Dive into an absorbing discussion with John Rush and guests Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House as they unravel the complexities of the recent Pfizer deal with the White House. Explore the nuances of direct-to-consumer drug programs and the role they play in the broader context of healthcare and pharmaceutical regulations. This episode provides a critical look at how pharmaceutical companies are actively shaping political narratives and influencing policy decisions.
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This is Rush to Reason.
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With your host, John Rush.
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All right, we are back. Sorry, don’t mean to cough in your ear there. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House with us. Dr. Kelly, how are you today?
SPEAKER 11 :
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER 05 :
Always a joy. Steve, welcome as well. Thank you for coming back this week as well. Glad to be here, guys. All right. Last week, Dr. Kelly, you weren’t with us, but Steve and I covered a little bit, and then we kind of got off on a bunch of other things that we talked about last week. But we did talk about briefly the Pfizer and White House deal. You were not with us, and I know you wanted to add some things to that, so I’ll let you have the floor.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, you know, I was really distressed when you talk about the – excuse me, the Pfizer deal, Albert Borla, the CEO of Pfizer, was there in the Oval Office with President Trump and Bobby Kennedy and others. And President Trump was singing his praises as a leader, as a great leader during COVID and talking about the tremendous contribution that Pfizer and Borla made to the outcome of the pandemic and on and on. And I watched the thing just appall saying, what in the world are you talking about? It was not that long ago that we all were really hardened that President Trump had posted on Twitter that he was open to and really demanding to see the data about the vaccines and that he was willing and ready to acknowledge if they weren’t actually the wonder drug, the wonder intervention that he had hoped they’d be. Now, fast forward to October and all of a sudden he’s hosting Albert Bourla, you know, and giving him some sort of, you know, tremendous prize. In addition to the fact that he is agreeing to 70 billion dollars worth of additional research and development of mRNA platform drugs. I found it absolutely appalling. I heard an interview yesterday or the day before with Mehmet Oz from CMS referring to Borla having been in and, quote, bending a knee to President Trump. I don’t know what press conference Mehmet Oz was watching, but I sure as heck didn’t see it. Albert Bourla or anybody from Big Pharma bending a knee. I think it was quite the opposite.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and question on my part, and Steve, we didn’t really get into this last week, but if they’re now basically sidestepping that middleman and they’re just going directly to, quote unquote, you know, the Trump Rx website, how I mean, unless I’m missing something, Dr. Kelly, they’re not discounting the drugs. They’re just cutting out some of the middleman markup. Am I right in my thought process?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, correct. They are cutting out some of the, you know, some of this is, I think, slight of hand. They’re cutting out some of the middlemen, which is a big deal.
SPEAKER 05 :
I get that. I get that. Absolutely. But in this case, Pfizer’s not taking a cut is my point, right?
SPEAKER 11 :
Correct. Correct. Pfizer is not going to lose a dime.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 11 :
And that’s the same thing with regard to the, you know, quote, most favored nation status. You know, all they are going to do, they are agreeing to sell us drugs at the same price that they sell to other countries. And so what they will do is they will decrease the cost to us and they will increase the price that they charge to some other countries. I guarantee another dime will be lost by big pharma in all of this. It may ultimately bring down the cost of drugs somewhat for Americans, including those people on Medicare and Medicaid primarily. And I have been a huge proponent of cutting out middlemen. But rest assured, big pharma is not going to take any loss.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and Steve, we talked about, again, some of this last week, and then we got off to talking about all sorts of other things, and it was still a great hour. I’m not questioning anything of what we did there, but I think the more time we’ve had now to sort of look at the deal and what’s happened, and even you and I talked about how the middleman gets cut out, but Dr. Kelly’s correct. At the end of the day, and we didn’t mention this last week, but at the end of the day, Pfizer’s not losing a thing here.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, no, they’re not only not losing a thing, but how is it that you can do a direct consumer program to Medicaid patients who can’t afford to pay for health care? Who’s paying for the drug that they’re now taking direct? Because they’re bypassing health insurance. They’re bypassing the middleman. And Medicaid’s a little bit different because it may be that the Medicaid program will pay for those drugs. But for everybody else, direct consumer has been going on for five or six years now. No one has claimed it’s made a hell of a difference, and I don’t think it will in this case. I think, you know, to Kelly’s point, first of all, Pfizer didn’t give anything up. Right now, at this moment, first of all, we have a major drug problem from drug manufacturing, drug safety, distribution, pricing, drug use, both illicit and prescription in this country. But there’s another factor, and that is this past week, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s become fairly clear that between APAC and And the pharma companies, they’re funding political campaigns around the country and driving the narrative that suits them best. And those two are two of the biggest.
SPEAKER 05 :
Dr. Kelly, and again, your thoughts on all of this. And again, Steve’s right. And really, at the end of the day, what Pfizer did, and again, maybe I’m not seeing this correctly, but they sort of just secured their own future by what they did. And Steve’s right. There’s been a lot of direct to pay, and it’ll be interesting to see how all of this ends up shaking out. But again, at the end of the day, I think to your point, they’re not losing anything. The bending of the knee, I guess what we’re going back to, hasn’t happened.
SPEAKER 11 :
Correct. I didn’t see any of that. And I’m very concerned that although and I think that Bobby Kennedy is probably feels very differently about this than the president. That’s my guess. Unfortunately, I didn’t. I am seeing deal making happening with the devil. here. Big Pharma has not been our friend. They have been raping Americans on the cost of drugs for decades and decades. They have produced some of the things that have created tremendous illness and suffering and disease rather than curing it. We certainly saw that with the COVID quote unquote vaccine program. We’ve seen it with statin drugs and other drugs that have caused more harm than good. And, you know, I don’t I really am perplexed as to why the president would go down this path unless once again he’s getting bad advice. We certainly saw that happen with Anthony Fauci. I don’t know who’s advising him on these things or what the exchange of dollars is, but I doesn’t look good.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, along those lines, and this was going to be my next question, so go to you first and we’ll go to Steve. And that is my main question. Who is advising him on all of this? What are your thoughts there? And I guess the question on a lot of the issues with this direct-to-consumer drugs and so on, where is RFK Jr. in all of this?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, as I said, unfortunately, I don’t think that he has carte blanche to do what he wants. If you watched that press conference with Borla, I felt like daggers were shooting out of Bobby’s eyes into the back of Borla’s head. As Trump was, you know, lauding him and praising him. I don’t think this is something there’s no question that Robert Kennedy Jr. has fought. He’s litigated against big pharma for decades. He knows them well. He certainly is not a big proponent of the vaccine programs in general. There are lots of things that I think he disagrees with the president on. But unfortunately, things don’t necessarily happen on our time frame. They happen on a different time frame. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t that we won’t ultimately get where we need to be. I would have wanted, for example. the COVID mRNA shots to be withdrawn from the market on day one of this administration. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. We have seen some significantly changed, quote, guidelines from the CDC. We’ve seen some significant movement in terms of exposing or demanding more research and more safety data. But things, unfortunately, in Washington work a little bit more slowly than I would like.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. Steve, your comments on that, then we’ll take a quick break.
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, clearly, look, something happened between Borla and Trump in the COVID vaccine development process, Operation Warp Speed. It may be nothing any more complex than him saying to Pfizer, look, you guys do this for me, make me look good. I’m running for reelection and I’ll always take care of you. And he’s trying to live up to that promise. I still I still absolutely believe. He does not want to say that the COVID vaccine didn’t work. His ego is having a hell of a time with that. And so, therefore, bring Pfizer forward. You want to make Pfizer look good because there’s questions about them. You do this to give them an opportunity to look good. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong price for the wrong people. It’s just not the right thing to do.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yep. All right. That’s a great stopping point. We’ll come right back. And, again, all of you listening, if you’ve got a question for us, Dr. Kelly or Steve House, specifically, send me a text message, 307. 200-8222-307-2822. You hear me talk about Dr. Scott a lot. He actually filled in for me yesterday as I was out on a very important family event, which I may talk about a little bit later, but I had a great time yesterday. Thank you for giving me that time off, and Dr. Scott did a great job filling in. You can reach Dr. Scott directly, 303-663-6990.
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No liberal media bias here. This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, we are back. Dr. Kelly Victory, Steve House. If you have ever wondered, you know, why do we talk to them every Thursday, go back through some of our podcasts and different things that we’ve had, you know, our recordings, I should say, that we’ve had for the past five years during this particular hour on Thursdays, and you’ll know why we’ve been doing this all through COVID and since, and we’ve continued on. Had a great call that came in during the break. Dr. Kelly, I’ll start with you, and the question is, okay, we’ve got Pfizer in there, you know, making this deal, and it’s going to be direct to consumer and so on, and They’re sort of being unvilified, if you would, over the vaccines and so on. And yet we’ve got Kenview, the maker of Tylenol, that was vilified a few weeks ago. And fact of the matter is, I don’t know this personally, but. from the face value sides of things, Dr. Kelly, I would look at what Kenview does and all of their subsidiaries and what they actually make in regards to, you know, Johnson’s and Listerine and Neutrogena and Tylenol and Motrin and Benadryl and Band-Aid. And I can go down the list of things that they actually are involved in as far as the manufacturing of. And no offense, these are everyday things that people use to make their life better. And yet they’re vilified. What am I missing here, Dr. Kelly?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, I agree. And the real problem with the connection between, with regard to the impact on the companies and marketing, the connection between autism and acetaminophen is that acetaminophen is the drug that they were trying to implicate in potentially being a causative agent for autism. Tylenol is a manufacturer brand name in the same way that after the, you know, the, the Jonestown massacre people use the word Kool-Aid again, you know, Kool-Aid is a brand name, but these, you know, shares of Kool-Aid plummeted because it was associated with that rather than just sort of a powdered drink mix. They should never have used the word Tylenol. None of us should, we should be referring to it as acetaminophen. And there are many, many manufacturers of acetaminophen. Tylenol is a brand name, and I do think that they’ve taken it on the chin. Yeah, I mean, people use them interchangeably, but there are lots of companies that manufacture acetaminophen, and there are lots of products that have acetaminophen in them other than just the simple pill or that that we know as Tylenol. It’s included in lots and lots, for example, of cold and flu medications made by other companies.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and really quick, to prove your point, Dr. Kelly, Tylenol, Panadol, Excedrin, Dayquil, Fevral, and I could keep going.
SPEAKER 11 :
Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I feel badly for this manufacturer because the name Tylenol has gotten thrown around. But people need to remember Tylenol is simply a brand name like Kool-Aid or Kleenex.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
You know, we use it ubiquitously to refer, you know, Kleenex is a perfect example. What you really mean is tissue. Facial tissue, that’s right. Facial tissue, but we use the word Kleenex all the time when that’s actually a brand name.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. Steve, your thoughts on all of this? And again, I think it was a great question. I have no issues with the question. In fact, I kind of wonder the same thing. It’s like, okay, wait a minute. We’ve got a company out there that really, for all intents and purposes, Steve, produces a lot of different things. Now, whether you agree with each particular brand and its uses and so on, that’s probably up for discussion maybe even a later time. But all in all, a brand that people have come to recognize of building quality products across the board that help their everyday life, and yet they were vilified the other day.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I mean, this is part of the problem I have with drugs in America. It’s so complicated that the average American, if you said, can you take Advil and Tylenol at the same time, most will say no because they think they’re the same thing. Is Motrin more Tylenol or is Motrin Advil? We don’t want them to advertise on TV, but there’s got to be a simpler way for people to understand what they’re taking, why they’re taking it, and get to know, because there’s so many drugs in play right now. So, yeah, you know, one company taking the hit because they’re the Kleenex of acetaminophen is, you know, it’s not fair to that company, but that same company published something back in 2017 or 2018 saying that if you’re pregnant, we don’t recommend you take any of our products.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
So why are they ignoring the fact that they tweeted that out five, six, eight years ago?
SPEAKER 05 :
Dr. Kelly, that’s a great question and one that I was wondering the same thing of.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, clearly, you know, one of the problems, as Steve points out, is that people are just uh ignorant of they are not well informed about these things i can’t tell you uh how many people have confusion over the difference between an antihistamine and a decongestant and they are opposites you know and there’s an appropriate time to use one and not the other Sometimes both together. As Steve said, people don’t know the difference between ibuprofen and acetaminophen, which drugs contain which ones. We have many, many issues for all the hype about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. We have, by orders of magnitude, more overdoses on acetaminophen because people don’t think to look at the back of the bottle. They say they’ve got a bad cold or the flu. They’ll take a couple of Tylenol and then proceed to take Dayquil or NyQuil or one of the other multitude of… compound, a mixture of cold and flu medications, and they’re getting more acetaminophen. They shouldn’t have taken those first two pills. That’s how you get toxic and end up with liver injury from acetaminophen because it’s contained in so many different things. So a lot of it is what we call pharmaceutical ignorance. that people just are not well educated. And I think we should do a better job of it. If I were surgeon general, that would be a big part of what I would do. Some basic education on these simple medications that are over the counter because most of them are relatively safe, but you can get into trouble if you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re stacking them on top of each other by taking, you know, as I said, it’s very, very common with cold and flu medications that because some will contain a decongestant or an antihistamine or acetaminophen or something else that’s combined in there. And then you take a second medication that contains the same thing, and there can be some overlap.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, so here’s a question for you. No, go ahead, Steve. Jump in. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
So not to toot Kelly’s horn specifically, but when I watched the commercial with her and Peter, and they’re talking about the fact that And even, you know, the other doctors, too, they talk about the fact that you get this kit, right? It’s a kit for when you have a flu. It’s a kit for the wintertime when you’re sick. And you have to go through a doctor’s visit to get it with them, you know, over the phone. But there’s a part of me that believes that one of the best ways to lower health care costs would be for everyone to have that kit who needs it. Because in reality, instead you end up in the ED or you make a mistake and you take too much of acetaminophen or you don’t take enough pain reliever because you don’t think you can take Advil and Tylenol together. If everyone had a basic cold and flu kit at home, we’d have less ED visits and I think it would pay for itself many times over.
SPEAKER 05 :
So, Dr. Kelly, along those lines, there was a question. Steve really took the words out of my mouth. How do people become more aware? And by the way, is this something that the three of us need to work on? And I put something up on the website where we can make this a little bit more easy for people to really understand. Or what are your thoughts there?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, again, I’m not here to promote my company, the wellness company, but what Steve’s pointing out is correct. I think, and if you had asked me five years ago before COVID, I would have had a very different answer. But what I realized during the COVID debacle, truly, is that most people, most Americans are a lot smarter than we’ve given them credit for when it comes to their own health. For example… There isn’t a woman out there who doesn’t know when she has a bladder infection, a urinary tract infection, okay? You know. It’s not subtle. If you’ve had one before, you know. There’s zero reason that that woman should have to march herself into her doctor’s office or an urgent care or, God forbid, the emergency department. incur a $1,000-plus bill plus waste hours of her time and take up a much-needed hospital bed or room while she gets evaluated to say for somebody to get a urine sample and say, yep, you got a urinary tract infection, here’s your prescription for antibiotics. Number one, she’s just wasted anywhere from 8 to 12 hours when she could, if she had those antibiotics at home already, She could have started treating herself right then. And that’s, I think, the way I’m not talking about saying that, you know, an emergency kit or having medications at home replaces your need to go to the doctor or to have a primary care physician or potentially to go to the emergency department. But so many things. are treatable, easily treatable at home with common sense and a guidebook or a telemedicine visit. And you would take the stress, the pressure off of the tertiary care centers, the emergency departments, and also have exponentially lower health care bills as a result.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Makes total sense. And Steve, when you say a cold kit, you know, cold care kit and Dr. Kelly, you know, the wellness company, you know, Steve, first of all, what do you mean by that? And Dr. Kelly, do you have that? And can you fill that? Steve, I’ll start with you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I mean, frankly, I mean, a normalized, relatively broad-scale antibiotic is a good idea because, like you said, Kelly said, I know if I have a bladder infection. I know if I’ve got an ear infection. I mean, at least I have a pretty good idea. The beauty of it is I could call the doctor or call somebody or look something up even. And if there was enough education, I think the kid has to have at least a little bit of education. To say, look, if you have this symptom and this symptom, then feel free to try this plus add zinc and vitamin C. And if it doesn’t help you in two days, then you need to think about a different strategy. I mean, that by itself, you’ve already got the resources to solve the problem. They’re in the kit. You’ve pre-qualified by talking to a doctor. You’ve got some education. And it’s likely not going to do any harm to you. Because you wouldn’t have gotten the kit in the first place if you had pre-existing conditions that would prevent you from getting it. So why not that as opposed to a rush of people in the ER at $5,000 a shot in November and December?
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. Dr. Kelly, and you know, I’ve talked about this in the past, and this is one of the things, one of the complaints that I have. And I understand that when you go to other countries, you have to be careful about what they offer in some of their pharmacies. I guess I should say it that way because you know what I’m talking about here, and that all of them are not created equal. I get that. Although there are some legitimate places, and you can get what you need, and you can even, in foreign countries, put together some of these kits that Steve is talking about and you’re talking about. So I always have a dumb question. Why can’t we do that here? I mean, why do you have to go to a second world country to get that over the counter? Why can’t we do this here?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, that’s primarily, you know, that’s one of the reasons why our company was founded. It was because of our experience with the COVID pandemic and the fact that for the first time in my career as a physician, we saw this egregious intrusion of everybody from politicians to pharmacists to, you know, news media people telling people what they couldn’t and couldn’t get. For things like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. I had patients who were unable to buy these things. We had entire, you know, big box chains, Walgreens, Walmart, you know, refusing to fill these prescriptions. And we said, no more. We are going to allow people to get access. to an array of prescription medications that they can have on hand. That’s everything from antibiotics to antivirals, steroids for allergic reactions, medications for nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, the sorts of things you would need if you were traveling or if you were just home and didn’t want to have to go to the ER or an emergency or an urgent care. And I think that we are doing that here and trying to make these things available because I don’t want people fleeing to Mexico or elsewhere and getting something that perhaps isn’t what they thought it was, is contaminated or tainted or not produced under the highest quality standards. So I think that really what we learned out of COVID was that we are doing a tremendous service to allow people to have these things on hand for their family. These are prescription medications that are written for the individual. They’re not willy-nilly. And there’s a backup, as I said, of having a telemedicine visit or a call with a practitioner if you have any questions about how to use them. I think it’s been a long time coming. Interestingly, as an aside, we have now more and more states. I think we’re up to 17 states that have now made ivermectin over-the-counter. which it is, by the way, in almost every country other than the United States. So after all of what people went through during covid, finally, more rational heads have prevailed. And ivermectin is slowly becoming over the counter in more and more states.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, dumb question. Why, and I get what you’re saying, you can now with your website, and there’s others, of course, like it, because some of these have just sprung up over the past five years, Dr. Kelly, to your point, but all that being said… Why can’t some of these like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, why can’t a local, you know, and I get it, you don’t want to probably maybe just put those things out on the shelf. And even in places like Mexico, they’re not. You still got to go talk to a pharmacist and actually ask for it. It comes behind the counter and so on. But at the end of the day, why can’t we do that in the U.S.? In other words, why does it have to be, you know, quote, unquote, prescribed?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I think the issues are multiple, but here are just a few from a clinician’s perspective, independent of who controls the money and all that. One of our concerns about having ready access to antibiotics is that every time people sneeze or cough, chances are 99.9% that it is a virus. Yet people will choose to take an antibiotic because they don’t know. That’s how you drive antibiotic resistance. That’s how you end up with tuberculosis that is resistant to almost every drug. That’s how you end up with strep and staph that are MRSA, things that are resistant to antibiotics, is the inappropriate use of antibiotics. So that’s one thing. Number two. We can’t all of a sudden expect your average layperson to be a clinician. If you have a child, for example, a young child, a two-year-old who develops a high fever, and you say, well, I guess I should start giving him or her some amoxicillin because you must have an infection. There must be an infection, but what if that infection is meningitis? And that parent doesn’t seek medical care because they think that, well, I’ve got my noxicillin right here. I’ll just treat little Johnny at home. And the next thing you know, little Johnny’s having a seizure and dying. you know, is on a ventilator in the ICU. So it’s the concern about misdiagnosing and not understanding. So it’s a fine line. We make these things available for adults with the idea that, you know, we are trying to guide people to treat common, easily treatable signs and symptoms and infections with medications without making them so readily available that everybody can just go in and grab an antibiotic and and start taking it for what’s actually a viral infection. And the next thing you know, we have rampant antibiotic resistance.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, so devil’s advocate here. And maybe they do have this problem. I just don’t know it. Does places like Mexico have the problems that you’re mentioning? Because they can do what we’re talking about. And literally go in over the counter and buy the same things that we’re talking about. Is that a problem there or do they have no offense? I don’t consider them to be smarter than Americans. I don’t consider us to be smarter than them on the same token. But at the end of the day, do they have that problem there?
SPEAKER 11 :
I agree. Number one, I agree with you. They are not necessarily better educated than we are. I can’t speak to whether or not they have higher incidence of antibiotic resistance. I don’t know that. And it may simply be that they’ve been because they’ve been able to access these things, you know, forever. They’ve been able to do it that they just don’t go willy nilly and take them because they’re I fear that in the United States, as soon as you make something like that available, people will flock in there. But I don’t know and I don’t have any reason to think that they have a higher incidence, for example, of them misdiagnosing and mistreating infectious diseases in children and therefore ending up with a bad outcome. But I can’t say that definitively.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. And again, that’s… No, go ahead, Steve. Go ahead. Good question.
SPEAKER 04 :
There may be another theory at play, and I’ve traveled around the world, and in areas where acute care medicine is not as available as it is here, people have to learn to take care of the problems… that we so often end up in the ED for. And I think the system changes, right? So if you’re in Mexico and you can’t immediately get into a hospital to have somebody look at you or you’re going to wait eight or ten hours, having access to a low-risk antibiotic when you’ve got a certain set of symptoms and you’ve got to take care of yourself and you’ve got to go to work the next day, in some cases it’s simply because my income can’t afford me to take the day off. They find ways to do that in the U.S., We don’t have that same situation, and I think that’s part of the problem. I think we have to have a review of pre-acute care medicine. Quite frankly, if the Surgeon General were doing the job we want the Surgeon General to do, this would be a conversation to say, look, the problem is acute care medicine and post-acute care medicine are incredibly expensive. Figure out a way to push things into practice. pre-acute care and keep them there. Some of it’s what Kelly and Peter are doing. Some of it is education. Some of it is, you know, people get themselves just desiring not to deal with the hassle with the system. But I think that’s part of where the problem lies.
SPEAKER 05 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
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SPEAKER 13 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Myself, Dr. Kelly Victory, of course, with us today. Steve House with us as well. And again, we’re talking about, in fact, Dr. Kelly, I’m going to go back to you. I’m one, and you know my feelings on this. We’ve talked about this many times in the past. We might as well hit it again. I mean, all of what we’re talking about really comes down to we need a major overhaul in how we do health care in America, correct?
SPEAKER 11 :
There’s no question. We need a major overhaul in so many ways. You know, first of all, let’s start with things like insurance. We have perverted the concept of health care insurance. You have car insurance. You have homeowner’s insurance. Those things don’t pay for routine maintenance. They don’t, okay? When you go to cut your lawn or paint your house, you don’t employ your homeowner’s insurance. When you go to rotate your tires or change the oil in your car, you don’t use your car insurance. So let’s start with that. People have an unrealistic expectation of insurance. We have, you know, overwhelmed our entire system because we have, let’s face it, a tremendous population of people who are here illegally who are using the emergency department and urgent cares as their primary form of medical care and health care. It isn’t sustainable. We have, you know, it’s such corruption, fraud and graft in the pharmaceutical industry as to be truly it is crushing Americans. We have these middlemen who are jacking up the prices exponentially. They are fundamentally, you know, doing engaging in racketeering. It’s a pay to play business. and they jack up the prices so that they benefit. I could go on and on. 85% of physicians are employed by some big corporation now, so they can’t even make their own decisions. There’s layers and layers of bureaucracy between the patient and the physician. It’s really a mess. We took what was the best healthcare system in the world and have fundamentally destroyed it. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. Yeah, you know, you got to ask yourself, you got to ask yourself the question, and this is what one of the things that drives me nuts with this too, is that drug pricing is estimated to go up 12% next year in 2026. So let’s get this straight. We’ve got increasing demand with virtually unlimited supply, not always the case with drugs. Why is the price rising? I mean, you know, they’ll say, but it’s not just rising a small amount, it’s rising 12%. And it just rose 6.5% or 7% this year. Why is the price rising in this environment?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, and that’s a great question because I’m going to throw this back at you, Steve. Why is it rising when I can go buy an 85-inch TV for a fraction of the price of what I could even just two or three years ago?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, partly because PBMs prevent competition. There you go. If you’re not on formula, you can’t compete. If Harvoni’s on formula at $44,000, you can’t get Maverick at $24,000 to solve the same problem. I mean, it’s racketeering like Kelly said, and it’s out of hand. Employers are starting to really wonder if they’re going to be able to offer the same benefit packages because it costs so much.
SPEAKER 05 :
So, Kelly, you know, here’s a question for you. Are they basically, in turn, forcing us into a, you know, complete subsidized through the taxpayer health care system where it’s a single payer? And I know that’s the I know that’s what one side of the aisle wants to do. But is that what’s being forced now?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, certainly, you know, that’s certainly what they would like to have happen. As you said, I certainly hope it doesn’t, because if you think that universal health care or government sponsored health care is a good deal, look at what’s going on in Canada and the UK. There’s a reason why any Canadian with more than 50 cents in his pocket comes to the United States for health care, because you will die up there waiting for health care before you actually get it. So it is a problem. But we’ve got to start fixing some of these issues. We’ve got to bring pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the United States. Look, right now, we are absolutely beholden to the Chinese, of all people, for most of our drugs. The president has acknowledged it, but I haven’t seen anything so far start to start the needle. to return pharmaceutical manufacturing back to this country. They have got to offer significant incentives for pharmaceutical companies to start making everything from antibiotics to medications for high blood pressure and everything else here in the U.S. There is so much to be done. It’s hard to know really where to start. And on top of it, we’ve got a population that is sicker and sicker. The one thing that Bobby Kennedy truly has… focused on, which is we have got to start, you know, driving down the disease burden. You cannot control health care costs if you don’t control health.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good point.
SPEAKER 11 :
We cannot have 80 percent of our population with a chronic disease and expect to somehow control health care costs. It’s simply it can’t be done.
SPEAKER 05 :
Steve, and I’m with you, it sounds, not sounds like, we’re at a point to where, like you were saying, those costs continue to increase. And I get it, labor costs have gone up, but product costs in a lot of cases, if we had the right competition, Steve, the cost to make, especially some of these drugs that have been around for a long time, the cost of those should be going down, not up, just like every other thing that we have out there does. I mean, there might be a few exceptions to that when it comes to, you know, cars and things like that, and that’s a whole other discussion we maybe could get into at some point in time, because frankly, they should be coming down in price as well. Reality is they’re not because of other factors. But when it comes to things like drugs, where in a lot of cases, there’s not even a lot of labor involved in making them, like big screen TVs, they should be coming down in price, not going up.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, they absolutely should. But a big part of that, and I think fixing health care is tied to the same issue, which is People have to stop using as much of it. They have to stop using so many drugs. I mean, you know, when, you know, I can tell you right now, people like Ford Motor Company is a business, John, where you’re familiar with Ford. Ford probably pays $900 million a year for prescription drugs for their employees’ independence.
SPEAKER 06 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 04 :
Almost a billion dollars. Wow. And some of it’s use, right? So the number one thing you got to do is give me something more. than a Starbucks card for good behavior. The average Medicare person goes to the emergency room once a year. So if you’re 65 and older and you avoid a Medicare or you avoid an emergency room visit in a year, give them $2,500. We would save that much money easily versus an ER visit. But they don’t do that. You get a $25 Starbucks card or you get something to Dunkin’ Donuts. I mean, the incentive does not match the desired behavior, not even close.
SPEAKER 05 :
Dr. Kelly, your thoughts on that? And I can’t disagree with what Steve is saying. And I don’t know the numbers of, you know, I mean, I can only guess at what ER visits cost and what it’s all said and done, what we would incentivize and help save at the end of the day. But, you know, I’m sorry to say, and this is not to poke at government, or maybe it is, government doesn’t think that way, Dr. Kelly.
SPEAKER 11 :
No, listen, I ran a company for the better part of a decade that was based entirely on this premise. We work with self-insured companies, so companies like Continental Airlines and Nissan Automotives who are on the hook for all of the costs for their employees’ health care. And because they’re self-insured and we were able to incentivize people in the way that Steve’s talking about, we would say to people, look, if you go to the fitness center three times a week on average, we will drop your health care insurance premiums by X amount. If you participate in the diabetes management program, if you show up to get your weigh-in regularly, once a week or once a month, if you participate in a smoking cessation program, because it’s all about driving down the total cost burden. I can try to get you a better price on a chest x-ray and drive it down, but the better thing is to get people so they don’t need a chest x-ray. We were able to do it in the private sector because those companies are highly incentivized And honestly, we saved Nissan Automotive millions of dollars at a single plant in Mississippi. A single plant, simply by incentivizing the right behaviors in their employees and employees’ families. We have got to do this. We’ve got to make the right thing to do, the easy thing to do, and make it pay off for people. For example, it’s not every state… allows employers to uh whatever you want to call it to to penalize smokers for example i think every state should be able to do that if you smoke you should pay more in health care premiums okay look if you drive fast and you get a bunch of speeding tickets i promise you you’re going to pay more in car insurance OK, if you build your house in a floodplain, I promise you you’re going to pay more for homeowners insurance. If you skydive, you’re going to pay more for life insurance than I do. So why, if you smoke in a sedentary, shouldn’t you pay more for health care insurance?
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, well, they would come back and say, Dr. Kelly, as you know, and Steve would know. Well, that’s discriminatory, Dr. Kelly. I mean, it’s not as far as I’m concerned, because we do it in a lot of other areas of life, like you just mentioned. But that’s what they’re going to come back and say, correct? It is absolutely discriminatory, and it needs to be.
SPEAKER 04 :
It needs to be discriminatory. That’s the entire point. That’s the idea, right? Yeah, the other thing about this is that if you drive up your own health insurance and you’re part of a group plan at work, you make everybody else pay more, too. That’s right. That’s right. And it’s not just you.
SPEAKER 05 :
You’re correct. You’re correct, Steve. Dr. Kelly, again, he’s right. That’s exactly what they’re going to go back and say, and he’s exactly right. It should be because that’s the whole point of it, right?
SPEAKER 11 :
Exactly. It’s discriminatory that if I get four speeding tickets, I’m going to pay more in car insurance, and it should be.
SPEAKER 05 :
Really quick, Dr. Kelly, no more than if you, and I know this, if you own a home, and you do as well, if you own a home in the mountains where there’s a higher risk for fire, you’re going to pay a higher premium than you are downtown where there’s no trees around you, correct? Correct.
SPEAKER 11 :
correct and that’s it’s you know it’s supposed to be a risk analysis you know you’re supposed to have there’s a calculation of how much risk you pose to the group and you should pay you know talk about paying your fair share you should pay your fair share because you are going to cost more um and so i think that there’s so much around insurance and how we incentivize uh i will tell you i would love to bring what we did in the private sector to the public sector because it really is the way to crack that. We also brought health care closer to where people are. You know, the idea, for example, the amount of lost work time that’s included because people have to leave work or take a day off from work. to go to the doctor. You take, you know, pregnancy, pregnant, you know, women who are seeing their OB once a month to get an ultrasound, it’s a 20-minute, you know, it’s a 20-minute appointment that ends up taking half a day.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
Or a full day.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good point.
SPEAKER 11 :
So if you actually, you know, and so we actually brought those services to the work site so that people, we could, you know, call people and say, we’re ready for you now, come on down, and they’d be back at their desk working again in 30 minutes. Mm-hmm. You know, there are programs that you can put in place. You know, we have got so many things. Your average child doesn’t participate in any physical activity because they’ve eliminated PE from the school system. Kids take either a ride or take a bus. No kids, you know, walk to school anymore. Nobody rides their bike anymore anymore. So we are developing an entire, you know, we’re now probably in our third generation of kids who are obese, have prediabetes or full blown diabetes, have sedentary lifestyles and are on the conveyor belt to a life of just relegated to a not only a lousy lifestyle, but extraordinarily expensive health care.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I just got a text message in, by the way, that life insurance companies, Dr. Kelly and Steve, they do the exact thing we’re talking about. And again, the question continues to come back, why can’t we do the same thing in health care? We should, but I guess, Dr. Kelly, we refuse to. I don’t have a good answer. I don’t know why.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, there’s an answer.
SPEAKER 11 :
No, go ahead, Steve.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, the answer is, I mean, when you think about how they constructed Obamacare, I mean, the theory was that if you had a pre-existing condition, you were being discriminated against when many times that pre-existing condition was a result of environmental factors and things like that. So rather than give incentive for someone to stop smoking, they made it so that no one could be penalized no matter what they did. And so the only thing was smoking cessation and age were relevant in Obamacare, but they basically set up an insurance product line that didn’t incentivize good behavior and it forgave all bad behavior. Yep.
SPEAKER 11 :
And that’s not insurance. And that’s not insurance, by the way. Insurance is intended to cover catastrophic and unanticipated things. Think of every other form of insurance. You know, what people have gotten to expect in health care is what you would call a bumper to bumper plan in automotive insurance. speak right you know something that covers where you pay ahead some exorbitant amount of money and anything that happens to your car is covered well you can do that in health care but it’s going to cost you and it people have this expectation that everything is going to be paid for from their past their annual past smear to their wellness check and it simply is not sustainable
SPEAKER 05 :
Nope, you’re right. Guys, the hour goes by fast. I’ve got several text messages in thanking us for doing what we’re doing and talking about this very subject, and the reality needs to be brought more to light. We’ll continue to do that. Steve, I’ll let you go first. Thank you, man, as always. Appreciate you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Good to have you back, Cal. Get as many people out there as you can to get the kit. I’m telling you, we’ll see health care costs go down, and I’m not promoting your business, but it’s a good idea. Amen.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, I know you can promote it all. Dr. Cal, you can promote that all you want. Amen. I totally agree with him. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I thank you for that. I appreciate it. If you go to the Wellness Company website, there’s a huge range of kits. You can figure out which one’s the right one for you or your family. And there’s always someone available to talk to if you’re not sure which way to go. I do think they’re a huge value and can be a lifesaver and also keep you out of the ER.
SPEAKER 05 :
Absolutely. Dr. Kelly, again, thank you very much.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. Have a great rest of your day as well. And again, Wellness Company, that’s where you go to get that kit that Steve was talking about and Dr. Kelly as well. Dr. Windows and Doors, speaking of saving money, do that with Windows and Doors by going direct to the source. That’s what Dave Bancroft does for you. Find him at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 13 :
It’s time to leave your safe space. This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, wrapping up things from this first hour. Lots of you texting in and thanking us again for not only this hour, but all the hours we do with Dr. Kelly and Steve House. And once again, we are big, and so are they, on you taking care of your own health. Get that message. You know, basically wrap your mind around that, where it’s not somebody else’s responsibility to take care of your health. It is your responsibility. The wellness company, that’s something that Dr. Kelly’s been a part of now for quite some time, one of the founding members of. And she’s always saying, I don’t want to self-promote. She can self-promote all day long. It’s a great company. It’s a great way for you to have things on hand, like Steve said, for you to be able to take care of your own health responsibly. rather than relying on somebody else to do that for you. And by the way, that’s what Dr. Scott believes in fully as well. So we’ve got lots of resources here for you at Rush to Reason. So just go to the website, RushToReason.com, and you can find Dr. Kelly and all of what we talked about there as well. We’ll be back with more hours coming your way. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
I’m a rich guy.
