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In this episode of ‘Rush to Reason,’ host John Rush engages with Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House to delve into the pressing challenges faced by RFK Jr. upon his appointment to a significant cabinet position. Diving into the intricacies of the agencies under his purview, such as the NIH, FDA, and CDC, the discussion explores the barriers that hinder efficient reform and strategic planning, including media scrutiny and crisis management.
SPEAKER 04 :
This is Rush to Reason.
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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.
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With your host, John Rush.
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My advice to you is to do what your parents did!
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Get a job, Turk! You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference!
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Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
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Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 14 :
And it’s Thursday. Welcome Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory joining me today as well as Steve House. Dr. Kelly, we’ll start with you. Ladies first. How are you?
SPEAKER 06 :
I’m doing great. Glad to be back together. So much has happened since we were last on as a group. Certainly lots happening in Washington and lots of appointments to talk about, lots of things happening at HHS, and lots of things happening around the country.
SPEAKER 14 :
Awesome. We will get into all of that as well. And, yes, it’s been too long. Steve, welcome. You as well. Appreciate you joining us. Always good to be here, guys. It has been a while. It has. And for those of you listening, maybe for the first time, you can find a full page of Dr. Kelly that we dedicate to her on the website. Go to RushToReason.com. You can get all of her background, the things that we have discussed for literally the past, oh, almost five years now. It’s been a long time and we’ve covered a lot of ground and I’m very thankful myself to be here and I know our listeners are as well to listen to the great information you both bring on a regular basis. Dr. Kelly, let’s start with you and talk to us again. You mentioned a moment ago HHS, RFK Jr. He was confirmed and he has got a lot on his plate.
SPEAKER 06 :
Boy, does he. To be clear, that cabinet position, all of them, oversees a tremendous number of agencies. He oversees the NIH, CMS, FDA, CDC. These all answer in a bubble up under HHS. And there’s a lot going on. He also has people, forces trying very, very hard to take him down to make sure that he fails. And I believe that that is largely why he is being sidelined, constantly being distracted by the next crisis right now with measles outbreaks or bird flu or whatever it is. So he hasn’t really been able to get to the vast amount of work, the vast number of projects that I know he wants to handle because he’s been in full-time crisis mode since he got in there.
SPEAKER 14 :
Steve, if you were RFK Jr., and I’ll get Dr. Kelly’s opinion on this as well, how would you – given what Dr. Kelly just said a moment ago, and she’s 100% correct, how would you, if you were him, literally decipher and strategize and start, if you would, your checklist of things you need to go through and do your best to minimize the things that she just said?
SPEAKER 16 :
Well, first of all, he needs a full staff, and I don’t think he’s there yet, so it would help to have a full staff. Based on just the conversations I’ve had this week, my thought process is, Bobby has two areas of focus, even though he has like 18 agencies or something that Kelly was talking about. The two areas of focus are the FDA, CDC, NIH kind of areas where you’re talking about drug safety, new drugs in the market, making sure you do no harm, even as the head of HHS on drugs. you know, how we roll out drugs. And obviously that’s a big issue with what happened with COVID and some of the other stuff that’s, you know, come along and going to come along in the near future. And the other thing is getting through the, how do we make people healthy by changing the substance of what they eat, the quality of the food and the things like that. I don’t think Bobby Kennedy should spend any time working on hospitals. or doctors. I mean, he’s got to have to leave that to Mehmet Oz and to some other people while he focuses on those areas. That’s my opinion, and since you asked, that’s what I wanted to tell you.
SPEAKER 14 :
All right. By the way, I don’t know that I can disagree with that. Dr. Kelly, your thoughts?
SPEAKER 06 :
no i agree with steve 100 on where um robert kennedy jr should set his focus um and as you said he doesn’t have a full staff in place i’ve been in contact with him in very very recently with regard to this issue and the fact that i think they are sorely lacking for someone in a communication role who can articulate to Americans what the priorities are. As I said, he keeps getting sidelined with things like measles or whatever else. The cabinet meeting that happened last Wednesday, he was asked a singular question about measles and then was lambasted in the press up one side and down the other for his answer. While it might not have been delivered quite as eloquently as Bobby Kennedy is capable, he was foundationally correct in what he said, which was, we have measles outbreaks every year. We’ve had four this year. We had 16 last year. And a single child has died. He failed, unfortunately, to give the obligatory condolences about a child dying and talking about how sad that is and how tragic it is, all of which is true. But he is correct in saying this is not a big deal. We have 30,000 to 50,000 people who die every year from influenza. When you add together the deaths from diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and alcohol, that comes to more than a million deaths worldwide. per year. And you don’t hear people absolutely, you know, running around with their hair on fire as a result of it. So I think these are diversion tactics. I think it’s an attempt to keep Bobby Kennedy from actually getting to the people’s business, which are those things that Steve just enumerated, including addressing food additives and the things that are driving the disease burden in America.
SPEAKER 14 :
Real quick before we move on to Steve on that, Dr. Kelly, I had read something today, and I always am careful to not repeat anything until I double-check, and I figure you would be more of an expert on this than anyone I could check with. And I had read today that that one case where that one child did die from measles, that it was caught while in the hospital with other things they were in the hospital for. Am I correct?
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s my understanding, and again, I have not reviewed the medical records. It’s my understanding that the child presented with respiratory syncytial virus, RSV, and pneumonia and was actually given an MMR vaccine while in the hospital. So they gave a live attenuated vaccine to a child who was in ill health. The child then subsequently, quote, tested positive for measles, which is expected given that the child had just received a live vaccine. vaccine that has a live virus in it. So it is unclear, although the child, quote, tested positive for measles, it is very unclear what actually caused the child to die. Was it measles? Was it RSV? Was it pneumonia? Was it improper treatment? I simply don’t know. And again, I am not minimizing measles. Any death, let alone the death of a child. I’m simply saying that I do believe that these things are being politicized and used to the effect of keeping Robert Kennedy and his team, insofar as it’s been put in place, from actually getting on to bigger issues.
SPEAKER 14 :
Makes total sense, and thank you for that clarification. And, Steve, yeah, by the way, everything you said about having the right staff and getting things in gear, and this is a monumental task that he has in front of him. And I want to get your opinion on this, but I’m pretty confident that he’s got the ability to get those things handled and make things happen. And I guess the— The bigger question I’ve got for you, and then I’ll ask Dr. Kelly again, is when it comes to handling the press and getting things on track in the areas that really need to be dealt with first, do you, Steve, hire, I mean, almost like a White House press secretary to handle a lot of those things that are coming in so you can concentrate on what’s needed? Or do you yourself as head of HHS have to answer all those questions?
SPEAKER 16 :
You absolutely have to hire a communications director like the White House would do. I mean, think about how the White House works, right? Carolyn Leavitt is pretty good at 27 years of age, but the man himself, you know, Donald Trump stepping in front of a mic always brings some additional clarity and a little bit more intensity. I mean, when Bobby needs to talk about something, he can always step in and do that. But, you know, Kelly’s right. He can’t get distracted by that kind of stuff. I mean, he’s fighting what we were talking about earlier, 10,000 kids being tested with a COVID vaccine in a safety group. I think that’s completely ridiculous. How many kids died from COVID vaccines versus one person dying from measles? It’s all about numbers, but yeah, he needs communications help for sure. He looked horribly tired to me the other night. in the quasi-stated union as well.
SPEAKER 14 :
I agree. All right, we will come right back. Any questions, by the way, you can sure text us 307-282-22. I’ve got a couple of questions that came in as we were off the last couple of weeks, but give us a text and I’ll get that taken care of. Again, 307-282-22, Affordable Interest Mortgage. I was talking to Kurt Rogers, by the way, just a few minutes ago. And rates are shifting around. Find out exactly where they are and what he can do for you. And he’s got a great program when it comes to buying a home that needs some fix-up in wrapping that all into one deal. Talk to Kurt today, 720-895-0500.
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SPEAKER 14 :
No liberal media bias here. This is Rush to Reason. And we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush. Dr. Kelly Victory, Steve House with us. Steve, I’m going to throw this at you because we were texting early this morning and talking about the show today and so on. And one of the things that you have been working on of late is data, trying to figure out how to lower the cost and improve American health care. And I’m guessing that is something that is probably front and center for Robert Kennedy Jr. as well. Well, let me ask you this. Is it as monumental as I think, or are there some pretty easy things we can do to help that right off the bat?
SPEAKER 16 :
I mean, there’s some easy things, but everything about health care is complicated, John. I mean, in thinking about the discussions this week, right, so first and foremost, I mean, as a general rule, and I’d challenge Kelly to tell me I’m wrong about this because I could be, I don’t think you can find an HHS secretary in the past, I don’t know, maybe a couple of decades that’s made a substantial difference in how health care operates in this country. And if you’re the guy that’s in charge or you’re the lady that’s in charge, I mean, you know, I’ve been talking to Tommy Thompson and his team. He’s a former HHS secretary. I think Tommy did some fairly significant things in the job. But it’s a really complicated job, and very few people have done much. I mean, the change toward EHRs or EMRs, probably cost us more money and time than it helped us. So I don’t know, John. I think it’s a tough question. I certainly would ask Kelly to jump in and contradict that. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 14 :
Go ahead, Dr. Kelly.
SPEAKER 16 :
You’re up.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, I agree with Steve. I can’t remember any HHS secretary getting much accomplished. And I think this is because they all fall into the trap of trying to do too many things simultaneously and then therefore end up doing nothing. I don’t think Robert Kennedy’s focus is on, quote, revamping health care. I think he has a very good list. of priorities that include things like addressing the food system, specifically foods that we feed to our children that we know are associated with increased disease burdens, things like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and those sorts of things. He certainly is looking at safety issues with regard to drugs and therapeutics, including but not limited to vaccines. I believe that he wants to make some significant changes like eliminating pharmaceutical advertising on television because that will help to return integrity to the media in terms of their reporting. And I know that he wants to disarticulate the relationship between Big Pharma and the medical journals and our medical schools. If you were able to do, you know, those four things I just rattled off would be monumental, you know, without trying to sort of revamp everything else. He has Mehmet Oz overseeing CMS, which is Medicare and Medicaid. Menedos can handle looking into the fraud and corruption that are rampant in those programs. And he’s got people at the FDA and the CDC who likewise can look at fraud, corruption, and lack of transparency there. I know that Jay Bhattacharya has vowed that he would do that. So I think that if Bobby can rely on the people who are heading these different agencies and then let them do their thing, get out of the way, while he addresses a handful of other things that could be impactful, I think we’ll be doing well.
SPEAKER 14 :
Steve, you also were talking about the waste and abuse when we were texting back and forth earlier today. And a question that I have is we know it’s not only wasteful at times, not only is there fraud, it’s abused greatly. In fact, unfortunately, it’s typically abused by those that are the least healthy of the population. In some cases, you wrote 300-plus ER visits in a year, meaning they’re darn near there every day. I mean, how would you curb that?
SPEAKER 16 :
You know, it’s interesting, and I’ll make one comment on what Kelly said. I actually think that I made this suggestion this week. I said, you know, write down the answer to this question. In four years… it will be different because and then you know list the things right there’ll be no tv commercials for drugs you know whatever it is just make it simple and tell people what you really think you can accomplish in four years in terms of your question you know looking at data we go back to covid right and one of the original conversations we had john was we have health information exchanges in the state of colorado and you know made a suggestion to the governor at that time um that was a period i was running for congress and said look you got hies go into the hies and look at people’s health status and the ones who are the greatest at risk for covid isolate those folks. Give them a heads up that says, hey, you know what, you’re 80 years old, you got COPD, you got, you know, diabetes to go with it. Those chronic diseases are not going to be, you know, in your favor clearly if you get COVID. We never use the data. You know, on one hand, you have to be able to be aware, right? I mean, I’m sure if, you know, Kelly was in an ER and doing trauma work and she saw the same person show up five days in a row, six days in a row, at some point she’s going to go, Why is that guy here every day? And, you know, what is it with this guy? And it turns out that particular guy, he was one of a bunch. When you get the $3 billion of the Medicaid cost in a single county, you know, people were taking the ambulance into the hospital because they didn’t have any other way to get there. You know, they didn’t want to walk in the cold. They didn’t want to take the ambulance. I can tell you an ambulance, and Kelly can tell you how much an air ambulance is, those costs are ridiculously high. Someone has to pay attention. They have to have the data. They have to pay attention to it. And they have to not run afoul of the law in doing what’s necessary to incentivize those folks to get healthy a different way than showing up at the ED every day.
SPEAKER 14 :
Dr. Kelly, and again, I don’t think that we want to get to a system whereby there are grades of individuals and they get care based upon said grade. On the same token, I’ve always wondered, just as a side note to what Steve said a moment ago, why is an ambulance ride – in the first place and is that an area where we don’t want different grades of care but when it comes to ambulance rides where you’ve got some that are paying full price and others that are getting a freebie is that an area where we could have tiered service
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, that’s the issue. An ambulance ride is so expensive because one out of 10 people actually pay for it. Nine people get it for free, and one person pays. So that one guy’s paying for it. Correct. And that’s what happens in the ER because we give away so much free care, and that’s certainly to people who are not in this country legally, but also people who don’t pay taxes and don’t have insurance and don’t pay anything. So it’s, you know, one out of 10 people is actually paying for the care. I think that we also something that clearly needs to happen is we need to revamp our concept of, quote, insurance when it comes to health care insurance. Health care insurance is the only form of, quote, insurance that handles everything from soup to nuts. You can’t get it. You know, you can’t drive a car in this country without liability insurance. But when you go to get gas, you don’t expect your car insurance to pay for the gas in the car or getting your tires rotated. You can’t get a mortgage without having homeowners insurance. But when you go to mow the lawn or clean the gutters or paint the house, you don’t expect State Farm, your homeowners, to pay for those things. You pay cash. And likewise, it should be that way with health care. Instead, people say, I have insurance, and they expect everything from their annual physical to their flu shot to their child’s antibiotics for an ear infection to be covered by that insurance. And the cost of insurance, if you handle it that way, is going to be astronomical, which is exactly where we find ourselves.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yep. Steve, you do a lot of work in this particular area, and you and I, with Dr. Kelly and without over the years, have talked about this particular subject. And there are fixes for this. I guess the question is, do we as a country, and I think there’s people like Robert Kennedy Jr. that are willing to drive some of these things forward, but do we as a country have the fortitude, I guess you would say, to make some of the changes necessary, like Dr. Kelly just said a moment ago? Because she’s 100% correct.
SPEAKER 16 :
You know, it’s really a generational segmentation thing I think you have to do where you say, look, I’ve got to, first of all, do some education. I mean, guys who show up at the ED every day or for 300 days out of 365, it could be abuse, it could be fraud, it could be drug-seeking, it could be a lot of things, but it also could be a complete lack of education on how they should take care of themselves or solve their own problems. uh… so it’s a mix of that but i think the way that kennedy has to approach it on the health side is you know you have to start teaching people your personal get the stuff out of the system that’s bad for us the dives the high fructose corn syrup you know using beef tallow to to do fries with instead of oils right is a little thing but it’s still an important thing so so teach the youngest generation how to eat better. You know, in the meantime, of course, I don’t know if you realize this, but there’s something called toddler milk, which I ran into this week, right? So after you have formula or breast milk for a year, then you can jump into this toddler milk, which is horrible. It’s sugar and salt. It tastes phenomenal. And kids drink it for three years and they put on weight. I mean, it just, all those things need to be dealt with. You need to do it by generation. Unfortunately, John, you and I are probably at an age level where our generation is not going to get much help out of Make America Healthy. We’re probably going to get what we put into it and what we’ve always put into it, but two generations younger than us, and kids will. So start there, work your way there, change the system over time, but it’s going to be a couple of generations before we get there.
SPEAKER 14 :
Dr. Kelly, is there a way, as you talked earlier about, The three of us have talked about this literally in the past a gazillion times because the ads that are run by the big pharma, by big drugs, really, and it gives them all sorts of power over all sorts of things, which really is a huge thing. And I really feel that Robert Kennedy will do whatever he can to try to get that part of it solved. But the question I’ve got is could you sell – to even the American public and to Congress, if you would, that, hey, we want to pass a law that eliminates drug ads. In fact, what we want to do, though, is maybe not a one-for-one, but maybe it’s a 50% ratio to where instead of running drug ads, we’re going to run PSAs, and we’re going to require networks to actually run said PSAs if they want to have their FCC licensing and so on, and we’re going to run some PSAs on how to make America healthy again.
SPEAKER 06 :
I think it’s a great idea. I think that we’ve got to start educating Americans about the basics. We’ve been led to believe, and this is largely because of the pharmaceutical companies, we’ve been led to believe that we can either vaccinate or medicate our way to good health. Mm-hmm. There’s a drug, a pill, an injection, a treatment for everything rather than the basics. You’re led to believe that you need a vaccine for every single infectious disease. Ozempic is better than diet and exercise for obesity. There’s a medication for everything. Instead, we should be educating Americans about the basics, adequate nutrition, regular exercise, sleep, stress mitigation, exposure to sunlight. All the things that our parents and grandparents used to do naturally. Now we have an entire society that is sedentary, sits on the sofa with a, you know, an iPad or an iPhone, doesn’t walk anywhere. And it really, you know, it has trickled down, but it’s being fed largely by the pharmaceutical industry that benefits from this ill health. They benefit. The hospitals benefit. Insurance companies benefit. Everybody benefits but the people.
SPEAKER 14 :
This text message just came in, and Steve, I’m going to throw this at you because I think I know the answer, although I want to be sure of it. And this texter says, I think more people would pay cash if they were charged for and pay for what would be the same that the insurance company pays for the price differences astronomical. I was under the impression, Steve, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought insurance companies in most cases pay more than what I would get as a cash deal, or am I wrong?
SPEAKER 16 :
No, you’re not wrong. It is that way exactly because of the rebate networking structure. I mean, oftentimes the cash pay patient will get a cheaper price. I mean, it’s still not cheap in most cases, but it is cheaper.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay, and I had thought that because typically those are all negotiated on the front side. So in other words, if you see a situation where the insurance company is actually paying less, well, that’s probably an isolated case where an insurance company made some sort of a deal on that. But typically speaking, insurance pays more than cash.
SPEAKER 16 :
You know, I just had this happen. I had a CT scan last year, and at the time I had it, I asked the question, what’s my cash price? Because they asked me for insurance. I said, what’s my cash price? They gave me a number of like $653 for a CT scan with contrast. And then I gave them my insurance. When the bill came, it was $3,000-something. Now, there’s a bunch of write-offs that goes into that, but it still did not equal $600-and-some by the time it was paid.
SPEAKER 14 :
Dr. Kelly, being a doctor, you’ve got great familiarity with this. Again, am I thinking correctly in that answer I gave just a few minutes ago?
SPEAKER 06 :
Absolutely. And I’ll tell you, I personally, because I have a high deductible plan, which is intended for, you know, catastrophic events, I commonly pay cash. I commonly say, I haven’t met my deductible, which I think is $10,000. If I need to get an x-ray or a CAT scan or an MRI, I ask for the cash price. As Steve said, it will generally be a few hundred dollars, where the insurance, if they bill it through insurance, it’ll be $3,000. And since I haven’t met my deductible, I would have to pay $3,000. I say, forget it. Don’t put it through. I’ll pay the $300 and pay it in cash. It is insanity. This is absolutely a racket. And, you know, more people understood it. I think we could really push back on the insurance companies. But they know that most people don’t understand how it works. They don’t understand that they have the ability to pay the cash price if they so choose. And if more people did that, we really could get prices back in line.
SPEAKER 14 :
Steve, when it comes to this particular topic, which is all sorts of things that factor into cost, and somebody texted a moment ago and said Obamacare really pushed up the cost of all of this, and I will not disagree with that at all. It did. I guess the question, because for some it might be so long ago that they’ve even forgotten what it was like before Obamacare, why did Obamacare push it up so much?
SPEAKER 16 :
Well, it was this theory that You know, he was trying to be benevolent, a benevolent dictator, as it turns out. But essentially what he was saying is, look, if you happen to have, you know, type 1 diabetes, if you have other genetic issues, if you grew up in an environment that was a food desert and you have type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases, that your insurance costs… should not be materially higher than someone who is healthy, fit, absent of genetic problems. So it used to be we would underwrite policies based on actuarial data that said, you know, Kelly Victory’s probably going to live longer than John and Steve because she’s fitter and does all this other stuff, so give her a lower price. They took that away. They only made it smoking status and age, essentially. So that meant that everyone’s price went up. And then… You know, they had to cover everything. So you and I are personally both insured for breast cancer. Kelly is insured for prostate cancer. It just became this racket. Now, why the heck the insurance company would think it’s okay, even though they know she’s a female and we’re men, to give us that kind of coverage? That stuff was nonsensical. It was unethical and immoral, in my opinion.
SPEAKER 14 :
Can’t disagree with any of that. Dr. Kelly, do you want to add any of that before we go to break?
SPEAKER 06 :
No, 100% correct. And it was this idea of covering that everybody was obligated to have coverage for everything. So as Steve said, I have pediatric dental insurance, despite the fact that I have no children and I’m well beyond childbearing age. But I still if you know, every insurance policy has to cover these things. We should go back to what we had when I was growing up, which was we called major medical or catastrophic, meaning that’s right. You know, you’ll pay for everything out of pocket. My parents paid for my, you know, well, child visits. My parents paid if we needed an X-ray in the ER or you needed a shot of penicillin for strep throat. And then if, God forbid, you had a car accident or a major event, you had catastrophic coverage to cover that unexpected thing. That’s what insurance is intended to do, cover the unexpected, not cover routine things.
SPEAKER 14 :
Absolutely. All right. We’ll come right back. Don’t go anywhere, folks. Keep texting 307-200-8222. Golden Eagle Financial, Al Smith is up next. If you want to look forward to your financial future and actually make it to retirement, talk to Al today. Find him at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 04 :
The best export we have is common sense. You’re listening to Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 14 :
And we are back. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House with us. Okay, a couple of text messages that came in. Let me start, Steve, with you. There’s a law that has been challenged by medical providers since 1970, and it is the… Robinson-Patman Act. It’s a U.S. federal law that prohibits price discrimination and other anti-competitive practices. It was passed in 1936 to protect small businesses from being undercut by larger competitors. So health care providers have challenged this. The question is, why are there no state attorneys or state or sorry, attorney generals or the Department of Justice challenging this particular pricing by health care providers? Is it a money issue? And this question is just coming off the text line, Steve.
SPEAKER 16 :
That’s an interesting question. I would probably want to ask them a question and say, you know, what are you referring to? Because, frankly, hospitals and doctors can charge whatever they want. I mean, if you have an agreement with a health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, for example, there’s going to be an allowable amount. that you have to pay, but a hospital can charge whatever it wants for the CT scan that they do for me. And therefore, it’s all about cost shifting, right? So if I absolutely pay and someone else can’t pay, they want to get enough from me to help cover that. But there is no price transparency to come out. The president actually… We did another executive order to try to emphasize price transparency. But price controls have never really existed in health care because the pharmaceutical – not the pharmaceutical, the insurance companies and the providers can charge what they want. Okay.
SPEAKER 14 :
Our next question came in for you, Dr. Kelly. Say they like your idea about going back to major medical. I do as well. And, by the way, there are plans today where you kind of can get that if you would – but how do we get the employers out of the mix? And I think I’ve actually, as an employer, I think I have an answer to that, but I want to hear what you have to say, Dr. Kelly.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, employers getting in the mix happened as a result of wage freezes happening after World War II when employers were trying to get some additional money in the pockets of their employees and weren’t allowed to raise wages, so they gave them the benefit of having health insurance. So it was out of really the goodness of the hearts of employers, but it’s now gotten out of control because it fundamentally ties people to their job. People end up getting stuck, not being able to move, to change jobs, to relocate because for fear of giving up their health insurance. So for many people, it ends up being an anchor. It’s the, you know, the concept that albatross around your neck. So I think really what people should be allowed to do is say to their employer that I don’t want to actually have that as a benefit and take some cash amount instead. Say it might not be equal. Your benefits may come to be, say, $20,000 from your employer, and you should be able, I think, to say to your employer, I don’t want the $20,000 for the benefits. I would prefer to take $7,000 or $8,000 of increased salary instead and buy my own. And that’s something that you can certainly ask your employer, but I think it should become a mainstream solution.
SPEAKER 14 :
Steve, I want to get your opinion on this because I’ve got one other thing I want to dovetail into what Dr. Kelly said because as an employer, and maybe I’m wrong in my thought process here, but I thought that one of the reasons why employers, to Dr. Kelly’s point, started offering health care not only was it to retain employees and to be able to offer them more and there was wage issues and so on, but if I’m not mistaken, Steve, a lot of that also came from the fact that for private companies, enterprises to compete with government, they had to start offering some of those things. Because at one point in time, somebody would go to work for government for a little less pay, but they had all these extra benefits, including health coverage and so on. And so the private sector came along and started doing the same thing. So my answer as to how do you get employers out of this, we’ll get government out of it first.
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, I mean, it’s a little bit of both because Kelly was right that the original health insurance, I believe, came when a guy named Kaiser was trying to help people who were building ships. and and california and they couldn’t get the workers uh… they they they wanted to give them something more to keep them versus their competition so it it was really it was you know like kelly fed trying to give them something other than wages could they couldn’t give them wages they do more months strike uh… but then did then what happened to come benefits packages became more competitive So when you go to work for somebody, you interview them, you’ll oftentimes see people say, well, we have the greatest benefit package, and some of them have really special benefit packages. And they do it that way as well. So, I mean, there’s still rules on HSAs. I mean, if you want to do this right, major medical or catastrophic with a really, really unlimited HSA, for you to use to take care of your own health benefits. We’d all be better off to go that way. That’s why Kelly and I worked on some of the Singapore model and other things when I was running for Congress and she was on the health care team in 2020. I mean, there’s all kinds of better ways to do this. Whether the company’s involved or not, I mean, this lawsuit I teed up to you guys from Johnson & Johnson and Wells Fargo and the employees suing the companies because drug pricing coming through the PBMs the company has is too high. It’s marked up too much. I mean, all of those things are distorting the market. So anytime you have a three-party system, you’re distorting the market. When you negotiate with somebody who needs a brand-new carburetor in their car, you negotiate face-to-face with the person buying. It’s not that way in healthcare, and that distortion makes this whole thing… open to fraud, waste, and abuse.
SPEAKER 14 :
What it really is doing, Steve, and Dr. Kelly, you can comment on this as well, is you’ve taken the free market out of health care because there’s so much insurance slash government regulation that, yeah, you can be a concierge doctor like Dr. Faulkner, who’s one of our sponsors here. Problem is there’s not near enough of those nor enough people even realizing those exist. And on top of that, because of Obamacare, still have to have some sort of other policy that they have in place just because they’re forced to do so. Am I correct, Steve?
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, and I clearly think that you’re right about concierge docs. I mean, the reality of it is as time goes on and the baby boomers get older and, you know, the need for health care in a system that’s going to have lower and lower access because of what’s happening, you know, those people will become like gold. You know, Kelly and her family probably can charge, you know, more than a couple of chickens for a visit because people won’t be able to get into a doctor. And so it’s going to become a commodity that goes up in value and price as people get older. So it’s distorted, John. You’re right. There’s no free market. There’s plenty of it. There’s not enough information in the market, and there’s too many players in a market when you have more than two people face-to-face making something happen.
SPEAKER 14 :
Dr. Kelly, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier when it comes to education, and I get it. You could run a lot of TV ads and still not really educate everybody properly, but you’ve got to start someplace when it comes to educating the public on, A, how some of the things that we’re talking about work, B, how to stay healthier, because frankly, the system that we implemented, gosh, Dr. Kelly, when… I was a kid. I think the food pyramid and all of that started and we started to go about things backwards and it’s gotten worse and worse and worse. And you talk all the time on this program here as to how unhealthy America actually is. And we are. The reality is we are not as healthy as we should be. And we’ve got all the technology, all the ability, all the communication and so on. To me, this is a matter of choice.
SPEAKER 06 :
Absolutely. And part of the problem is that we have not incentivized the right behaviors. I spent over a decade of my life working with self-insured companies. That means companies that make enough money that they don’t buy commercial insurance. They just plan to pay for the health care for their employees out of their own profits. Those companies, the great thing about that is that they do incentivize the right behaviors. They’re in a position to say, for example, you take a Sprint or Scott’s Miracle-Gro or Nissan Automotives. They can say to their employees, look, if you go to the gym, to the fitness center that we’ve built for you right here at the office, at the factory, if you go on average 10 times a month, that’s three days a week, you will only pay $40 a month for your insurance versus $80. If you participate in the smoking cessation program that Dr. Victory is running, you can take $30 a month off of your health care premium if you do X, Y, or Z. And that is what we should be doing, incentivizing the behaviors that we want rather than just saying, you know, you have insurance, therefore you have an entitlement. Everything is paid for. You have no personal obligation to take care of yourself. There’s no accountability. You can be as overweight, as sedentary as you want. Use, you know, drugs. smoke, whatever it is, we have got to start returning the idea of personal responsibility and accountability and making and incentivizing those behaviors that we want people to do. You can start first and foremost by returning physical education to the public schools. When I was growing up, PE was a class we had four days a week. It doesn’t exist anymore. That’s right. Not anymore.
SPEAKER 14 :
I don’t know about you, Steve, but to Dr. Kelly’s point, I don’t know about you, but when I was of that age and all the way up until I graduated high school, we had to run the mile four times a year, and you had to run it under a certain amount of time or you didn’t pass.
SPEAKER 16 :
Six and a half minutes was what I remember in terms of the time, and I was in that category as well. I was going to mention on commercials. The one thing you’ve never seen a commercial is you never see a commercial where someone’s telling you the food that, you know, this particular food is bad. Right. You know, people will talk about how, you know, their food is fortified and healthy and this and that, but, you know, no one ever comes down to the commercial. Maybe Bobby Kennedy will get it to this point and says, you know, look, don’t eat this. You know, I mean, M&Ms are bad for you. I don’t care. I mean, so, you know, the Mars candy company is going to be upset about it, but at some point, You know, the best education is, you know what, this is not good. But nobody ever tells you what’s not good.
SPEAKER 14 :
And really quick, I know we’re getting tight on time, but Dr. Kelly, as somebody that, you know, you guys travel around the world, I do as well. I don’t stay in the United States the entire time. And I will tell you, when you leave the U.S., even going south of the border, what they have on the shelf to buy and the ingredients of are way different than what we have here. And yet that’s a second world country. And I just think to myself, you know, That happens there, but we can’t get this done at home. Why?
SPEAKER 06 :
Exactly, because Americans are addicted to convenience and to inexpensive items. We have allowed our big ag to put these food additives in because it makes it cheaper for them. High fructose corn syrup is inexpensive. Some of the fats that are being used have longer shelf lives, even though they’re wildly unhealthy. So if you look at a box of Kellogg’s Froot Loops that is sold in the United States, I think it has 32 ingredients in that. A box of Kellogg’s Fruit Loops, same company, same presumably product. If you look at that box sold in England, it has five ingredients. Right. Okay? Because they do not allow in the U.K., they don’t allow the artificial coloring, the artificial preservatives, the artificial flavorings, all of this stuff with words so long you can’t even pronounce them, let alone know what the heck they are. And this is a problem. And so Robert Kennedy Jr., although I don’t agree with everything he has said over the years, the reality is he is darn right that we are feeding our population and certainly our children foods that contain things that are leading to poor health. And this is particularly problematic when you’re talking about people who are in food subsidies, food stamps, or other sort of federal food programs, because we are also, with rare exception, paying for the health care for those same people. So we are making them unhealthy, and then we’re on the hook to pay for their diabetes. their obesity, and their heart disease.
SPEAKER 14 :
Correct.
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s pure insanity.
SPEAKER 14 :
Real quick, Steve, you might know this answer. I think we’ve got a minute and we’re going to have to do this quickly, but it worked for a very large company. For a short while during COVID, they deducted from our checks a surcharge for not being vaccinated, just like for tobacco users. Are there any lawsuits out there regarding getting that money back and with damages?
SPEAKER 16 :
I haven’t seen one, but there sure should be because that just makes zero sense. I mean, you know, at the time it was, I mean, you probably can’t win that lawsuit, John, because the public health department was essentially mandating it for people. So the companies were trying to eliminate their own liability, and they were using that money to help offset the potential liability for people getting it in the workplace and having someone die or get really sick from it.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay, guys, I’ll let you go. As always, look forward to next week. Thank you so much for all that you do. Dr. Kelly, I’ll let you go first. You’re always a wealth of information. I learn every week.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you. Always great to be with you guys.
SPEAKER 14 :
Appreciate you very much, Steve, as well. Thanks for putting this up, or putting this together, I should say, about five years ago. It’s been a joy the entire time, and I’ve learned a ton.
SPEAKER 16 :
Yeah, I agree. I love being on here. We should someday do a show for a couple of hours of what we all do to be extra healthy. Let’s get our secrets on the table, John.
SPEAKER 14 :
I’m good with that. Steve, I appreciate you as always. Yep. Thanks, man. Have a great night. Up next, it is veteran windows and doors, three windows or more. There’s a substantial discount on windows. Talk today, Bancroft today. Just go to klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 04 :
It’s time to leave your safe space. This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 14 :
All right, and we are back. One minute left. And as always, I want to say a special thanks again to Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House. And we may very well do exactly what Steve said and what are some of your secrets even when it comes to staying healthy. And I hope that we see out of this particular administration, I believe we will, some things along those lines, some PSAs and things that we can get back even into schools and education and how do we get people healthy again because the reality is we have gotten completely away from that. And it’s a mindset change that we actually have to have in this country. Yes, I know government can do a lot in that regard, but really this starts from the ground up, getting families to do this and have everybody on board at the same time. And, yes, I know there’s a lot of great companies out there that do a really good job with their own employees of this, but we have got to spread that around and make that more congruent across the board from coast to coast in every segment that we have going. out there so we’ll do our very best to put that together with steve and i appreciate his suggestions on that that’s it for hour one hour two is coming up don’t go anywhere rush to reason denver’s afternoon rush klz 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
I’m a rich guy.
