Speaker 1: When you're ready to ride Metro, we want you to
Speaker 1: know we're ready for you. Here are just a few
Speaker 1: of the people at Metro to tell you how we're
Speaker 1: doing our part to keep writers safe. Cleaning before half
Speaker 1: the Great Queen you have found halfs out of suns
Speaker 1: of statist no mask, no Metro need one. We have
Speaker 1: a few extras at Metro. We're doing our part to
Speaker 1: keep the DC area moving. Find out more at well
Speaker 1: mata dot com slash doing our part story. Before we
Speaker 1: get into some healthcare talk, had an appointment yesterday with
Speaker 1: my son's doctor, who was a one of the best
Speaker 1: in the world at what he does. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: at a very very high level, which factors into this story. Okay,
Speaker 1: so my son needs this particular treatment and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the doctor told me that it's not covered by insurance.
Speaker 1: Likely he will write a letter. Now he's he's the
Speaker 1: best in the world at this right, but he will
Speaker 1: write a letter. He said he usually gets turned down
Speaker 1: by insurance companies even though he's the best doctor in
Speaker 1: the world to who's recommending this And it's probably gonna
Speaker 1: cost me between thirty and sixty thousand dollars cash for
Speaker 1: this treatment for my son, which it's either he has
Speaker 1: a crappy life forever or I get this treatment. So
Speaker 1: it's not an option whether to do it or not.
Speaker 1: It's serious brain thing. But thirty to sixty dollars cash,
Speaker 1: even though the best doctor in the world says that
Speaker 1: it is necessary. And you know, that's just where we
Speaker 1: are with insurance and stuff. That would just be ruinous
Speaker 1: to a lot of American families. Most of you can
Speaker 1: take out a home equity loan, I guess, or you
Speaker 1: would go fund me and have a you know, like
Speaker 1: people do you have a barbecue picnic and pupe people
Speaker 1: show you know whatever. But it's incredible what's covered and
Speaker 1: what's not the best in the world says, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: this is absolutely valid. This, this treatment is what is needed.
Speaker 1: But the insurance company says, we'd like to that We're
Speaker 1: going to look at it for a couple of mornings.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Craig got Walls is an attorney
Speaker 1: at law benefit consultant. He is Craig the healthcare Guru.
Speaker 1: In a private text to me, he suggested, how about
Speaker 1: Craig the healthcare gangster. I thought that was not a
Speaker 1: great idea, um, but he sure knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: And and Craig, first of all, welcome, always good to
Speaker 1: talk my friend. Thank you sir. Sorry to hear that story, Jack,
Speaker 1: that's not a good one. That's just interesting. But you
Speaker 1: know what occurred to me as I was thinking about
Speaker 1: chatting with you today that healthcare is the number one
Speaker 1: issue in politics these days other than I love Trump,
Speaker 1: I hate Trump, um And I heard a commentator say
Speaker 1: that mostly it's shouting slogans at each other and putting
Speaker 1: bumper stickers on our car either the health care is
Speaker 1: a right or no socialism. Then the minute you get
Speaker 1: into details of any plan, your plan gets less and
Speaker 1: less popular. Um and and and yet it's something every
Speaker 1: single human being listening or participating in the show or
Speaker 1: whatever deals with on probably a monthly basis. It's not more.
Speaker 1: And so we're completely at sea at this about this
Speaker 1: issue that we all deal with all the time. It's
Speaker 1: kind of ironic. But anyway, and the older and the
Speaker 1: older you get, the more you deal with it, and
Speaker 1: the more powerful of a voting block you are too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. So you send us some notes
Speaker 1: on what you wanted to talk about today and it's
Speaker 1: a great topic. Health insurers are collecting astonishing levels of
Speaker 1: detail on your life and it's costing you. What what's
Speaker 1: going on? So you guys had you guys had a
Speaker 1: segment on your show recently that I heard a snip of,
Speaker 1: and it was about employer wellness programs and how people
Speaker 1: are voluntarily giving up a lot of their personal information
Speaker 1: by wearing these wearable devices that tell you how often
Speaker 1: they walk, how often they exercise, how well they sweep, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And they're they're often doing that with their employer for
Speaker 1: something like two to three hundred dollars off of their
Speaker 1: insurance costs hundred a month something you wear a fitbit
Speaker 1: all the time and the your your boss, your company
Speaker 1: has access to all the info. Yes, and the reporting
Speaker 1: on that story was what was well done and it
Speaker 1: was accurate it but what what it what reminded me
Speaker 1: was that you guys are not aware of what's going on.
Speaker 1: So that's the stuff that people are consenting to write.
Speaker 1: But you guys, we have never talked on your show
Speaker 1: about what's going on behind the scenes. How much information
Speaker 1: these entities are gaining on your life without your knowledge.
Speaker 1: So little history just really quick on this insurance, the
Speaker 1: theory of insurances that you're guarding against known or excuse me,
Speaker 1: unknown risks. Right if you if you already have cancer,
Speaker 1: you can't go buy insurance, or at least that was
Speaker 1: the way things worked before Obamacare. Right, So once Obamacare
Speaker 1: came along, Obamacare said, okay, now you can no longer
Speaker 1: underwrite an individual based upon his or her health status.
Speaker 1: In other words, you can't ask them whether or not
Speaker 1: they have cancer. You just have to give them insurance. Well,
Speaker 1: as Jack has pointed out hundreds of times on your show,
Speaker 1: that's untenable. You can't do that. You can't just say, hey,
Speaker 1: we'll provide insurance for anybody who shows up. Wait till
Speaker 1: you break your arms, then show up. So what hell?
Speaker 1: Insurance companies have been doing for the last decade and
Speaker 1: really for the last twenty years. But but Obamacare launched,
Speaker 1: it was, oh shoot, and here's a four trillion dollar
Speaker 1: industry and we have to be able to keep it going.
Speaker 1: And if we cannot underwrite based upon your health status,
Speaker 1: we must be able to underwrite, in other words, but
Speaker 1: through toicate the risk based upon other things. So what
Speaker 1: Obamacare did not make illegal was looking at things like
Speaker 1: your age, your zip code, how often you watch TV,
Speaker 1: what magazines you get, whether or not you own a gun,
Speaker 1: what ethnicity you are, et cetera. How do they know? Well,
Speaker 1: the spawn of Obamacare really coincides quite nicely with the
Speaker 1: launch of gigantic corporate data collection like Facebook and Twitter,
Speaker 1: all social media, all every every imaginable record you can
Speaker 1: think of, your divorce records, your marriage records, when you
Speaker 1: buy a home, when you refinance, your AT card scores,
Speaker 1: your Google searches. There are multi billion dollar corporations gathering
Speaker 1: that and creating a docier on each and every single
Speaker 1: one of us. And the insurance companies are buying that info.
Speaker 1: They are they're renting it there. What an insurance company
Speaker 1: does and this is really inside baseball stuff, but what
Speaker 1: they do is they'll take a census. They'll take a
Speaker 1: demographic profile of say your company with your thousand employees,
Speaker 1: and they will send that over to one of these
Speaker 1: data brokers like IBM, Watson or Millerman or Lexis, Nexis
Speaker 1: or optim and they'll run that census something just making
Speaker 1: I can say those names because they're published um and
Speaker 1: they'll say they'll say, tell me, tell me how many
Speaker 1: HIV s you've got in this group, Tell me how
Speaker 1: far along they are, what drugs they take? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that and then all of your insurance costs are then
Speaker 1: being adjudicated back up and built into your premiums based
Speaker 1: upon this data that may or may not even be accurate.
Speaker 1: And so one thing that's interesting to me about this
Speaker 1: is I've always wondered all this data that's being harvested
Speaker 1: from me, either legally or illegally, by all these companies.
Speaker 1: I've always wondered, what's somebody gonna do with it? And
Speaker 1: so now I know one thing that's being done with it.
Speaker 1: Let me toss a bunch of examples out. Then we'll
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and I want to ask you
Speaker 1: the key question. Um, but I love these examples. Are
Speaker 1: you a woman who recently changed your name. You could
Speaker 1: be newly married and have a pricey pregnancy pending, or
Speaker 1: maybe you're stressed and anxious from a recent divorce, so
Speaker 1: the computer models say, expense expense. Are you a woman
Speaker 1: who's purchased plus sized clothing, you're considered at risk for depression,
Speaker 1: mental health care expensive, among other things. Wow, So well
Speaker 1: that is interesting. Are they Are they doing it well?
Speaker 1: I understand you want to get as much data as
Speaker 1: you can to understand how much you ought to be charging. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you're ensuring a bit ausness
Speaker 1: that only hires four pounders, it probably be handy to
Speaker 1: know that is an insurance company. Well, how about people
Speaker 1: that watch an extraordinary amount of television I don't exercise
Speaker 1: right right, that's built in there. That's built in there.
Speaker 1: By the way, you're your smart TVs are reporting that back,
Speaker 1: that's in your agreement. Is there any sales into these
Speaker 1: get on for my cat when I'm not at home exactly,
Speaker 1: see that. That's unfortunate, John, you're paying for that? So
Speaker 1: is anything the farious being done to individuals or is
Speaker 1: it just a price estimation tool. The companies that are
Speaker 1: engaged in this activity become very uh shady and quiet
Speaker 1: and and and they obviously escape the facts when you
Speaker 1: start asking about individuals. But I have information that it
Speaker 1: is being used at the individual level. I know specifically,
Speaker 1: and I'm involved with a group of attorneys and other
Speaker 1: experts looking into the legality of this, because I'll just
Speaker 1: say this, what insurance companies do now. We used to
Speaker 1: be able to generate a quote for a for a
Speaker 1: client with just a centis just said, you know, employee
Speaker 1: want as a male. At this age, we never gave
Speaker 1: any individual identifiers. Now insurance companies are requiring names when
Speaker 1: we when we so I'm submitting a quote for a
Speaker 1: three person company, they want all three hundred names with
Speaker 1: zip codes because they want to run it through this database.
Speaker 1: So I know, darn well they're using it at the
Speaker 1: individual level. Wow. Well, and if they can they will,
Speaker 1: So exactly right. And it's interesting you mentioned there at
Speaker 1: some point um the information might not even be accurate.
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's it's it's troubling on a bunch
Speaker 1: of levels, but the impult they have on me might
Speaker 1: not be accurate. They gotten a wrong, wrong stuff at
Speaker 1: some point. That's exactly right. And remember I think you
Speaker 1: guys have talked about on your show as well. Sixty
Speaker 1: minutes did that piece on privacy in Europe. This is
Speaker 1: illegal in Europe because you own your own data. What
Speaker 1: needs to look you guys know, I am not an
Speaker 1: advocate for more federal law, but what we need is
Speaker 1: we do need a law saying we own our own
Speaker 1: absolutely otherwise you have so so one author that approached
Speaker 1: this right, who's the biggest thing I keep interrupting you,
Speaker 1: but who's the biggest lobbyist in the entire country? Freaking Google.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why we don't have that law in
Speaker 1: Europe does well Google, And health care is up there
Speaker 1: in the top five too, So you've got a really
Speaker 1: unholy A lot are going on right now. Yeah, health
Speaker 1: care is arguably the number one industry in the country.
Speaker 1: It's it's a fifth of our economy. So you've got
Speaker 1: seriously powerful players here working to to do this behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, and people just don't know this is going on. Yeah. Wow, okay,
Speaker 1: so a great great stuff interesting, uh you know, unknown
Speaker 1: and and and important part of people's health care. And
Speaker 1: we'll we'll have you joined us again before too long,
Speaker 1: Craig to talk about the you know, whatever is next.
Speaker 1: That's the most interesting thing you've ever told us. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's some of the brask there. See if there was more.
Speaker 1: I'll be thinking about this well before, probably for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. But that is really really interesting,
Speaker 1: not surprising and interesting. One author that looked at this
Speaker 1: did a request from Lexis Nexis. Because you are allowed
Speaker 1: to request a limited set of the data they have
Speaker 1: his report came back, going back more than ten years,
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty two pages of information on him,
Speaker 1: just one one company, one person, and eighty two pages.
Speaker 1: Other companies have boasted that they're collecting one thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred facts about each individual, going all the way back
Speaker 1: to the early nineties. Prophecy. Well, and yeah, now now
Speaker 1: this next generation who have had all their info out
Speaker 1: there since you know, birth, Really, jeez, what a dossier
Speaker 1: they'll have on on all those people when they're grown up.
Speaker 1: Exactly which they started, and then they started in the
Speaker 1: ninth before social media, they started doing this on all
Speaker 1: of the public records, right, you're arrest record, your marriage record,
Speaker 1: your property records, your credit records, anything, make it get
Speaker 1: Then once social media kicked in, this has gone into
Speaker 1: hyper drive. Steroids Bill because that coincided with Obamacare of
Speaker 1: that said, now you can't even ask what you're bidding
Speaker 1: on when you quote for medical insurance anyway. So the
Speaker 1: health industry said, whoa wha red flag. We've got to
Speaker 1: have a way. We've got to have a way to
Speaker 1: understand what the health risk is out there. So now
Speaker 1: instead of reporting your actual health risk that would be
Speaker 1: accurate you're getting. You're getting your premiums based upon these
Speaker 1: these markers for health that may or may not correlate
Speaker 1: very well with your health, like how much TV you
Speaker 1: watched and whether you want a gun, and whether you
Speaker 1: like to ski? Yeah, maybe I spend all day watching
Speaker 1: those working out on the beach shows used to be
Speaker 1: so popular. What you used to call that soft core
Speaker 1: Hawaii bikini aerobics, spreading on the beach. Yeah, um uh wow,
Speaker 1: what do you like to ski? So that that'd be
Speaker 1: a tick up? And what you're gonna cost because you
Speaker 1: might break your leg or whatever. So this is a
Speaker 1: great example of unintended consequences. I mean, the Obamacare was
Speaker 1: hoping to do away with any of that, and now
Speaker 1: we've got, you know, just like you said on steroids,
Speaker 1: version of what we used, right, and listen to strike
Speaker 1: a liberty loving note. Uh, it's obvious as privacy dies
Speaker 1: that if we were to give up our liberties or
Speaker 1: give more power to government, their ability to do evil
Speaker 1: with it would be so big, I mean, be so
Speaker 1: good because they know everything about everyone, every phase of
Speaker 1: their life. I mean, lies Jack, when not the current generation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see, when you're nine years old, you you hurt
Speaker 1: your leg and in the youth soccer, I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: so yeah that yeah, I think you know, let's renew
Speaker 1: our dedication of the idea of not giving the government
Speaker 1: too much power the many weapons that they can make
Speaker 1: a movie about this and if that's really interesting, Craig
Speaker 1: got Wallace Craig, the healthcare guru does benefits and healthcare
Speaker 1: and law and that sort of thing for his clients,
Speaker 1: and he's really really good at it. What's the best
Speaker 1: way to get ahold of you, Craig, um benefit dash
Speaker 1: revolution dot com is my blog, my blog blog and
Speaker 1: one other thing there, Joe. If your large company wants
Speaker 1: to avoid giving this information, contact the healthcare guru. I
Speaker 1: know a way around this, all right, Craig got Well,
Speaker 1: thanks a million, Craig, great to talk at as always.
Speaker 1: How fascinating and troubling is that I always wondered where
Speaker 1: all that data was going. But hundredreds of pages all
Speaker 1: these companies, Who are you know they're selling your data?
Speaker 1: I always thought, who are they selling to? Who wants it?
Speaker 1: What they're doing with? Well, this is this would be
Speaker 1: the only one that they that needs to exist with
Speaker 1: some of money at stake. Right. We have to decide
Speaker 1: who owns your data clearly. I do own my own data,
Speaker 1: not clearly according to the lobbyists. When you're ready to
Speaker 1: ride Metro, we want you to know we're ready for you.
Speaker 1: Here are just a few of the people at Metro
Speaker 1: to tell you how we're doing our part to keep
Speaker 1: writers safe. Cleaning before you've found halfs out of sounds
Speaker 1: of stakes. All my with a Metro, no mask, no
Speaker 1: Metro need one. We have a few extras at Metro.
Speaker 1: We're doing our part to keep the DC area moving.
Speaker 1: Find out more at will mata dot com, slash doing
Speaker 1: our part