Best of the Program | Guest: Dr. Marty Makary | 9/16/19

Hello and welcome to the podcast.

It's Glenn, along with my trusty sidekick.

I like to call him Toronto, mainly because he's a Canadian sports hero, but a

sad sports hero today.

Just wanted to mention the Eagles, Eagles, Eagles, Eagles.

Lose, lose, lose.

Just it hurts, it's painful, but I appreciate you bringing it up.

Yeah, all right.

Today, we're going to talk about the biggest serial killer in American history, and he was just found last week.

Why haven't you heard about him?

Also, Pat joins us.

We have some really incredible stories today about a family that are

just trying to get their kids home and a really uplifting story about two football players in high school that have helped a kid by giving him new clothes.

Wait until you hear that.

And Saudi Arabia, oil, are we going to war?

That all in context and the price we pay at our hospitals, all on today's budget.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

2,246 dead people,

all on the property of this 78-year-old man who had been killing these people.

This is a new story.

It is in Illinois.

His name is Ulrich Klopfer.

Now, how is it that this story broke on Thursday?

No red flags on this guy?

I mean,

he was in a small town.

He was in Gary, Fort Wayne, and South Bend, Indiana.

South Bend, Indiana.

You probably haven't heard his name,

at least linked to mass murder, because he was an abortion doctor.

And his industry is defended tooth and nail by the press and by the left.

Now, here's Dr.

Klopfer.

He did have his medical license suspended three years ago.

Three years ago.

The guy was 78, by the way, when he died.

Three years ago, he had his license suspended for failing to exercise reasonable care and violating several notice and documentation requirements.

You see, he was neglecting to report abortions he performed on two girls under 14.

And it probably was just an oversight, I'm sure.

I mean, what's a couple of 14-year-old girls when you've killed thousands of kids?

Just another day at the office.

Now, just like Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia butcher, whom the media was pleased to ignore,

Dr.

Klopfer's backyard mort

had 2,246 babies that will remain mostly anonymous, at least on a national scale.

I want you to think about this.

Here's a guy who was performing these abortions at home.

He had a suspended license.

Imagine, imagine if there was somebody

who had a suspended concealed carry and just killed 10 people.

Imagine what the media would be saying.

Democratic Party has made it an airtight part of its platform, defending a woman's right to kill her unborn child even seconds before birth, even after birth.

No matter what they're saying now, as we pointed out last week,

what they said

was killing the child after birth.

And it's happening.

It's a brave and righteous path.

Shout your abortion.

Democrats will scream for justice for any persecuted group on the planet, including the animal kingdom, except for one,

the unborn.

During the testimony before the Indiana Medical Licensing Board three years ago, which had this guy's license revoked, it was revealed that Dr.

Klopfer had performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who had been raped by her uncle.

Klopfer, who is required by law to report it, did not report it.

Instead, he sent the child home with her parents who knew about the abuse but refused to prosecute.

This guy was an expert.

He began performing abortions in 1973, right after Roe v.

Wade.

He was described by a Fort Wayne, Indiana paper as

likely Indiana's most prolific abortion doctor in history, with numbers going into the tens of thousands of procedures in multiple counties over several decades.

The testimony during his medical board hearing revealed that he had been using the same abortion and sedation procedures since 1973.

He only gave pain medication to women under 16 years old or to those who could pay extra.

This seems safe and rare, doesn't it?

He didn't have staff on hand to monitor the women he did sedate or to help during emergencies.

Yet he boasted to the panel that he had never lost a patient in 43 years of performing abortions.

Well,

it depends on who the patient is.

Over the year at his abortion clinics, inspectors found multiple consent form violations in which abortions were performed on women within an hour of signing their consent form rather than waiting the 18 hours between consent and procedure as required by law.

Imagine we have a three-day waiting period, and somebody only waited two days for it, and then used their power to kill, to mutilate, and keep the bodies.

Imagine what would be said.

They also found an unsanitized medical instrument, a whole group of them, and staffers who took home the soil linen to wash.

A refrigerator meant for medication storage contained a two-month-old abortion specimen, otherwise known as a child.

A clinic staffer explained that they were waiting for the remains to be picked up by a

detective investigating a rape case.

How could you get rid of so many bodies?

The total blindness of abortion defenders is incredible.

This is the kind of help that you're fine with?

We found two of these monsters in the last couple of years.

Two.

Not one.

Two.

And you're comfortable with this?

All of us at the Whole Women's Health Alliance are shocked by the news.

We are proud to serve a community with high-quality abortion care services that respect the dignity of women and families.

Really?

This guy's been there for 43 years.

He buried almost 2,500 children in his backyard.

They're shocked by this news?

Stockpiling baby parts, and you're shocked by it.

Nobody said anything?

By the way, only a local news station has reached out in South Bend to Mayor Pete Buddhaj.

He hasn't commented on it.

There's no response.

His office must be scrambling to figure out how to be outraged by the discovery of these bodies, yet continue to defend abortion.

The mental gymnastics can't be easy, but then again, he's the guy who said a lot of parts of the Bible talk about how life begins with breath.

Holy cow.

I guess that makes

this makes Dr.

Klopfer's sick trophy collection totally okay with so many people.

Today, I just want to spend a few minutes on the crazy things that the left is paying attention to.

Crazy, crazy things.

They say the greatest threat to lives in America today is climate change.

And when it's not climate change, it's guns.

But Dr.

Klopfer's collection of over 2,200 preserved bodies of aborted babies,

which is more than three times the number of Americans killed by shootings on school campuses since 1973.

Those 22 babies, just a fraction of the estimated 50,000-plus abortions that he performed during his life, and that's just one doctor in one state.

How many more of them have little collections of their own?

Were these 2,200 children special to him in some reason?

Is he collecting them because maybe

these were the abortions that he really wanted to shout, that he was so proud of?

2,200 Trophies.

If the left is truly concerned about mass killings of children,

we live in a crazy world.

A crazy world.

We are

possibly, and I don't think so, because

I think Donald Trump may be exactly the right president to have with the world itching for war.

I don't, I just can't see him going to war with Iran, and I thank God for that.

But boy, is Iran itching for a war with us.

With all of the things that are going on, the oil situation alone, it's up 20 bucks today.

Why?

Because Saudi Arabia

had a drone strike on one of their biggest oil fields

and has shut down oil production of about 5% of the world's oil.

That's significant.

And

it looks like Iran was behind it.

Now they say it was the Houthis, but

where are they getting a drone?

And really

they're funded by Iran.

Really?

Do you really think they're just like, you know what?

We're Houthis.

Let's just do it.

We don't care.

Let's just go on our own.

We'll have more on that coming up in just a few minutes.

But this is crazy.

Crazy.

Then you have Betto.

Can we play the Betto who says he's been talking to Texans?

I'd like to know who these Texans are.

Listen to this.

We are proud of gun ownership, but responsible gun ownership that would never entail threatening somebody with that firearm.

And so using guns to hunt or for self-defense makes a lot of sense to us here in Texas.

But having a weapon of war, and even from those Texans who own AR-15s, they've told me this themselves.

I don't need this.

I don't need it to hunt.

I don't need it to protect myself.

It was fun to use.

I like taking it out to the range.

But if giving this back or cutting it to pieces or selling it to the government helps to keep us safer, then by all means, let's do it because they'll tell me.

I have kids in school as well.

And they ask me whether it's a matter of when or if

a killer is going to come into their school and take the lives of their fellow students or take their kids' lives.

Wow.

So would that killer be the guy who wants to give up the gun?

I mean, because why would the guy who's giving up the gun, you know, if this is going to help, this is going to help?

Because I know it's just a matter of, it's not even, it's not even if, it's when I know a killer is going to come into my kids' school.

That would,

if I knew that that was true,

I would be there with my gun waiting.

I would be demanding that the school has armed personnel around.

You know this is going to happen.

And so what do you do?

You, as a law-abiding citizen, give your gun away or cut it up?

How does that make sense at all?

Right.

You're basically admitting you're worried about you committing a mass shooting.

Right.

Right.

You could say, like, I want everyone else's ban, but I want to keep mine because I know I'm safe, right?

Like, that is a progressive position, right?

Everyone else is going to be the bad guy, but I'm okay.

These people are apparently coming to him saying, like, I'm actually the problem.

Because the only way that you selling your gun back to the the government is going to make the world safer is if you were going to use this gun in a terrible way.

Let me ask you, Stu, how many people, how many Texans, Texans that own an AR,

a weapon of war?

You've already decided to do that.

Think about the person who's that profile.

It is one of the most popular sporting rifles in America, but not every liberal is going to buy them, right?

These are people who care.

It's not the first gun you buy either, right?

It's a gun that you buy.

I mean, what is there?

How many million?

It might be a, there's 20 million, eight.

20 million.

I was going to say 15, but you have a 20 million.

So 20 million is, again,

it's the most popular modern sporting rifle, but not nearly the most popular gun in America.

If you're a gun owner, it's typically not the first gun you go out and buy.

You have to probably like guns.

You like going to the range, like shooting them.

Not necessarily going to be some hardcore anti-gun.

person that would ever do that.

So these people have already made the decision to go buy an AR-15 and are now telling Beto, you know what?

You're right.

I can't wait to turn this thing in because, gosh, you never know when I'll just go into a school and start shooting it.

That is a weird person.

That's a person that, let me help you with this, doesn't exist.

This is a person.

In California, maybe.

In California, maybe.

I think it's more of a thing where people tell you what you want to hear.

Now, giving,

besides the fact that he's obviously making a lot of this up, right?

Like, first off, straight up lying, right?

He's just making up people that don't exist when he comes to these large numbers.

But has somebody in line at an event told him this?

It's possible.

That doesn't mean that you should believe them.

Hang on just a second.

We're talking about Betto.

Have you heard his new song?

Is it a new campaign music?

No.

Yeah, go ahead and play it.

Okay, go ahead.

Okay.

All right.

So is he playing this himself?

No, he's got a little monkey that's playing it now.

Yeah, it's really kind of cool.

So I want to take him dead seriously here on what you're saying.

He really is at the point where it's just like, what?

What's the issue of the day?

Okay, what's the craziest thing I can say?

Okay, take that, triple it, and let me go make a state.

It is absolutely

circus.

He is.

He's like, look at me, look at me, look at me.

Please look at me.

Please.

First of all, anybody who started, we could stop it.

Anybody who started

their campaign with saying to the people,

I'll be whoever you need me to be.

Tell me who you need me to be.

And he's proving that today.

Right.

I mean, this is, he's seeing, well, I'm not getting, I didn't get any traction with with trying to be the sensible one here.

So let me go further than everyone else and see if that one works.

Because at least at the end of the day, I can get a nice,

you know, I can be on MSNBC.

When this thing falls apart, I can go to a think tank.

Completely

meaningless.

Oh, I agree.

I agree.

But you see the media totally embracing him now that he's taking all these crazy stances, right?

But I mean, but nobody else is.

The media might, but nobody else is.

But like, how many times have we had this call from someone in the audience?

Hi, lifelong Republican or lifelong Democrat, voted Democrat every single time, but this one time on the election that's coming up is the time I'm changing.

There are people, obviously, who are lifelong Democrats and have switched on every election we've ever covered.

However, all those people seem to find their way to call us right before the election.

And it makes me believe,

as we found out recently with reports among Democrats, where

seminar callers.

Democrats actually did have a program in the 90s with Hillary Clinton.

This just came out.

It's in his museum.

The Clinton Museum has the documents showing that they actually did recruit people to call into talk shows to make their points and try to sound like they were average, everyday people.

I've always been with you guys, always.

But this time,

I got to give up my gun.

I got to give up my gun because it just makes total sense.

But let me tell you something: I used to hunt lions, I used to hunt tame lions.

I hunted lions in the zoo,

and how I'd hunt them is I would shoot innocent elephants that would fall on the lion.

But now,

this one time, I got to give up my guns.

I got to give up because it just makes sense.

The best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

President Trump said the United States is, quote, locked and loaded and prepared to respond.

But I don't think he wants to go to war.

This president is not looking to go to war.

The Iranians know this.

The press knows this, but they're not saying that.

Iran first attacked our oil tankers, then shot down one of our drones.

Now they've attacked Saudi Arabia, shutting off 5% of the global oil supply.

Things are going to get worse.

Now, here's why.

Iran wants sanctions relief.

That's not a secret.

We are crippling them economically because they are going for nuclear weapons.

The minute they get nuclear weapons, we have to deal with these crazy people like we deal with Kim Jong-un.

There are no good options.

So the President is using every bit of our power that we have to cripple them and

hopefully get them to fall into line or some sort of a regime change that does not come from us, but comes from the people.

The people like the West.

This is a different place in the Middle East.

Now,

my advice to the President would be this.

Just keep your cool and weather the storm.

Let the Saudis respond militarily to the militia that

attacked the Saudi oil refinery.

Do what Israel has

been doing for decades.

Have the Saudis target the militias, destroy the high-tech weaponry they have.

Meanwhile, have the Treasury Department continue to hit the Iranian regime where it hurts the most in their wallets, continue maximum pressure because it is working.

Iran is doing what terrorists do.

They are trying to terrorize the world and scare us.

They are trying to terrorize us and terrorize the world into getting their way.

This attack will not be our last.

But we cannot continue the business of responding with our military every time someone else should be taking care of it themselves.

The Saudis have bought a lot of weapons from us.

Maybe they should start using them themselves.

We should not go to war.

But I want you to understand fully how much the world is changing.

And

I hate to,

well, no, I don't.

I want to give you the history.

of this social revolution, Saudi economics, the politics, and how we're even in bed with them in the first place.

Because Saudi Arabia has played a very key role in keeping our dollar stable.

And I don't know if that's going to last much longer because the world is changing.

So let me give you a bit of history.

At the end of World War II, Europe and Asia, everybody was in shambles except the United States.

The USSR was pressing its military might all across Eastern Europe, and we needed financial stability.

All of the Western allies tied

their currency to the U.S.

dollar, which at the time was backed in gold.

Then the United States and the rest of the West got greedy, and they said there's not enough gold to do all the things we want to do.

And so in 1971, Nixon closed what's called the gold window at the Treasury, which meant if you had a dollar, you could go in and get a dollar's worth of gold.

We were off the gold standard.

But what people didn't know at the time, or most, is that Nixon had a deal with the Saudi royal family.

Your money had to be backed by something.

Otherwise, people, what good would it be?

Why would you need the U.S.

dollar anymore?

In exchange, Saudi Arabia agreed that

they would only accept U.S.

dollars for the purchase of its oil if the United States would provide ongoing military support for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

So we would protect them, and they would make sure that everyone who said, hey, yeah, I'd like to buy a barrel of oil for me, had to do it in U.S.

dollars.

So that is why the U.S.

has the

reserve currency

around the rest of the world.

But that is beginning to change.

However, to this day, 99% of international bank transfers close in U.S.

dollars, and over 92% of all oil purchases occur in U.S.

dollars.

And it's been going this way for 50 years.

We've had an alliance with Saudi Arabia.

We ensure that their borders are safe.

They ensure that the U.S.

dollar is the primary currency used for financial transactions worldwide.

But something happened here in America.

Something big happened.

About 15 years ago, the roughnecks here in Texas, in Colorado, in Utah, North Dakota, Kansas, Kansas, they figured out a new way, a new technique of changing the shale stone that we have

into oil.

Now, shale is oil that long ago dried into rock.

How do you take that rock and turn it back into oil?

Well, the process is called fracking.

Fracking took hundreds of millions of cubic yards of earth and transformed it into energy.

We now have 1.8 trillion barrels of oil here in the United States.

That's enough energy production for more than 1,000 years of U.S.

energy production, including any population growth.

For 1,000 years, we can be energy independent.

So what does that mean?

Well, now that we have the largest oil reserves, oil production from the U.S.

has put a permanent cap on global oil prices unless there's a significant

disruption in global oil supplies.

Prices, they say, now will have a hard time getting over $70 a barrel.

If this would have happened in 2008, the price of oil could have gone up to $200 a barrel.

What are we looking at?

$65 a barrel?

It's up 20%.

Now, this is really significant for Saudi Arabia.

I want you to consider the following.

Because we have the capability,

the U.S.

is keeping oil prices suppressed into the $55, $60 barrel arrangement.

Saudi Arabia is only profitable producing oil at about $80 a barrel.

So what does that mean?

More than 80% of Saudi Arabia's GDP is based in oil and energy production.

For comparison, in the U.S., less than 8% of our GDP relies on energy production.

They're 80.

So a few years ago, Saudi Arabia operated its first budget deficit since the 1950s.

They've been swimming in cash.

It's the only thing that has held that country together because everybody is rich.

But now they can't afford those things.

In 2016, they issued government bonds.

That means they took on government debt for the first time since the 50s to cover the budget shortfalls.

The government is now losing about $12 billion a year and is, you know, has

to raise their debt ceiling to cover those deficits.

In 2017,

Saudi Arabia announced new plans under the crown prince, you remember him, Mohammed bin Salman, to take the Saudi Arabian oil industry, Aramco,

and take it to an IPO.

They were going to modernize everything and they were going to let everybody invest.

But by 2018, that IPO was falling apart.

Oil prices had fallen below $50 a barrel, and the IPO, which they expected to raise nearly $2 trillion,

was failing to receive any bids to raise even $50 billion.

There was one journalist who was out there saying this is crazy.

His plan, the plan that the Crown Prince was pushing was

Vision 2030 for Saudi Arabia.

The guy who was the most outspoken about what he was doing with this IPO and Aramco

was Jamal Khashoggi,

the guy who was murdered in Turkey.

As soon as he was murdered, the IPO was shelved because now nobody wanted to buy anything from Aramco.

So fast forward earlier to this year, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations announced to cut back oil production as a means to raise global prices, and by summer they had succeeded in getting oil prices up to around $65 a barrel.

But we came in and quickly came online and increased global supply to make up for the reduced OPEC production.

We couldn't do that before.

And by August, oil prices were back to $55 to $58 a barrel.

Remember, Saudi oil has got to be about $80 a barrel or they can't afford it.

So what happened three weeks ago?

And then what happened over the weekend?

And what does all of this mean for us in the United States in the future?

We'll continue in one minute.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

You know, I'm so tired of

listening to people who say they're here to help and they're going to fix things when they're not doing anything to actually get down to fixing things.

I know I could get together with, you know, 10 different people who are farmers, most likely, and we could fix a lot of what is wrong with America.

quickly because all it would take is common sense and people just really trying to fix it.

Not doing special interest, anything.

Just how can we make this better?

The Price We Pay, What Broke American Healthcare and How to Fix It, is a new book out, and we have

Marty McCary.

He is a doctor who's done a lot of stuff.

He's written this,

and we wanted to have him on because the Republicans don't seem to have any idea or any intention of fixing healthcare.

Maybe they should pay attention just for a few minutes here.

The price we pay is the book, and

Marty is with us.

Hi, Marty.

How are you?

Hey, Glenn, great to be with you.

Thank you very much.

I'm fascinated by the stories in your book.

There's one in the middle here.

Let me grab this one.

People living in rural states are getting hit the hardest.

Sitting at home in Montana, John felt a stomach cramp one day.

It was a little worse than the belly ache of everyday life.

At his local hospital, the doctors told him, this could be serious.

We're going to transfer you to the big city where they'll take care of you.

Eight hours later, afraid that no other options explained to him, he was wheeled off an elevator and the nurse hit the H button for a helipad.

The helicopter pilot was there, greeted him.

He was loaded on a chopper for a 30-minute ride to the city.

He arrived at the hospital, peppered with medical questions, assigned to wait in an emergency room.

Beds were full.

They placed him on a stretcher in a hall.

He waited several more hours until the hospital's on-call specialist saw him.

He repeated the battery of test, and hours later, explained that John had no real reason to be in the hospital and he could go home.

He was then presented with a bill of $60,000 just for the helicopter.

And that's when he reached out to you.

Tell me what happened, Marty.

Well, what bothers me about these money games, Glenn, is that they are taking advantage of people at a time when they're most vulnerable.

We've lost our mission.

You know, I took on that case, and I've been defending cases on behalf of patients around the country, patients who have been sued to have their paychecks garnished.

I mean, everyday hardworking Americans who already spend a boatload between their taxes at good health care and their health insurance and they work, they've done nothing wrong, and now they're getting assaulted with these bills and hospitals are terrorizing their communities with price gouging.

These money games now threaten the great public trust of American medicine.

And most hospitals were built by churches.

People forget that.

They were there for their communities.

And as a doctor, I just, this has gone too far.

And you talk about a guy who came from France.

He was here, had a mild heart attack.

The American hospital told him it would cost him about $150,000.

They said, we're going to call our doctor in France.

They asked, how much is this in France?

They said, $15,000.

When they told the American hospital that, the American hospital said, oh, well, we can do it for $25,000.

And

it so bothered them that

they were being ripped off, you know, that they would be quoted something, $150,000, that they said, we're going to go to France.

Why is this happening, Marty?

Well, because we have no price transparency.

We don't have real markets in America in healthcare.

I mean, if airlines billed us, Glenn after the flight, can you imagine that?

They'd be gouging us, right?

If you went to Expedia or Travelocity or these sites and there were no prices with flights, guess what they would do?

They would gouge us.

They might argue they can't predict a price because they don't know if we're going to consume a beverage or the flight could be delayed.

And, you know, for 50 years, hospitals have been telling us they can't give us a price.

And we need to demand more transparency.

So I can't show up and mow your lawn and then send you a bill for $4,000.

Yeah,

I don't understand.

And I think it's just because of the healthcare industry itself.

I'm sorry, the insurance industry,

where we haven't been required to shop around, but I don't know why I can't go in and say, hey, I have to have the tonsils removed.

How much is that?

Assuming things are normal.

How much is that?

And I want to go check another hospital and find out how much it is over there.

It's ironic that American university hospitals, like the one I work at, Johns Hopkins, it is the center of scientific genius in America, but we can't give you a price.

And that is starting to change.

I want to let people know there are bright spots, and I highlight the disruptors in this new book.

People like Dr.

Smith at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma posting a menu of prices.

We've already seen three little areas of healthcare move to transparent pricing, and that's IVF therapy, it's LASIC surgery of the eye, and it's some types of cosmetic surgery.

Guess what?

All of those procedures have had a global reduction in prices over time in competitive markets.

LASIC surgery is the quintessential example.

They're operating on your eye.

And

because it is private, the price keeps going down when everything else is going up.

Is there any other reason other than this is just the market?

Well, the politicians, and we're watching it right now with these Democrat candidates running, but you know, it's all all politicians.

They talk really about how to finance our broken health care system.

We need to talk about how to fix it.

And the story that no one is talking about, that we need to talk about, is pricing failures, middlemen, and inappropriate care.

And if we talk about those things, Glenn, I bet you there is broad consensus in the United States, contrary to what cable news would give us, as a false paradigm.

We don't need to just talk about how to finance the broken system.

We need to talk about how to fix it.

Okay, so tell me about prescription drugs, because prescription drugs is something that

everyone will say and even

they'll say that

we're paying too much.

The same people who say the wealthy should pay the lion's share of things have a problem that the wealthiest country on earth pays more than the rest of the world.

Insurance companies will say we won't be able to come up with these drugs if America isn't paying higher prices true false what's the story on that

well um

just like the movie The Big Short took a very complicated industry and broke it down in very simple terms so anybody could understand it that's what I try to do with the middlemen of the pharmacy world for example PBMs are pharmacy benefit managers they're middlemen and they put a gun to the head of pharma and they say look if you want us to carry your drug pay us a play-to-fit play fee.

And those fees or kickbacks are called rebates.

Now, these are not like rebates on cornflakes.

These are middle money games.

And employers can actually choose a PBM that will not play the rebate game.

And businesses across America are getting ripped off on their PBMs.

Every business has a PBM for their employees.

And they're getting ripped off.

And I show how businesses can renegotiate these PBMs because the money games are out of control.

Wait, so how are they getting ripped off?

So a broker will typically sell a pharmacy plan or a PBM plan to a business, just like they sell health insurance to a business.

Those brokers get 5% flat commission and kickbacks, some of which are undisclosed, and then they're selling these products that price gouged the employers because the PBMs are charging the employer and the employee through a copay for the drug.

Well, the employers aren't keeping track.

They don't know the names and doses of these drugs, so the employers get gouged.

And that is the game of the PBMs.

We're the only country in the world that has PBMs.

We didn't have them 30 years ago.

That's why you're seeing insulin spike in price.

And drugs that have been around for 50 years are now suddenly expensive and sometimes in shortage because we've given market dominance through these pay-to-play kickbacks.

So, what should Washington be doing?

Well, we saw Secretary Azar and the current administration propose that all these rebates or kickbacks have to be passed through 100% to the patient.

The swamp of the special interests crushed that proposal.

It got no support on Capitol Hill.

And I think people need to hear from everyday listeners out there.

The members of Congress are hearing from all the stakeholders in healthcare who are all, trust me, making a ton of money, except for one, the patient.

So we need to ban kickbacks in healthcare.

We need to get rid of secrecy.

And I think it's that simple.

It's like a pothole.

It's not a blue, red, Democrat,

Republican issue.

When there's a pothole, it's a matter of competence.

It's a matter of understanding how things work.

And I think there's broad consensus.

How much worse are things going to be if we go to some universal system?

Well, we have a new study out today, Glenn, that is published in.

I wrote a piece in USA Today showing that our new study from Johns Hopkins shows that we spend as a on a federal level of all federal spending in the United States by the federal government, forty-eight percent of all spending is going to health care right now in all of its hidden forms.

Okay, it's crazy.

Think about that next time you fire filed your taxes.

And so what is this Medicare for all

what are these people proposing we increase increase that to?

70, 90 percent?

People forget it's not just our federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid.

It's people are using their social security checks now for their Medicare copays.

We have a giant VA health system.

The Defense Department has a health care system.

And we pay health insurance benefits for 9 million federal workers and their families and retirees.

And interest on the debt is in part interest on the health care spending debt.

So half of our federal spending right now is going to health care.

We don't need to just pour more money into this.

We need to cut the waste.

Look, we all want health care for everybody in America.

Who doesn't want that?

But pouring more money into this broken system is not going to get us there.

We already spend enough money to give everybody gold-plated health care.

We just need to cut the waste.

Doctor, I appreciate the conversation, and I really appreciate the book.

It's really really easy to read.

It makes it very relatable because we all have either been through these stories or

know somebody who has, and I appreciate the way you're looking at this.

The name of the book is The Price We Pay, What Broke American Healthcare and How to Fix It.

You might want to send it to your favorite congressman, senator, or presidential candidate.

Thanks so much, Doc.

Appreciate it.

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