Hour 1 of Rush to Reason ignites with John Rush joined by physician Dr. Kelly Victory and healthcare industry expert Steve House for a bold, no-holds-barred deep dive into America’s health crisis. What’s really driving soaring healthcare costs — accidents, or lifestyle diseases like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension? Why do “quick-fix” drugs promise miracles while risking serious side effects? Dr. Kelly and Steve challenge listeners to rethink weight loss, chronic disease, and personal responsibility, exposing how incentives in medicine and the pharmaceutical industry may be steering care in the wrong direction. They tackle blood work, drug pricing, middlemen, and
SPEAKER 12 :
This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 10 :
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 04 :
With your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 09 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did. Get a job first. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 02 :
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 05 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 12 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush, presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 13 :
And it’s that time, Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory joining us today. I’ll start with you, Dr. Kelly. Welcome.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hey, good to be with you. I’ll tell you, Christmas is bearing down on us. The holidays are here, so I hope. I hope you’re ready. I am not.
SPEAKER 13 :
They are rolling along, and I don’t know that I’m ever fully ready. Steve House, are you ready? You know, sort of.
SPEAKER 14 :
I’m not 100% there, but when you have an extended family, you do some of your Christmas like in early January, it gives you a little bit of a break.
SPEAKER 13 :
True.
SPEAKER 14 :
And after seeing Kelly’s interview on Instagram, all I want is anti-aging products because this woman I spent a lot of time with five or six years ago looks like she’s 15 years younger. What’s the secret, Dr. Kelly? You need to cough it up.
SPEAKER 11 :
It’s a trick done with smoke and Maybelline.
SPEAKER 13 :
I want the trick, Steve, because I want to look young also.
SPEAKER 14 :
I know. I saw that Instagram interview with a woman with long, dark hair, and I’m like, God, I’ve known Kelly for a while now, and she looks like she’s going backwards in age. Whatever she’s doing, I need to find out. Good job, Dr. Kelly.
SPEAKER 11 :
I will tell you, all joking aside, I am a huge believer that diet and exercise are the key to longevity and looking the way you want. So each year as I get older, I double down on my resolve to eliminate all the bad things from my diet or as much as possible. I’m like everybody else. I have my moments changed. where I give in. But I really think, and that’s I think why I’m such a believer in the Maha movement, that we cannot keep turning to another injection pill treatment or therapy of some sort. And I am not one who embraces plastic surgery or, you know, facial sort of things, injections, those sorts of things. I really think it begins and ends with what you put into your body.
SPEAKER 14 :
Which, by the way, leads me to a suggestion on your TV ads on drops. I would simply say the ad should say something like, you’ll need drops until you drop the Big Mac.
SPEAKER 11 :
Something like that. Good one. No, it’s a good one, Steve, because people, that’s exactly right. People think, well, I don’t need to make the tough changes. I don’t need to make the tough lifestyle changes. Certainly there’s a pill or a shot or some other sort of therapy that I can do to rather than the thing that’s hard. And the thing that’s hard is to make yourself get daily exercise, make yourself really control your diet. And when I say control your diet, I eat a lot. I eat a tremendous amount of food. It’s not that I am starving myself. It’s simply that I try to make good choices. in the things that I eat. Once you get your arms around that, that it really begins and ends with you, I think life becomes far simpler and you are far happier with the results.
SPEAKER 13 :
Can’t argue any of that. And again, for all of you listening, Dr. Kelly Victory, we’ve had her on with us now since really early on in COVID. She’s been with us ever since. We’ve done this Thursday hour for a long time now. Steve House, you’re the one that actually set all of this up. You and I have a history of doing some things together radio wise on technology and advancement, the things along those lines, which, frankly, we haven’t been too far off of in some of the. predictions that we talked about back then. I do have a couple of questions really quick, Dr. Kelly. I want to throw in before we get too involved here today. And for those of you listening, this will be our last live Dr. Kelly and Steve House hour for 2025 because it’s Christmas and then New Year’s for the rest of the year. So this is it. If you got a question for us, by all means, send us a text message 307-200-8222. So Dr. Kelly, blood work, fast or no fast prior to blood work? What’s the rule of thumb?
SPEAKER 11 :
It depends on what it is. When in doubt, you should fast. Certain things like lipid panels, cholesterol panels, you’d absolutely want to be fasting. Other things like a complete blood count or electrolyte count doesn’t make any difference. So, as I said, if you’re not sure, if you’re not sure what blood tests your doctor may have ordered or whether or not you should be fasting, then the answer is to fast because you’re that you can never go wrong with that. And what that means is simply that you shouldn’t have eaten for at least eight to 10 hours before. uh prior to having that blood work and not just eating or a drunk you can have black coffee black tea but nothing with cream or sugar those sorts of things um so when in doubt you should do it fasting okay so and i guess you know being kind of a novice here you guys know far more about this than i do why dr kelly why is that important what does that do Well, that gives you what your true baseline is. If you just eat a Snickers bar, everybody’s blood sugar will have a brief blip up in blood sugar, for example. If you’ve just eaten a big fatty meal, you can throw up and have a brief increase in your circulating cholesterol or fats in your bloodstream. So if you want to get an actual, you know, realistic viewpoint of where you are, what your baseline is, then you want to do it fasting.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay. All right. So for whoever that was that asked that question, you just heard the answer. And I’m assuming, too, Dr. Kelly, there’s going to be times where maybe that just didn’t pan out that way. Maybe you had blood work done unexpectedly. Does it really throw the numbers off a ton when that happens?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, it doesn’t. And as I said, you generally aren’t getting an emergency cholesterol panel. If you end up in a car accident or have a heart attack, that’s not the blood work that we’re worried about. So people may literally be in the middle of a meal at the time they have an emergency. So no, we get the blood work whenever you can. And sometimes you just can’t do it fasting. If I know personally that I have blood work that’s meant to be fasting, say when I get my cholesterol checked once a year, I schedule that lab appointment in the morning. so that I get up and I go right there. I don’t want to schedule it at 3 o’clock in the afternoon so that I am stuck not being able to eat all day so that I can be fasting. So if you have blood work when you are asked or told by your doctor or you’re concerned that you might be supposed to be in a fasting state, then try the best you can to schedule it for some time before 11 in the morning so that you don’t find yourself having to withhold from eating and drinking.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, makes total sense. So again, great question, by the way. Thank you for asking that. Okay, next one. This one involves both of you. In fact, Steve, I think I’ll start with you on this one. Will we ever see justice for those who pushed the vaccine mandate? What will happen to the damaged children when their parents pass on? If you assume that the vaccines caused autism, who cares for those children with severe autism when their parents are gone? Will the left promote euthanasia for those children, quote unquote, the party of death? Steve, I’ll let you answer that one.
SPEAKER 14 :
You know, it’s interesting because there’s a lot of ways you can answer this question, and I’m going to point you back toward the concept of a class action lawsuit. In a class action lawsuit, you have a whole bunch of people who were harmed. You know, the plaintiff’s side is huge, and the defendant’s side is usually a drug company or someone like that, and it’s likely because so many people were harmed that someday there may in fact be a lawsuit against Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, and the federal government. But ultimately, it’s probably going to be class action-like, which means people will get pennies and it’ll go away. I just don’t see how they’ll ever really hold these guys accountable. If they were committing serious fraud, which we believe they were, which is telling people a lie about this safety and effectiveness, they should be held individually liable for criminal behavior. But I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of that either.
SPEAKER 13 :
Dr. Kelly, your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with Steve because it isn’t a simple equation of, you know, that it was only the vaccine and that there aren’t other potentially confounding factors. I am a firm believer that a big driver, probably the most important driver of the increase in autism rates is the vaccine schedule itself. not only the number of vaccines in total, but the rapidity and the frequency with which they are given. But we will never be able to approve that definitively the way that you would need to for a payout in a class action lawsuit. With regard to who will ultimately take care of these and where the burden will fall, that’s a big deal. Because when you start talking about one in 12 boys in the state of California born last year, is being diagnosed with autism. These numbers are astronomical. We are going to have an entire number of generations, not just a single generation. This is going to trickle down for some decades. And not only is it going to be an issue of who’s going to care for them, but what’s going to happen to the workforce? What’s going to happen to the the population from which we can choose our military? Are these people going to be capable of being in any way contributing members to society, let alone the horrific. You know, life that we have relegated them to. These are big issues and something I think that we are going to have to address as a country and as a public health system. We’re going to have to start looking at these because the numbers are going up right now. Remember, the numbers are going up, not down.
SPEAKER 13 :
Right. Great point. Okay, let’s do this. We’ll take a quick timeout. Keep texting us questions. We’ll get those answered. Again, last live program with Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House of 2025. Yes, we’ll be back in 2026, but hang tight. Dr. Scott is coming up next, and he would love to be your doctor. He thinks just like we do. I know I say that a lot, but it’s the truth. He does. He thinks like we do, and he wants to take care of you in the same way that we talk about here, not only on Wednesdays, but Thursdays as well. 303-663-6990.
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SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560, Dr. Kelly Victory, Steve House with us as well. Okay, yeah, I’m assuming that both of you watched, or maybe if you didn’t watch, at least got a chance to recap President Trump’s speech last night. I’m assuming both of you are at least aware of that, right? Absolutely. Okay. So, Dr. Kelly, I’ll start with you. He mentioned in that speech specifically drug prices, how things have gotten out of control. There’s going to be a new website coming along, TrumpRx, where he’s claiming it’s going to be a significant savings. Walk us through what he’s meaning and what do you see happening along those lines?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, the things that President Trump has been openly talking about are things like getting it such that the United States is not paying a disproportionate share compared to the rest of the world. He has lobbied for what he’s calling most favored nation status, meaning that the drug companies would agree to sell drugs to the United States at the same price that they’re willing to sell them elsewhere, so that the cost of things like research and development, testing, those sorts of things, marketing, is spread across equally in other westernized countries, primarily. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is really going to do the entire thing. I think it’s just a shell game. I’m guessing Steve would agree with me. The thing that the president… really hasn’t addressed head-on, and I wish he would, is this issue of the middlemen. This is something that Steve and I were involved in way before there was ever the COVID debacle, which is getting the racketeering component out of pharmaceuticals. The idea that these middlemen negotiate contracts between a pharmaceutical company and an end supplier, whether that’s a hospital or a doctor’s office or whatever else, And they essentially extract a fee and they are back alley thugs who say, look, if you want your drug to be on the formulary, you know, at hospital ABC, then you need to pay us a bigger kickback. And that’s what they get kickbacks. It would be illegal in any other industry. And it is the single biggest driver of escalating drug prices. And I don’t feel that it’s been adequately addressed.
SPEAKER 14 :
Steve, your thoughts. Kelly’s right about it, obviously. Here’s the other piece of it, and that is if Trump was standing in front of me and told me about this program, I would say, Mr. President, which drugs? Are you talking about average, everyday, generic, and branded drugs, or are you talking about specialty pharmacy drugs? Because specialty pharmacy drugs are drugs that have to be made in a specialty pharmacy. There’s not a ton of them in the U.S., but plenty. And those drugs are drugs that account for somewhere between 70% and 80% of all drugs sold. So when you get a better price on, you know, metformin or a diabetic drug or lucinopril or any of the drugs for hypertension and those kind of things, you’re saving 8%, 10%, 14%, which is not insignificant. But the high-cost drugs, it sometimes is 70%, 80%, 90%. of the cost of the drug that should be saved if you didn’t have the middleman Kelly’s talking about.
SPEAKER 13 :
So really, Dr. Kelly, that middleman, and we’ve talked about it plenty, but I think we get new people that tune in each time and maybe don’t fully understand some of the things we talk about, or they’ve listened in the past and maybe are still trying to grasp where it really goes on here. Because frankly, Dr. Kelly, as you know, most people, myself included, we don’t see any of that. We simply… Get a prescription. You try to go get it filled. You might have insurance. You may not. Sometimes you pay out of pocket. Sometimes there are deductibles, whatever. But for folks like myself, we don’t see all of the other inner workings. We just know that this particular prescription I just got filled and picked up costs X amount of dollars. We don’t see everything else you’re talking about.
SPEAKER 11 :
No, you’re exactly right, and that’s why most people do not understand why drug prices are as high as they are. With the rare exception, the notable exception being chemotherapy drugs, individual physicians don’t make any money on the particular prescription that they write for you. In other words, if I write you a prescription for azithromycin versus amoxicillin, or I write it for a generic versus a brand name, It doesn’t make any difference to me. It only makes a difference to you as the patient. And I try to look out for my patients. The notable exception to that, by the way, is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is actually a pass-through from the pharmaceutical company, sells it to the oncologist, and the oncologist then resells it to the patient. This is important because patients need to understand the oncologist, about 55% of their income is is from the chemotherapy that they sell. And until we fix that, I don’t know how anybody really can trust the advice of their oncologist when the oncologist is in a position to make so much money on the sale of those chemotherapeutic drugs. But these are things that the average patient doesn’t understand and has no reason. Yeah.
SPEAKER 13 :
Before knowing you guys, I didn’t know any of that. And I don’t know that I fully understood what you just said until now. So I’m somebody that, you know, I have cancer. All of a sudden it’s diagnosed and they want to put me on a treatment. And that one of those treatments maybe is radiation and or chemotherapy or a combination of the two. What you’re telling me, Dr. Kelly, is as a patient. I don’t get to buy direct from the source and or even the middleman. I’m buying from the doctor that’s marking it up. So this thing’s basically got two to three steps of markup in it by the time I get it?
SPEAKER 11 :
Correct. And it goes directly to the doctor, to the prescribing doctor.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, really quick, who controls what the price of that is? Do they just set that arbitrarily or is there a market value? How does that work, Dr. Kelly?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, the pharmaceutical company, they put a price on it, whoever the pharmaceutical company that creates that chemotherapy drug, and then they sell it at a certain price to the oncologist, and the oncologist then marks it up. and then other people get a piece of it as well if you have to go to an infusion center or whatever else to actually get it. But the oncologist can mark it up, and as I said, about 55% of the annual income of your average oncologist is made just on what they make on chemotherapy. And again, I think I’m not saying that any one individual oncologist is being dishonest. But it certainly begs the question, you know, are they recommending something because of the amount of money they stand to make?
SPEAKER 13 :
Wow, this is, I mean, I almost feel like we’ve entered into like, you know, bizarro land here, Dr. Kelly. And Steve, I’ll let you comment in a moment as well. But Dr. Kelly, this just seems, I’m sorry to say, this just seems totally, you know, backwards on the way. And I get regular, typical industries, businesses and so on. You know, a person, you know, we talked to HVAC a moment ago. So, you know, Hunter buys a furnace and he’s able to mark up that furnace to the customer because that’s how he makes his money and so on. But he’s not an oncologist. In other words, he’s looking out for you need a furnace. I’ve got the furnace. Yes, I’ve acquired it. I’ve procured it. It’s ready to go. It’s the right model. Make everything. I’m going to install it into your house and off we go. That’s a lot different than a prescription, Dr. Kelly.
SPEAKER 11 :
I agree, and for example, if you did it with everything else, if I made a portion, go back to what I just said, which we don’t, say on an antibiotic, if I could write you a prescription for generic azithromycin, or I could write it for the brand name azithromycin, which is about 10 times more expensive, if I made a cut of that, how commonly do you think I’d write for the generic?
SPEAKER 13 :
You wouldn’t.
SPEAKER 11 :
Why would you? Of course I would. Why would I? You wouldn’t. Why would I? I would say I’m writing you the best drug, which is this drug, and I’m going to write for the one that I make a way bigger cut on, and that’s why it’s not allowed. Why it has been allowed in oncology and with chemotherapy is unclear to me as a physician. That’s not my area. But I don’t know why it’s allowed, and we’ve got part of the problem is until we alert patients to it, and bring it to the forefront. And I’m very, very interested in lobbying that that should not be allowed because it really questions the optics of it are wrong. It begs the question, should you trust that doctor?
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, Steve, when it comes to this end of things and from your perspective, because you help on the admin sides of things and so on, am I and or Dr. Kelly looking at this wrong? In other words, is there something that we’re missing whereby this is an acceptable practice or something that shouldn’t be changed, or are we on the right track?
SPEAKER 14 :
No, you’re absolutely on the right track, but you’re missing one other point, which is think about the furnace example you gave. It’s not only that he buys the furnace and he can mark it up, But in the oncology world, what he would be able to do is he would be able to decide which furnace for you. You would have no input on that. Good point. And how many times you’ve got to change the filter, how many times you need to take the drug. Yeah, there’s a sense for what’s going on. And I do think a lot of oncologists are very high-quality people. But incentive-wise, for the ones that get caught… and they do bad things, they’re in complete control of how much poison they put in your body and which they do and how much it costs. It’s a crazy, crazy business.
SPEAKER 13 :
No, great point. And you know what? I hadn’t thought, and Dr. Kelly, going back to my furnace example, which I just pulled that one out because of the last commercials we ran with Cub Creek, so I did that only because it was at the top of my mind, but I hadn’t thought about the way Steve just presented that. I mean, these particular doctors, they literally control the entire process plus their markup on the drug.
SPEAKER 11 :
Exactly, and I think that that’s why it’s perverse, and it’s got to stop. I agree. Because it puts patients in a very, patients aren’t in a position to shop around. We don’t know. I mean, Dr. Kelly, I mean, no offense.
SPEAKER 13 :
I find out next week that I’ve got cancer, and yes, there’s some treatments, and here’s the options. I mean, yes, I guess I could go get a second or third opinion. In some cases, it might be the exact same opinion I’ve already got. So at the end of the day, I’m sort of, unless I go look at some alternatives and so on, which maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t, but at the end of the day, if I choose that particular course of action, I’m pretty much locked in. No offense, Dr. Kelly, I’m pretty stupid when it comes to some of this stuff that you guys work on daily. I have a foggiest idea what I should be charged.
SPEAKER 11 :
Right, and the other thing is you’re taking advantage of a patient who’s in a precarious situation.
SPEAKER 13 :
Their mental state is way different at that point, correct?
SPEAKER 11 :
They’re dealing with a potentially life-threatening illness. They aren’t in a position to shop around and start negotiating for themselves. They’re in a position where they’re hanging on to every word this doctor says And I just I don’t I don’t think it’s ethical. I don’t think it’s moral, even if it’s legal. And it undoubtedly is. And they’re they’re allowing it to happen. I don’t think it’s moral or ethically correct for physicians to to do this, to take advantage of a patient who’s in a position of making a potentially life or death decision. decision about their treatment plan and then saying, you know, here’s what I suggest. Well, most patients, 99.9% of patients are going to go with that recommendation and they aren’t in a position to know better and they’re going to pay whatever they’re told they’re going to pay.
SPEAKER 13 :
When did this start, Dr. Kelly? I mean, as far as the prescription end of things and making money off of the drug itself and the treatment of cancer, has it always been this way or was it different way back when, you know, chemotherapy and that first started?
SPEAKER 11 :
You know, that’s a great question. I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s my I don’t know when it was not this way. OK, I don’t remember anything ever getting past saying, OK, now we’re going to allow this to happen. And as I said, I was unaware of it myself until probably four years ago that this was in most of my physician colleagues. When I said that, I’m like, no, that the only people who knew about it are the oncologists. You know, it’s their own little secret.
SPEAKER 13 :
I mean, Steve, in a lot of ways, and I know this is probably a lame explanation, but Steve, all three of us are old enough to remember the day where you couldn’t own a telephone. If you had telephone service, you leased, rented, monthly charged on your bill for said phone. If you had one phone, it was one price. If you had… Three phones, it was three of those that you were leasing. In other words, you never owned the equipment, Steve, the phone company always did, meaning they controlled every single part of that. And you had, Dr. Kelly’s point a moment ago on the drugs, Steve, you had no option in where else you were going to go to actually get telephone service. That’s finally why I believe they got broke up. But you had no option because they controlled everything.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, the single supplier. In the drug space, there’s plenty of people who make oncology drugs. My suspicion is, first of all, that I believe it has been around since the beginning, but secondly is when oncology drugs became a reality, there was a whole bunch of side effects. There were a whole bunch of pain and agony that go with them, and I believe what the drug manufacturers convinced Congress or whoever of was that These are really life-saving things. They can stop people from dying of cancer. Yes, it’s horrible, but we’ve got to put it in the trust of the doctors so people will actually use it. I think it was an incentive to use the drugs rather than to do alternative things like surgery or radiation oncology, and they just never stopped it.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay. That’s a great stopping point. So, folks, we’ll come right back. Don’t go anywhere. Again, questions that you’ve got for Dr. Kelly Victory and or Steve, give me a text message, 307-282-22. Roof Savers of Colorado coming up next. And again, we’ve had a lot of wind. Still have some more coming tomorrow. Might be some more turnoffs of power. I’ll talk about that in the next hour. In the meantime, give Dave Hart a call. Find out what he can do with the Roof Max product on your roof today. 303-710-6916.
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SPEAKER 04 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, welcome back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory, Steve House with us. Dr. Kelly, there was an article, in fact, Charlie sent me this yesterday, talking about some folks that are suing over Ozempic, you know, GLP-1 for blindness and some things along those lines. You know, is there validity to that, or is this just, you know, a repercussion of something else that these folks might have already had? What are your thoughts there?
SPEAKER 11 :
I think that there are, unfortunately, a lot of serious side effects from Ozempic. Side effects tend to be more serious than mild. Most people will not have a bad side effect, John, but those who do can end up with things like blindness. They certainly can end up with pancreatitis, bowel obstruction. There are people who end up with a feeding tube that they can’t get rid of. The complications are severe when they happen. So this is why I say that everything in medicine boils down to a risk-benefit analysis. It’s one thing if I have a patient who needs to lose 150, you know, 160 pounds because they are, you know, very very close to having a heart attack a stroke or other complications then it’s then then yeah i’ll say okay it’s worth the risk but for the person who needs to lose five or eight or you know pounds or ten pounds to get into bathing suit you know uh shape or because they want to attend their high school reunion that drug is not for you the simply the risks do outweigh the benefits. It’s not worth taking a risk because the side effects of these drugs can be very, very serious. I do think that there will be some wins in the class action lawsuits, particularly it’s going to be once again based on lack of informed consent where nobody told them, you know, here are the potential severe side effects that can happen as a result of this drug.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay. Steve, your thoughts on all of that as well. You’re on that side of things where you’re advising and helping and so on. What are your thoughts?
SPEAKER 14 :
I think, you know, drug manufacturers have to take responsibility for what happens to their drugs. And I think we still are looking for the quick fix, right? I mean, if you’re taking Ozempic, Because you need to lose 10 pounds. You really have a problem you need to deal with, which is, you know, if that’s the case, you probably are misguided completely on the decisions you’re making because it just isn’t for that. So ultimately, you know, if it’ll be a class action, it may very well be. It’s likely it will be. And a bunch of people will go blind and they’ll get pennies on a class action if they can actually peel themselves out and sue on their own, which is the way they’ve done it. they may be able to hold them responsible. If they do, then that might change some things because if you have malpractice kind of reaction to Ozempic causing a side effect, not everybody will put Ozempic in their plans. You may have to pay a lot more for it to even get it.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay. Makes total sense. And, uh, Again, these are things, and as both of you know, and I’m guessing, Dr. Kelly, this will take, I’m guessing, not just months but probably years before this is all settled, or am I wrong in my thought process?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, no, these things always take a long time. And the pharmaceutical companies will fight and fight and fight to try to keep it from ever making it through the court system. I suspect that people will ultimately get paid out. But as Steve said, it’ll be pennies on the dollar and it won’t really change much of anything. I think the best thing we can do, unfortunately, is continuing to Educate patients that there is no quick fix. It gets back to what we opened the show with. There is no quick fix to losing that little bit of weight. It’s about lifestyle choices. And these drugs are a miracle for that relatively small group of people who have a massive amount of weight to lose. And if they don’t do it relatively quickly, they’re putting themselves at risk for a really bad health side effect. And so we’ve got to be realistic about the group for whom we are recommending these.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, back to Trump and saving money when it comes to, you know, not only the health care end of things, but drugs and so on. And he mentioned some things even last night on the fact that, you know, we’re just doing this completely wrong. Of course, there’s been some debate in Congress when it comes to how do we fix this? Do we keep some of those subsidies moving forward? I think four Republicans voted with Democrats to go ahead and extend those, which, by the way, I think is a really bad idea. Dr. Kelly, I’ll start with you. This whole thing needs a revamp, or am I wrong in my thought process?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh my gosh, no. We knew from the beginning that Obamacare, the ACA, the quote Affordable Care Act, was a disaster. It wasn’t affordable. Of course, it was passed in 2010. If anyone had taken the time, and none of them did, to actually read the bill before it was passed, get out a pencil and paper, you could have figured anybody who would do basic arithmetic knew that the thing didn’t pencil out. So here we are now, 15 years later, having not only, you know, where we sold a bill of goods, not only were you not able to keep your doctor if you liked your doctor, not only did it not drive health care costs down, it drove them up. And now, once again, we are relying on the largest of the American taxpayer to to subsidize people’s health care when Obamacare was supposed to be the answer. This came to us from the Democrats, with the exception of John McCain, and the Democrats need to own it. I find it absolutely repugnant that we have four Republicans who have voted to continue these subsidies. You shouldn’t need a subsidy for a bill that was passed to save people money if it worked. The reality is it doesn’t work. Let’s acknowledge it for what it is, which is an abject failure, and start over.
SPEAKER 13 :
Steve, your thoughts, and your thoughts even on what Trump was talking about in regards to health care costs?
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, there’s a couple. He said something right, but let’s go back real quick to Obamacare. One of the problems with Obamacare is Obamacare specifies what your insurance must include. Now, anything that you do in a more precision way, which means Hey, look, you’re not a smoker. You don’t need to be covered for certain things. If you’re a man, you don’t need to be covered for breast cancer. A woman doesn’t need to be covered for testicular cancer. But Obamacare specified what had to be in the coverage, mandated it, and that gave you absolutely no flexibility. So if you’re like Kelly and, you know, most of us who go out and exercise a fair amount and stay in shape and try to be healthy, there’s no advantage to us on our health insurance. We just don’t get any benefit by being healthy. So guess what? That’s not much of an incentive for people to stay healthy. So I think that’s a big factor. The one thing Trump is saying, even though I know it won’t get done, that is true in my opinion, the whole subject is Americans should spend the money. They should get health insurance money, you know, given to them rather than someone else and let them go buy what they need. The market needs to change that way. It’s just going to be very, very difficult in 2020. We talked a lot about this. We believe that if people could buy catastrophic insurance and then they could pay their own way on visits, they would have incentive to be healthy. We’d have a whole different world, but we’re going to have a hell of a time getting there.
SPEAKER 13 :
I was just going to say, good luck. I mean, I’m sorry to say it that way, Steve. I just don’t see some of that happening. As much as it needs to, and we need a complete revamp of the system, I’m sorry. Maybe I’m wrong, Steve, and I’m short-sighted. I just don’t see that happening.
SPEAKER 14 :
It’s more likely what will happen, John, is it’ll get to a level of failure where if you’ve got a moderately difficult, moderately deadly disease, you won’t be able to get the care you need and you’ll die before you get care because we can’t afford to give it to the person. Some systems like Canada and England and others have done that already. We’ll get to that point, and I think at some point people will go, this is not working. We need to make a change, and then we’ll have a chance, but probably not until it fails.
SPEAKER 13 :
How close are we to that, Steve, in your opinion?
SPEAKER 14 :
I think some aspects of it are failing now. I mean, I think there are people that are falling through the cracks because they can’t get care in a reasonable period of time. You know, there’s just a number of things that go on that shortcuts have to be made because of either financial problems, and that’s going to hit a lot of the rural hospitals. Colorado has over 50 hospitals that are ruled that are in trouble financially. I mean, it’s going to hit those hospitals, and you’re going to die before you get to a hospital because it’s too far away.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, Steve, question. When it comes to these rural hospitals, this is something that I haven’t asked yet because I’m still trying to wrap my head around. What makes them so insolvent? Is it the fact that folks in those areas just can’t pay or there’s not enough insurance to pay or there’s not enough customers coming in the door? I’m confused. It seems to me like if there’s a population around of any size at all, they’re going to have patients and people that come through the door. Why are they struggling to make money?
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, first and foremost, that payers don’t pay the same, right? So Medicaid pays the lowest, and it’s usually well below the cost of the hospital. And in rural areas, you tend to have more Medicaid patients. And you do in urban areas, too, so it kind of falls in both categories. But then the Medicare pays better, and the commercial payers pay a percentage of Medicare. But then every rural hospital has to follow the exact same regulations as a big hospital. A hospital that’s got a lot more capital has got a lot more investment. So they buy a CT scanner for fundamentally the same price, and they use it a third as much. So if you’re using it a third as much, you’re just not getting the value out of it, and you’re paying the same in asset acquisition, depreciation, maintenance. It’s all just over-regulated, and there’s no accountability for the fact that the hospital is so much smaller.
SPEAKER 13 :
Makes sense. That’s one, again, that’s where I’ve really had a hard time wrapping my head around all of that. And Dr. Kelly, you know, you’re familiar with the way hospitals run and so on. I am not, although there’s times I look at some of these places and how they run and no offense, all the inefficiencies. And as a business owner and somebody that coaches businesses, I look at all these inefficiencies and think, give me a break. If you give me in here for just a a week, I could change this thing around overnight and really make this thing efficient, rock and roll, and actually maybe make some money at the end of the day. Now, maybe I’m completely wrong because it’s not in my wheelhouse, but holy cow, Dr. Kelly, I see so many inefficiencies in the medical world, it drives me crazy.
SPEAKER 11 :
There’s no question. And to get back to Steve’s point, Obamacare is failing. The problem is that the Democrats are selling it, that it’s failing because the Republicans have refused to give more subsidies or something else, as opposed to acknowledging that it didn’t work in part because it requires… every single person to have far more coverage than they actually need. You know, here, I am well beyond my childbearing age, okay? I don’t have children. Yet, if I had Obamacare, I’m required to have maternity coverage, pediatric dental insurance. Why should I have to have pediatric? I don’t have children.
SPEAKER 13 :
Right. Good point.
SPEAKER 11 :
Why do I need pediatric dental insurance? You know, this is… So if you require every single policy… To cover all this stuff, you build these ginormous policies that require people to have coverage that they don’t. They end up being just monstrosities as opposed to giving people the money, saying, look, go out, buy a catastrophic policy, buy anything additional you need, and then you are incentivized to do the right thing. Secondly, not all physicians, not everybody takes Obamacare in the same way that not everybody takes Medicare, Medicaid, okay? So you don’t have the full range of practitioners to choose from because those insurance plans don’t reimburse well, and many practitioners say, forget it, I don’t need that. I’ll just take people who have Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna and Anthem and insurance policies, insurance programs that will reimburse me at a reasonable rate. So there are so many, so many complex problems with it. But the first thing we need to do is get rid of Obamacare, unwind it, and get back to giving people money or allowing them to use their own money to purchase what they actually need.
SPEAKER 13 :
On the same token, Steve, a lot of this was by design because I’m assuming that the more out of whack, quote unquote, they could make the medical system, especially when it comes to hospitals and so on, the more the public will be OK with a single payer. Let’s all do the same so that, you know, whether you’re a small hospital or a large hospital, everybody ends up being the same at the end of the day. In other words, in my opinion, this was just one step forward. in that direction whereby we can go to a single-payer system, or am I thinking incorrectly?
SPEAKER 14 :
No, you’re absolutely right. I mean, you know, that’s the best way to cap the cost on health care, but in the meantime, you’re going to cap the actual value of it as well. So that is a big, big issue. Let’s not forget, though, that we’ve had a huge influx of people coming from outside the country who did not contribute, you know, on the premium side of health care. And remember… There’s something called EMTALA laws where if you show up in an emergency department, there is no way to refuse giving you care. So if you don’t have a primary care doc because you’ve got Obamacare and the doc won’t take it, or if you happen to be an illegal in the country, you don’t have to worry about it. You just show up at the ED, and guess what? Your cost is about 50 or 100 times higher when you go there.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay. So, again, lots of problems with this. We’ve got a few minutes left. Dr. Kelly, what’s the first thing you would do to fix them? besides scrapping Obamacare?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I think also the idea, and Steve’s correct, illegal immigration has had a huge impact on the cost of health care in this country, and we’ve got to continue to chip away at that. The idea of giving health insurance to illegals is absolutely insane, and it’s unsustainable. We can’t do it. Furthermore, I get back to what I started the show with. I’m a huge believer in Maha. We have a chronic disease crisis in this country. 80% of adults have a minimum of one chronic disease. They are the true cost drivers. Okay, it’s not the car accident and the fall from the roof putting up the Christmas lights that drives up health care costs. It’s the diabetes, the hypertension, obesity, emphysema, those things that are lifestyle related and can be managed. Only about 9% of all people with chronic diseases are actually taking advantage of disease management programs that are offered through whether it’s their insurance or through Medicare. Medicare pays for disease management, and if you have one of these chronic diseases, those patients should be enrolled in aggressive disease management so that they are meeting weekly or monthly with a disease management nurse. These are the sorts of things that will help to rein in health care costs and, incidentally, improve the quality of people’s lives in the meantime.
SPEAKER 13 :
Real quick, Steve, somebody asked, how do you calculate the percentage of payback to politicians into the cost of these programs? Yeah, you know, and I get that. That’s kind of a facetious question, but probably not all wrong either, because there’s a lot of money from health care that goes back into politicians’ pockets.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, you could do something simple, like look at how many donations they took from a pharma source, whether that’s a PBM, a pharma company, a drugstore, etc., and then also look at how many boards Are they on where they are in a paid position to be on a board after their career in that category? I just want to echo what Kelly said. The only way to make health care more cost effective is to make people healthier. Right. So they don’t need it as much. And, you know, the other thing I’ll say is we were talking about drug pricing earlier. You know, like you go to the store and every month, you know, Lucinda Pearl costs you for hypertension eight bucks. And, you know, drug prices goes up 12 percent year over year. You may or may not see a single change in $88, but where you are paying is your premiums are going up because they’re still charging the health plan that you’re part of a bigger and bigger number for everything you get. So you may not get it at your end, but your company’s getting it, and then they’re bearing down your benefits or they’re making you pay more in premiums. So it’s not a panacea. You don’t get a fixed price on drugs. It’s going up every year.
SPEAKER 13 :
Complex problems, although, Steve, you’ve put together some, and Kelly both have put together some pretty simple solutions to fix this. Why is it so hard for other politicians to see that?
SPEAKER 14 :
because they don’t want to make the pharma lobby mad. I mean, can you imagine, John, if you gave people a real meaningful incentive on BMI, on smoking status, on exercise habits, and you said you can earn $5,000 a year, $10,000 a year as a patient by meeting certain criteria, you wouldn’t need so much drug. You wouldn’t need so much care. The pharma guys would hate that because they would sell less.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah, I get that. Dr. Kelly, your thoughts on that? And I also want to give you some time to kind of wind down 2025 and maybe encourage us as we head into 2026 as well.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, Steve, spot on. You aren’t going to embrace something that pays you handsomely. And certainly the politicians are paid a tremendous amount on both sides of the aisle, by the way. Just as many Republicans taking money from the pharmaceutical lobby as there are on the Dem side. So this isn’t a partisan issue. We’ve got to get out of that. And frankly, I think in addition to eliminating pharmaceutical payments to people in Congress, I think we should eliminate pharmaceutical advertising on television because it’s the only way we’re going to return integrity to what we hear on the news media. With regard to coming to this year, I think this is the year that people need to, you know, take control of their own destiny. Stop being, you know, a… sort of, you know, can be held hostage to this system. People talk about medical freedom all the time, the medical freedom movement in which, you know, I am proudly a part, meaning, you know, to free yourself from the shackles of the insurance industry or whatever it is. But there’s nothing that says medical freedom more than not needing the system. Not needing to go to the doctor every three months because you’ve got another whatever, because you’ve got osteoarthritis related to your obesity or you’ve got your blood sugars are out of control or whatever it is. Freeing yourselves from the shackles of that and the. needing to take medication after medication after medication. And unfortunately, it’s not the easiest thing to do, but it’s by far the best thing you can do. You can start small. You don’t have to take it all on in one big chunk. Set small goals for yourself. It could be something as simple as saying, I am going to take a walk, a 10-minute walk before or after dinner. You know, five out of seven days a week, I’m going to do that. And set it up as a goal and do it. Small goals, you know, build on to bigger ones. And before, I truly think that’s the answer. It sounds so simplistic, but I wish I could tell you there was a quick fix, a better drug, a better pill, or injection around the corner. It isn’t coming. It comes back to the individual and lifestyle choices.
SPEAKER 13 :
Great point. Steve, I’ll give you the last words. We’ve got a couple of minutes. Go for it.
SPEAKER 14 :
I think 2026 needs to be the year that we realize that living off the grid is a bigger statement than you think. And I don’t mean it in the literal sense of the way people get rid of electricity and those things. Those are all relatively important. But anytime you’re dependent upon institutions or the government, your freedom is being compromised and you’re probably not going to like it. And that includes having to be institutionally taken care of by the health care system itself. So figure out a way to get healthier. Stop being dependent on it. And the sooner you do that, the better the lifestyle is going to be for you. It’s not easy. Kelly said you can’t, you know, it’s not giving up, you know, the extra carrots at dinner. It’s the M&Ms at 10 a.m. in the morning. You’ve got to find a way to do the hard stuff because once you do, I’ll give you a line I live by. I don’t live as much by it as I should, but it is nothing tastes as good as thin feels. And I think if you can just follow that process and keep reminding yourself of that, you can be free of the institution itself.
SPEAKER 13 :
Good job, Steve. I’ll let you go. Thank you so much for all you’ve done in 2025. Look forward to 2026, and Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER 14 :
Me too, and to you guys as well.
SPEAKER 13 :
All right, man. Appreciate you. Dr. Kelly, same. Thanks for all you do for us, and Merry Christmas to you as well.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you, and have a great New Year. I’ll look forward to meeting up again after the first of the year.
SPEAKER 13 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
It’s time to leave your safe space. This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, we are done with this hour, guys. We appreciate you listening. Our last Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House episode of the year. More to come, though, in 2026. Never fear. Hour two is next. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
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