In this episode, host John Rush digs deep into the whirlwind start of the new administration. With guests Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House, they explore the rapid-fire executive orders signed in the first days and what they mean for the nation. Areas of focus include the controversial pardons issued by the outgoing president, particularly those affecting high-profile figures like Dr. Fauci, and what this signifies for accountability and precedent. As the conversation progresses, the guests discuss the administration’s efforts to curb excessive government spending and the potential pitfalls of blanket pardons.
SPEAKER 16 :
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My advice to you is to do what your parents did. Get a job, sir. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same, and there’s a big difference.
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SPEAKER 12 :
Are you crazy? Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush. Presented by High Five Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, and Electric, where every call ends with a high five.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, welcome. Happy Thursday, everybody. Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. That time of the week, Dr. Kelly Victory joining us, as well as Steve House. Always start with the ladies first. Dr. Kelly, how are you?
SPEAKER 17 :
Well, I’m okay, John. We’re four days into this, and honestly, the jury’s out. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about the first four days of this administration, so I’m looking forward to the next hour where we can talk about what’s what’s happened that’s been good, and what’s happened that’s been puzzling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Steve, your thoughts as well? And, yeah, I mean, a lot going on, lots of executive orders. We’ll get into a few different things today, not only along those lines, but even some of the budgetary suggestions that I sent both of you right before showtime. But, Steve, welcome as well.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thanks. Good to be here. And I guess my opinion on the first three or four days is, I like the action. I like lots and lots of actions have been taken. Some of it’s been really, really good. There’s a few puzzling things, too, but for the most part, people talk about the first 100 days. It’s more like the first 100 hours with him and what he’s done in this first four days.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, and I was saying this yesterday, and the reality, Dr. Kelly and Steve, is I don’t know that we’ve ever seen a president – get after it as quickly as Trump did that evening, meeting with the press, signing executive orders. Granted, he had a head start because he knew what he was getting into from doing this once before. So in that end of things, he’s not a first-term president by any means. And he showed that Monday night, Dr. Kelly, and the things that he started. doing. Now, there’s a lot of things that I believe he will still do. There’s still lots of confirmations. We may talk about some of those things today. And the one thing that I wanted to really get started with you guys on before we even get into any of that stuff is the pardon of Dr. Fauci.
SPEAKER 17 :
Well, yeah, let me first say I agree with Steve wholeheartedly. I like the fact that he has hit the ground running and It was very clear in his inaugural address on Monday night. He did not equivocate. He did not play to both sides. He said, this is what I’m going to do, and he pulled no punches, and I really like that. I think that there are some things, again, that are perplexing to me. And we can get into that with regard to these the pardon, the last minute preemptive pardon that Biden gave to Anthony Fauci, as well as dozens and dozens of other people. I think that is really not only is it a slap in the face to Americans and insults, because it robs them of the opportunity to really hold accountable people like Anthony Fauci, who were participants in tremendous crimes against humanity, who perjured themselves, and far worse. But it also sets a very dangerous precedent. If this stands legal challenge, the idea that a president, as he’s walking out of the Oval Office, can, quote, preemptively pardon a bunch of people who’ve never been charged. What is going to stop any president in his or her administration from appointing people saying, look, do whatever the heck you want. And in the final minute, I’ll just pardon you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Steve, your comments on that, because Donald Trump, there was some conversation back in the day prior to him leaving office where he may do some, you know, preemptive pardons and so on. And the left just went up in arms. You know, there’s an there’s even video out there of Adam Schiff, you know, just really throwing a fit over the fact that Donald Trump may even do something along those lines. And the accusatory comment. you know, nature of what Schiff said. And by the way, a lot of what he said goes along the lines of what Dr. Kelly just said. And yet, yet their very own president just did that.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I’ll give some of them credit even now, because a lot of them on the left were really upset with Biden for what he did. I mean, they can’t believe he went through this process on the precedent it sets. So Fauci and others, I mean, I will tell you right now, You’re waiting for the day. It’s not going to take very long that people are going to be given the option. If you make a major donation to a presidential candidate and they win, you will get an option to have some immunity given to you or some pardon given to you in exchange for that, because that’s where the country is. I mean, we’re corrupt enough. that I believe, I mean, frankly, that’s exactly what Biden did with his family. They got $27 million. They should not have gotten it. It was obviously illegal. He pardoned them on it. So essentially, he took a $27 million donation at least to his own family. And pardon them on it, let alone wait till donors are needed in the heat of a big race.
SPEAKER 08 :
Absolutely. Now, some of the good things that I saw Donald Trump do, and I even talked about some of these this week. I didn’t go through every single executive order this week. But, Dr. Kelly, some of the things that he did right off the bat was ending all of the nonsense around COVID, you know, the disaster relief, if you would, the response to, you know, setting aside certain things for COVID response, which we’re still using today. Well, we were using up until that day. Those things I’m going to give Donald Trump credit for because, frankly, those things needed ended years ago.
SPEAKER 17 :
Oh, my gosh. Yes. You know, I think overall his Trump’s overreaching or overarching, I should say. plan right now is to staunch the hemorrhaging that’s been happening, the financial hemorrhaging. We are spending stupid amounts of money on things that, as you rightly point out, should have ended years ago when the pandemic ended. So he’s stopping that. He’s made bold announcements with regard to the requirement for any federal employee to wait for it, actually show up at work. be there in person, none of this remote work anymore. That is going to save a lot of money. And he’s really appointing people who I think have been tasked, each of them individually, whether it’s Linda McMahon and the Department of Education or Kash Patel at the FBI, to get in there and clean house, clear it up. I mean, he said to Linda McMahon, look, if you do a good job at the Department of Education, you’re going to be out of a job. Right.
SPEAKER 09 :
Good.
SPEAKER 17 :
And I think that he meant that. And I think that that’s great. I think that those are all huge moves. And certainly stopping the ridiculous spending on anything related to the pandemic, I think, was a great first move.
SPEAKER 08 :
Any other things that you would have liked to have seen him done? And granted, we’re only a few days in there. There’s more pardons today that came out for some of the pro-lifers that ended up in jail that shouldn’t have been, by the way. So some of those things he’s still working on. And timing is everything. And I get it. He can’t do everything at once. But is there things that you were hoping he would have done by now that he hasn’t?
SPEAKER 17 :
Yes, I was hoping that he was going to at least give tacit acknowledgement in his Monday night address and then act on it. If not, he’s never going to acknowledge that the mRNA shots, that the COVID shots were a disaster. But he could have said that he was going to stop all mandates. He made you know, he said he was going to reinstate the military who were dismissed with back pay. But he didn’t say, and I’m going to make it, you know, illegal. I’m going to make it unconstitutional to have a vaccine mandate because there are still.
SPEAKER 08 :
I thought he and this is where maybe I heard wrong. So, Dr. Kelly and Steve, you know, correct me. I thought. He referenced something along those lines in that speech where he, at the end of talking about reinstating those individuals with back pay, he said something to the effect of and discontinuing that in the future. Now, maybe I heard that wrong.
SPEAKER 17 :
But I think it’s referencing with reference to the military. He certainly hasn’t signed anything. Nothing has been codified, at least, that would make it so that the other people, whether it’s health care workers or law enforcement or college students, wouldn’t be held to this. So I guess if you’re asking me specifically, is there something that I wish he would have done, I think it’s important because I think a lot of Americans were really waiting for that. As I said, you’re holding your breath if you think he’s going to come out and say no more MRNA right now or hold these from the market or any of that. But I do think that he could have, along with the tremendous action of reinstating the military, I think he could have made a bold statement about eliminating mandates for others.
SPEAKER 08 :
Steve, your thoughts on all of that?
SPEAKER 07 :
I actually think he’s going to do it, but I think what he’s waiting for is he’s waiting for Bobby Kennedy to assume the HHS head and they’re going to do it together. I do think that it’s coming. I mean, every indication is it is. But I do think that there’s some bullets that he’s going to wait until, you know, there’s something appropriate. I mean, it’s just like executive orders maybe and how we do, you know, the education department nationally versus in the state. I think he’ll do those orders. I’m just suspecting and maybe that’s wishful thinking, but I suspect he’s going to wait until Kennedy’s in office and they’re going to do it together.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, it’s funny, Steve, when you say that, my son and I today were talking about some of this and the timing of and what does he wait and do when each person that he wants confirmed gets confirmed, especially when it comes to RFK Jr. And by the way, I’m with you on that. I think some of these things he’s waiting for some of these individuals to be confirmed and then together because it gives them sort of not only some kudos, but a jumping off point where together they announce X, Y, Z.
SPEAKER 07 :
I mean, it’s political. Obviously, it’s very political. What Bobby’s going to do is political. He needs to have some wins that are good news. I mean, the Make America Healthy Again thing is a really good idea, and I’m really supportive of it. But there’s going to be some tough decisions in there. So I think he needs to mix in some wins with some of those tough decisions, and that may be what Trump is doing. But clearly, it has to get done at some point.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. Question. When we come back from break, Dr. Kelly, we’ll start with you. I’m going to throw it out now. And that is there’s a lot of flack that he’s taking over the recension of some of the orders, of course, that Joe Biden put out. One of those being the prescription drug end of things, lowering the price of and so on, in which I think there’s probably. more to that than what’s on the face, so we’ll talk about that as soon as we come back. Affordable interest mortgage is next. Kurt Rogers, by the way, wants to help you with all your mortgage needs. Those of you that are self-employed especially, give Kurt a call, 720-895-0500.
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SPEAKER 03 :
This is an encore of an earlier program. We are not able to accept your calls.
SPEAKER 04 :
No liberal media bias here. This is Rush to Reason.
SPEAKER 08 :
And we are back. Rush to Reason, Debra’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Dr. Kelly Victory with us during this hour, Steve House as well. And one of the things, Dr. Kelly, that Trump did in the reversal of some of the executive orders that Biden put out was this Medicaid drug negotiation and so on, which I’m sure he’s going to take some flack over. But I guess the question I have is. Was that EO from Biden? I mean, did anything really come of that? And is Trump doing this, A, so that he can revamp the whole thing? Or what are your thoughts along those lines?
SPEAKER 17 :
Yes. A lot of this is symbolic, for one thing. You know, when a new administration takes over, it’s not uncommon for them to try to reverse certain policies that were put into place, particularly ones that didn’t have any meat on the bones anyway. This is really a lot of a do you know about nothing. First of all, Trump clearly wanted to do some take some actions that would weaken the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. including some things that Biden had put in place to strengthen Medicaid, which included providing more outreach funding to states. And so Trump is trying to reverse those things. With regard to the drug pricing, most of that had not even been initiated yet, so isn’t going to have any impact on people. And he didn’t touch the the bigger Biden health care initiatives, including the thirty five dollar a month cap on insulin, for example, and the two thousand dollar annual out of pocket cap on prescription drugs. So they will not be affected by Trump’s executive actions on Monday. So I really think it was more symbolic than anything else. And as you said, so that he can sort of start fresh with a new administration, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. heading HHS and say, OK, what really makes sense? Do these at the beginning of his administration so they actually can be enacted, take effect and we can see the benefits?
SPEAKER 08 :
So what I figured, Steve, your thoughts on all of that, because you look at this from the admin side as well.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, yeah, I mean, it’s that and it’s even those, you know, that list of budget things you sent. There’s a general rule here which says, you know, that we’re putting lipstick on a pig a little bit. I hope that’s not where we end up. I mean, there is. so many things that really need to be fixed, but I don’t think you can use executive orders to fix healthcare. It’s too messy, too big, too burdened, too corrupt to do it. So yeah, you know, that’s nice for executive orders. I still think he’s got to come to the table and say, I want to spend the time and effort to fix health care, unlike any president in history. And it’s going to be hard and we’re going to do it. And it doesn’t end up with a revision of Obamacare. It ends up with a completely different patient incentivized, make America healthy again, structure that we don’t have today. So I didn’t really pay much attention to those either because I didn’t think it would have any impact.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, I sent both of you, I just came out just this afternoon. I hadn’t seen it. I got a little bit of a chance to look at it as I was sending it to you guys. I scanned through the majority of it. I’ve got a few highlights. And this is a report from the Ways and Means Committee on essentially, you know, outside of even Doge, how do we start trimming the budgets? You know, where’s the fat? How do we trim some of this? And for all of you listening, I’ll get into a little bit more of this after we’re done with Dr. Kelly and Steve in hour two. But there is a ton of things in here. trillions upon trillions of dollars of savings. And in some cases, there’s some costs that get added in depending upon what they do with certain things. But one of the things that, you know, several health care things, Dr. Kelly, that with you and Steve, I wanted to go over because one of the first things I read here is Medicare site neutrality. Currently, Medicare and beneficiaries pay more for the same health care service furnished in hospital outpatient departments than in physician offices. The budget supports Medicare site neutral payments by equalizing Medicare payments for health care services that can be safely delivered in a physician’s office. And this is on a 10 year mark, about one hundred and forty six billion dollar savings. I mean, to me, this seems like a no brainer. Why aren’t we doing this already?
SPEAKER 17 :
I agree. And I think if you look at how inefficient, that’s why we need somebody, a department of people specifically looking at these inefficiencies. There is nothing that you give to the federal government that becomes more efficient and you know, more cost effective and none, you know, and more competent ever. It always if you want something to get done quickly and on budget, you give it to the private sector. And so I think there’s so much fat to be cut out of this. So, yes, you know, Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, is going to look at all of these things and hopefully Under Elon Musk’s guidance, we will be just cutting out, not whittling away, John, but hacking away at things. Entire departments are likely to go away. The number of billions of dollars a year that have been spent. Not well before COVID on buildings in Washington, D.C. that are fundamentally empty because people are not actually working in them. They’re working from home or they work from the office. They’re required to be there one day a week or something. These sorts of things should go away very, very quickly. And I think the list is endless for where we can cut these things out.
SPEAKER 08 :
Steve, as I was reading through this and everything Dr. Kelly said, I cannot disagree with. And what you said, by the way, on having complete reform, as I read through the Ways and Means Committee report and some of the, you know, billions upon billions of dollars that literally we are wasting as taxpayers and I’m not joking when I say that literally wasting in some cases these hospitals are able to double dip and do things that frankly they should not be able to do and some of the stuff to me is a no-brainer on getting it fixed but to your point Steve if if they went in and just did a complete overhaul a lot of what’s in this report just gets fixed automatically am I correct
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, and I think you’ve got to go up a level from there even, but let’s address site neutrality for a minute. The entire reason stuff like that exists and even some of the other stuff you’re referring to is that there’s more than one lobbyist per congressional member for health care. And a bill like site neutrality really came about by lobbyists saying, look, if you allow – non-hospital settings to get paid the same as hospital settings, hospitals will go out of business. Well, you know, 60-some percent of hospitals today have negative operating incomes, negative EBITDAs, and they’re in real financial trouble. So lobbyists go to Congress and say, look, help them out by doing this so that they can maintain more income than they would otherwise. And the competition, you’re basically stalling competition. So that’s one thing. But the higher level discussion has to be if you look at let’s just take birthright citizenship and you look at all the stuff that’s in there about illegal aliens using health care and everything else. The best way to solve those problems is get rid of the problem.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
And to me, the way you get rid of a birthright citizenship, which will never pass muster in the court system or the other problems associated with aliens using health care is you stop having them come in the country illegally. You’ve got to stop the problem. Otherwise, you know, making tweaks that save you $10 billion on, you know, illegal aliens accessing Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, getting healthcare for free. You just need to stop the problem. Yes, get rid of all of that crap in there. But at the same time, it won’t happen. It won’t work in the long run unless we solve the higher order problems we’re talking about.
SPEAKER 08 :
I agree. For some of you listening, for example, eliminate Medicare coverage of bad debt. Medicare currently reimburses hospitals at a 65 percent of bad debt. That’s uncollected cost sharing that beneficiaries fail to pay. While private payers do not typically reimburse providers for bad debt, this policy brings Medicare more in line with the private sector policy. by gradually reducing the amount that Medicare reimburses providers for bad debt. Again, and really, when we read this, by the way, it says Medicare reimburses. Really, Steve and Dr. Kelly, what it should say, what the taxpayers reimburse. Really, that’s what it should say, or am I wrong? No, you’re not wrong.
SPEAKER 17 :
No, of course. The government has no money. It’s all taxpayer money.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, but the way, again, we kind of clean that up by calling the departments out and saying, you know, this department pays this and that department pays that. Well, no, at the end of the day, it’s the three of us and millions of others that are paying this.
SPEAKER 07 :
Ron, back at the time that I ran for Congress in 2020, and Kelly will remember this because I think she was part of putting this analogy together, health care is like going to a restaurant and ordering food without knowing what it costs, at a table getting served the food. When it came time to get the bill, you get a bill from the concierge, from the waiter, from the busboy, from the cook and the owner. And the value of that bill from each and all collectively would depend on how much money the people sitting next to you at the next table, how much they paid. So you never know what you’re going to pay because there’s cost shifting ratios and there’s all these things. I mean, And then, of course, you spend 20 percent on the credit card transaction for health care versus 3 percent in a restaurant. That’s what’s wrong with health care. It’s so confusing. You can shift the money depending on what the guy next to you pays.
SPEAKER 08 :
And I’m guessing and this is where, you know, Steve, go to you first and Dr. Kelly. I am guessing that all of what you just said, Steve, is by design or am I wrong?
SPEAKER 07 :
I think if you talk to a hospital administrator, I know plenty of them, and you ask them about cost shifting ratios, they say it’s survival for us. But if I look at it as a taxpayer, I think for myself, okay, so Medicare pays a certain amount and then, you know, commercial payers like Optum, United, you know, BCBS, they pay a percentage of Medicare, like 103% of Medicare, 105% of Medicare. It’s inpatient and outpatient, same procedure, cost different stuff. I mean, as a taxpayer or consumer, you look at that and go, isn’t it all the same stuff being delivered to patients? Why would it be radically different and why would the cost depend on whether my neighbor paid their bill or not? It’s crazy. It makes it confusing, but also a lot of hospitals, never forget this, they can bill you for any amount they want for any procedure that they do on you. There’s no limitations on what they can do.
SPEAKER 08 :
Wow. Dr. Kelly, I mean, all of that and what Steve just said, agree, by the way, I’m not arguing at all, that’s spot on, but just seems so unfair to the end user.
SPEAKER 17 :
Oh, of course it is, and they’re taking advantage of you when you are not in a position to argue, okay?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, you’re on your deathbed. You’re hurting. You’re in pain. All these things are going on. You’re not going to argue with them at that point.
SPEAKER 17 :
Correct. They throw things in front of you on a clipboard, say sign here, sign here. You’re not in a position to negotiate. You’re not in a position to say no. So, of course, you sign it. So the entire thing is a racket. And the idea that you should pay something different, that all of these different negotiated rates are And you’re always trying to, you know, yes, it’s a survival thing for the hospital because they’re trying to make up for the huge population of people who don’t pay anything at all. You know, it truly is the only thing, you know, as Steve said, if you went into the grocery store, filled up your cart with groceries, had no idea what anything cost and then signed the thing on the way when you get the cashier saying, yes, I promise to pay. And then, you know, two months later, you get a bill. You have no idea that’s legitimate. And I think that the hospitals and the insurers count on the fact that at some point, a fair percentage of people will get fed up, they won’t be able to sort it out, and so they just pay the bill because they can’t figure it out.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s exactly right.
SPEAKER 07 :
John, there’s another part of this, and that to me is that, I mean, I love American hospitals. I mean, there’s a lot of great hospitals and a lot of great doctors in this world, but here’s the other part. Medicare and the federal government is a payer and a regulator, so part of the problem is Medicare Medicare regulates hospitals to do things that cost us money that are insane. So give me an example. Well, the number of threads, the thread count of the scrubs the doctors are wearing or how many pieces of this or that. In an outpatient or in a commercial world, a non-government, non-over-regulated world, You know, Dr. Victory is doing work in an emergency room. She will do what she believes is necessary from a quality medicine point of view because she’s a scientist and she’s well-trained. She doesn’t need the government to tell her what to do, how to document. She needs to do what she needs to do to be a good doctor. And the government, unfortunately, gets involved in all aspects of medicine and gives you penalties if you don’t do it the way that they want you to do it. And all that costs a tremendous amount of money.
SPEAKER 08 :
It’s sort of like their law whereby if you work for the federal government on highway projects and construction, you have to pay certain workers certain wages, even though the free market might dictate otherwise. Am I right in that, Steve? It’s kind of the same thing.
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s called Davis-Bacon laws, and frankly, if you don’t pay it Davis-Bacon wages, you don’t get contracts.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, and bottom line, and you get fined and all sorts of other things. To your point a moment ago, at the end of the day, they’re literally telling you how to do business and not letting the free market dictate it. So, Dr. Kelly, in your world as a doctor, if you agree to do all of these things, you’re bound by that agreement to do what they tell you to do, which, to Steve’s point, at the end of the day, does nothing but raise costs. Am I wrong in that? Yeah.
SPEAKER 17 :
No, exactly. And there’s an awful lot of medicine. Probably 25 to 30 percent of medicine is unnecessary entirely, but it’s done as a CYA. OK, because doctors are forced because of our our malpractice laws and the litigious nature of our society. The fact that you can sue for anything, you end up ordering a test and doing things that are absolutely insane. Because if you don’t, you can be sued. For example, let’s talk about these are real life examples. If a patient comes in, if a biologic male comes in to the ER, but I quote identifies as a woman, you have got to do a pregnancy test. On that person.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, my word.
SPEAKER 17 :
You are going to get sued. You are going to be sued for not treating that person the way that you would as a biologic female. OK, I mean, these are things, you know, there’s not a chance.
SPEAKER 08 :
And you know what of him ever getting pregnant.
SPEAKER 17 :
Correct. But but you see, and that is why these are things that happen. And I could give you dozens and dozens of examples of pure, unadulterated insanity. OK, but if you don’t do these things and so this is in all people, all Americans pay for this, because whether you personally are paying for it or you’re at your tax rate, or it’s the cost of your monthly premium on your health care insurance, one way or another, you are paying for it. We have got to cut that out.
SPEAKER 08 :
And again, this report that I’m talking about, guys, I’ll go over some of these other things in the next hour, but there’s a lot of things here, a lot of criticisms, by the way, that are being thrown around right now in this particular report, Steve, as you can imagine, because there’s a lot on the left that don’t want to see any of these things change. For some of them, this is a huge cash cow, and or it’s protecting their constituents or whatever the case may be. But the bottom line, to Dr. Kelly’s point a moment ago, all this is is just costing us all a bunch of money.
SPEAKER 07 :
It is. It’s actually transferring wealth, you know, from taxpayers who pay taxes to grant programs. Many of those grant programs and stuff are funding overseas activity, not just in the United States. So that’s, you know, part of the problem. And it’s just, as Kelly said, I mean, you know, Trump said two genders. Just going to two genders on all federal grants, all federal forms, will actually save a significant amount of money. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s just the paperwork, right? In fact, quite frankly, Kelly said it wrong. It’s not a biological female anymore. It’s a non-transgendered woman. I heard that one. Yeah. Transgendered woman versus now you have to call if you’re a normal female, I guess you’re a non-transgendered woman.
SPEAKER 08 :
You know, it’s funny, Steve, when you just said what you said, which I don’t think a lot of people, even on the conservative side, picked up on him just saying from now on, there’s only two genders. That’s a huge cost saving measure in and of itself that I don’t think anybody really picked up on.
SPEAKER 07 :
It is, but that’s underlying all of it. I mean, I’m not all about the cost, right? I have sensitivity to people who have gender dysmorphia and those types of things. But it is establishing a framework of understanding of what we believe the current situation is. And then from that basic understanding where you don’t change the rules, it’s like… calling the COVID vaccine a COVID vaccine. They changed the rules on what a vaccine was so they could call it a vaccine and give it liability protection. Don’t change the rules on what genders we have. Deal with the problems that come from people having issues with their gender or dysmorphia and stop trying to change the rules to be able to make something else happen that doesn’t help anyone.
SPEAKER 08 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
This is an encore of an earlier program. We are not able to accept your calls.
SPEAKER 06 :
Back to Rush to Reason, presented by High Five Plumbing, Heating, Cooling, and Electric, where every call ends with a high five.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, we are back. Dr. Kelly Victory, Steve House, and our engineer today, by the way, Luke Cashman as well, which I appreciate also. All right, Dr. Kelly, I have a question for you, and this is something where I’m not sure that an executive order could be done for this, so I thought I would ask you and Steve to just see if I’m on the right track or not. But one thing that… And maybe it’s not possible. But I really wish if there if it were, Trump would do this. And that would be to at least put a freeze on. I’m not sure he could eliminate it, but put a freeze on royalty payments to those that are in the NIH that are making money off of my tax dollars. Is that even something he could do? So when you mean royalties… So Fauci’s making money off of patents and things that NIH developed. We’ve talked about that in the past many, many times. I, as a taxpayer, funded all of that, but yet he’s getting the royalties.
SPEAKER 17 :
Correct. Yes. And I think that there should be an absolutely absolutely can be eliminated. And I think it’s something that if Trump doesn’t do the executive order, it’s something that Robert Kennedy Jr. will attack very early. It’s not only a total misuse of your tax dollars. There’s a conflict of interest that is absolutely inherent in that. The idea that anybody at any of our federal agencies should own parts of patents or products that they are in a position to recommend or mandate that people take is an absolute conflict. I mean, it is beyond racketeering. And so, yes, there’s certainly something that Trump can do about that. And as I said, Robert Kennedy Jr. will take care of it, I believe, forthwith if it isn’t done by executive order.
SPEAKER 08 :
And, Steve, maybe this is, again, one of those things we talked about early on where he’s just waiting for the timing to do some of these things, make some of these announcements, and so on. And so I’m going to dovetail into something else, Steve, that I want you to answer. Why do we need FDA, NIH, and the CDC? Can’t all of those run as one department?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, let’s just one other quick thing on the patent thing, and that is, Technically, and I think this is where they’re going to get a little bit more nuanced, is technically the patent money that’s paid to those physicians, and I agree it shouldn’t be paid, is not paid by federal taxpayers. It’s paid by drug companies. But my tax dollars funded it, right? Well, funded what? The research for the patent? Not necessarily. I mean, in the COVID vaccines, there was a tremendous amount of tax dollars, but a regular drug that’s not always coming out of your tax dollars to create a regular drug. What happens is if they did the patent, I mean, maybe the U.S. government should have an ownership of that patent because we the people own the government. I’m not sure about that. You know, that’s one issue. What was the other question that you actually asked? And I diverted just now.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, and so really quick back before before we move on, just to make sure that I’m clear on this and that I’m saying it correctly. I, as a taxpayer, though, are still paying the salaries of those people back to Kelly’s point where they’re then dictating and recommending where these things get used. And because because they can dictate that and get more royalties based upon what they recommend, that alone should be stopped. Right.
SPEAKER 07 :
That is an incentive problem, a significant incentive problem. There’s lots of those things in the government as well. So you’re right about that. It’s just that the royalties part is not paid directly from U.S. taxpayer dollars. It’s paid from pharmacy companies or pharma companies. Okay, makes sense.
SPEAKER 17 :
But for example, John, I as a physician, if I can’t own a – An x-ray, you know, a radiology clinic or a radiology department or a lab where I refer patients to myself. I can’t, you know, I can’t refer to myself where, you know, refer them to go to get care somewhere where I then make money off of it. on the back end. And that’s fundamentally, there’s stark laws in place that prevent physicians from doing that. Why in the world would we allow Anthony Fauci to own part of a patent on a drug that he can then stand up there and say, everybody needs to take this. Everybody needs to take the drug on which I get paid through the back door. These guys made millions in addition to their federal salaries on the royalties that they got on these mRNA vaccines, for example.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, so Steve, I’ll run back, too, because I know we’re getting tight on time, so I’ll run back to my other question. Could we, and I know this is a bigger question, and it won’t happen overnight, and there’s a lot of moving parts to make this work, but why do we need NIH, FDA, CDC? Can’t those all be one?
SPEAKER 07 :
I don’t know if they’d all be one, but I do think that you bring up a great point. First of all, Mehmet Oz has a really big job, and, of course, Marty does as well with his role with the FDA. I think what ought to happen is Bobby Kennedy ought to sit with those guys and other smart people like Dr. Victory, for example, and sit down and say, what exactly do we need to actually do? Forget about the name of the agency. Let’s talk about what needs to be done by currently public health. Right. Public health is a big part of that. But, you know, how do we manage safety regarding new drugs coming to market? Right. How do we manage the Centers for Disease Control? How do we manage when there’s something coming along that we need to be concerned about? The question to me is not the agency. They basically it’s like the budget. Right. Everything in that budget plan, what you need to talk about the next hour is. all of them should be eliminated and restarted because we should have a zero-based budgeting strategy. The same thing might be true in healthcare today. We should start with a zero-assumption structure and say, what role does the government play that typically was played by CDC, NIH, and FDA, and how should that change given the technology changes and artificial intelligence and everything else that’s coming along? We haven’t fundamentally changed those. We just made them bigger.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep. You know what? Can’t argue that. And I like your answer, by the way, Steve. Basically, if those three agencies still existed, but they were minimized and did exactly what they were supposed to do, and they didn’t have all these overreaching things that they’re involved in, at the end of the day, okay, I’m okay with that. My point as a taxpayer, Dr. Kelly, is I just want to see some savings, because to me, it just seems like far too much government.
SPEAKER 17 :
I agree. The government is beyond bloated. I don’t think it’s an overestimation to say that we could cut our government down by probably 70%. Seventy. Wow. And still, truly, if you look at the number of things, just cutting out the Department of Education and sending those decisions and the funding and the things that need to happen back to the states, getting rid of the Federal Department of Education, which I will remind people, you know, began in the mid-1970s, okay? I went through, you know, all of grade school before there was a Department of Education. And I got a great education, thank you very much. We now have this overload of hundreds of thousands of federal employees. And hundreds of thousands of them making more than $200,000 a year, by the way. I mean, it is billions of dollars that we stand to save by eliminating just the Department of Education, sending that back to the states, which is where it belongs in the first place. If you go down the line with all of the different cabinets… All of the different departments cut out the ridiculous funding for stupid scientific studies, you know, on the effect of, you know, cotton candy on, you know, rat brain, whatever. I mean, just I can’t even make one up. That’s as insane as what they do. I think that we truly, I think, could well cut our government by half without even feeling it.
SPEAKER 08 :
You know what? Go ahead, Steve. No, go ahead.
SPEAKER 07 :
So part of what the government does and it’s become so bloated in is it’s become a referee on almost everything, right? I mean, capitalism should work without having to have somebody in the government decide what’s really equitable, what’s equal, what’s allowed and not allowed. Why are there so many people in the IRS? I mean, all of it is just looking at the way that we conduct business and conduct our lives. and they’re making decisions like a referee does. Yeah, you get this. No, you don’t get this. I mean, there’s so many people employed in that process. It’s not unlike that in health care where you get prior authorization and then denials and, you know, who makes the decision. I mean, quite frankly, Kelly, as a doctor, oftentimes can get prior approval on something, and somebody who’s not a doctor, who’s not even a clinician will say, well, I looked at a flow chart, and it doesn’t look like you’re allowed to do that, Dr. Victory. I mean, it’s just ridiculous the amount of refereeing that goes on and what it costs.
SPEAKER 08 :
Can’t argue that one at all. Dr. Kelly, back to my, you know, can we combine all three? Again, those two, and if we really want to trim government back, why two agencies? Why can’t they be under one agency? Because it looks to me like there’s a lot of crossover between what one and the other does, or am I wrong?
SPEAKER 17 :
No, I think there’s tremendous crossover. And frankly, I think they have abandoned their mandate to do what they were tasked to do in the first place. Let’s look at, you know, if you want to say that, you know, the Centers for Disease Control, they are supposed to investigate COVID. what causes and what is contributing to different diseases, different illnesses, different problems that we have in public health. So why, for example, hasn’t the CDC, the agency tasked with that, why have they not looked into what is causing, for example, the tremendous increase in autism? We all know it’s true. We know that it was 1 in 10,000 children when I was growing up. It’s now 1 in 34 births. From 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 34 births. Now, that is not because we are, quote, better at diagnosing autism. It’s because there’s been a monumental increase in that. Why do we have a monumental increase in diabetes, obesity, hypertension, depression, insomnia? It’s not because we are better capable of identifying obesity. It’s because we’ve gotten fatter. Why hasn’t the CDC addressed that? Instead, as I said, they’re doing stupid studies on beagles and You know, horrific, you know, like that are meaningless to the overall health and wellness of the American population. So, yes, I think not only is there tremendous overlap, there is so much fat that can be cut out. They need to be get back to what they were tasked to do. And they need to justify every single position that they have.
SPEAKER 07 :
I can’t argue that. John, one thing I would add to all that, Kelly’s 100% right on that, but here’s the other thing. One of the things I love about Make America Healthy Again is that it’s going to bring the siloed agencies together in ways we have not talked about ever before. For example, if Robert Kennedy says no more fluoride in the water, he needs to deal with interior. He needs to deal with public works. He needs to deal with all of these things. If you take about all of the things that cost Americans their health, from food production to the water to the air to chemicals to you name it. I mean, to structure and just make America healthy again, what you likely would find is you’ve got a bunch of agencies you don’t need at all, and you’ve got a bunch of other agencies who are actually costing us money in one agency because of what they’re doing in their own agency. I think if they do that, that could be one of those programs that really makes a huge difference in the future of American life.
SPEAKER 08 :
Perfect. Great ending, guys. It was a fast hour. We’ll talk more next week. Thank you both very much. Steve, I’ll let you go first. Appreciate you.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know what? I appreciate you, and I also appreciate Kelly and your wisdom, because you always bring something to the table I hadn’t thought of, so I appreciate you being here.
SPEAKER 08 :
Absolutely. Dr. Kelly as well, thank you, and I’ll second what Steve just said. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 17 :
Terrific. Look forward to next week. As always, I’m sure we’ll have lots more to talk about. Thanks, you guys.
SPEAKER 08 :
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SPEAKER 03 :
It’s time to leave your safe space. This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, and it’s always a fast hour. Luke and I were just talking about that a moment ago. I learn something every single week. I hope all of you do as well. Those two individuals that we have an opportunity to talk to almost every Thursday, Dr. Kelly Victory and Steve House, are, in my opinion, two of the smartest people that I know, and we are fortunate to have them with us on a regular basis and have had conversations All through COVID. And I know I personally and my family have learned a ton that frankly has kept us a lot healthier than I think a lot of others because of the information they give out on a regular basis. And I hope all of you listening feel the same way. All right. Another two hours coming your way. Phil Kirpin coming up next, president of American Commitment. We’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere. This is Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you. I’m a rich guy.
