BHS – China Import Tariffs | ‘Medical News’ with Dr. Jim Keany

China only has itself to blame for the trade war. New York counts on post-strike comeback for TV and film production. Jim Keany, Co-Director of the Emergency Room at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany talks with Bill about a new COVID variant, AI recognizing depression, and HEP A, B, and C… what’s the difference?

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. You are
listening to the Bill Handle Show.What is that about? Kno, What
am I missing on that music?What do you mean? China? Trade

(00:25):
war? Oh, star wars?Okay, evil eampire? Okay, I
got it all right. I wasgoing in another direction that still resonates.
Okay, I take that back.Usually you're very good nuts. Sometimes I'm
not really quick enough to put itall together. This is what I think
of when I think of China.Okay, okay, I think of it,

(00:48):
you know, I think of orangechicken. But okay, fair enough,
all right. So yesterday the Presidentannounced eighteen billion dollars in terrists,
protectionist tariffs and Chinese goods that aresold in the United States, the big
one doing being ev cars electric cars, and it was twenty five percent.

(01:10):
In other words, a car comesin twenty five percent. So if a
car is sold to a dealer fortwenty thousand dollars, it goes another twenty
five percent on top of that intaxes in tariffs. Well, he just
raised it to a hundred percent.One hundred percent. Y Well, A

(01:32):
couple of reasons. First of all, China, well, here's something about
China. China used to literally producethe crappiest stuff in the world. Maiden
China was really garbage. Now Chinaproduces some of the highest quality products on
the planet. They're up there withthe top of the heap. So they

(01:53):
become a real contender in terms ofselling high end stuff semiconductors, solar panels,
cars at the biggest solar car manufacturerin the world by a long shot.
And they're able to produce evs ata much lower price, which are
as good as anything out there.So they're out to dominate the world market.

(02:15):
And this is what Jingjiping has decided, and that is we're going to
He's chosen certain aspects of industry,EV's being one of the big ones,
and we're going to go ahead anddominate the world market. So he has
just given the Chinese the governments,the government giving Chinese manufacturers, you do

(02:38):
it will subsidize. Here's the problem. They're building like crazy. They are
building assembly plants, manufacturing plants toat breakneck speed, to the point where
the biggest car market in the world, which is China, consumer can even
come close to buying the products.So they have to sell overseas. And

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what China has as a habit ofdoing is dumping products. They did that
was steel many years ago. ThatI think their first major product. The
government subsidizes the steel industry. Steelis exported in the United States. Steel,
a Chinese steel came in at afraction of the cost an American steel,
and it wiped out the steel industry, or it came very close to

(03:19):
wiping out the steel industry. Andthat's the fear here that Chinese evs are
going to be so good, socheap, that people will buy them instead
of American cars. Well, onehundred percent tariff comes in double the price.
Okay, that puts a stop onit. Go okay, Now is
it worth it? Yes or no? And it becomes competitive, I think
even with one hundred percent tariff.So the problem is number one, the

(03:44):
trade wars are here. Now,how does China react when Biden does this,
They go bruiserk tariffs. What itdoes is getting the way of competition.
It does. It stops manufacturing,it does, it stops trade.
It does. Here's the problem withChina. They have no problem putting tariffs

(04:09):
on everything that comes into China fromoverseas. Everything and so they've been gaming
the system for years and years andyears. They sign treaties and then they
turn around and throw tariffs on.So if you're a manufacturer and you're selling
in China from the United States,you're paying a tariff. There is an

(04:31):
additional cost that goes to the governmentbecause they want to protect Chinese industry.
Well, the same thing is happeninghere. That's what Biden did yesterday.
Now, Biden, for the mostpart, is a free trader. But
you reach the point where you havea government the size of China subsidizing an
industry to dump cars in this case, as well as other products, high

(04:55):
tech products. You know what,something's got to give and the rest of
the trading partners around the world.Because China doesn't just do this the United
States. It does this all overthe world. It is the largest manufacturer
of stuff on the planet and thelargest exporter of stuff on the planet.
It's trade balance is always in itsfavor. The better a trade balance is

(05:15):
to a country, the better offthat country is. We've had a negative
We've had a trade deficit for yearsand years and years. We import more
than we export. That does nothelp the economy. If we export more
and more people are employed, companiesgrow, they manufacture more. China has
had that advantage because the government istotally involved in manufacturing. We're in the

(05:39):
United States. It's a free marketsystem. We don't have the government owning
parts of companies. We believe incompetition. They don't. And so the
system has been totally gained and therest of the world trading partners are saying,
this is enough. We're done.We're gonna bring you down to reality.

(06:03):
And if you have tariffs, wewant an even playing field. You
put up on tariffs, will putup put up tariffs. Now, in
the case of Biden and his eighteenbillion dollars or one hundred percent tariff on
evs, it goes beyond that,because this is a Chinese view of the
world. Biden, we want evsmade in America. We do not want

(06:28):
them overseas. So this goes beyondjust free trade. This goes way into
keeping an industry alive in the US. And you know, screw it,
we'll throw up protective terrorists. Tariffskill things. Tariffs are not good except
sometimes you have absolutely no choice.And I think that's Joe Biden. I

(06:50):
think what he did had to bedone based on China's philosophy and the crazy
stuff that China does. All right, now, New York and film production.
Every single state that I can thinkof that does film production is trying
to get film companies to go tothat state to produce films and TV shows.

(07:13):
New York being the primary competition toLa. La of course is the
end all be all of film productionand TV, and other states just didn't
want to bother. You know,when TV first came out, you know,
New York was where it was alldone, not Hollywood, because it
was live TV and they were generallyplays. Playwrights did it because they were

(07:39):
used to it, and actors thatusually it was Broadway actors who came in
and did these live productions. Canyou imagine today doing a live performance?
They just very rarely does that everhappened. So now as soon as Hollywood
jumped in, then of course everythingmoved to the LA area Hollywood, and

(08:00):
so New York and other states aremaking this huge and have made for years
this huge effort to move productions intotheir state, particularly New York City.
And why is that, Well,you have a company that comes out a
film company with a forty million dollarbudget on a film, hiring hundreds of
people, a lot of them flyingin, staying in New York at hotels,

(08:24):
eating in New York. You've gotcatering companies that are out of New
York. I mean, the amountof money that flows into the city on
a per film basis is enormous.So what New York and other states do.
In California has done this to keepproductions here. They give you a
tax credit. And what does thatmean? They'll say, Okay, depending
on the size of the film,depending on the budget and what you are

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spending, New York will pay upto thirty percent of the costs of the
film the below line costs, inother words, the camera people, the
caters. I mean, just canyou imagine you have a film that costs
twenty million, thirty million dollars andNew York will pay seven several million dollars

(09:11):
of it up to thirty percent,again depending on the production. Now,
in certain productions it's up to fortypercent if the principles are unclothed. And
for example, there was one filmthat they got forty percent and that was
New York Subway Slut, and theother one was Debbie does New York forty

(09:35):
percent off. Okay, I'm Ican take that one and go forever forty
percent off. I mean, youknow that's a Jewish joke that I'm not.
I'm just not even gonna get intothat. But the point is so
many productions are moving to New Yorkand other states that the number of sound

(09:56):
stages have exploded, and those areall over the place. You go to
North Carolina sound stages, Atlanta buildinglike crazy because Atlanta, George is doing
the same thing. New York soundstages are exploding. LA sound stages are
exploding. Problem is, like Isaid, the previous story with China,

(10:18):
too much, too quickly, andit is well, when things are good,
you open up. It's like restaurants. You know, you have a
chain, you grow like crazy,and all of a sudden you realize too
many too quickly and you go underor you have some real problems that happens
all the time. Same thing withsound stages. Now, sound stages are
not owned by the studios. Imean Netflix doesn't own any sound stage and

(10:41):
yet it spends twelve billion dollars onproduction. So people build their companies that
own sound stages and they make afortune, and there's just too many of
them. Same thing going on inNew York, so it becomes a double
whammy. You know, there's avery thin line. This is why CEOs
and upper management get a lot ofmoney because to navigate that line, you

(11:03):
want growth. You don't want growthquicker than it should happen. You want
to maximize the amount of money,you want to maximize profit. There's a
lot of stuff going down, andthat's what's happening with the New York film
industry, particularly LA It's already it'ssort of baked in, I mean,

(11:24):
because productions happen here. Although there'ssome New York productions Dick Wolf, it's
all New York. Woody Allen willnot get out of Manhattan when he does
his films NYPD, Well, whatdo you think, of course it's going
to be in New York. Soa lot of money is being spent in

(11:45):
California. Our film we have afilm office like many other states do where
we in LA City also does Iguess a Commissioner of Film, head of
the Department, a pr organization thatnot only funds films that go out,
goes out and talks to film companiesgo hey, come to La. Come

(12:07):
to La, or stay in La. Stay in La. It is a
huge money maker. You don't buildinfrastructure. The city just gets money.
They get tons of tax dollars,they get tons of benefits. The economy
explodes when fifty million dollars is beingspent on location in a city like New

(12:30):
York. And so how do youget people to come to the city.
Well, what you do in allof these cases is you have these programs
and their tax credits. We willpay, we will pick up the expenses.
We become your partners. Actually,of course we don't get any percentage
of the film. We get noneof the gross, we get none of

(12:50):
the net. But we want youto film here. And so now everybody
competes and you get a permit forfilming. It used to be crazy to
get permits for filming in Los Angeles. It was almost impossible. Today,
there's one place you go and thepermit is issued, and the Persian Palace.
To get to the Persian Palace,there's one major street and there's one

(13:11):
house on that one street that forsome reason is a filming center. And
there are months where a week outof the month, let's say four or
five eight days. The street iscompletely blocked because you have a major film
company or with the TV company.I don't even know what it is.

(13:35):
Maybe they do commercials there and thepolice are there. Because you can hire
production companies for security in southern Californiacan hire uniform police officers. You can't
any other business. You can hirecops who moonlight, but cops on movie
sets on location can be uniform policeofficers. So you've got an LAPD cop

(13:58):
do with security. Who's going toscrew with that? And when a cop
says you can't drive here through here, you pay attention. And then you
wait until the scene is done.And they have the craft's table right outside,
and I go, hey, canI get some samples? No?
Can I stop and have some lunch? No? You ever been to a
set the big N movie Neil uhwith the craft table. It's unbelievable because

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that's the other thing these craft companiesbid for the business. It's so profitable
and it's so much money. SoI've gone on a couple of TV shows
and it's incredible. Steak lobster,you know, three entrees, four vegetables,
salads, dessert. I mean,it's a good meal. It really

(14:45):
is sound jealous. Yeah, well, what do we do? We don't
even get here. You want somewater? There's the machine down the hall
that's for guests. Okay, we'redone as we finish our Wednesday show with
doctor Jim Kingey, who is ourer doc. Hi Jim. The new

(15:05):
COVID variant. Now I have aquestion. They are they coming up with
new vaccines because this reached the pointwhere I must have gotten five or six
already, and I was in Kaiserthe other day. I've got a foot
thing because this is like I viewKaiser like a buffet. I want to
get my money's worth, so Itend to overeat, so I tend to

(15:26):
overuse Kaiser. No offer of avaccine, even with a new variant,
which is very unusual. Yeah,you know, I don't know. I
don't know where we stand up thiswith the vaccine these dave I had so
many boosters and it's still required towork in a hospital. So I mean,

(15:50):
they are going to come up witha variant with variants to the vaccine
as they progress every year. Butthe problem is that once we get in
new variants, there hasn't been enoughtime yet to change the vaccine. Of
course, we believe that there's somecrossover. You know, that there's the
antibodies for one will probably protect youpartially to the other. And as the

(16:12):
populations change and more people have hadCOVID or have had fire vaccines, kind
of that informational change as well.I haven't seen the latest updates or really
seen any updates recently on the efficacyof the old vaccines against this new variant.
Is it going to be like theflu shot? Basically every year you're

(16:34):
going to come in, they haveto guess what the flu is going to
be, what kind of variant there'sgoing to be, And sometimes they're right
on and sometimes they're completely off.Are we looking at the same procedure?
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Imean, and that's what was the hope
for these new RNA vaccines is thatan RNA vaccine has kind of got,

(16:57):
you know, an engine and acaboose, and you can put any any
kind of fill those box cars withanything you want in the middle. And
so the idea was that you'd beable to create a new vaccine that was
more specific very quickly and not haveto develop an entire new vaccine every single
time. So as far as Iknow, that really hasn't happened yet,

(17:19):
and there's that's going to get anew kind of process for FDA approval and
those type of things that you know, at the bottom line is when we
look at people that at risk population, people with lung disease, heart disease,
elderly people, we don't have alot to offer other than to say,
hey, you know, the vaccinecan offer you some protection. Hey,

(17:41):
why is why aren't people dying likethey have with COVID. You remember
when when it first came out,I mean, we had a thousand people
a day dying. Why and peopleare unvaccinated and they get COVID, Why
aren't they in the hospital and ventilatorspopping off left and right like they did?
Well, I mean to be asuccessful kind of little little virus monster,

(18:03):
right, if you kill everybody rightaway, you don't actually spread it
very well. So the more effectivespreading viruses are ones that don't necessarily kill
people. And so I think onepart of it is that COVID's gotten a
little bit more effective, and it'sit's better at transmission and it's better at
moving through the population. But youknow the other part is the population has

(18:27):
some partial immunity. Now, thisis not something you've never seen, and
so maybe you don't remember having COVIDif you've never had COVID, but maybe
your body's immune system actually was dealtwith it and was able to process the
infection and result in some level ofimmunity. So you know, it's not

(18:48):
like when COVID was a novel,completely new virus. That's what's scary is
when we get a completely new virusthe humans have never seen. So it's
not the danger of COVID, uh, that hasn't decreased simply, Uh,
the defense has gone across the population. Basically a question of time. Do

(19:08):
I have that right? Yeah?I mean both that over time that it's
possible the COVID virus has gotten lessyou know, virulent where you're going to
get people so sick that they die, and because the more the ones that
spread easier aren't necessarily the ones thatkill you, all right. And then

(19:30):
on the other side is the isthat we have better protection because of our
une system. Okay, we reportedI think yesterday the day before that there's
been a hepatitis outbreak in southern California, particularly in one of the encampments among
the unhoused homeless people, and oneof the discussions was, Okay, what's

(19:52):
the difference between hep A, B, and C which is the most dangerous
one? Can it be cu word? So tell us a differentiation and what's
going on with hepatitis A, Band C. All right? So,
well, first of all, youknow, when we think about like influenza
A and B, we sound likewe're talking about the same virus, and

(20:15):
they are similar in a lot ofdifferent ways. Hepatitis The commonality there is
that they infect they cause an inflammationalliver, so they're not necessarily all the
same kind of virus. So hepatitisA is a virus that is transmitted from
in saliva in feces, and sothis is why we tell people to wash

(20:37):
their hands. It's usually ingested throughcontaminated food or water or close contact with
an infected person, and so that'swhy you can see poor hygiene. Homelessness
will increase your risk for that andspreads through those of that mechanism. It
doesn't even appear for two up tosix weeks after the expos and then you

(21:02):
get sick like a flu like illness, but also with yellowness of your eyes
and your skin, dark urine,pale colored stool, and then kind of
self limiting is the advantage of thatover hepatitis B and C. It runs
its course, but it can makepeople really sick, and sometimes they get
dehydrated, they don't get enough nutrition. Some of them need to be hospitalized.

(21:23):
How dangerous do you die? Yeah, I mean without medical care,
you could die from the dehydration andfrom lack of adequate nutrition, but most
people don't. It's self limiting goesaway all by itself, and then it's
not chronic like hepatitis B and Cbecome a chronic infection, so they're with
you forever. Basically, Yeah,those are spread by blood. So that's

(21:45):
why we're testing the blood supply forB and C. People who share needles,
injecting drugs. People who are infectedthrough not you know, improper cleaning
of needles for you know, saytattoos or things like that increase your risk.
So that's they're totally kind of adifferent way of spreading, a different

(22:06):
process, but still a result inyour literate getting inflamed. Okay, So
which was the most dangerous, Whichis the most dangerous of those three well,
I mean v can cause long termliver damage, throws to the liver,
it can actually lead to liver canceras well. Hepatitis C definitely increases
your risks significantly for liver cancer.There's that treatment that costs like one hundred

(22:30):
and fifty thousand dollars for the treatmentactually worth it for hepatitis C because it
hepatitis is probably the number one causefor liver cancer. And that's so expensive
that even treating at this price isworth it, you know, to health
systems to reduce the cost of livercancer. Yeah, and that's an outright
cure as far as the commercial concerned, highly effective, highly effective, and

(22:55):
it's a cure it's going to putitself out of business because it's going to
cure hepatitis C. So it doesn'tI think that's part of the high price
is that, you know, theyhave a shorter time to recoup research and
development because it's going to cure hepatitisC and probably eliminated eventually if the price
goes down enough enough people can getthat drug. I know this isn't your
wheelhouse, but let's say someone walksin with hepatitis C and has insurance the

(23:22):
insurance company write a check for onehundred and fifty thousand dollars or do they
call it experimental or it's not inthe formulary. How does that work?
You know? I mean with alldrugs, what we look at is a
lot of insurance companies have a formularyand you know what's covered and what's not
covered. And then that way youdon't necessarily have to activate a bunch of
you know, people to figure thatout. You can just look it up

(23:44):
and it says, okay, it'scovered in this setting. We have that
setting, so we give them thedrug. Other times you have to get
what we got prior authorization. Andthen that's a process that that physicians and
physicians offices and case managers and hospitalsare all familiar with. Yeah, and
I'm assuming at one hundred and fiftythousand dollars. Of course, that's not
the easiest thing to have, okay, or it's so effective it is easy?

(24:10):
Yeah, I mean again, it'snot drug I use. So I
don't know how difficult or easy itis to get approved. But I do
know that some insurances do cover itbecause they do recognize the benefit. Some
insurances don't because let's face it,what they're hoping is you're not going to
get the cancer on their watch.And people change insurances now, especially with

(24:30):
the portable health insurance, you canjust change insurance. So they're hoping,
well, you know, if youget if you have it, then maybe
you'll move on to some other insurancecompany, and we want it to deal
with it. Yeah, it's likebariatric surgery. When I had it done
eighteen years ago, insurance company wouldn'tcarry it, Kaiser wouldn't cover it.
Kaiser wouldn't and then someone figured itout. If you look at the cost

(24:53):
of someone weighing over three hundred poundsfor twenty years. Yeah, there's an
issue blood pressure, hard issues,stroke issues, and okay, maybe we'll
pop for the twenty five thousand dollarsand now it's just considered part of medical
care. Yeah, exactly, allright, Jim, Thanks as always.
We will talk again next Wednesday.Oh, we haven't talked a while.

(25:15):
We have to go to lunch andmake fun of everybody. I'll call you
next day or two. I havea right take care of. Jim Keeney,
one of my all time favorite people. Really and accidentally we do talk
about how many people he's killed duringthe week. I mean, that is
literally the course of our conversation.Hey Jim, Hey, welcome board.
Let's have lunch. Who'd you killedthis week? All right, we're done,

(25:37):
guys, boy, we started thisall over again. Tomorrow. Wake
up call with Amy at five o'clockand the rest of us are here from
six to nine a m. Seeyou tomorrow. Bill Handle in the Morning,
Crew k I Am six forty liveeverywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've
been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday day

(26:00):
six am to nine am, andanytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.