Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2: Arm Strong and Jetty and No He Armstrong and Eddy.
Speaker 3: Go back with breaking news in our politics lead and
Speaker 3: a brand new excerpt from my upcoming book with Axios
Speaker 3: is Alex Thompson. It's called Original Sin. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if you've heard of it. It's on Biden's Decline. It's
Speaker 3: called Original Sin. I'm sure you've heard on May twentieth.
Speaker 3: That's Tuesday. Original Sin that's coming out in three week,
Speaker 3: comes out Tuesday. You will not believe what we found out.
Speaker 4: Don't news people have to tell you what they know
Speaker 4: when they find it out. Isn't that the difference between
Speaker 4: news and the secret? You won't believe when we found out.
Speaker 2: No, That's why I'm watching it. Breaking news in a week.
Speaker 5: John Stuart always been good at cutting through to the
Speaker 5: obvious with things like that, like one of his quotes
Speaker 5: John Stewart last night on the Daily Show. He does
Speaker 5: it once a week. And we're about to talk about
Speaker 5: the Jake Tapper book, which I don't know the title
Speaker 5: Love and it doesn't matter. I'm not looking it up
Speaker 5: and I refuse to mention it. But John Stewart says,
Speaker 5: forget about the fact of how effing weird it is
Speaker 5: that the News is selling you a book about news
Speaker 5: that should have told.
Speaker 2: You was news a year ago, for free.
Speaker 5: He's selling you a book full of information he should
Speaker 5: have told you last.
Speaker 2: Year for free, which is a pretty good.
Speaker 6: Point, right, I mean, that's what you do for living well.
Speaker 5: Tapper is claiming that these people weren't willing to say
Speaker 5: this stuff out loud, a lot of them until after
Speaker 5: the election, which is true. But the the ultimate point
Speaker 5: of Biden's brain didn't work. Everybody already knew, so whatever. So,
Speaker 5: as I mentioned, it's unintentionally hilarious.
Speaker 2: This book.
Speaker 5: I bought it like a month or so ago. I
Speaker 5: don't know, I wasn't drunk. I don't know what made
Speaker 5: me do it, but I bought it and so it
Speaker 5: showed up in my uh my kindle last night and
Speaker 5: I started reading it, and I'm kind of angry that
Speaker 5: I put money in their pocket because of all the
Speaker 5: stuff we've said, and it's it's it's it's hard to
Speaker 5: believe it even exists.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, like John.
Speaker 5: Stewart said, it's effing weird, yeah, that it even exists
Speaker 5: as a thing.
Speaker 2: But so they took themselves so seriously.
Speaker 5: I believe they would they would do this differently if
Speaker 5: they knew how it was going to land after all
Speaker 5: the criticism and Mark Halprin last week, taking apart his
Speaker 5: explanations of how tough he was and all that sort
Speaker 5: of stuff, because they go way over the top with
Speaker 5: the seriousness of this. The whatever page it is before
Speaker 5: the book starts, I don't know what you call that page.
Speaker 5: It has a couple of quotes, one from Ulysses, a
Speaker 5: poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Though much has taken much
Speaker 5: abides and though we are not now. I won't read
Speaker 5: the whole thing. It's very long, but some long complicated poem,
Speaker 5: and then also a quote from King Lear William Shakespeare.
Speaker 5: They told me everything they told me I was everything
Speaker 5: 'tis a lie. I am not og proof, which I
Speaker 5: had to look up with some disease back in the day.
Speaker 1: But to.
Speaker 5: Have these like heavy literary quotes before you start to
Speaker 5: tell us something we already knew is weird. And you
Speaker 5: were nearly the only class of people on earth who
Speaker 5: were either blind to it or pretending otherwise. I'll read
Speaker 5: some more from the like the the intro before they
Speaker 5: get to the book. The lessons from this book go
Speaker 5: beyond one man and one political party. They speak to
Speaker 5: or universal questions about cognitive dissonance, group think, courage, cowardice,
Speaker 5: and patriotism. Yeah toward you, Yeah, with you being like
Speaker 5: the main you and your friends, right, not off you.
Speaker 5: We knew, we knew, and we're reacting that way. That's
Speaker 5: what drove him out of office, the polls showing you
Speaker 5: couldn't win because we knew you're the one. This paragraph
Speaker 5: is about you, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 6: It's funny you were talking about John Stewart cutting through
Speaker 6: the clutter to get to the simple truth of it.
Speaker 2: Just occurred to me.
Speaker 6: The simple truth of this is the tone of this is.
Speaker 6: Listen to this, and we expect your gratitude.
Speaker 2: You should be grateful.
Speaker 6: To us for exposing these truths, all this smugness of it.
Speaker 1: No, Jake, No, you're the one group of people on
Speaker 1: earth who can't be smug about this and can't let
Speaker 1: sure anybody.
Speaker 5: Hey, let's go with this long orwell quote which we
Speaker 5: usually read part of but not the whole thing, And
Speaker 5: I will just because it's so damn interesting, and he
Speaker 5: puts this in there also. Georgia Orwell once wrote that
Speaker 5: we are all capable of believing things which we know
Speaker 5: to be untrue, and then when we are finally proved wrong,
Speaker 5: impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we
Speaker 5: were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this
Speaker 5: process for an indefinite time. The only check on it
Speaker 5: is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up
Speaker 5: against solid reality, usually on a battlefield. He was writing
Speaker 5: about World War Two, but he could have been writing
Speaker 5: about anytime, any era. The Germans in the back to
Speaker 5: the quote from Orwell, the Germans and the Japanese lost
Speaker 5: the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to
Speaker 5: see facts which were plane to any dispassionate eye. To
Speaker 5: see what is in fronv one's nose needs a constant struggle.
Speaker 2: Uh. Which is very very interesting.
Speaker 5: And I doubt that Jake, when he put that quote
Speaker 5: in there, was thinking about himself, the being able to
Speaker 5: believe something we know to be untrue, and then when
Speaker 5: we are approved wrong, twisting.
Speaker 2: Facts to show we were right. That is exactly the
Speaker 2: Jake Tapper story of the last week.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then Jake writes, Jake and Alex, we should
Speaker 5: throw in Alex Thompson's name, who gets a lot of
Speaker 5: credit from a bunch of people for actually being kind
Speaker 5: of tough on the Biden people, but he was not
Speaker 5: as big a star, so didn't get mentioned as much.
Speaker 5: Here was what is in front of our noses? Yeah,
Speaker 5: your nose. You're the one with the sources.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: This is one of the most stunning examples of a
Speaker 6: lack of self awareness I've ever observed.
Speaker 5: As I mentioned earlier in the show, one thing that
Speaker 5: did come out of the book that I didn't know
Speaker 5: was just how much they were lying to their own people,
Speaker 5: not just the public or Fox or whoever, or even
Speaker 5: the media, but like their own friends. The tightest circle
Speaker 5: was lying to people that they are friends with and
Speaker 5: have known forever. And that's part of why those people
Speaker 5: believed it. I mean, you wouldn't expect, like your own
Speaker 5: colleagues that you have a personal relationship with, when you
Speaker 5: go to him and say, I saw the President on
Speaker 5: the TV last night.
Speaker 2: What is going on? Oh he's fine, he is fine,
Speaker 2: trust me, Behind closed doors, he's fine.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he'd had a long day, he didn't sleep all
Speaker 6: the night before, but he's sharpest attack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll just read a little bit from the book.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: Publicly and privately defending the president and his acuity. I
Speaker 5: spoke with the White House and campaign officials regularly and
Speaker 5: received constant reassurance.
Speaker 2: He's fine, he's fine, he's fine.
Speaker 5: They all said, you know, I'm not giving Jake Tapper
Speaker 5: a pass because again, the public figured it out without
Speaker 5: any sources. But if Jake Tapper is going to people
Speaker 5: he trusts and his friends with and goes out for
Speaker 5: drinks with and saying what's up, and they're saying, trust me,
Speaker 5: he's fine.
Speaker 2: You gotta trust me on this. I'm with him every day. Okay,
Speaker 2: I don't know what do you do.
Speaker 5: This was the experience of dozens of officials, from politicians
Speaker 5: to donors to left leaning pundits. In the spring of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four. This democrat called top White House officials
Speaker 5: every day. I'm defending this guy. The top democrat told him,
Speaker 5: someone tell me he's okay. Like it doesn't look great,
Speaker 5: the press conferences don't look great. He was reassured every time.
Speaker 5: The top democrat told us, I'd love to know which
Speaker 5: top Democrat this was. Anita Dunn told me he was fine.
Speaker 5: That's one of the inner circles. Jeff told me he's fine.
Speaker 5: Jeff Design's chiefest staff told me he was fine. Donaldin said,
Speaker 5: I promise he's okay. To their faith, Yeah.
Speaker 6: To the wallow a little longer in orwell though it
Speaker 6: sounds like Jake Tapper and these people are being told
Speaker 6: by the friends and associates ignore the evidence of your
Speaker 6: eyes and ears.
Speaker 5: The President was fond of using the formal family motto
Speaker 5: of giving my word as a Biden, but they had another,
Speaker 5: more private saying in the Biden family, never call a
Speaker 5: fat person fat. It wasn't about politics, It was about
Speaker 5: ignoring ugly facts. Don't say mean truths. Is how someone
Speaker 5: close to the family put it. The Biden's greatest strength
Speaker 5: is living in their own reality, this person told us,
Speaker 5: and Biden himself is gifted at creating it. Bo isn't
Speaker 5: going to die Hunters, sobriety is stable. Joe always tells
Speaker 5: the truth. Joe cares more about his family than his
Speaker 5: own ambition.
Speaker 2: They stick to.
Speaker 5: The narrative and repeat it over and over inside and
Speaker 5: outside the family.
Speaker 2: Wow, that rings true.
Speaker 5: From twenty twenty three, what I've been able to observe
Speaker 5: right of their family. Yeah, from twenty twenty to until
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four. All this resulted in an almost spiritual
Speaker 5: refusal to admit that Biden was declining. I thought that
Speaker 5: was interesting, For instance, about lying about health situations. Bo Biden,
Speaker 5: who died, the son that he referenced all the time
Speaker 5: of cancer, was the sitting Attorney general of Delaware. He
Speaker 5: had an important public position in the state. He lied
Speaker 5: about his cancer the way his dad has been lying
Speaker 5: about his cancer currently. In the summer of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 5: Bo collapsed during a family vacation and underwent brain surgery
Speaker 5: to remove a tumor. Bo's tumor was definitely stage four.
Speaker 5: Biden later wrote about the post operative findings. It was
Speaker 5: a death sentence, under wrote Bow began limiting his public
Speaker 5: appearance as his fall. He stopped doing media interviews. He
Speaker 5: appeared gaunt, but Biden and Bo's team internally debated not
Speaker 5: to disclose about vote Bo, the Vice president's son and
Speaker 5: state's top law enforcement officer, but ultimately said nothing. In November,
Speaker 5: Bo told the local reporter that he'd been given a
Speaker 5: clean bill of health. This was not that many months
Speaker 5: before he died, So he was lying in his own state.
Speaker 2: In a position where the voters should know, you're dying
Speaker 2: and not capable, and they.
Speaker 5: Were flying him all over the country doing these experimental
Speaker 5: cancer treatments and everything like that. I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 5: you got, like you brought up last hour, you've got
Speaker 5: your own personal health and how much do you need
Speaker 5: to share with people.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, you're.
Speaker 5: Not able to do your job that the people put
Speaker 5: you in office for at all, and you're you know,
Speaker 5: you're looking at people in the face of light. But
Speaker 5: the point I think from Jake Tapper and Alec Thompson
Speaker 5: in the book by laying that out, is the Biden
Speaker 5: family just created their own reality about whatever story they
Speaker 5: wanted to and always did to the media. They didn't
Speaker 5: they didn't think the telling people honestly what was happening
Speaker 5: was necessary at all.
Speaker 6: Right, clearly, which bits interesting. More on this to come,
Speaker 6: including some great audio we want to play for you.
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Speaker 2: So I got another example from the book.
Speaker 5: Maybe I'll get to next hour of how early and
Speaker 5: how bad Joe Biden's brain was and how people how
Speaker 5: worried the Inner Circle was about him.
Speaker 2: He was, he was.
Speaker 5: He shouldn't have run in twenty twenty. Absolutely shouldn't have
Speaker 5: run in twenty twenty, let alone twenty four.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's been my position for a while. Yeah, which
Speaker 6: is pretty cover up was in full force early early, early.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 5: We're going to talk to our favorite healthcare expert, Craig
Speaker 5: Gottwaals this hour to tell you about Medicaid and how
Speaker 5: you're getting ripped off, among other things.
Speaker 6: Yeah, how a program designed to cover a tiny few
Speaker 6: unfortunate Americans is now covering about a third of us
Speaker 6: or more.
Speaker 5: And the reason we're going to be talking about it
Speaker 5: is a lot of whether we cut this back or
Speaker 5: not is part of the big beautiful bill that the
Speaker 5: Republicans are trying to push through, So you should know
Speaker 5: more about it, among other things we've got coming up today.
Speaker 2: Stay here.
Speaker 7: This is in scale and in scope and embrazen. This
Speaker 7: the biggest espionage operation against the US in its history.
Speaker 6: At sixty minutes, talking about the Chinese intelligence efforts against
Speaker 6: the US going on right now as we speak. Let's
Speaker 6: hear one more clip. Michae Linn will discuss why.
Speaker 2: Do China's espionage efforts appear to be growing so big,
Speaker 2: so fast under c Jimping.
Speaker 7: Chi Jinping thinks it's China's time to move to the
Speaker 7: center of the world stage. Xi Jinping looks at the
Speaker 7: West and at the US and says, these people are
Speaker 7: feeble minded, and I'm going to be able to beat them.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm standing right here. I can hear you.
Speaker 6: Hey, look at the president for the last four years.
Speaker 6: Thanks for feeble minded? Where'd you get that impression?
Speaker 5: Says the United States as a whole, Hey, we can
Speaker 5: hear you calling us feeble minded?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see.
Speaker 5: The problem is I'm afraid they're gonna pull it off,
Speaker 5: replacing the United States as being the center of the world.
Speaker 5: The only thing stopping them are their own, like internal problems.
Speaker 2: We're not doing a good job of stopping them.
Speaker 6: No, And they have a massive, massive effort to spy
Speaker 6: on the United States, both the conventional spying, industrial espionage,
Speaker 6: and the rest of it. And I've told this story
Speaker 6: many times before, but I was acquainted with some folks
Speaker 6: from the FBI counter terrorism I'm sorry, counterintelligence, you know
Speaker 6: efforts who went to a prominent college campus and told them, hey,
Speaker 6: you've got a bunch of Chinese agents on your campus,
Speaker 6: masquerading as researchers and students and the rest of it.
Speaker 6: And we're told by the university president get off my campus,
Speaker 6: you racists. We are just coming through that part of
Speaker 6: the woke mindset, the rejection.
Speaker 2: It's xenophilia.
Speaker 6: If they're foreigners, they must be good because I hate
Speaker 6: my own country. And how dare you suggest that these
Speaker 6: nice Chinese people might be agents? Well, this is so
Speaker 6: interesting from the Free Press, a story about specifically, and
Speaker 6: it's not unique to Stanford University, but there's a hell
Speaker 6: of a lot of it. The story is how China
Speaker 6: turned Stanford students into spies. And again, this is solid
Speaker 6: damn journalism. It would take me half an hour to
Speaker 6: read this whole thing to you, but it is old school,
Speaker 6: many months spent journalism. Last summer, a man calling himself
Speaker 6: Charles Chen approached several Stanford University students unsolicited using social media.
Speaker 6: There were almost all women, and they were invariably researching
Speaker 6: China related topics. One of them was Anna, Stanford undergrad
Speaker 6: student working on sensitive subjects linked to Chinese economy and
Speaker 6: military developments. At first, Chen's outreach seemed benign. He asked
Speaker 6: about networking opportunities, but soon his messages took a strange turn.
Speaker 6: He and he requested anonymity. He spoke Mandarin, He spent videos.
Speaker 6: He sent videos of Americans who had gained fame in China.
Speaker 6: He encouraged Anna to visit Beijing, even offered to cover
Speaker 6: travel expenses, on and on, told her how long to
Speaker 6: stay in China, short enough to avoid scrutiny by the government.
Speaker 2: Then he urged her to communicate exclusively.
Speaker 6: Via the Chinese version of we Chat, a platform heavily
Speaker 6: monitored by the Chinese Communist Party. Mentioned things he knew
Speaker 6: about her that she had never told him, and he
Speaker 6: asked her to delete screenshots after commenting on one of
Speaker 6: our social media posts, and on and on it well,
Speaker 6: with the help of experts familiar with espionage tactics and
Speaker 6: a contacted the FBI, it revealed Charles Chen had posed
Speaker 6: as Stanford's student for years, slightly altering his name and
Speaker 6: online persona. He was actually an agent of the Chinese
Speaker 6: Ministry of State Security the MSS, who the sixty Minutes
Speaker 6: folks were talking about, whose job it was to target
Speaker 6: Stanford's students sympathetic to China who could be used to
Speaker 6: gather intelligence, and for years concerns about Chinese espionage have
Speaker 6: quietly persisted at Stanford, yet until now, no attempt has
Speaker 6: ever been made to gauge how pervasive it is. The
Speaker 6: answer we discovered after a year long investigation is very pervasive.
Speaker 6: Everything overwhelming evidence that the CCP is orchestrating a widespread
Speaker 6: spying operation at Stanford.
Speaker 5: Dang it, there's so much more to say about this.
Speaker 5: We have to bring it back up because we're out
Speaker 5: of time. Everyone should know the letters at MSS. Don't
Speaker 5: ever throw around KGB or something like that. That's that's
Speaker 5: in the past. MSS is what is going to ruin
Speaker 5: your life. That's the mount KGB of China. I would
Speaker 5: be delighted to go big on this anytime you want.
Speaker 5: We'll do it soon. Yeah, we've got a lot off.
Speaker 5: You miss a segment. Get the podcast Armstrong and Getty
Speaker 5: on demand.
Speaker 6: Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 8: They literally are trying to take healthcare away from millions
Speaker 8: of Americans at this very moment in the dead of night.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, Oh my god. It's a party of monsters.
Speaker 6: That's why they're having the Republicans. They're monsters.
Speaker 5: That's why they're having the one am vote tonight on
Speaker 5: the big beautiful bill to try to slide through in
Speaker 5: the darker night, the cutting back on Medicaid.
Speaker 6: And so the Republicans who are actual vampires can come
Speaker 6: out to vote too, because you know, the sun is down.
Speaker 6: So Craig Gottwalls originally Craig the Obamacare lawyer, because when
Speaker 6: Obamacare was in the works and passed, Craig would talk
Speaker 6: to us about it, longtime friend of the show, and
Speaker 6: everything he said was true, and virtually everything he predicted happened,
Speaker 6: in contrast to most of the coverage of it, which
Speaker 6: was garbage. Well, Craig is now Craig the healthcare Guru,
Speaker 6: and we're going to talk a little bit about Medicaid,
Speaker 6: among other things. Craig Gottwaals, how are you, Craig.
Speaker 1: I'm good, How are you, gentlemen?
Speaker 2: Terrific? Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: So what do you make of Hakeem Jeffrey's quote there
Speaker 6: and what is the reality of Medicaid?
Speaker 1: Well, it underscores just how we can never give anything
Speaker 1: to the government. This is why we can't have nice things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen sixty five, the federal government passed Medicare
Speaker 1: and Medicaid, and specifically with respect to Medicaid, the whole
Speaker 1: idea was, man, we need a safety net for like
Speaker 1: single moms with disabled children who are falling through the cracks.
Speaker 1: We need we need this, this mechanism to just capture
Speaker 1: the most disadvantaged among us, to help them out, to
Speaker 1: give them, to give them a lift.
Speaker 2: Right, so we did.
Speaker 1: And back when this was passed in nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: it was designed to cover two percent of Americans. Today
Speaker 1: it covers one in three Americans and forty one percent
Speaker 1: of all babies burst in our country.
Speaker 2: Whoa forty babies born?
Speaker 6: So originally forty one line the disabled, the utterly unable
Speaker 6: to help themselves, and now it is approaching half of us.
Speaker 5: Is that because we have so many more single moms
Speaker 5: with blind babies?
Speaker 2: Or what does happen? Well?
Speaker 1: You know you got you, you know better than I jack.
Speaker 1: This is entitlement creep, government creep that its finest. I
Speaker 1: mean you When we when this really took took off
Speaker 1: and became insane was with Obamacare in the early you know,
Speaker 1: twenty teens. When Obamacare came into play, Obamacare was bribing
Speaker 1: the states, because you know, the way this thing works,
Speaker 1: it's an agreement between the state and the federal government
Speaker 1: and they're shared financing, right, So the federal government couldn't
Speaker 1: just say to the states, you shall expand Medicaid. But
Speaker 1: what the federal government did is said, hey, look if
Speaker 1: you expand Medicaid to basically able bodied, working age people
Speaker 1: now because we'd already you know, had Medicaid for all
Speaker 1: the other categories you just mentioned, Joe, the government said, look,
Speaker 1: if you do that, will we the federal government will
Speaker 1: pay one hundred percent of it for some time, and
Speaker 1: then we'll pay ninety percent of it. So all but
Speaker 1: ten states went ahead and said, heck, yeah, we'll take
Speaker 1: that deal. And so now with that, with that Medicaid
Speaker 1: expansion expansion that occurred with Obamacare, it's it's ninety percent
Speaker 1: paid for by federal tax payers, and it covers anywhere
Speaker 1: from eight million to fourteen million able bodied working adults
Speaker 1: or able bodied adults, some of which are working, some
Speaker 1: of which aren't.
Speaker 6: And in a bizarre twist, correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 6: the federal government compensates the states at a much higher
Speaker 6: percentage for able bodied dudes smoking pot on their parents
Speaker 6: based on counch than they do for actual like disabled
Speaker 6: people in blind babies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. So that was the that
Speaker 1: was the Obamacare bride because because Medicaid already covered all
Speaker 1: those people we were trying to protect, you know, when
Speaker 1: we started this thing in the sixties. So it covered
Speaker 1: all those people that had disabilities, single moms, et cetera,
Speaker 1: the blind, that disabled, but it didn't cover just underemployed
Speaker 1: or unemployed, abled bodied adults. And so in order to
Speaker 1: get the states to agree to do that, the federal
Speaker 1: government had to say, look, we know that we're only
Speaker 1: paying you an average of fifty to sixty five cents
Speaker 1: on the dollar for your existing Medicaid, and we know
Speaker 1: that's not enough to get you the states to agree
Speaker 1: to go ahead and cover the adults. So we'll pay
Speaker 1: ninety to one hundred percent, starting at one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: drop downe to ninety percent. So, yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: If you are a twenty eight year old dude smoking
Speaker 1: pot in your mom and dad's basement right now, medicaid's
Speaker 1: paying ninety percent. The federal government's paying ninety percent of
Speaker 1: your medicaid where it's only paying an average of sixty
Speaker 1: cents on the dollar in a state like California for
Speaker 1: a disabled mother with the child.
Speaker 5: I'm thinking somebody I know specifically who has like a
Speaker 5: regular person with the job and is doing it the
Speaker 5: normal way, and they're incredible medical bills they got right
Speaker 5: now because they've had some health problems. That's very galling
Speaker 5: that they have these high medical bills with insurance and everything,
Speaker 5: as opposed to if you got on some sort of
Speaker 5: government plan, it would all be covered.
Speaker 6: And Craig, I'm going to leave it up to your
Speaker 6: judgment how much you want to get into this, But
Speaker 6: there are all sorts of other perverse incentives that this
Speaker 6: law has caused states, you know, taxing hospitals to raise
Speaker 6: the amount spent, but then they get it back from
Speaker 6: the federal government.
Speaker 2: Then they give it back to the hospitals. I mean,
Speaker 2: and it's business team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let me just give you a couple of
Speaker 1: nuggets on the cost of it, just just because what's
Speaker 1: happened is employers pay two to three times the cost
Speaker 1: of a hospital visit as Medicare and Medicaid do. So
Speaker 1: when you are on Medicare and Medicaid, you go to
Speaker 1: the hospital, you pay X. If you're on an employer
Speaker 1: sponsored plan, you pay two's the three times X.
Speaker 2: Wow the bill as I was just talking about, Thus
Speaker 2: the bills.
Speaker 1: But even with that reality, gentlemen, if you're on Medicare,
Speaker 1: that cost per taxpayer is about eleven thousand per year,
Speaker 1: If you're on Medicaid, it's ninety four hundred per year,
Speaker 1: and for employer sponsored people it's eighty seven hundred per year.
Speaker 1: So even with that, granted, employer sponsored coverage generally younger,
Speaker 1: generally healthier, we get that. But even with this tremendous
Speaker 1: cost shift to the hospitals, it just it underscores how
Speaker 1: inefficient these government programs are. When they passed meta Care,
Speaker 1: now this is Medicare, not Medicaid, but they did all
Speaker 1: the financials together when they passed it in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: actually two years in, when they did an analysis on it,
Speaker 1: they said, hey, we think this is going to cost
Speaker 1: twelve billion by nineteen ninety, when in fact it cost
Speaker 1: one hundred billion. They were off by a factor of eight.
Speaker 2: With Medicare the bullet train of medicine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the bullet train of medicine. And now that
Speaker 1: there are some people making noises that, gee, we ought
Speaker 1: to trim back the edges a little bit and get
Speaker 1: these able bodied adults off of it. You, of course
Speaker 1: get the grand standing of politicians, even those on the right,
Speaker 1: screaming that it's murder in the streets.
Speaker 2: So Medicare is the one we all get when we
Speaker 2: typnical it will.
Speaker 5: Medicare is the one we all get when we turned
Speaker 5: sixty five. But Medicaid is the one that the downtrodden.
Speaker 6: Or folks allegedly yeah, yeah, hey, Craig, I want to
Speaker 6: do the numbers you did for Medicaid too. So in
Speaker 6: nineteen eighty seven, Congress projected that Medicaid would make special
Speaker 6: relief payments to hospitals of life less than a billion dollars.
Speaker 2: By nineteen ninety two under a billion dollars.
Speaker 6: The actual cost was seventeen billion, So they're seventeen times
Speaker 6: as high. I mean, if that doesn't tell you what
Speaker 6: you need to know about government entitlement programs and what
Speaker 6: they do, inevitably, well you're too stupid to understand it,
Speaker 6: and I pity you.
Speaker 1: And that one was in a five year span, Joe.
Speaker 1: That was their eighty seven projection for ninety two.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you're right. Yeah, that wasn't well. And
Speaker 2: one of the problems.
Speaker 5: One of the problems is, you know, all government programs grow,
Speaker 5: and you know the high cost of good intentions and
Speaker 5: all that sort of stuff. But in this case you've
Speaker 5: got the added part that there's a bunch of people
Speaker 5: that want the government to run all of healthcare. So
Speaker 5: they love it. They're pushing the expansion. It's not just
Speaker 5: like normal bureaucratic creep. They're pushing it. The more people cover,
Speaker 5: the more you can make the argument of well or
Speaker 5: already government healthcare anyway, let's just flip the switch and
Speaker 5: go full on single pair.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, and the single payer I'm just here
Speaker 1: to tell you the single payer path is a good
Speaker 1: thirty to fifty percent more expensive. Now those costs are
Speaker 1: hidden because of the way the money slashes around. But
Speaker 1: you've only got one payer of healthcare in America that
Speaker 1: actually cares what it costs, and that's employers. That's it.
Speaker 1: The insurance companies don't care because the way Obamacare is written,
Speaker 1: they need more claims to make more money. The government
Speaker 1: doesn't care because the more healthcare costs, the more budget
Speaker 1: they get to address the issue. The only policy holder,
Speaker 1: the only tax the only moneyed interest in this that
Speaker 1: actually cares is an employer, and it's dramatically shrinking. Those
Speaker 1: of us that get healthcare at work is shrinking every year.
Speaker 5: I don't know how we ever get this fixed, because,
Speaker 5: like you've probably been listening, No, I got whooping cough.
Speaker 5: So I've been to the doctor, like yeah, four or
Speaker 5: five times, eight different medications, all these different bills, most
Speaker 5: of them tiny. I don't have the slightest idea what
Speaker 5: anything cost.
Speaker 2: Or I'll get a bill.
Speaker 5: I know, I'll get a bill in a month for
Speaker 5: one hundred and eighty bucks or five hundred and eighty bucks,
Speaker 5: I don't know, and then I'll just pay it.
Speaker 2: And nobody has any idea.
Speaker 5: And the randomness of those of us who have employee uh,
Speaker 5: you know, insurance.
Speaker 2: We don't know if we're getting ripped off or good
Speaker 2: price or whatever. So it's it's complicated. It's certainly discouraging.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, Craig, Yeah, and it's it's not helped Jack
Speaker 1: by the you know a lot of people think that, hey,
Speaker 1: I have Purple Cross as my insurance, and so whether
Speaker 1: I go to Stanford or El Camino or Good Sam
Speaker 1: for this particular shoulder surgery should be about the same
Speaker 1: price because I have a Purple Cross Ppo contract. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not you can pay ten thousand for that shoulder
Speaker 1: surgery or fifty thousand for that shoulder surgery with the
Speaker 1: same exact insurance card. It's utterly insane what's happening in
Speaker 1: the commercial market because government has crept into this unholy
Speaker 1: a lineions with the commercial payers, and so you have this,
Speaker 1: you have a situation where it's crony capitalism at its
Speaker 1: absolute worst. You know we're talking about and we can
Speaker 1: tease for a future visit, but there are ways to
Speaker 1: get around this. But relying on the government or this
Speaker 1: large commercial sector is going to kill us. And when
Speaker 1: I say the commercial sector, I mean the fully insured carriers.
Speaker 1: Employer sponsored plans, self funded employer sponsored plans are the
Speaker 1: way to go. It's the only way to beat this
Speaker 1: and beat it back.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're talking to Craig Gottwal's Craig the healthcare guru.
Speaker 2: Craig.
Speaker 6: I feel like at this point in the interview, we
Speaker 6: ought to give people the local suicide hotline number.
Speaker 2: I mean, because it's so discouraging.
Speaker 6: So we've you know, described this incredible, mountainous, wasteful, enormously
Speaker 6: expensive government program out of control. And if you, as
Speaker 6: say a Republican, a Chip Roy, for instance, say hey,
Speaker 6: can we have thirty five year old guy smoking pawn
Speaker 6: on his parents couch, please pay a thirty five dollars
Speaker 6: copay when he goes to the doctor, you have Hakeeen
Speaker 6: Jeffrey screaming. You're literally taking healthcare away from millions of Americans.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's one problem, though, the other problem is
Speaker 5: you that's a Democrat. You got Josh Holley, a Republican
Speaker 5: writing an option, and Molly has lost his soul. I
Speaker 5: hope he gets hit by a car abhorror violence.
Speaker 2: Josh Holly.
Speaker 5: Right. So I think in the New York Times last week,
Speaker 5: you know, Republicans, hey, do not cut any of this.
Speaker 2: It's a bad political move. So where does that leave you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It you. At this point, gentlemen, I put my head down.
Speaker 1: I don't even listen to the big the big picture anymore.
Speaker 1: And I just try and help one employer at a time.
Speaker 1: It's just and and I get individuals to contact me,
Speaker 1: and they asked me, what do I do, and I say,
Speaker 1: buy is little difference, check in by the highest deductible.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, don't get sick is your recommendation.
Speaker 1: Don't get sick, but find a doctor, find a doctor
Speaker 1: who's left the system, and engage in something called direct
Speaker 1: prime mary care, where you give them anywhere from seventy
Speaker 1: five to two hundred dollars a month, you treat, you
Speaker 1: work with them, and then God forbid you have something
Speaker 1: giant happen. You have the highest deductible you can stomach
Speaker 1: to go deal with that issue. But you've got to
Speaker 1: cut insurance and government payments out as much as you
Speaker 1: can and work directly with doctors. And the good news
Speaker 1: is that system is growing. Gentlemen, I talk to doctors
Speaker 1: every week that are leaving the system and going direct
Speaker 1: pay with individuals and not the three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: dollars concierge model, but like doing this for one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a month. Literally.
Speaker 6: Well, I love the idea of starting at that point
Speaker 6: in our next conversation with you, Craig, and talking about that,
Speaker 6: because one of the things I was going to bring
Speaker 6: up if we have time, and we don't unfortunately, but
Speaker 6: some of the unholy vertical integration of the giant healthcare
Speaker 6: companies where they own the doctor, they own the hospital,
Speaker 6: they own the pharmacy, they own the pharmacy benefit manager,
Speaker 6: which is an unholy, murky cesspool of God knows where
Speaker 6: the money goes. And so yeah, the idea of checking
Speaker 6: out of that system, I love it. Let's let's let's
Speaker 6: talk off the air. Will schedule you to come back
Speaker 6: because I think it'd be great for the good folks.
Speaker 1: Sounds great, gentlemen, have a wonderful day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, Craig. Appreciate the time you have to come
Speaker 2: on all the time and bear bad news.
Speaker 6: I mean it's like, yeah, I just you know, as
Speaker 6: a realist, you've unlike the Biden family, the one thing
Speaker 6: you must do is understand reality or or you're you're houseless.
Speaker 5: I've been saying to Craig and he usually agrees for years.
Speaker 5: I think the realist view is we're going to end
Speaker 5: up single payer healthcare. Uh it's just when when does
Speaker 5: that fight?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I suppose so.
Speaker 6: But in every single health single payer healthcare system, people
Speaker 6: who can afford.
Speaker 2: It go outside, right right, got to learn those ropes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, wait, hang it don't folks, it'll be okay, don't
Speaker 6: get sick.
Speaker 2: Just don't get sick or break anything. That's the answer.
Speaker 2: Stay here.
Speaker 9: Hey, Deth and inmates tonight are still at large. These
Speaker 9: are dangerous inmates. They have serious charges. At least for
Speaker 9: are charged with murder or attempted murder. Sheriff's office says
Speaker 9: there was no guard assigned to the pod, only a technician,
Speaker 9: who officials say stepped away to get food when this happened.
Speaker 9: Authority is now investigating whether this was an inside job.
Speaker 9: So far, three staff members have been suspended without pay.
Speaker 9: The district attorney says there was a complete breakdown in
Speaker 9: jail protocol.
Speaker 4: Any family member who was scared or frustrated, they have
Speaker 4: every right to be sould.
Speaker 5: A breakdown in jail protocol. If it turns out as
Speaker 5: the breaking news is that uh, one dude there helped
Speaker 5: them get out. Somebody worked there, is that a breakdown
Speaker 5: in protocol? The people who work there aren't supposed to
Speaker 5: help people escape. Yeah, the protocol is keep them in. Yes,
Speaker 5: there was a breakdown in that product. The maintenance guy
Speaker 5: helped them escape. Louisiana so corrupt, unbelievable.
Speaker 6: May before we move on after the conversation with Craig
Speaker 6: gott Waltz in the last segment about medicaid and how
Speaker 6: bloated and horrible it is and how Obamacare exploded it.
Speaker 6: Here's your breaking news. Trump moved to end the quarreling
Speaker 6: among various GOP factions. Quote, tell them don't f around
Speaker 6: with Medicaid. So the orders came from Trump to the
Speaker 6: GOP don't do anything to reform Medicaid.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, I give up.
Speaker 5: So I just got a text from a friend of
Speaker 5: mine who he's on the older end, but he said, Uh,
Speaker 5: just got the Medicare statement for a cardiac ablation one
Speaker 5: hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars for an over at
Speaker 5: night's stay.
Speaker 2: And he's gonna pay fifty two dollars. But that one
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: Nobody has the slightest idea if that's anywhere close to reasonable?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: No, who gets it? I don't know how'd you come
Speaker 6: up with? Where's it coming from?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Now? That is no system anyway.
Speaker 5: The other breaking news we've got around the conference that's
Speaker 5: going on right now with Trump meeting with Republicans trying
Speaker 5: to get the big beautiful bill. Thing is he has
Speaker 5: completely flipped on salt for whatever reason. That is the
Speaker 5: whole getting deduct your state taxes in the Blue.
Speaker 6: States state and local tax right exactly deduction. Uh.
Speaker 2: Trump has flipped.
Speaker 5: He says raising the cap benefits with raising the cap
Speaker 5: would benefit democratic governors. We don't want to benefit democrats.
Speaker 5: So he is against the salt thing now, having been
Speaker 5: for it pretty strongly for.
Speaker 2: The last week. I don't know what was going on there.
Speaker 5: And this just in he just said to one congress person,
Speaker 5: I know your district better than you do. If you
Speaker 5: lose because assault, you were going to lose anyway, So
Speaker 5: there you go. But anyway, that's the right thing happening,
Speaker 5: the assaults of the crime against nature. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: just horrible, even though it would benefit me personally.
Speaker 6: What cap are they going with thirty grand or I
Speaker 6: don't know, I don't not or because the Blue state guys,
Speaker 6: we're trying to raise it to like fifty or unlimited,
Speaker 6: right well, so that all the red states could pay
Speaker 6: for the Blue states, you know, income.
Speaker 5: TAXI Trump's actually at a microphone now, so maybe we'll
Speaker 5: hear that. And they have a meeting at one am
Speaker 5: for some reason tonight.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on. LA getting tough on immigration.
Speaker 2: You're not going to believe it. Stay with us,