Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Ketty arm Strong
Speaker 1: and Jetty and he Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2: So, if you're an NFL fan, the very first game
Speaker 2: of the this year was last night Chargers Lions. Chargers
Speaker 2: beat the hell out of the Lions in the Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame game and can'ton Ohio anyway. I came across
Speaker 2: this at Harbaugh. Jim Harbaugh, one of our favorite people
Speaker 2: back when he was a forty nine Ers coach, said
Speaker 2: to his team or media or somebody, because people are
Speaker 2: talking about then all it's freaking July. There's an NFL
Speaker 2: game and preseason and who cares and all that sort
Speaker 2: of stuff, And he said, this game will get higher
Speaker 2: ratings than a World Series baseball game or any NBA
Speaker 2: Finals game. And he's right, that's how much bigger the
Speaker 2: NFL is than the other sports.
Speaker 1: Wow? Is that right?
Speaker 2: He yeah, I didn't look it up, but that's historically,
Speaker 2: that's true, that sort of thing. That's how much bigger
Speaker 2: the NFL is. Wow, they are the five hundred pound guerrilla.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: So Kamala Harris was on Colbert last night. We talked
Speaker 2: about this a lot. Yesterday, She's got a book out.
Speaker 2: She announced she's not running for governor of California. She's
Speaker 2: clearly running for president, or at least trying to put
Speaker 2: together a team to run for California, and if she
Speaker 2: can get the money people behind her, she will run.
Speaker 2: She's delusional. She was on Colbert. She was always good
Speaker 2: at those. That's why she did them. She's good at
Speaker 2: the smiling, laughing and if you have a host that
Speaker 2: wants to help you along, she's fine at it. And
Speaker 2: I think that's what convinced her in her head she
Speaker 2: could be president because she was good at those. She
Speaker 2: couldn't do any interview where she has challenged on policy.
Speaker 2: But I just wanted to hear this a little bit
Speaker 2: about the intro because I haven't heard this.
Speaker 1: I've just read about it and it sounds gosh.
Speaker 3: Thanks gentlemen, My guest tonight was Vice President of the
Speaker 3: United States. Please welcome her back to the Lake Show.
Speaker 3: Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: Listen to that crowd.
Speaker 2: Keep you going there, my, She stands there and waves
Speaker 2: because they're all on their feet, grinning.
Speaker 1: The ear to ear excitement in the.
Speaker 4: Air cheering wildly, I guess, And.
Speaker 1: Here you go with the USA chance. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: what the state of the USA would be if that
Speaker 1: half witted Well, that's not that though. What does that
Speaker 1: tell you? That's good, Michael. What does that tell you politically? Though?
Speaker 2: Now Colbert famously has a very left audience. That's what
Speaker 2: he crafted on purpose. He was the number one show,
Speaker 2: so blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Uh. But he's got that crowd. But she got beaten
Speaker 1: by Donald Trump, and the crowd is chanting USA and
Speaker 1: he can't get him to quiet down enough to even
Speaker 1: ask her a question. Yeah, I'm just trying to think
Speaker 1: of an analogous situation on the other side of the aisle,
Speaker 1: like if Republicans Conservatives had just erupted in rapturous cheers
Speaker 1: when Bob Dole was introduced for Mitt Romney after his defeat.
Speaker 1: Although you could argue Mitt Romney was a was a
Speaker 1: very good man, could have won, blah blah blah. But
Speaker 1: you know the history. You always have that quote about
Speaker 1: when people run for president and lose. That's the history
Speaker 1: of people when they run for president lose. Even if
Speaker 1: you're a good gut person. People are ardies are done
Speaker 1: with you. You didn't come out to Chance of USA. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially because she was such a weak candidate. Is that
Speaker 1: just I'm reading it?
Speaker 2: Is it's just an opportunity to express your anti Trump enthusiasm, particularly.
Speaker 1: Given the fact that anti Trump enthusiasm is kind of
Speaker 1: tied up in the whole Colbert Show is getting canceled
Speaker 1: right right because the first chant was Steve n Steve N.
Speaker 1: So I think it's all kind of wrapped up for
Speaker 1: those people. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I thought that was an interesting political moment. She's not
Speaker 2: only a losing candidate. She lost to a guy whose
Speaker 2: negatives were higher than anybody who's ever won the presidency,
Speaker 2: and she was horrible at it and thunderous applause.
Speaker 1: In Chance of USA. I mean that is if they
Speaker 1: keep sharing, folks, maybe you can get to Kamala and
Speaker 1: Mamdani as the VP nominee that got the juices in
Speaker 1: her brain?
Speaker 2: Do you have juices in your brain that got the
Speaker 2: juices in her brain that we're thinking should I run
Speaker 2: for prison or not? Into full tilt mode? I guarantee
Speaker 2: you look at this should I run? How is that
Speaker 2: even a question? Look at these people right.
Speaker 1: The people want me. I would be a bad American
Speaker 1: if I did not become their leader, right, they're begging
Speaker 1: me as will Okay, So there's that.
Speaker 2: And who knows what's going to happen in twenty eight
Speaker 2: because who knows what the issues will be. It's possible
Speaker 2: that one of the biggest issues for the mid term
Speaker 2: or the presidential election are going to be how great
Speaker 2: the tariffs were or what a disaster the tariffs were,
Speaker 2: depending on how this all turns out. But so Trump
Speaker 2: last night announces I think it was sixty eight new tariffs.
Speaker 2: He had this big board with sixty eight countries on
Speaker 2: there and what their new tariffs are, including a thirty
Speaker 2: five percent tariff on Canada that kicks in today, and
Speaker 2: it was a big deal. So on MSNBC, I was
Speaker 2: watching their late night show that's on at eleven o'clock
Speaker 2: East coast eight o'clock in California, and you know, it's
Speaker 2: all about Hayte and try Up all the time. And
Speaker 2: Stephanie Rule, the host of that show, had a guest
Speaker 2: on and she sets him up with this anti Trump question,
Speaker 2: hoping they're all just going to get to do some
Speaker 2: good Trump bashing and I thought the guy's answer was
Speaker 2: pretty interesting.
Speaker 5: Trump wants people to focus on the big new tariff freeze,
Speaker 5: but the reality is he's just pushing the deadline again,
Speaker 5: like has Taco Tuesday become Taco Thursday at the White House?
Speaker 6: You know, Steph, I don't think so. I think these
Speaker 6: are for real. I think tonight's a fairly historic night
Speaker 6: where I think you can go back and when you
Speaker 6: write the history, you'll say this is the night that
Speaker 6: the global free trade era begun by the United States
Speaker 6: and the post war era led by the United States
Speaker 6: really came to an end. There is now, I think,
Speaker 6: a permanent tariff curtain around this country.
Speaker 2: I thought that was some pretty good analysis and there
Speaker 2: should be more of that. Whether it's going to be
Speaker 2: a good and he says, he goes on to say,
Speaker 2: which is abnormally fair for HIMSNBC. He goes on to say,
Speaker 2: whether this turns out to be a good thing for
Speaker 2: the United States or not, you know, will be proven
Speaker 2: over time. He didn't automatically say it was gonna be
Speaker 2: a bad thing, but it's a giant deal.
Speaker 1: The whole taco thing is a stupid narrative. New York
Speaker 1: Times wrote that a week or so ago, I mentioned
Speaker 1: that The New York Times said, Hey, I know the
Speaker 1: taco joke is funny, but the reality is Trump has
Speaker 1: done it. We live in a much different world of
Speaker 1: tariffs now than before he came into office. It's real,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not.
Speaker 2: He talked big and there and things didn't change. No,
Speaker 2: things changed a lot, and we'll.
Speaker 1: See how it turns out. Right. Yeah, and this story
Speaker 1: doesn't really lend itself very well to hit and run,
Speaker 1: you know, media of whatever sort and what you just
Speaker 1: quoted the fellas saying kind of anticipate in one of
Speaker 1: the points I was gonna make. I have some pretty
Speaker 1: strong opinions about some aspects of this, but we won't
Speaker 1: know until time passes. Well, hell, we don't even know
Speaker 1: if the tariffs are going to be an acted stand
Speaker 1: by for that. But if it were, if what Trump
Speaker 1: is doing were one hundred percent right and wise and
Speaker 1: patriotic and far seeing, there would be a period of
Speaker 1: disruption and discomfort that we would have to get through
Speaker 1: to get to that better result, which is one of
Speaker 1: the reason modern democracies often don't solve their problems. I mean,
Speaker 1: like our budgetary problems it's fairly obvious how we need
Speaker 1: to do that, but we will never put up with
Speaker 1: the difficult period that we need to go through to
Speaker 1: fix it. And so I readily admit knee jerk analysis.
Speaker 1: What Trump is doing is either going to be wrong
Speaker 1: or it's just unfair. It's just dumb. Having said that,
Speaker 1: and it is absolutely hilarious to me how little coverage
Speaker 1: this is getting. The US Court of Appeals for the
Speaker 1: Federal Circuit on Thursday yesterday heard oral arguments in a
Speaker 1: challenge to the Worldwide Tariffs and the editorial board of
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal's lead is, well, that was painful
Speaker 1: for the Trump administration's lawyer. That is, judge after judge
Speaker 1: doubted the administration's arguments. And so what you need to
Speaker 1: know is the administration says the nineteen seventy seven International
Speaker 1: Emergency Economic Powers Act also known as IEP or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, grants the president's sweeping authority to impose tariffs,
Speaker 1: and the judges seemed very very skeptical, which doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: prove anything. They'll put out a ruling then we don't
Speaker 1: have to guess. But one of the judges right out
Speaker 1: of the gate pointed out that no president has ever
Speaker 1: used the emergency law to impose tariffs. And they got
Speaker 1: into a discussion with the lawyers about, well, that's true,
Speaker 1: but the law is written broadly to give the president
Speaker 1: the right to use whatever tools he deems appropriate. The
Speaker 1: judges weren't buying it. Why should we read tariffs into
Speaker 1: that statue? Is the plane meaning of regulate and that
Speaker 1: has to do with a verbage in the statute to
Speaker 1: impose tariffs or taxes? And isn't the administration uppending the
Speaker 1: entire tariff schedule that Congress enacted. Then you have to
Speaker 1: get into Nixon's across the board ten percent tariffs in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. It would take too long to explain.
Speaker 1: But they said, no, this is very different in a
Speaker 1: number of different ways, and it ends up being whether
Speaker 1: you like it or not. And it'll get to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court almost certainly unless they think the appeals Court
Speaker 1: is right. And they say, no, we're not going to
Speaker 1: take it because we think they're right. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: Hang on a second. It's a great question about Congress
Speaker 1: versus the executive branch and who gets to do what
Speaker 1: and how to interpret broad statutes. And you remember us
Speaker 1: on the libertarian conservative side, we're really happy. Last year
Speaker 1: the High Court put out a ruling happened to be
Speaker 1: called Low or Bright that says, no, judges don't automatically
Speaker 1: defer to the administrative state the regulator's interpretations of vague laws.
Speaker 1: You got to figure out what Congress meant, and remember
Speaker 1: the Major Questions doctrine says Congress must give the president
Speaker 1: express authority for actions with economic or political significance, otherwise
Speaker 1: he's overstepping his bounds.
Speaker 2: But you said it'll get to the Supreme Court. Is
Speaker 2: that something they could rule on before October, like jump
Speaker 2: in and you know, take off their summer shorts and
Speaker 2: put on the robes and look at this because October
Speaker 2: is a long way away.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. They could do a couple
Speaker 1: of things. They could announce immediately that they're not taking
Speaker 1: the case after this the Appeals Court rules.
Speaker 2: And which means it stands, and you're anticipating the Appeals
Speaker 2: Court will rule that Trump can't do this.
Speaker 1: I'm leaning that way with you know, just a moderate
Speaker 1: level of confidence. Well, because you know, as you pointed
Speaker 1: out earlier, you can try to leap to conclusions based
Speaker 1: on the oral arguments, but it's a slippery thing to do.
Speaker 2: Okay, I got a question about that, But first we
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Speaker 1: your window.
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Speaker 2: We're out of time, and we'll have plenty of time
Speaker 2: to talk about tariffs in the coming days, weeks, and months.
Speaker 1: But just on a broad principle though, how many times
Speaker 1: did we say during the Biden administration to Democrats, don't
Speaker 1: you understand your president using these extraordinary wild powers to
Speaker 1: do things that are probably not the executives to do.
Speaker 1: Don't you understand the other side of be in power
Speaker 1: at some point and how unwise you're being? Well, I
Speaker 1: am consistent. If nothing else, same thing applies.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 2: My question was going to be Trump has been talking
Speaker 2: about wanting to do tariffs his whole life. Was he
Speaker 2: always planning on using this emergency Act? Or how was
Speaker 2: he planning on doing it?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Huh, I haven't heard that question answered. Are you familiar
Speaker 2: with the Oho network? The eighth tier sports network. It's
Speaker 2: a thing and it's kind of funny, among other things.
Speaker 2: All the way, stay here.
Speaker 7: Strong.
Speaker 5: The Presidential Fitness test is back now.
Speaker 3: Trump says he wants to be sure America's future generations
Speaker 3: are strong, healthy, and successful.
Speaker 1: At least I think that's what he said. He was
Speaker 1: knowing on a KFC twelve piece at the time, the
Speaker 1: Presidential Fitness Test.
Speaker 2: If you're old enough to remember doing that, he had
Speaker 2: some pretty high standards. Either you're going to be a
Speaker 2: Navy seal or you're gonna you know, not pass. I
Speaker 2: guess those are your sale.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, mushmallow, get out of my sight, said
Speaker 1: my Jim teacher.
Speaker 2: Coming up, we need to talk about this. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you're tired of AI talk or not. I'm
Speaker 2: definitely not. It is now officially much bigger than the
Speaker 2: dot com boom of the nineties was in terms of
Speaker 2: the way it has taken over the stock market. And
Speaker 2: people talk about the dot com boom still because it
Speaker 2: was such a disruptive force. But AI's significantly bigger than that.
Speaker 2: VIDIA is worth more than it's got more than the
Speaker 2: GDP of like every country on Earth's like but three
Speaker 2: or something. Anyway, more amazing stats about that coming up.
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with the OCHO? It started with it
Speaker 2: as a joke. There was the movie dodge Ball that
Speaker 2: was quite hilarious. And in the movie Dodgeball, it aired
Speaker 2: on the OCHO Network. So it became a thing where
Speaker 2: ESPN would talk about the OHO for like really third
Speaker 2: tier sports, and then they started doing it, and now
Speaker 2: this will be the ninth year in a row where
Speaker 2: they have they set aside, I think three days of
Speaker 2: programming on the O Show for all these sports that
Speaker 2: you know aren't aren't really sports that I mean. They've
Speaker 2: got everything from paintball, which is kind.
Speaker 1: Of a sport. There's somebody I've had some great times
Speaker 1: playing paintball.
Speaker 8: I was gonna ask if you guys, have you ever
Speaker 8: been shot with one of those.
Speaker 2: I've never done paper and over again, which is surprising
Speaker 2: you have, Joe, I've never done paintball.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you remember. I used to do it with
Speaker 1: my son in sun River, Oregon out in the woods. Uh,
Speaker 1: just a big wooded field of play, Katie. It was fin. So.
Speaker 8: I grew up in a canyon, and so all the
Speaker 8: guys that lived near us in our housing community, we
Speaker 8: would go into the canyon and we'd hide behind the trees.
Speaker 1: Oh soh of last, go paintballing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my son's super into it. Uh, but they have
Speaker 2: all kinds.
Speaker 1: How much time I got.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the slippery stairs competition is, but
Speaker 2: that sounds like something I would like to watch.
Speaker 8: Oh, they put soap on inflatable stairs and you have
Speaker 8: to try to awesome.
Speaker 1: What is extreme archery? Yikes?
Speaker 2: They do for the kids. They do, of course, have dodgeball.
Speaker 2: They have a pillow fight competition. They have a mullet competition.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that's a sport. They have diving chests.
Speaker 2: You have to dive down deep into the water the
Speaker 2: chessboards on the bottom, move your piece, then come back.
Speaker 1: Up for air. Among other things.
Speaker 2: Wow, robot fighting, yes, the foot golf you only use
Speaker 2: your feet.
Speaker 1: Wow. Uh.
Speaker 2: There's a million of bike polo, world action and knife
Speaker 2: throwing that sounds good. I don't know what banana ball is,
Speaker 2: coffin wars. Don't know what that is either, tire wrestling
Speaker 2: that sounds good, big boy soap hockey.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 2: Tire wrestling, uh huh, but that's on the OCHO. Look
Speaker 2: for that over the next several days. Sounds like this
Speaker 2: sort of thing. If you sat there drunk, you could
Speaker 2: have a really, really good time.
Speaker 1: Well belated Happy birthday too, medicare celebrating it's what was it,
Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday yesterday? Jack sixty seventh, sixtieth sixtieth, Yes.
Speaker 2: Lindon Mains Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law sixty
Speaker 2: years ago this week. It has cost us many, many
Speaker 2: trillions of dollars and not sure it's done anybody any
Speaker 2: good at all?
Speaker 1: How do you like?
Speaker 9: That?
Speaker 1: Reminds me of the old Internet meme, how it started,
Speaker 1: how it's going. Yeah, and we'll talk to Craig the
Speaker 1: healthcare guru about that next, among other fair shouldn't you
Speaker 1: for all those trillions of dollars have amazing successful results
Speaker 1: or at least some successful results for tens of trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars. Are you asking about a government program or
Speaker 1: like anything else on earth? And nobody program different stand,
Speaker 1: nobody's talking about it anyway. We will coming up Armstrong
Speaker 1: and Getty.
Speaker 2: We're about to have our healthcare experts. Craig gotwalls on.
Speaker 2: I'll bet he could do this so on the OCHO network.
Speaker 2: One of the sports that they have on the OCHO
Speaker 2: this weekend, the Microsoft Excel World Championship Finals. I'll bet
Speaker 2: Craig would be good at that. Just wow, sort of
Speaker 2: person that excels at excel. So we're talking about Medicare
Speaker 2: and Medicaid. It's the sixty year anniversary of it being
Speaker 2: signed into law. Listen to this stat will you? And
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal was writing about this the other day.
Speaker 2: It's why we decided to have Craig on, because he's
Speaker 2: an expert in this. We have spent in this country.
Speaker 4: Forty five trillion.
Speaker 1: Dollars since nineteen sixty five on these two with out
Speaker 1: evidence of effectiveness, without any evidence that it's done anybody
Speaker 1: any good. Forty five trillion dollars. And to prepare for
Speaker 1: the chat, I've been flipping through every headline I can
Speaker 1: find over the last several days about Medicare and Medicaid
Speaker 1: turning sixty and they are either glowingly positive yep. Or
Speaker 1: they talk about the savage, brutal, inhumane cuts that the
Speaker 1: big beautiful Bill is going to enact for every single
Speaker 1: one that came up in my gig gig Google search,
Speaker 1: so to discuss that in other fair, please welcome to
Speaker 1: the Armstrong and Getty Show once again. Craig got Walls.
Speaker 1: Craig the healthcare guru attorney, law benefit consultant, Benefit Revolution. Craig,
Speaker 1: how are you, sir?
Speaker 7: I'm good, gentlemen.
Speaker 1: How are you a Paul? Just terrific? Well, he's a Paul.
Speaker 1: I'm terrific. So back to the internet meme. How did
Speaker 1: it begin or how did it start? How's it going?
Speaker 1: What was the idea in the first place?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so, well, if you just medicaid, which is the
Speaker 7: element that was designed to cover the lowest income amongst us,
Speaker 7: those that were the most downtrodden, that needed the most help,
Speaker 7: that was designed to cover two percent of the American population.
Speaker 7: You can go back to the congressional record and you
Speaker 7: can see it clearly written. This is this is just
Speaker 7: a safety net, folks. This is what we this is
Speaker 7: what we have to do at the bare minimum to
Speaker 7: cover the most downtrodden amongst us. Well, it now covers
Speaker 7: four out of ten babies born.
Speaker 1: Well, that's because the standard of living is declined so
Speaker 1: much in the last fifty years. Oh no, it's actually
Speaker 1: quite the opposite. Go on, Craig.
Speaker 7: Sorry, well, yeah, and that's just medicaid. When you combine
Speaker 7: Medicare and Medicaid together, you'll see waste fraud and abuse
Speaker 7: studies that range from twenty five to thirty five percent
Speaker 7: across the board within those systems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another thing is from the one article that
Speaker 2: maybe a third of it we're spending about a trillion
Speaker 2: dollars year, about a.
Speaker 1: Third of it is waste.
Speaker 2: I don't want to now you put you on the
Speaker 2: spot because you're not a historian. But like backing up
Speaker 2: even another step, what brought about the legislation that LBJ
Speaker 2: signed in the law sixty years ago this week? There
Speaker 2: was there a real feeling in this country that you know,
Speaker 2: people weren't getting medical care and falling through the cracks or.
Speaker 1: What drove it?
Speaker 7: No, honestly, Jack, it's a perversion of the tax code.
Speaker 7: So you know, like third party insurance started in the
Speaker 7: twenties and thirties. You know, you'd have a little policy
Speaker 7: that you bought just for hospital services. But then what
Speaker 7: happened in World War Two was we put wage freezes on,
Speaker 7: but companies still looked for ways to recruit employees. So
Speaker 7: they couldn't do it with wages, so they started to
Speaker 7: do it with healthcare. Oh interesting, and the government said,
Speaker 7: you know what, that's a good idea. We like you
Speaker 7: buying health care for your workers. So we're not going
Speaker 7: to tax you on anything you buy healthcare wise, well,
Speaker 7: just like everything else, right, just like with with our
Speaker 7: college tuition. Once you have this tremendous tax break going on,
Speaker 7: this thing just blew up. From about nineteen forty through
Speaker 7: nineteen sixty, it just took off, and then the government
Speaker 7: expansion of it was just the next logical step. You've
Speaker 7: got crony capitalism going on, let's get the government involved too.
Speaker 7: And to the point now where you know it's it's
Speaker 7: literally to the point in blue states where taxpayers fund
Speaker 7: seventy one percent of all healthcare, and in the country
Speaker 7: nationally it's sixty seven percent of all health care.
Speaker 1: Wow, we don't want socialized medicine, everybody says, yeah, we
Speaker 1: have it to a large extent.
Speaker 2: Well, So the headline I've been quoting all week long
Speaker 2: from the Wall Street General opinion piece that we've spent
Speaker 2: forty five trillion dollars without substantial evidence of effectiveness?
Speaker 1: Is that overstated or does that sound about right to you?
Speaker 7: It's close to right. I think it's a little overstated.
Speaker 7: I think the number is closer to thirty trillion, But
Speaker 7: I mean, you know who's counting at the point that that, yeah,
Speaker 7: it's you know what. The one that you'd run into
Speaker 7: pushback out here in the industry is with Medicare. So
Speaker 7: if you tried to peel Medicare back, you'd have I mean,
Speaker 7: just you know, right left and center, you'd have just
Speaker 7: absolute mutiny on your hands of the oldsters saying I
Speaker 7: paid into it for all these years. You can't peel
Speaker 7: it back. And I will say that when you look
Speaker 7: at the studies on the efficacy of the programs, it's
Speaker 7: pretty clear that Medicaid isn't able to show that it
Speaker 7: causes any better health outcomes. And part of that's because
Speaker 7: of lifestyle of people that are on Medicaid, the longer
Speaker 7: wait times, et cetera. But Medicare it's a much more
Speaker 7: mixed record where you know, there might actually be some
Speaker 7: benefit to Medicare.
Speaker 2: But listen to what you just said, there might be
Speaker 2: some benefit. We're spending a trillion dollars a year on
Speaker 2: these programs, and the best you can do is say
Speaker 2: there might be some benefit.
Speaker 7: Well, cobbling them both together, Jack, it's like one one
Speaker 7: and three quarter trillion a year when you act them
Speaker 7: all together. But yes, so because if you were to
Speaker 7: fund your own health care outside of Medicare, if you
Speaker 7: were to completely be a free market system where you
Speaker 7: had a relationship with a doctor and you funded your own,
Speaker 7: I think it's really clear that your outcomes would be better,
Speaker 7: you'd be more invested in it, you'd have a better
Speaker 7: a more personal relationship. So that now if you were
Speaker 7: to say, well, it's either Medicare or nothing. Either I'm
Speaker 7: going to have a Medicare doctor, I'm going to have nothing, well,
Speaker 7: then it's also it's pretty clear that Medicare is better
Speaker 7: than nothing. But surely that's a tough choice, you see.
Speaker 1: So one of the most interesting things we've learned from
Speaker 1: you through the year's Craig, Oh, before I get to that,
Speaker 1: it is true, is it not that there are now healthy,
Speaker 1: working age single men on Medicaid?
Speaker 7: Yes, And then that was yeah. I wanted to circle
Speaker 7: back to that in your intro because you know, the
Speaker 7: one big beautiful bill that the draconian requirement is that
Speaker 7: you now have to either volunteer or take a class
Speaker 7: for at least eighty hours a month to remain on Medicaid.
Speaker 7: That's this horrible draconian requirement we put in for able
Speaker 7: bodied humans.
Speaker 2: Right, which I understand is pretty easy to game. You know,
Speaker 2: you have a friend or something that signed some paperwork
Speaker 2: that claims you volunteer.
Speaker 7: And so of course I was teaching a class at
Speaker 7: a university during the pandemic, and we had something similar
Speaker 7: that came through the pandemic where if you took a class,
Speaker 7: you got an extra amount of unemployment effectively, and the
Speaker 7: class quadrupled in size from what it normally was, and
Speaker 7: you just had people sitting there, not even doing the work,
Speaker 7: so they could just check the box that they attended
Speaker 7: and get there and get their gum and cheese.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like when I was trying to hire babysitters
Speaker 2: through one of the most popular websites in the country
Speaker 2: and nobody would ever like respond, and somebody finally told me, no, no,
Speaker 2: that's just so they can fill out their paperwork showing
Speaker 2: they're looking for a job that qualifies you for variety
Speaker 2: of things.
Speaker 1: They don't want the job.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: I with a number of client employers in the same
Speaker 7: situation where you just I've literally walked into one of
Speaker 7: my clients in a rural county and there's people standard
Speaker 7: charge get their app pajamas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you repeat that? You glitched out?
Speaker 7: Oh, I'm sorry. I was one of my clients in
Speaker 7: a rural county that they get a lot of applicants,
Speaker 7: they have a lot of turnover. I showed up there
Speaker 7: one day and there's all these there's all these employe
Speaker 7: potential employees lined up to get their application of HR
Speaker 7: and some of them are literally standing there in their pajamas.
Speaker 7: They don't want the job, they just want to check
Speaker 7: the box.
Speaker 1: God dang it. That's the problem with socialism. People find workarounds, right,
Speaker 1: Which brings me to my greater question, back to one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting things we've learned from you, Craig,
Speaker 1: and and it go. It has to do with the
Speaker 1: utterly bizarre, complex and perverse way a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff is funded. And I know a lot of those healthy,
Speaker 1: you know, working age males on medicator on it because
Speaker 1: of the perverse incentives enacted during Obamacare, and god, you
Speaker 1: get to the provider taxes and hospital taxes. It's probably
Speaker 1: too much for what we're going to do here today,
Speaker 1: but the compensation rates for doctors and hospitals for for Medicaid,
Speaker 1: for instance, is a fraction of the cost. How does
Speaker 1: that work?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's gotten so complicated now, Joe, And that's right. Like,
Speaker 7: on average, a physician or a hospital is reimbursed less
Speaker 7: than their cost, something like eighty percent of their actual
Speaker 7: rock cost just to provide surgeries and facilities. So then
Speaker 7: what happens is there's additional taxes built into the system,
Speaker 7: primarily on employer sponsored plans that get funneled back to
Speaker 7: the hospitals on the back end to make sure that
Speaker 7: they're made whole. Well, of course, this is nothing more
Speaker 7: than a hidden tax on our employer plans, such that
Speaker 7: we're paying three hundred percent of what Medicare pays for
Speaker 7: certain services because of the fact that Medicaid pays like
Speaker 7: eighty percent of what Medicare pays for certain services.
Speaker 1: Which enables Congress to get away with not using honest
Speaker 1: numbers to fund the programs. They stick it to everybody
Speaker 1: with private insurance. And I would I would guess fewer
Speaker 1: than ten percent of Americans understand that that is going on, Dahl.
Speaker 7: I probably even fewer than that. It's such a it
Speaker 7: took me years in the industry to even figure it out,
Speaker 7: to follow the money around to all the different convoluted stops.
Speaker 7: It makes just to see that that's what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no way ten percent of people understand that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. Gotline. Yeah, go ahead, Craig.
Speaker 7: I was gonna say, just because they keep in mind
Speaker 7: twenty nine percent of us have private healthcare are that
Speaker 7: are greatly funding these underpayments and this system on the
Speaker 7: back end.
Speaker 1: I think it's damned interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah that Joe did a little search on the news stories,
Speaker 2: and of course every stories I've seen is like this too.
Speaker 2: It's either a glowing isn't it fantastic that this happened?
Speaker 1: Or neutral.
Speaker 2: But there's certainly outside of that Wall Street Journal opinion
Speaker 2: piece that I came across, anybody pointing out this has
Speaker 2: cost us a lot of money for very little good.
Speaker 7: Yeah, No, that's right. And it it just it just
Speaker 7: goes to show once you get something away, you can
Speaker 7: never peel it back. Because even in even in my industry,
Speaker 7: I've had I've had coworkers that have been in this
Speaker 7: industry for years asked me, Hey, what's this? What are
Speaker 7: these terrible draconian cuts gonna do with Medicaid? What's that?
Speaker 1: Anything, he's gone. You got tired of us? So and
Speaker 1: who can blame him? So? Uh, Craig is available. He's
Speaker 1: actually doing some amazing stuff on uh for companies and
Speaker 1: individuals to design their own health plan and not pay
Speaker 1: insurance companies.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: We'll have a link at Armstrong and getty dot com
Speaker 1: to Craig's substack. Again, that's Armstrong and getty dot com
Speaker 1: under hotlinks and.
Speaker 2: A frustrating note that seems to be weaving its way
Speaker 2: through our Friday show, which is not good.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be frustrated on Friday.
Speaker 2: But here is the biggest driver of our debt that
Speaker 2: we've got in all of government, your Medicare Medicaid thing.
Speaker 2: And it's a sixty anniversary and you can't get a
Speaker 2: debate going over how good is it or how good
Speaker 2: is it not? Or could it be improved or tweaked?
Speaker 2: Or is it a disaster?
Speaker 1: No, none of that, no national debate about that at all.
Speaker 1: Just sixty years ago today, fairy dust angels of the
Speaker 1: dropped down, free healthcare for the down drodden. Isn't it wonderful?
Speaker 1: In other news? And then the mean Orange man is
Speaker 1: trying to end it? Yeah, and this stuff. We were
Speaker 1: discussing about compensation rates and how Congress passes laws. When
Speaker 1: they pass, you know, the laws that brought us these things,
Speaker 1: or continue to fund it, they will say, and of course,
Speaker 1: will increase the taxes and the compensation to physicians year
Speaker 1: after year after year to fund this. But then it
Speaker 1: would be politically really unpopular to increase those taxes, and
Speaker 1: so they say, yeah, yeah, never mind about that, which
Speaker 1: increases the gulf between costs and inflow of revenue more
Speaker 1: and more and more every single year, and you know,
Speaker 1: requiring it, you know, in requiring the government to stick
Speaker 1: private tax payers or private insurance people with more and
Speaker 1: more of the cost without admitting to what's happening. So
Speaker 1: there's this enormous dishonesty. And perhaps if everybody understood what's
Speaker 1: going on, we had some honesty, we could have an
Speaker 1: argument in which lefties would call for very high taxes
Speaker 1: and there should be no billionaires and we need universal
Speaker 1: health care, and that's fine. We can have that disagreement
Speaker 1: and then vote on it. That's what we do around here.
Speaker 1: But the fact is, nobody knows what the facts are.
Speaker 1: It's so shrouded in mystery.
Speaker 2: So we have figured out why Katy Perry and Justin
Speaker 2: Trudeau are a romantic couple. The answer is there and
Speaker 2: it's pretty obvious once you hear it. Among other things
Speaker 2: we've got on the way, stay here.
Speaker 10: The longest lightning bolt ever on record, as signed US
Speaker 10: have now earned. A single lightning bolt stretching five hundred
Speaker 10: and fifteen miles across three states Texas to Missouri was
Speaker 10: back in twenty seventeen, now confirmed. The megaflash covered the
Speaker 10: distance in a little more than just seven seconds.
Speaker 2: The longest light bolt lightning bolt. I don't know how
Speaker 2: they measured that exactly, but seen by many, many people
Speaker 2: across the Midwest. That's kind of exciting measure is that
Speaker 2: climate change? Is that something to be worried about? Yes,
Speaker 2: this story, if you haven't seen the video is getting
Speaker 2: lots of attention.
Speaker 1: If you've seen the video, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 9: The terrifying moment a rod in an amusement park started
Speaker 9: losing control. The rod in Saudi Arabia, going back and
Speaker 9: forth with for it appears to come loose and then
Speaker 9: it just splits in half. Many of those people, as
Speaker 9: you can imagine, we're seriously hurt. With some hospitals nearby
Speaker 9: declaring a state of emergency. The exact number of people
Speaker 9: hurt and what went wrong is still unclear.
Speaker 1: Holy crap, have you seen that video?
Speaker 2: Plus plus They show it over and over and over
Speaker 2: in slow motions so that you can like individually look
Speaker 2: at each person and see did their arm break? Did
Speaker 2: their foot get cut off? Because it's yes, Katie.
Speaker 8: It's it's one of those pendulum rides that swings, and
Speaker 8: it swings all the way to the top, and then
Speaker 8: the band that it is on just snaps and the
Speaker 8: whole part that all the people are on slams all
Speaker 8: the way to the ground.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh that would have been a terrifying half
Speaker 2: a moment before. And then you land and think, is
Speaker 2: my neck broken?
Speaker 1: Geez? That looked like quite the jolt.
Speaker 8: And that's the day you decide to never go on
Speaker 8: a ride again.
Speaker 1: And then the woman running the thing runs away. Is
Speaker 1: it's crashing?
Speaker 2: The woman running the thing, it's Saudi Arabia is wearing
Speaker 2: the full beekeepers outfit where she's just looking through the
Speaker 2: little slit.
Speaker 1: That's that and that what an interesting thing that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're one of the I don't know, wife,
Speaker 2: slave people that they have in Saudi Arabia, not allowed
Speaker 2: to cover, allow anything to be seen except your eyeballs
Speaker 2: while you run the crappily put together right at the carnival.
Speaker 1: I'm in favor of Carne's being forced to cover themselves,
Speaker 1: that's true. Get can we get that going around here?
Speaker 1: I'd like to see nothing but your eyeballs and you
Speaker 1: could wear sunglasses if you want. Yeah, that's horrifying, terrible.
Speaker 1: Oh jeez, here's a funny thing I came across. So
Speaker 1: I mentioned yesterday that Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau, the
Speaker 1: former Prime Minister of Canada, seemed to be a thing.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Astronaut Katy Perry, I keep I keep not
Speaker 1: throwing in that descriptor because they're lesbians. Yeah, today's today's
Speaker 1: hottest lesbian couple. I'm Katy Perry. Let's got a spat.
Speaker 2: So astronaut Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are a romantic item.
Speaker 2: And it was pointed out on Mark Alpern's video last night.
Speaker 2: It is the most romantic Trump derangement story ever.
Speaker 1: And that exactly what's going on. Obviously, that's what driver,
Speaker 1: it's the I have to be pro Canada with Justin
Speaker 1: Trudeau and make a big show of it and everything
Speaker 1: like that, how much we hate America and moving to
Speaker 1: Canada and.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah that whole world is that. Isn't that fantastic?
Speaker 2: A romantic Trump derangement syndrome story?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: I remember the famous audio from uh the Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: victory party there about Katy Perry's crying, Righty Gaga's crying.
Speaker 1: On a slightly serious note about politics, New York Times
Speaker 1: and political reporting today that Donald Trump is raising money
Speaker 1: in an unprecedented at an unprecedented clip for lame duck.
Speaker 1: Usually he's a lame duck. He can't raise any money.
Speaker 1: He wants to give money to somebodyho's about to be
Speaker 1: out of office. But the president's primary super pac brought in
Speaker 1: on an unbelievable one hundred and seventy seven million dollars
Speaker 1: in the first half of the year, and it's leadership
Speaker 1: pack raised twenty eight million dollars. Nobody's ever seen anything
Speaker 1: like this before. Yeah, that's something for a lame duck.
Speaker 1: Great stuff.
Speaker 2: Two hundred million dollars total in the first six months,
Speaker 2: with people expecting him to still have power.
Speaker 1: I guess. As I've said a thousand times, Donald J.
Speaker 1: Makes me insane in a lot of ways, But man,
Speaker 1: is he making great progress on some fronts the border,
Speaker 1: you know, most notably, and rolling back the climate cult.
Speaker 1: Great stuff on that next hour. Hope you can stay
Speaker 1: with us, Armstrong and Getty