Speaker 1: Craig got Wallas. Craig the healthcare Guru joins us. He's
Speaker 1: an attorney, law benefit consultant, and Benefit Revolution is his website.
Speaker 1: Also a longtime friend of the show, my former mountain
Speaker 1: bike riding buddy until my joints got weak. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean I started buying substandard pop. I mean I
Speaker 1: just got old. Craig. Hey, how are you, sir? I'm well, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: how are you? Terrific? As usual, You've sent us a
Speaker 1: fair amount of very interesting information. Do you mind if
Speaker 1: we start with the big budget lie that is government
Speaker 1: medical programs. I find this so interesting? Yes, yes, this
Speaker 1: this lie has been going on in one iteration or
Speaker 1: another since the nineteen nineties, this particular lie, and it's
Speaker 1: it's the number one way that uh, big state politicians
Speaker 1: get their favorite programs through So, whether we're talking about
Speaker 1: Obamacare or the latest Cares Act, the way that politicians
Speaker 1: push these things through Congress is to say, well, this
Speaker 1: this law. You know, this law is going to help
Speaker 1: so many millions Americans, and it's only gonna cost only
Speaker 1: a get something under a trillion or maybe one point
Speaker 1: three trillion, or or or some number that they find
Speaker 1: is palatable by the general public at the time. Right.
Speaker 1: So this was done most famously with Obamacare in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, when they said, well, Obamacare is only going
Speaker 1: to cost point nine trillion dollars. It's got nine billion dollars.
Speaker 1: And and part of the reason it was going to
Speaker 1: cost that small of an amount, I know it makes
Speaker 1: me choke to say that small of an amount was
Speaker 1: to say, written into Obamacare was a provision that they
Speaker 1: were going to cut Medicare, the reimbursements to doctors and
Speaker 1: hospitals by two percent per year for like a ten
Speaker 1: year period. So when this when the when the accountants,
Speaker 1: when the CBL gets to that, of course they're just accountants.
Speaker 1: They have to look at it and and say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if they are going to cut what we pay Medicare
Speaker 1: by two percent per year and add all these other
Speaker 1: things to cover Obamacare, then yes, Obamacare is gonna cost
Speaker 1: n fifty billion dollars. So let me jump in here, Craig,
Speaker 1: just to make sure that everybody understands. This is if
Speaker 1: I said to Judy, honey, I'm gonna go buy a
Speaker 1: brand new loaded F one fifty. Here's the car payment.
Speaker 1: But starting next year, I'm gonna cut the car payment
Speaker 1: by twenty dollars a month. Every month, I'm going to
Speaker 1: pay less than the car payment, as if I have
Speaker 1: the power to do that, but I never intend to
Speaker 1: do that, or maybe say, starting next year, that's okay, honey,
Speaker 1: because our car budget is going to be fine because
Speaker 1: what we're gonna pay for insurance is going to be
Speaker 1: cut by fifty dollars a month, right. And then of course,
Speaker 1: when the next year comes around, insurance costs actually go
Speaker 1: up and you don't cut what you're gonna pay for
Speaker 1: insurance fifty a month, so your entire budget just explode.
Speaker 1: So has Converress ever actually cut the payments to doctors
Speaker 1: through Medicare. No. The very latest one that was just
Speaker 1: in the news in the last few weeks was um
Speaker 1: that again another another two percent cut to Medicare, this
Speaker 1: one dating back to the Budget Control Act of and
Speaker 1: this again was supposed to be two percent per year.
Speaker 1: And I remember, for your listeners, I repeat this every time,
Speaker 1: but I got to say it. Medicare pays less than
Speaker 1: half of what an employer plan pays to hospitals when
Speaker 1: you go in to have work done. So Medicare reimburses
Speaker 1: so little already that if we really were to cut Medicare,
Speaker 1: you would have a mutiny on your hands, because hospitals
Speaker 1: would just throw their hands up in the air and
Speaker 1: say we're not treating seniors anymore. And of course seniors
Speaker 1: vote and that wouldn't be good for re election. So
Speaker 1: there never really will be a cut to Medicare. But
Speaker 1: they use this trick to budget their laws. So we've
Speaker 1: had this two percent cut on the books going back
Speaker 1: ton and just last month, UH Congress voted again this
Speaker 1: is bipartisan mouth seasons three eighty four to thirty eight
Speaker 1: to say, well, we're not gonna go ahead and put
Speaker 1: that cut in now because right now we're in an
Speaker 1: national pandemic. Would it wouldn't be proper, and so we've
Speaker 1: got to pay for the carriage acted, so we're not
Speaker 1: going to do that. So once again we're bamboos all,
Speaker 1: we're lied to, we're cheated. That's incredible, it's absolutely incredible,
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly by partisan support to UH to say Nana, the
Speaker 1: cuts that that we're mandated, and now we'll skip them
Speaker 1: this year and every year. Yeah, that's amazing. Every every year,
Speaker 1: multiple laws, Obamacare, the Cares Act. I mean, just you
Speaker 1: could go to if this started in the nineties. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's ridiculous, guys and right, And the average person,
Speaker 1: including me, doesn't pay attention to those votes and doesn't
Speaker 1: even know they happened. That's amazing. Okay, I don't want
Speaker 1: to I don't want to spem it. I have to
Speaker 1: work hard. I have to work hard to find this stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, so I guarantee you the average person doesn't
Speaker 1: follow it. Okay. I don't want to spend all our
Speaker 1: time on that because you have so much good stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, for instance, you pointed out that the Obamacare
Speaker 1: now extends to families making as much as half a
Speaker 1: million dollars a year. Yeah, we talked about that last
Speaker 1: month when I was on your show. That one of
Speaker 1: the changes put forth because of the Cares Act was
Speaker 1: to say, well, people are having a hard time. So
Speaker 1: Obamacare has originally written said look, we're going to give
Speaker 1: taxpayer dollars to people to buy healthcare. But once you
Speaker 1: make like a hundred and six hundred and seven thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year as a family, you don't get taxpayer
Speaker 1: dollars anymore. Well, the Biden administration and Congress has changed that,
Speaker 1: and now you can actually make up to half a
Speaker 1: million dollars a year and still get taxpayer dollars to
Speaker 1: buy your Obamacare. So we have we have something close
Speaker 1: to government medical care already, don't we. Oh oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's again. Another repeat stat for you, folks.
Speaker 1: Seventy percent of Blue states the healthcare provided in seventy
Speaker 1: excuse me, in the Blue States, seventy percent of healthcare
Speaker 1: is taxpayer funded. Nationally, that number is sixty six percent
Speaker 1: of healthcare is taxpayer funded. So we're clinging to a third.
Speaker 1: We're clinging to thirty of of tax tax of non
Speaker 1: taxpayer funded healthcare in this country. Well, could you make
Speaker 1: the argument at this point then, like, if you're a
Speaker 1: high earner, you you might welcome just universal health care
Speaker 1: because you're the only people left that are paying out
Speaker 1: a bucket. I mean, he might as well make universal
Speaker 1: just to include you know, everyone else. Oh goodness, you know, Jack,
Speaker 1: If if one were to look at this purely cynically
Speaker 1: and entirely based upon self motive, and if one were
Speaker 1: saying over the age of fifty five or sixty, you
Speaker 1: might take that approach but the reality is we're going
Speaker 1: to tank our country and we're going to tank our
Speaker 1: health care system with that move. I'm fired up, guys.
Speaker 1: It's I see the end in sight, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what we can do to stop it. All right,
Speaker 1: let's tell me this. What is the Medicare of Trust Fund?
Speaker 1: And and how's it looking? So? The Medicare trust Fund
Speaker 1: is what we used to pay for Medicare. It's what
Speaker 1: we're all supposed to what we will what comes out
Speaker 1: of our paychecks to pay for Medicare. It is now
Speaker 1: according to the CBO. This is so, this is according
Speaker 1: to government, the encounters, not some spin machine. It will
Speaker 1: be exhausted by And this is the closest we've ever
Speaker 1: come to bankruptcy and Medicare in the fifty five year
Speaker 1: history of Medicare. And all the federal government legislators in
Speaker 1: the administration can talk about is how can we expand
Speaker 1: Medicare to more people? Right, Bernie wants to expand it
Speaker 1: to everybody. Biden's talking about dropping it down to age
Speaker 1: fifty five or even age fifty, so that we can
Speaker 1: put more people into a system that we cannot pay for. Now,
Speaker 1: are we not looking at are we not looking at
Speaker 1: like gigantic tax increases within five years well, or just borrow? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it'll be a combination of tax increases plus
Speaker 1: inflation plus money printing plus borrowing to the point where
Speaker 1: we will tank what we've We've probably already tanked our economy.
Speaker 1: But I think there's hope that we could limp along
Speaker 1: and and and make this thing work in the long run.
Speaker 1: The problem is right now, gentlemen, right now today. But
Speaker 1: the people, everybody wants to talk about the fact that
Speaker 1: we're twenty eight trillion in debt, and yeah, and hard dollars,
Speaker 1: that's true. But once you add in the unfunded liabilities,
Speaker 1: once you say how much are we really in debt
Speaker 1: when we have to pay for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,
Speaker 1: that number is a hundred and forty eight trillion, meaning
Speaker 1: each US citizen owes four hundred and forty four thousand
Speaker 1: dollars today today, and we want to expand that debt
Speaker 1: with Medicare that we already can't pay for three years
Speaker 1: from today, not to mention a few trillion dollars worth
Speaker 1: of other programs that are getting pushed right now. So
Speaker 1: when you say you you see the incoming and you
Speaker 1: and you, and there's no way we can stop it.
Speaker 1: What does the end look like? I mean what what
Speaker 1: as a as a guy? What does the end look
Speaker 1: like to you? Massive economic collapse in the United States,
Speaker 1: no longer being the world empire. Me now, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we look something like the UK or France, where we
Speaker 1: just take a much smaller role. We don't have growth,
Speaker 1: everybody just has one car, we take a lot of
Speaker 1: public transportation. But but h more like, maybe we look
Speaker 1: more like Rome because no no country has ever done
Speaker 1: what we've done here. What We've never had this level
Speaker 1: of debt escalating this quickly. And the problem is we
Speaker 1: are the reserve currency for the world, so when we collapse,
Speaker 1: the whole global economy is going to go. Well, guys,
Speaker 1: you know the thing that just made me so sick lately, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: is you can go onto YouTube and watch the most
Speaker 1: eloquent defenders of these topics from the nineteen sixties to
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, and that's Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman.
Speaker 1: There's speeches on why you don't let your country socialized
Speaker 1: medicine because it's it's the last straw, and then you
Speaker 1: will become socialized. They're they were the most eloquent defenders
Speaker 1: of responsible budgeting and no socialized medicine. And we had
Speaker 1: them in power in the seventies and eighties, and we're
Speaker 1: still making this mistake. And that's what that's what really
Speaker 1: kills me. Guys, as I look at this now and
Speaker 1: I think, who do we have today that can make
Speaker 1: the arguments that Reagan and Friedman made in the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties. Nobody and just doing it. We're just blowing
Speaker 1: this up, all right. And you know it could be
Speaker 1: if Martians scholars write a book on humankind, they will
Speaker 1: say there is just a natural tendency among that species
Speaker 1: toward government control and socialism. That's just the way the
Speaker 1: beast evolves. I don't know. Craig got walls, Craig the
Speaker 1: healthcare guru. Uh what's your website again? If people want
Speaker 1: to get in touch, it's benefit dash revolution dot com. Okay, fabulous.
Speaker 1: Well let me just Mr Franklin, what have you given
Speaker 1: us a republic? If you can keep it right here here, Craig, Thanks, buddy,
Speaker 1: you've been We've been talking to Craig for years and uh,
Speaker 1: so far all his predictions have been right. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was dead on everything that happened with Obamacare, for instance.
Speaker 1: They'll ever enforce this, This will slide to a different
Speaker 1: income level, this will slide to a different age group.
Speaker 1: Here's why. It's not one trillion. It's going to be
Speaker 1: two and a half trillion. And it's always true. That's something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something. You can still live a happy life. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not here to to make you miserable or anything.
Speaker 1: You still have a wonderful life. It's just terrible governmental policy, terrible,
Speaker 1: unbelievable