council meeting presentation. I guess the question would be, did she say what the threshold needs to be? I mean, is it $500,000? Is it $1 million? Is it $5 million? I mean, what threshold does she feel like people need to be at or below to be, in her mind, I guess, not super rich? I think in her mind it was anybody that had a million dollars or more. Needs to be taxed so that they have less than a million dollars? Yeah. Wow.
SPEAKER 07 :
I mean, the way she said it was very direct. She said, taxes are for reducing people’s wealth. Wow. It’s exactly how she said it. And I was listening to this, and I probably used a few words of profanity I wouldn’t use on the radio, but I’m just like, don’t you get it? Don’t you understand that if you tax me… above a certain level, you prevent me from doing better than that, I’m going to stop working when I get to that level.
SPEAKER 06 :
Or you’ll go somewhere else where you can do that and still reap the benefits of. You’ll find some other country that allows you to do that and figure – I mean, as you know, Steve, and there’s no secrets here, and anybody that has any kind of a brain, I think – would know this and by the way i don’t think people like her necessarily believe in what she’s saying i just think it’s rhetoric they put out because that’s part of the that’s the marxist mentality that’s exactly what they believe in you know get rid of all of the the wealthy have this really do a total dual system whereby you know the majority of people are below a certain level and then the upper echelon is at that higher level which you always wonder steve how long do they even last because true marxism they don’t last very long at that upper level either. But at the end of the day, you know, as you know, those people are smart. They’re not going to put up with that. They’ll just figure out ways around it or they’ll go somewhere else. They just won’t stay. They won’t stay in that environment.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, it’s like New York. I mean, there’s almost no question that New York is going to elect Mamdani to be their mayor. And, you know, he will get away with his taxes because the city council is dominated by Democrats. But The reality of it is there will be a reaction, and I don’t think these people get it. I was in Chicago. I was at a foundation luncheon yesterday, and I was listening to a county foundation talking about the fact that, you know, they want all the Medicaid money returned to illegal aliens. They want all the Medicaid money. They objected to the idea that there were two qualification periods now. So you get qualified for Medicaid. Six months later, you requalify. That’s going to hurt people. I’m like, why would that hurt people? I mean, you’re going through the same asset evaluation at that point. The only way that hurts somebody is if their assets rise to a level that they should no longer be on Medicaid, they should actually be on Obamacare. That was the point. And so they’re going to lose people because they’re not going to like those two periods. I’m like, tough. I mean, really? Give me a break. If that’s the hardest problem you have, well, then they spend hours getting snapped. They spend hours. I’m like, maybe you should convert that time to getting a job. Yeah, working.
SPEAKER 06 :
Amazing. Well, it’s interesting you say that. I had a great doctor on yesterday during health and wellness, psychologist, clinical psychologist, doctor, great guy, by the way. And we were talking about, you know, just everything from, you know, mental illness, depression, things along those lines, you know, things that happen to individuals. And the fact that far too many drugs are prescribed when people may not even need those in the first place. There might be other things going on that they could actually work through. And one of the things that he and I got to talking about was, you know, in a lot of cases, Steve, some of this mental illness is simply the fact that people aren’t busy enough. They sit around, to your point, they sit around feeling sorry for themselves or they’re trying to gain the system or they’re doing this or they’re doing that, and they’re simply not productive. And then we wonder why we have all these mental health issues.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. I mean, that was part of the discussion yesterday that was so important. I don’t know, it’s so hard for me to listen to as well. It’s not that I’m not embraced in reality, because I know what reality is, but the head of behavioral health in this program said, he said, we have the largest behavioral health facility from the Midwest to the West Coast. Right down the road, it’s called the Cook County Jail. And I’m like, okay, so we have a whole bunch of people who have behavioral problems in sitting in that Cook County jail. And his answer to that question is let them out, give them money, make them whole and they’ll be better. And I’m like, I don’t think you have this right. I don’t think you do. I mean, that’s a crazy notion. You know, if they don’t understand, you know, like, well, they were triggered to do this and triggered to do that. I’m like, forget it. You’re pretty weak if you’re triggered by a bunch of stuff. And I’m not being that critical. I’m sure there are people in the audience who are going, look, you’re picking on people. Well, the reality of it is the best advice I could give to anyone is you got to get tougher. The world’s a hard place.
SPEAKER 06 :
You’ve got to get tougher. Yep. No, you’re 100% correct. And that was basically what we were talking about with this. I mean, again, as you know, most psychological doctors, most doctors in that field, I guess I should say, psychologists, don’t necessarily think that way. And you know what I mean by that, Steve. Most of them are in that world where Well, you know, maybe you should be doing this and maybe we need to concentrate on that. And, you know, maybe you need this pill or that pill. And on down the line we go. And I’m not bad mouthing those individuals. That’s typically the way that works. And guy interviewed yesterday was completely the opposite of that. He’s like, wait a minute. No, we’re we’re giving out far too many prescriptions. We’re affecting far too many people at the end of the day. We have this crisis going on because we’ve created it because of some of the policies and things that we’re doing as government.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right.
SPEAKER 06 :
And by the way, I couldn’t have said it any better, and I’m not a doctor, but he was spot on.
SPEAKER 07 :
I know. I mean, there was an NIH study that came out today I was going to ask you about, since I didn’t share it with you, but today or last week or something recently. Sorry. It was a study that showed that if young men, in this case 15 to 40 basically, who smoked marijuana daily and spent a fair amount of time playing video games – their increased risk for schizophrenia was like 85%. Wow. And so you think of it like, all right, so yeah, we legalized marijuana. Um, yes, we invented the video game. Yes. They individually can choose that lifestyle if they want, but, You know, the first problem you have is that most people turn them into victims rather than saying, look, how can we get them out of this?
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. That’s right. That’s exactly right. No, it’s exactly what he said yesterday. It’s funny that, you know, we’re still talking about this, but I was so impressed by by what he said, because, again, that is against the norm of what his quote unquote industry says. feels and preaches on a regular basis Steve and this guy’s going literally against the grain saying wait a minute time out you know there’s a lot of situations whereby and it’s funny you say the drug side of it one of the things he said yesterday is I asked him okay what if you’ve got a family member that is struggling you know with mental illness what’s one of the first things you should do and literally his first words out of his mouth was find out if they’re on drugs or not because if they are get them off that could very well be the reason they’re having the problems that they’re having his words not mine Steve
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, and that’s exactly right. I mean, drugs have such a big effect, and we’ve had so many. I mean, the classification of drugs, I mean, I’ve done a lot of study on LSD and the stuff that was around back when we were in high school. Versus today, I mean, there are so many classes of drugs, so many different ways, and so many more people who are addicts with both alcohol and drugs. And it just tears your brain up. I mean, it just tears up your brain.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, no, he said, again, the very thing that you’re talking about is exactly what… He said yesterday, I mean, if Kelly was here, I guarantee you she would be agreeing with the very things that we’re talking about, because a lot of this, quote unquote, you know, mental health crisis that we’ve gotten to in this country. Steve, let’s face it. We’ve created it. It didn’t. You know, I also I would love to have Kelly’s input on this. I do think that with some of the. You know, food changes and different things we’ve had throughout the years. There might be something said along those lines, which, by the way, is still our fault. I mean, not saying that that’s not our fault either. That is as well. But I think everything you just stated a moment ago, especially when it comes to, you know, young men and even young girls now and some of what you just mentioned in regard to, you know, video games, drugs and so on, that’s not helping at all. No, it’s not.
SPEAKER 07 :
In fact, there was a couple things that happened just in the last 24 to 48 hours that I think are really illuminating on this subject. One was the Secretary of War gives a speech about, you know, we’re not going to do beards anymore. They have to pass the physical fitness test. You know, we’re not going to be gender neutral or whatever. You’ve got to do it, right? Right. So lots of people in the media look at that and go, oh, they’re all going to quit, right? They’re all going to hate this. You know what? They’re not. Opposite. They’re not. Because they have guidelines that they have to follow that they are going to strive for that is going to make them healthier, and they’re going to be fitter, and they’re going to feel better about themselves. It ain’t going to be easy, but they’re not going to hate it. And the second thing was, you know, I do a lot of stuff with AI, and I was listening to a speaker tell the story about the fact that neural networks and the different chips that are coming, the different AI stuff that’s coming, he said, our biggest risk is that we have generations of people He didn’t name which generations, but he said they don’t like life. They don’t believe it’s fair. They don’t believe they’re paid well. They don’t believe that, you know, society’s right. They don’t like the president. They don’t like this. They don’t like that. The answer for them in so many ways is someone’s going to come to them and say, let’s put a chip in your brain. It will take away depression. It will give you a much happier view of life. Yada, yada, yada. So all of a sudden you’ll have a whole bunch of people who have had implanted devices that are operational via artificial intelligence. And that’s going to cause a wave of people who are expendable. You know, you don’t have to account for them anywhere. They’re soft, they’re tender, they’re controlled. That’s where the danger of AI is. But it still starts out with, are we tough enough to manage our lives based on a set of standards that are really the right standards?
SPEAKER 06 :
Great way to And we’ll end that segment. We’ll come right back. You guys have questions or comments, things you want to add, feel free. 307-282-22. Dr. Scott Faulkner, speaking of doctors, Dr. Scott, by the way, if he was sitting in the room right now with us or on this call, he’d be saying the exact same things that we are because this is exactly the way he feels and believes and he wants to take care of you the best way possible. 303-663-6990.
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SPEAKER 08 :
No liberal media bias here. This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 06 :
And we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Steve, when it comes to, I want to talk for a moment about the whole, you know, AI end of things. I want to get into Pfizer and all of that, too, as far as what’s going on with the White House. But as far as the, you know, just the whole AI thing and this implant, you know, implants, I guess you could say, which I don’t disagree with you. I think at some point in time, that’s where things are headed. And am I, you know, and you know my feelings on this. Am I all against AI? No, I am not 100% against AI. That’s not my point here. In fact, I think it can be a very useful tool, just like a lot of other things can be. Although, like other tools, Steve, we need to make sure that we monitor and take care of it correctly.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, like anything else, I mean, there’s good and bad. I try to explain to people, here’s the simple analogy that most people will get. When MRI came out, people in medicine said, this is going to be one of the greatest tools we’ve ever had access to, which turns out to be true, right? Because you can do imaging at a level you can’t do with blood vessels and brains and everything else. However, the first MRIs that went in for actually for quite a while, MRIs were dangerous and they were dangerous because if you walked in the room with a screwdriver in your pocket, keys in your pocket, I mean, people weren’t completely aware of how strong the magnet was and what the dangers were. AI is the same way. AI has the potential to do some really amazing things, especially process-oriented stuff and stuff that requires fast, effective education. But if you just go all the way into it, jump all the way into it, you’re going to get hurt. You got to be careful with where you go to. You got to be careful how much it does with Human interaction as opposed to process related stuff until you’ve figured out how to govern it, how to do it right. And you certainly can’t screw around. I mean, they’re talking about putting in chips and people who have spinal cords that don’t work and trying to make that work. I mean, I know Elon Musk is working on that. Those things are probably worthwhile things.
SPEAKER 06 :
Absolutely. Yeah, if you can take, in fact, Steve, if you could use, you know, things along those lines to help people with, you know, bodily functions, things that they might otherwise, you know, be struggling with, much like we do, you know, cochlear implants and things along those lines. I mean, there’s, in my opinion, nothing wrong with any of those things. And I get it. It may not be right for everyone that has one of those things. But when you can, in that case, help someone hear that otherwise would not be able to, or even maybe now they’re hearing in one ear, but they could hear in two ears. I mean, those are all great inventions, great things in our modern world that, frankly, ought to be used as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want to steer away from those if they’re done correctly. That’s correct. You can’t let…
SPEAKER 07 :
You can’t push it over the edge where you put somebody into a robotic category because there’s enough technology in them that they are no longer in control of what’s happening. It’s being controlled by an outside force or by artificial intelligence, which is essentially an outside force as well. It has to be done in a reasonable way. It has to be done in a practical way, but it has to be done considering human beings and what they need.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. Yeah. And again, I can’t disagree with that. That’s one of those things that maybe at a future date, you know, we can get more in depth into that. It’s fascinating to me. And I look at a lot of the things that are happening in AI, the good, the bad, the ugly, by the way, because there’s some things, you know, like, you know. there’s some things in it that are definitely ugly just like a lot of other tools you know i say it this way steve you know whether we’re talking about mri machines on the medical side whether we’re talking about cars or guns i mean let’s face it cars can be used for great tools they can get us from point a to point b they can also be very deadly and kill people same thing with guns i mean i could go down the list steve of all these different things that are there that have been invented over the years although i will say and i want to get your feeling on this i feel like with ai It’s like being back in the early, you know, late 1800s, early 1900s with the Industrial Revolution. This is a complete game changer, and I don’t think people, on average, really understand what a game changer it is.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, they don’t, and quite frankly, most people are looking at AI as a large language model, which is basically a version 1.0 of AI. There was stuff prior to that, but… The 2.0 version is entirely different. It doesn’t require a large language model. It does not go out and search for data the way that a large language model like ChatGPT does. The second level is all about what are called ontologies and semantics, and really what it is is It’s looking at how does data or a data point, what relationship does it have with another data point? So ontologies are basically structured relationships. So it gets a lot smarter when you’re not looking at a big bulk of data and say, well, our average forecast for what the data is telling us is this. We predict this. When you get to ontologies, it’s very, very specific. And it’s very, very deterministically. You ask it one question, you ask it that same question 10 times, you’re going to get the exact same answer 10 times. That doesn’t happen with large language models. Right, exactly.
SPEAKER 06 :
So there’s better coming, ultimately. Oh, yeah, ultimately there is. Well, and thank you for saying that. One of the things I can encourage all the folks that I know that are even using it, playing around with it, helping it in their businesses and so on, I keep reminding them that keep in mind something that you may have tried before a month ago that you weren’t really happy with the response of, realize that today, a month later, it’s learned a lot in the last month. And you’re liable to get something different today than you did a month ago or even a week ago. Because as you know, Steve, every moment in time, it’s learning. And I know that sounds scary to a lot of people, but that’s the reality of what’s happening.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, yeah, I mean, I talked to one of the candidates for governor about, you know, his plan for you know, Colorado and, you know, one of the conversations that came up, which I think was on target was if you can teach kids in Africa in six weeks, what it takes to typically learn in two years by installing an AI bot to work alongside the student, you go from two years to six weeks. Imagine the educational gaps we have in Colorado. And otherwise, I mean, math scores are like 20% of, you know, grade level when they graduate reading is as bad as that. If you can use AI sitting alongside the student to get educated and do it at grade level or above, number one, that solves a huge problem, and I think that’s worth it. And number two, virtually anybody, I witnessed this the other day with somebody I work with who knew nothing about a subject, had an opportunity, was ready to turn it down, and I said, don’t do that. Go to AI, ask six questions. Here are the six questions. They asked the six questions. I said, read everything that’s written there. Ask any question or ask another question on anything you don’t truly understand. By the time he got done, he was basically a PhD in the subject. He bid a quarter of a million dollar opportunity and won it. There you go. So think about it. Great example. It might be entrepreneurs.
SPEAKER 06 :
I mean, you can operate at a PhD level with AI if you use it right. You can. And I’ve got some of my coaching clients where we’re continuing to dig more and more into it on the ability to help them inside of the business, whether that be in helping with sales, whether it’s just helping in data processing. Maybe it’s actually helping to write invoices, things along those lines, Steve. And if I could just get them to do more of it, what they’re learning is, oh, wait a minute. You know, I could probably and whether this is good, bad or otherwise, this is the reality of where it’s going. I could probably do everything that we’re doing with one less person or maybe even two, depending upon the size of the organization. And Steve, that’s partly what’s going to happen. Now, that’s scary to a lot. Although when you look at the employer sides of things where they’re struggling to find really good, solid people that show up every day, that’s exciting for those. It’s fretful for one side, but exciting for the other. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, that’s the whole thing about do you have a scarcity mentality or an abundance mentality? And if you have an abundance mentality, you look at it and go, the number of opportunities that are going to be available to me is, you know, a hundredfold greater when I have the ability to become an expert. The expert is an interesting point because I would tell you that John Rush is a business and technical expert in automobiles. I can take a 25-year-old who’s got an AI bot sitting beside them, and I can make them an expert on almost everything in the auto business except the business and technical experience that you would use to filter what the AI does versus the 25-year-old who doesn’t know that stuff.
SPEAKER 06 :
Correct. But that doesn’t mean that… No, you just bring up a great point. In fact, I’ve been telling… I had a conversation with a teacher not long ago where I basically said, you know, what you really should be teaching your students is not to steer away from AI, but, you know, how to use it. I’ll be honest about what they’re using, by the way, since they’re in the classroom. But at the end of the day, how can they become teachers? an expert in something whereby they’re now the quote-unquote filter or the fact checker of AI, meaning what you just said a moment ago. You’ve got to be an expert enough in a field to know, is this the right answer, the wrong answer, or how do I dovetail something else into this that makes it even better?
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right. I mean, the business knowledge should both guide to more rapid adoption of the learning, but it should also stop you from things much faster, too. You know, you may say, look, no, you are not going to replace that or remove that carburetor, regardless of the fact that you have. and in-depth knowledge of every piece and part that goes into it. Because what you don’t understand is the match to that engine. And if you take it out, you’re going to unmatch it and then you’re going to get poor performance. So you might actually prove your principle that you know what you’re talking about, but you will actually do damage you shouldn’t do.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right, and that’s where some of these young kids especially, but even folks that are our age, Steve, need to realize that, okay, I need to become probably even better and sharper at what I’m actually doing so that AI doesn’t replace me, but I actually become its guide or I become its checkpoint, if you would. I’m the security gate there. for it. Maybe that’s the way to say it, Steve. And I think so many employees out there listening, even owners, are not looking at it that way. They’re looking at it completely as the enemy, and I want to stay completely away from it, much like the horse and buggy guys did with the automobile back in the day, Steve. You can’t do that. Not this time around. You do that, you’re going to get left behind.
SPEAKER 07 :
You are. In fact, it used to be when we’d mentor people, and you do this for a living, but I used to mentor people in my corporate life. And There’s all kinds of things you could say to them, but you come out of college, you say, well, look, you can’t stop learning. You’ve got to keep learning. You’ve got to keep asking questions and do that. The time compression that they now have at their fingertips with even ChatGPT or Grok or any of the current versions of that gives them an opportunity to make themselves more valuable, not only rapidly, but continuously more valuable over time. If you don’t use it, that’s up to you. But I can guarantee you, you know, I would rather pay, you know, somebody who’s interested in becoming better and using the tools they have at their disposal than someone who wants to just learn it slow over time, because that’s not the way the world is anymore.
SPEAKER 06 :
Especially now. Now, shifting gears and going more towards the medical end of things, which, of course, is your background, and let’s talk about the Pfizer deal, because, by the way, some of what we just got done talking about I think actually fits into some of what we’re going to talk about in regards to, you know, Trump-RX and the Pfizer deal. And for those that maybe didn’t see the announcement today, explain what this is.
SPEAKER 07 :
So the president agreed with, I think his name is Borrella, who’s the president of Pfizer, to do direct-to-consumer sales of the Pfizer product line for drugs. Now, it’s not the first time this has ever been done. I mean, we think it is, but it isn’t. It’s been done for five or six years. So essentially, Pfizer can cut out the middleman. The middleman we all know as the PPM. I mean, we’ve talked about it with Kelly many times. So the middleman marks up the drug dramatically, right? I mean, so a GLP-1 should cost a fraction of what it does. But the PBM gets a hold of it, marks it up dramatically, and then puts it in your health insurance plan and gives you a copay that’s, you know, $500 or more a month. And, you know, the drug probably didn’t cost any more than $300 or $400. So it’s great that Pfizer is willing to do that. It’s great that they’re willing to do it with Medicaid. But let’s talk about the practical reality. If you don’t buy your drug through your health insurance, if you have health insurance, then you’re paying 100% of the cost. Now, the drug may, in fact, be cheaper in combination between your health insurance cost and your cost, but it’s not cheaper to you as an individual. So, you know, there are some places where that may be the case with some unique drugs. So that’s number one. Doing it in Medicaid is interesting because, again, you know, the Medicaid, the insurance plan is not going to pay for the drug. This is direct to consumer. Health insurance plans are not required to pay for those drugs. If you buy it off of their plan, you have to pay yourself. Well, if you’re on Medicaid because your income doesn’t allow you to be any higher than that, a drug goes from $4,000 to your Medicaid plan to $400 to you only. Can you afford the $400? Gotcha. The answer is probably not. So there’s been direct-to-consumer stuff for a while in the drug category, but it has not done all that much. The high-cost drugs, the high-cost specialty drugs, yeah, you know what? You can get it for, instead of paying $8,000 for a particular immunosuppressant drug like Enabrel or something else, you can get it directly from the pharma company for $800, which is what they’ll sell it on the street for at a discount, most favored nation price. But I guarantee you, You know, you’re paying $150 a month for the copay. I don’t think you’re going to pay $800 for the drug every time you need it.
SPEAKER 06 :
You’re just not going to be able to afford that. So at the end of the day, is this more optics and politics than it is actually helping people? Or what are your thoughts there?
SPEAKER 07 :
The political upside is… Getting the drug companies to come to the table and to do something. Okay, this is not what I would do I would again cut out the middleman but sell the drug through the health insurance company and However, the PBMs and the health insurance companies are not going to want to do that because the PBMs and health insurance company get a whole bunch of money in rebates that they won’t get if the drug comes directly from pharma to them. So they’re just not going to agree to do it. Then they’re going to say, look, I don’t want the paperwork. I don’t want to do it. On the other side of the coin, you know, philosophically, it’s a good idea to have us thinking about lowering the cost of drugs, which, by the way, are going to rise 12 percent in 2026, which is catastrophic. On the other political side, though, I wonder if Trump is doing this with Pfizer or Pfizer is doing it with Trump because Pfizer doesn’t want Trump. doesn’t want the president to disclaim their vaccine for COVID. He’s close, right? He keeps questioning it, hasn’t done it yet. I think he is very, very close. When Robert provides him with the data that shows that, as we saw the other day, that more deaths than World War I, World War II, Vietnam, and Korea combined caused by the vaccine. Once that gets out there and becomes mainstream, Pfizer is going to have a problem. So is Moderna. And they want the president to protect them. And quite frankly, I don’t think he should.
SPEAKER 06 :
And you know what? You bring up a great point. I hadn’t thought about that end of things. I guess I should have, because this is really a way to, I guess you could say, defer, soften the blow, whatever you might want to say when it comes to what you just said. And maybe that’s Pfizer’s way of thinking, well, if we do this, maybe we get him off our backs. Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
I mean, the worst thing that could happen for the shareholders, for the owners of that company, from their point of view, would be for someone to take that COVID vaccine off the market. Yep. You know what happens to your stock when that happens? No, it tanks. Then there are questions that become, you know, when will they, if ever, face liability questions? Right, right. And, you know, liability means multi-billion dollar, hundred billion dollar lawsuits. Or more. You know, that’s the big, Perala and Pfizer don’t want that. Moderna doesn’t want it. Should they face it? I think they should because I think they made a lousy drug. It was obviously hurting people, still is, and they didn’t take any responsibility for it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, and they coerced, maybe that’s the right or wrong words, Steve, but they coerced government into pushing this thing out. I think they gave them a lot of false data and false hope, by the way, at the same time gave the American public false hope. And really, you know, in a lot of ways got government and other employers to mandate this. that frankly never should have been mandated, as we’ve talked over the past five years, never should have happened in the first place, but it did. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER 07 :
And think about this. Here’s the simple setup that we’ve talked about in pieces, but here it is. The federal government pays Echo Health Alliance to create gain-of-function research and a COVID virus is released from a lab in Wuhan by accident or on purpose. That leads to some deaths and they shut the world down. When they shut the world down, people lose jobs, they lose their savings, they defer their mortgages, they have to pay more later, all those things. Now, because they’re losing so much financially, you introduce the idea of a vaccine that will make it all go away. You add that vaccine to the schedule. You put it out. You don’t quality. You don’t safety check it. You don’t report, in fact, on the safety problems you’re having with it. People take it. A million people die in the U.S. from the vaccine or something in that order. Right. That entire cycle was born of our government. It was managed by our government and it is our government’s responsibility. And unfortunately, I don’t think they’ll ever take responsibility, but it has driven this divisive. I don’t trust the government level to the highest I’ve ever seen it. And I don’t I don’t. I don’t complain on why that’s happening because think about that simple cycle of what happened.
SPEAKER 06 :
You’re right. Okay, great stopping point. We got a text message that just came in. I’ll read that in a moment. Roof Savers of Colorado coming up next. Talk to Dave Hart today. Get that roof of yours rejuvenated. Have it last longer. And by the way, that might save you on your insurance costs and insurance policy as well. 303-710-6916.
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SPEAKER 11 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 06 :
And we are back. Steve House with us today. Dr. Kelly Victory not able to be with us. She’s traveling today. But, Steve, we appreciate your time as well. And you’re the one that really was the brainchild to set up everything between Dr. Kelly and all of us way back anyways. And we’ve been doing this for about five years now. might have just tuned in or maybe only been listening to us for a short time a lot of what Steve just covered we have talked about over and over again at times throughout the last five years Steve when it came to even when even when this stuff was just starting to happen when it was being developed what was you know what was really happening at the time I mean we’ve literally lived and I’ve not missed other than being on vacation I haven’t missed a single day talking about all these things, even through COVID, when, frankly, a lot of other folks were buried in their basement and scared to come out. That wasn’t us.
SPEAKER 07 :
No, it wasn’t. And we took on the issues. By the way, I was the state chairman there in 16 and 17. I know we met during that period. You had me on the show and you and Dan and those guys. Haven’t we been doing the show for 10 years? Oh, at least.
SPEAKER 06 :
At least. I mean, we started doing things, Steve, you and I, even when we were talking about even before you becoming chair, we were doing things with the Internet of Things and so on even prior to that. So, yeah, we’ve been doing this for probably well over a decade now.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, people ask me, what’s the smartest thing you did in getting this? I said, that was the smartest part. I mean, you know, I needed a radio guy who would actually last. You’ve been around for a long time, and, you know, you’ve been a mainstay. You’ve grown your base of, you know, advertisers and supporters, and you’ve just done a phenomenal job. I mean, probably the best. non-large radio host. I mean, you’re probably doing better than almost anybody. You’re not syndicated nationally, but people can listen to you nationally, too.
SPEAKER 06 :
They can, and they do. By the way, that’s very kind of you to say. I appreciate that, and I don’t take that lightly. I have a lot of respect for you. You’ve done a lot of things throughout your career, and for you to say that means a lot, and I appreciate that greatly, Steve. I really do. Back to this whole Pfizer thing and I guess here’s another question. Given the fact he’s doing that, Trump and the White House has done this with Pfizer. Will there be any other companies that follow along as well? Oh, no doubt.
SPEAKER 07 :
I mean, there’s going to be pressure on them to react. I think they all know it’s like I think we talked about this one time. So Bill Gates, who’s worth God knows how much money. Right. Says I’m going to give 400 million dollars to a cause. And what he does is he gives 40 million dollars a year for 10 years. And you and I both know that he never runs out of the original $400 million.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, that’s easy.
SPEAKER 07 :
Because he’s getting more than 10%. Exactly, exactly. So these guys like Pfizer and other drug companies doing this, they get publicity. They’re seen with the president. It tantamounts almost to an endorsement. by Trump to them. So Trump’s people, the MAGA nation, et cetera, are looking at it and going, Hey, Pfizer must be pretty good with the president. He’s good with me. They’re good with me, right? That can drive up stock prices, valuations. I mean, there’s a lot of reasons why the other drug companies will do it besides just pressure.
SPEAKER 06 :
True, true. No, no, you’re exactly right. So in other words, and I, you know this better than I, how many actual large, I mean, I know there’s a lot of drug companies, but how many large companies like Pfizer are there? Five, six, or are there more than that?
SPEAKER 07 :
No, it’s probably more 20 or 25 that are in that sort of spectrum. And they, because, you know, one big drug, And, you know, I mean, the guys that created the GLP-1s, I mean, you know, that can be a drug that changes the valuation of the company by a hundredfold.
SPEAKER 1 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 07 :
Wow. I mean, just because there’s so much demand. I mean, it’s a process. I mean, AI is going to have a huge effect on drugs because… AI can simulate safety tests that are so close they are valid safety tests. There’s other things that they can do, but if AI took a year off of a drug coming to market, number one, it might help patients who really need it, and number two, it’s going to change the cost structure dramatically for pharma companies.
SPEAKER 06 :
Wow, amazing. I was watching a video the other day, and this is something I was going to throw at you because you might know more about this than I do, because I have no knowledge of this. But I was watching a video on a guy who’s a doctor, and some of this I don’t know whether to believe or not. This is where I wanted to throw it at you, and I wish Kelly was here today because I’d throw this at her as well. But this guy was talking about how back in the day when the polio vaccine was actually – This was before the invention of DNA, which came about three years after the polio vaccine had been invented. Anyways, make a long story short, this guy goes through this entire process of going through the history of and how it came about and this, that and the other and how at that time. They gave out some worldwide around 300 million doses of this polio vaccine that once they learned after DNA what was actually in the vaccine, it actually had a cancer-causing dimension to it. I don’t remember exactly what the code was for it. I should have looked that up and written it down. But anyway, Steve. supposedly according to this guy’s story that polio vaccine itself actually introduced cancer more into the world today than what it did prior to that that prior to that you didn’t really hear that many cases of cancer and that that particular event was really the quote-unquote large cancer-causing event impacting the world and again i don’t know if that’s true or not might be totally totally conspiracy this guy might be a total whack job i have no idea but i thought it was interesting
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, the hard part about it is you’re talking about SV40.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, SV40. And this guy’s name was Dr. Jack Cruz. Dr. Jack Cruz is the one talking about it.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, so SV40 being in there. I mean, SV40 is… actually a pathogen. I mean, it does, in fact, cause cancer being in the polio vaccine. You know, obviously, they’re unaware at the time that it happened, you know, does it cause cancer? I think it’s more likely that it does than it doesn’t. But here again, you have these machines, these mechanisms inside pharma companies to disclaim responsibility for things. Not all pharma companies are bad. There’s lots of great drugs out there, but when you make a mistake, and in the case of polio, polio vaccine to me is somewhat like COVID. I don’t want to make it that direct of a comparison, but here’s what I’m saying. COVID, if you take D3, if you take zinc, if you take vitamin C, if you live reasonably healthy, if you do get COVID, you’re going to survive it, you’re going to manage it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So do you really need a vaccine that doesn’t prevent it and doesn’t stop it from being transmitted? The answer is no. It’s much worse than a polio vaccine because a polio vaccine is a live virus vaccine, attenuated, but live virus vaccine that usually prevents you from getting polio. But the source of polio… is almost always poor sanitation and water. And so at the point where nations solve the sanitation and water problem, certainly the United States falls into that category. Did we give polio vaccines too long? You know, the issue was, you know, they want to make sure it’s eradicated for a certain number of years in the country before they stopped doing it. There’s an acceptable loss scenario. There were probably some people that were negatively affected by the polio vaccine that who took it long after they needed to take it because they set a standard based on number of cases in the country, when in reality, we knew what caused it, and if you took care of the water and sanitation, you were likely not going to have outbreaks of it again.
SPEAKER 06 :
Interesting. When do you feel like, and again, I know this is an odd question, but when do you feel like we should have stopped giving it?
SPEAKER 07 :
Shortly after we began to give it. I mean, I think once we had… I mean, you talk about what’s possible. The U.S. government couldn’t do this, but in India, they distributed and gave 60 million doses of the polio vaccine on a single day.
SPEAKER 06 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 07 :
And then, frankly, in India, it was absolutely necessary. In Nairobi, Kenya, where you have 400,000 people living in a slum that has no running water, has no sanitation, those places were rampant for polio because the virus thrives in that environment. So the vaccine helped in those situations far more than it hurted in India. And frankly, again, it’s in, you know, first world nations that solved the sanitation and water problem a long time ago may have been able to get off the polio vaccine long before they did. And they just didn’t.
SPEAKER 06 :
And for everybody listening, there’s actually, believe it or not, there’s an article about what we’re talking about on the NIH’s website. website talking about the very thing that we’re talking about right now, Steve, and it even talks about how studies of groups of people who receive polio vaccines during 55 to 63 provide evidence of no increased cancer risk. However, because these epidemiological studies are sufficiently flawed, the Institute of Medicine’s Immunization Safety Review Committee concluded that the evidence was inadequate to conclude whether or not the contaminated polio virus is or polio vaccine caused cancer. In other words, they really don’t know one way or the other. And there is, I guess, from what they’re saying, a chance that it did. They can’t disprove it.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I know. I mean, I read a CHOP study about it, Milton’s Hospital, Philadelphia, a long time ago. And the hard part is, is that we live in a world where we question everything, right? You know, we question the conspiracy theories. We create conspiracy theories about everything because we just don’t believe the government. We don’t believe the intentions And this is I’m a capitalist, right? I mean, I’m profit motivated. Right. But for for profit companies in the drug category, it’s for profit until they die. And they, you know, disclaim responsibility in situations like the COVID vaccine that they shouldn’t be allowed to. But the system works for them and they work it. And that happens. So, yeah, I mean, after 63, there was supposedly no SV40 in the vaccine. But at the same time, SV40 is still around. Right. And, you know, who knows exactly? I mean, unless you’re. the small fraction of the number of people who actually know what the problem might have been or was specifically supposed to be, people are unaware. They just go about their day and don’t even think about it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yep. I do know this. You know me. I’m not a conspiracy theorist at all, Steve. In fact, probably err more on the side of being ultra-cautious than that, partly because of the fact I sit in front of this microphone on almost a daily basis. I have to be really careful as well on some of that. I believe I do anyways. But it does make you wonder, the amount of money, that has been generated off of people having cancer. And as you know, it’s one of the leading causes of deaths in America today, that and heart disease. I mean, between those two things, they claim far more lives than anything else we talk about, including gun-related deaths and other things. So at the end of the day, those two top it by a long, long way. You’ve got to ask yourself, I mean, almost that skeptical side of you has to say, okay, time out. The amount of money that’s been made off of that, is that SV40 end of things? That story I was just talking about, could some of that have been actually real? I don’t know, Steve. I don’t know. It probably was.
SPEAKER 07 :
It probably was, and you’ve just highlighted what I think is a big problem, which is once we start down a path, We make a polio vaccine. We make a COVID vaccine. We make statins for people who they think need to lower cholesterol. We rarely revisit it. We just keep using it, right? It’s like you have this regimen of things you use, and those are things that doctors prescribe all the time, and they just keep doing it, doing it, and doing it, and someone says, well, that’s probably not good. I mean, they think it’s hurting people. Nah, I haven’t heard that. I haven’t read that. Well, you don’t have time to read because you’re too busy. But in reality, we don’t revisit that stuff enough. And I think that’s part of the job of HHS and the FDA is to go back and say, okay, you know, is Paxlovid a really, really an important drug in the COVID or is it damaging? Is Remdesivir, you know, is, you know, should people be taking statins? There’s so many downsides to statins, but we just don’t revisit it often enough. We just accept it as true. Even, even opioids, opioids originally, there were plenty of papers said they’re not addictive. And, like, not addictive, not addictive. And they were as addictive at the beginning as they are today. That’s right. And hundreds of millions have died as a result of it. That’s right. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. I’ll leave it at that. Hour always goes by fast. Steve, I appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Always great info.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thanks, man. Thanks, man.
SPEAKER 06 :
Appreciate you very much. Have a great rest of your day. Steve House again. Yes, and as he stated, he was one of our previous GOP chairs. One of these days we’ll talk about some of that maybe in a little bit more depth as to even what’s happening inside of Colorado right now. But veteran windows and doors coming up next. And, again, cut out that middleman, much like Steve was talking about when it comes to Pfizer drugs and what’s going to happen with Medicaid. Cut out that middleman. Get those windows and doors direct to you. Find Dave today. Dave Bancroft at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 11 :
It’s time to leave your safe space. This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right, and Steve, by the way, very – I’ll say this. He’s not here with me, but I can say this now. I would say if even he was listening. I’m not joking. Probably one of the smartest guys that I’ve ever met and run into, and as he said, literally been on this program with me for 11, 12 years. I mean, almost from the very beginning of my show here, Rush to Reason, and not exaggerating. We met here – At the station one day, he was on another program, and we just met and actually hit it off really well. And I’ll be honest, I think the very first time he and I met, we were not in agreement on a particular item that he was actually talking about. And so we had a very nice conversation, and once I gave my side, and it had to do with transportation and cars and so on, and once I gave my side, he was actually, you know, very, you know, opened his eyes, and he’s like, yeah, okay, I guess I could see that side of things. And since that day, we became very good friends all the way through him being the Colorado chair, GOP chair, and so on, and just a great individual. And there’s a lot of folks out there I know that don’t look at Steve the same way I do, but there’s not anything about him you could ever say wrong to me because I think everything he’s done, he’s one of the smartest, brightest, and most upstanding individuals that I’ve ever met when it comes to all the things we talk about on a regular weekly basis. So… I’ll leave it at that. You can always find our episodes, past episodes as well. Just go to RushToReason.com. And again, this is Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
I’m a rich guy.
