December 11, 2025 • 19 mins
BEST OF - The Senate is set to vote on the GOP's health care plan as the House plan will exclude ACA subsidy extension. Ryan shares his recent experience at the doctor and how it highlights some of the issues with the health care system. An op-ed dives into the root of the health care issues and why nothing being discussed in DC will fix the problems, our National Correspondent Rory O’Neill reports the Fed announced a final interest rate cut for 2025, and gives an update on the Venezuelan oil tanker seized by the U.S.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
With the Obamacare and hand subsidies set to expire in
just a few weeks to Senate scheduled to vote on
two competing plans today, one offered by Democrats and the
other by the GOP. Now neither bill is expected to
get enough votes to advance, but each side wants the
votes on the record. Basically, they'll use it for finger
pointing purposes in the future. It's a big dog compony
(00:21):
show for twenty twenty six mid term election ad material.
The GOP plan would get rid of the enhanced subsidies. Instead,
it will put some money into health savings accounts. Majority
Leader John Thune, echoing the President, says the plan is
an effort to reform the ACA by putting the funds
directly into the hands of consumers instead of the insurance companies.
Now it sounds like you wouldn't be required to use
(00:46):
that health savings account money to buy an insurance plan,
even though the bill seems to try to link hsas
to bronze level plans through the Obamacare exchanges. Those are
the plans with pretty limited coverage and those really really
really high deductibles. So basically you'd have between a thousand
to fifteen hundred dollars in a health savings account to
(01:07):
work with to either pay for your premiums which are
going to.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Go up, or use for the deductibles which.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Are gonna be way higher than a thousand and fifteen
hundred dollars, or I guess just use how you want
with no insurance. The problem with that is it creates
a sacrepool of people in the insurance marketplace, right because
you got the healthy people saying we're not going to
buy anything, and that's going to leave to even higher
rates down the road.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And do you get that, is that a thousand to
fifteen hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Or just no, that's just yeah, if.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
That's not gonna pay for anything?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, well, I mean you know, like maybe an urgent
care visit or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
The Democrats bill which just extend the expiring subsidies for
three years, no reforms, no changes, just continue throwing money
at the problem as is. And I think the key
point here is that neither plan really does anything to
address actual health health care costs. It just comes down
to the GOP plan giving you the money to basically
give right back to the insurance companies. In most cases,
(02:06):
while Democrats plan continues to send the money straight to
the insurance companies. At the same time, over in the House,
Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that he's going to bring
a vote next week on a package that he claims
will actually reduce premiums for one hundred percent of Americans
who are on health insurance, not just the twenty two
million on Obamacare. The one minor problem. They still haven't
(02:31):
decided on a final bill, so I'm not sure how.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
They know that.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Oh jeez, that's kind of where we are with all
of this. Coming up at about twelve ish minutes from now,
we're going to dive into that problem, the real problem
with our healthcare system, how much everything costs beyond just
insurance and all of that. So make sure you're here.
We've got that coming up for you in about twelve
(02:54):
minutes from now. So the other day, I went to
get my yearly physical, and the only reason I went
to do it was because if if you get one,
then you get a break on your insurance premium through
the insurance that we have here at iHeartMedia. So I
went and more issues with my insurance cards, so I
downloaded what was supposed to be the card onto my phone.
(03:17):
It's in my Apple wallet, and I show it to
them and they're like, yeah, some it's not right here.
And so then I go to the website and there's
like a different, more comprehensive card that I found there,
and then that had the information they needed. I don't
know what information was missing from the downloadable whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I've had the same problem at the dentist and the doctor.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, so you know that took forever. As I'm standing
there like.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
An idiot, it's totally inefficient. Why are there two cards?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
And then I go in get the physical, takes you know,
a couple of minutes, and I leave. I have no
idea what that costs. I don't think it's going to
cost me anything. I think that's something that's completely covered.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I thought last year I didn't pay anything. I'm not
one hundred percent sure. Maybe I'll get a bill in
the mail, maybe not. But I was just thinking, as
I'm leaving, you know, that's something where if I like
my primary care physician, I didn't need to go see
him for the physical, Like if there was an option
where I could see what the pricing was for different
(04:22):
you know, doctors in the area. Maybe I would have
went to a cheaper option for that. That really wasn't
that important. It was only to get the discount on insurance.
Like there wasn't anything I'd talked to him about. You know,
maybe I would have shopped around a little bit for that,
especially if it could have maybe saved me money in
the long run on my premium. But that's not how
it works. I have no idea. Look, even if I
(04:43):
don't pay anything, I don't wind up paying a dime
for that visit, it still costs something, right, and I
don't know what it costs.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
You have no idea what the doctor's office is charging
your insurance company. Whether it's one hundred dollars, it's probably
more like a thousand dollars to be no, probably insane.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I have no idea what that costs.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And this goes to the transparency issue and the fact
that you know, we say that we have all of
these these choices, but really, when you get down to it,
because we're limited to whatever our employer provides us, we
can choose from those usually in network doctors. It's not
just kind of an open marketplace where it's wherever is
(05:24):
practicing in the Tampa Bay area or in South.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Florida recommends because they've had a good experience, who has
good Yelp reviews, it's whoever they tell you have to
go see exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
So it really limits you in that way.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So even if you did want to shop around, you're
still limited to how you're shopping around. That's really not
an effective, efficient marketplace the way it's set up. So
I just that really stood out to me as I was.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
You don't pay anything, but you know that there's a
bill somewhere someone's.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Going to get Yeah, as Congress is trying to work on,
you know, health care reform here, and we're going to
get to what they're going to be voting on later today,
which isn't going to across.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
A really good.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Op ed yesterday from doctor Zach Cooper, an associate professor
of public health and economics at Yale, and it's.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
About what he calls the real healthcare fight.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So, as Congress is debating these different healthcare reforms, like
I said earlier, I think they're missing the bigger picture here.
The op ed argues the Congress is locked in the
wrong battle. They're debating subsidies instead of tackling the underlying issue,
soaring healthcare spending. Doctor Cooper notes that rising health costs
(06:38):
since the nineteen seventies have pushed down wages and wiped
out jobs, especially for low and middle income workers, and
premiums on the Obamacare exchanges show the scale of the problem.
So a sixty year old couple making eighty five thousand
dollars a year could face nearly thirty two thousand in
(06:59):
premium without subsidies, and employer coverage in a whole lot better.
The average family plans now run about twenty seven thousand
dollars a year, And even though we might not really
see it or feel it, those costs flow back to
workers through lower pay. And it's also why so many
companies balk and making positions that they need to fill
(07:22):
full time.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
How often have you heard about that?
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Well, yeah, they don't want to have to pay for
insurance premiums.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah, they don't want to pay the benefits. Goes on
to say this piece the research links decades of health
care inflation to a roughly ten percent wage hit, and
a few of the reasons for these higher prices. The
US pays more than other nations for the same care.
For prescription drugs, we adopt expensive technology that comes out
like right away, we immediately start implementing that kind of tax.
(07:51):
It's really expensive, and we have lots of administrative overhead costs.
He also pointed out that healthcare markets have consolidated so
much in a lot of parts of the country, hospitals
and other providers can charge near monopoly prices, and he
gave this example. There's a Medicare payment rule created in
(08:11):
the eighties to where the government program Medicare pays more,
sometimes double, for care delivered in a hospital or hospital
owned doctors practice versus in an independent doctor owned practice,
even if the care is identical.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So what does that do?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It makes it more profitable for the doctors to merge
their practice with the hospitals than to remain independent. Yeah,
those mergers give doctors and hospitals bargaining power, drives up
prices and insurance premiums.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
He did note in his piece that the Trump administration
recently introduced some policies that could save ten billion dollars
over the next decade by requiring Medicare to pay hospitals
the same rate they pay physicians to admit drugs like chemotherapy,
so kind of a new rule in place to uh
pull back from some of that.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Doctor Cooper says, there's no silver bullet systems, too big reforms.
And I mentioned this a number of times. You know,
you make one change here, well someone's gonna win and
someone's gonna lose. Yeah, that's just how it works. And
he said, you know, the politics because of all of
that gets real messy. He did offer a couple of
steps to try to fix this. The first one to
(09:29):
fix obvious inefficiencies like what we just talked about with
those Medicare payment rules, you know, things like that, to
kind of break up the monopolies a bit. The second step,
he says, is to pass a series of small, targeted reforms,
so you start doing little things as supposed to.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
You know, a big comprehension thing.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
All the upheaval within the whole system is one particular
thing that's not working that you can focus on make
it more efficient.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Do that right, He said, these one percent steps, that's
what he calls them. If you put it all all together,
it could cut spending by more than two hundred and
fifty billion dollars a year. And then the third step
is to study bigger structural changes like and I've talked
about this a lot before, decoupling insurance from jobs. So
(10:16):
the way I see it, and I'm no expert on this,
so this is just me, you know, looking at it
from kind of a common sense perspective. But we don't
have as much choice as we think we do. If
we have employer based insurance, kind of get what the
company gives us. Yeah, and within that, you hope the
company puts together a pretty good plan. And that's part
(10:39):
of you know, companies competing with each other for workers.
But it gets messy if you're trying to leave jobs
and you're changing insurance.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, then you've got to try to change your doctor
and get all new people. And it's also really hard
when you look at those plans to even understand what
you're getting and not getting what you need in network
out of network productibles.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
It's just so complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, and you know, is your doctor still going to
be in the network to choose And then sometimes they
just like last year they changed insurance providers. I had
no idea, but they switched, and you know, then you've
got your dental coverage here and your vision there, and
you know, it's all fricking over the place. And then
a lot of people that are working on their own.
Now you've got small businesses, You've got people who are
(11:19):
doing these gig economy jobs and so they have to
rely on the exchanges.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
So you've got you really don't have one.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Big marketplace for competition and transparency and pricing and all
of that.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
You've got all of these little different ones.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And you've got you know, big companies that have more
negotiating power than the little guy because they've got more employees,
so the insurance they want to get them on. But
there are just so many issues I think tied to
insurance where if it was just a big marketplace kind
of like what we see with car insurance, I feel
like you.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Might well with car insurance or with property insurance because
I just went through this when I got my house.
You can reach out to all these different insurance companies
and you get a quote, tell them what you need
and you can get a quote, and then you can
compare whether or not that's what you want.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, and you're isolating.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
You know, you've got sick people spread out and then
if you have too many of them in one part
of the healthcareunt and that drives up. There's just so
many different mechanisms in play here. And one of the
things that he also pointed out the big problem, and
this is why part of the reason you're not going
to see bigger changes, he said, one person's health care
(12:29):
spending is another person's health care income.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
That's right. It's a big money business.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Profits, jobs, paychecks, tens of millions of people who work
in the healthcare sector.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
It's all dependent upon this.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And how many times have I said the confusion and
the complexity is on purpose because it covers all of that.
He said, if the US health system were a country
in dollar terms, it'll be the third largest economy in
the world. So there's no question there are, you know,
these massive, massive problems, and there's not going to be
a simple fix. But what you're seeing from Congress right
(13:01):
now really is int ad dressing any of that kind
of stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
It's not fixing the cost issue is just trying to
figure out who's going to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Exactly can't afford it, right, And and like I said
a little while ago, neither one of these bills at
the Senate's putting up today's gonna pass.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
You got a pass, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Nothing's actually getting done period.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And right now, let's bring in our national correspondent, Rory O'Neil,
whose reports brought to you by Mark Spain Real Estate. So, Rory,
Federal Reserve for the third time this year cut interest rates.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
How is this going to impact all of us?
Speaker 6 (13:36):
Well, you know, these lower rates don't necessarily change mortgage rates,
even car loan rates directly, but they do have an
influence on those rates now hopefully trending downward.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
But I thought it was fascinating with the FED.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Chair and his news conference that followed the announcement yesterday,
essentially saying that the Fed's done for a while, you know,
to start the year, we're like, oh, six rate cuts
ahead in the year ahead, but the tariff complications have
made it difficult to calculate, you know, what's inflation, what's tariffs.
We had about forty five days of a blackout of
data being collected, so right now they're flying a bit blind.
(14:12):
But the Fed chair said they're happy that three rate
cuts in a row.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
They're ready to wait and see the impact that that's
going to have.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, you had the most dissent in a FED meeting
since twenty nineteen. Two of the members wanted to keep
rates where they were, one wanted an even bigger cut.
You had six of nineteen top FED officials saying they
preferred no cut at all. So you kind of add
(14:41):
all of that up and there's just a difference of opinion.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Right now.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
You've got one camp who basically sees a weakening job
market and some temporary inflation, and the other sees inflation
that's been a bit more stubborn than expected, but a
still strong market. I would say you've got a bit
of a weakening job market. I think that's pretty clear.
(15:05):
And you've got inflation that again has been a bit
more stubborn than was expected. And some of that, you know,
might have to do with the tariffs. So well, what's
just a point on the teriffs? The question is was
it a one time blip?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Right?
Speaker 6 (15:21):
If they put a tariff on Ryan widgets imported from
China and it's ten percent, now that's that tariff is
so now that one hundred dollars widget is one hundred
and ten dollars, was that it?
Speaker 5 (15:32):
Did you pass the cost along? Are we done well?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It depends. It depends what Trump does.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
All right, or did the Ryan Widget company say well,
we can absorb some of this, so we're going to
make it one.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Hundred and two dollars.
Speaker 6 (15:45):
A year goes by like, oh, we can't keep swallowing
all that cost.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
And let's make it one hundred and eight dollars or
is it that?
Speaker 6 (15:51):
So is it a one time bump or is it
something that we're going to see continue to increase.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
That's just unknown. And again we just went through six
weeks of no data. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a point.
And then also you just don't know what President Trump
is going to do. I mean tomorrow he could say,
you know what, I don't like what John is doing.
I'm gonna jack up tariffs again and unpredictable. Yeah, then
it's not a temporary cost. So and then looking ahead
to twenty twenty six, I mean, they say maybe just
(16:16):
one more rate cut next year. Again, we thought they
were gonna be six this year, so you never know.
They do expect pretty strong growth next year in lower
inflation than earlier projections. I had just talked to somebody
recently who deals in mergers and acquisitions, and this person
said you know, based on the small to medium sized
businesses they talk to, pretty positive outlook for twenty twenty six.
(16:40):
Obviously you got the Trump administration saying it's gonna be
the best year ever. So you know, plus plus yeah,
I think just still a lot of uncertainty going into
the new year. I think that's kind of right.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
And then you know, whatever Jerome Pouli says, write it
down in pencil because he's on his way out the door.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
That's another good point.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
All right, we're joined by our national correspondent Rory O'Neil.
Let's get to this seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker
that took place. First time we've done something quite like
this with Venezuela and oil right.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
In our hemisphere.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
I'm pretty remarkable to have this happen. I thought it
was interesting that the news really came from Attorney General Bondi.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
You know, President Trump was having a meeting.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
I think, in the Roosevelt Room, and you know, sort
of told reporters that this thing had happened, but didn't
have a whole lot of detail. Instead on posting on
social media, ag Bondi said it was the Coastguard FBI
Homeland security investigations executing a seizure warrant for this crude
oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
The allegation is this thing.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Had been spoofing its location, selling oil all around the
world and using the profits to fund Iran's military even
has Belah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, and this tanker tied to Cuba, so they resell
some of that Venezuela and crude on the black market.
A lot of that ends up going to China for
their oil demand. So you know, it sounds like we
did something that might have impacted negatively Venezuela, Cuba, and
maybe even China too, So that's pretty good. And the vessel,
(18:10):
I don't know if you knew this. It's a VLCC
oh okay, which stands for and I'm not kidding, a
very large crude carrier. Basically it holds a lot of
crude oil or.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
As the President said, the biggest ever.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, the biggest effort.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And it was funny because I think he was saying
they were asking him like, what are you gonna do now?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I guess we can keep it. It's ours now.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And I'm sure you know those three hundred and twenty
thousand gallons or tons tons of crude that were on
that tank er. I'm sure if we do keep it,
that is, without it not going to help bring gas
prices down. I'm sure we'll immediately see that Trump.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
They've already gone down, there have been lately. The other day,
I was psyched.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
How about that? I always please miss out.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I always end up going and filling up after the
prices have gone back up.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Boogie gas anyway, And who fills your tank for you?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Rory, our national correspondent with us this morning. Rory, thanks
so much.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Thanks Ryan.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
The Ryan Gorman Show five to nine every weekday morning
on news radio w f l a
With the Obamacare and hand subsidies set to expire in
just a few weeks to Senate scheduled to vote on
two competing plans today, one offered by Democrats and the
other by the GOP. Now neither bill is expected to
get enough votes to advance, but each side wants the
votes on the record. Basically, they'll use it for finger
pointing purposes in the future. It's a big dog compony
(00:21):
show for twenty twenty six mid term election ad material.
The GOP plan would get rid of the enhanced subsidies. Instead,
it will put some money into health savings accounts. Majority
Leader John Thune, echoing the President, says the plan is
an effort to reform the ACA by putting the funds
directly into the hands of consumers instead of the insurance companies.
Now it sounds like you wouldn't be required to use
(00:46):
that health savings account money to buy an insurance plan,
even though the bill seems to try to link hsas
to bronze level plans through the Obamacare exchanges. Those are
the plans with pretty limited coverage and those really really
really high deductibles. So basically you'd have between a thousand
to fifteen hundred dollars in a health savings account to
(01:07):
work with to either pay for your premiums which are
going to.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Go up, or use for the deductibles which.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Are gonna be way higher than a thousand and fifteen
hundred dollars, or I guess just use how you want
with no insurance. The problem with that is it creates
a sacrepool of people in the insurance marketplace, right because
you got the healthy people saying we're not going to
buy anything, and that's going to leave to even higher
rates down the road.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And do you get that, is that a thousand to
fifteen hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Or just no, that's just yeah, if.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
That's not gonna pay for anything?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, well, I mean you know, like maybe an urgent
care visit or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
The Democrats bill which just extend the expiring subsidies for
three years, no reforms, no changes, just continue throwing money
at the problem as is. And I think the key
point here is that neither plan really does anything to
address actual health health care costs. It just comes down
to the GOP plan giving you the money to basically
give right back to the insurance companies. In most cases,
(02:06):
while Democrats plan continues to send the money straight to
the insurance companies. At the same time, over in the House,
Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that he's going to bring
a vote next week on a package that he claims
will actually reduce premiums for one hundred percent of Americans
who are on health insurance, not just the twenty two
million on Obamacare. The one minor problem. They still haven't
(02:31):
decided on a final bill, so I'm not sure how.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
They know that.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Oh jeez, that's kind of where we are with all
of this. Coming up at about twelve ish minutes from now,
we're going to dive into that problem, the real problem
with our healthcare system, how much everything costs beyond just
insurance and all of that. So make sure you're here.
We've got that coming up for you in about twelve
(02:54):
minutes from now. So the other day, I went to
get my yearly physical, and the only reason I went
to do it was because if if you get one,
then you get a break on your insurance premium through
the insurance that we have here at iHeartMedia. So I
went and more issues with my insurance cards, so I
downloaded what was supposed to be the card onto my phone.
(03:17):
It's in my Apple wallet, and I show it to
them and they're like, yeah, some it's not right here.
And so then I go to the website and there's
like a different, more comprehensive card that I found there,
and then that had the information they needed. I don't
know what information was missing from the downloadable whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I've had the same problem at the dentist and the doctor.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, so you know that took forever. As I'm standing
there like.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
An idiot, it's totally inefficient. Why are there two cards?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
And then I go in get the physical, takes you know,
a couple of minutes, and I leave. I have no
idea what that costs. I don't think it's going to
cost me anything. I think that's something that's completely covered.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I thought last year I didn't pay anything. I'm not
one hundred percent sure. Maybe I'll get a bill in
the mail, maybe not. But I was just thinking, as
I'm leaving, you know, that's something where if I like
my primary care physician, I didn't need to go see
him for the physical, Like if there was an option
where I could see what the pricing was for different
(04:22):
you know, doctors in the area. Maybe I would have
went to a cheaper option for that. That really wasn't
that important. It was only to get the discount on insurance.
Like there wasn't anything I'd talked to him about. You know,
maybe I would have shopped around a little bit for that,
especially if it could have maybe saved me money in
the long run on my premium. But that's not how
it works. I have no idea. Look, even if I
(04:43):
don't pay anything, I don't wind up paying a dime
for that visit, it still costs something, right, and I
don't know what it costs.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
You have no idea what the doctor's office is charging
your insurance company. Whether it's one hundred dollars, it's probably
more like a thousand dollars to be no, probably insane.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I have no idea what that costs.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And this goes to the transparency issue and the fact
that you know, we say that we have all of
these these choices, but really, when you get down to it,
because we're limited to whatever our employer provides us, we
can choose from those usually in network doctors. It's not
just kind of an open marketplace where it's wherever is
(05:24):
practicing in the Tampa Bay area or in South.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Florida recommends because they've had a good experience, who has
good Yelp reviews, it's whoever they tell you have to
go see exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
So it really limits you in that way.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So even if you did want to shop around, you're
still limited to how you're shopping around. That's really not
an effective, efficient marketplace the way it's set up. So
I just that really stood out to me as I was.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
You don't pay anything, but you know that there's a
bill somewhere someone's.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Going to get Yeah, as Congress is trying to work on,
you know, health care reform here, and we're going to
get to what they're going to be voting on later today,
which isn't going to across.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
A really good.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Op ed yesterday from doctor Zach Cooper, an associate professor
of public health and economics at Yale, and it's.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
About what he calls the real healthcare fight.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So, as Congress is debating these different healthcare reforms, like
I said earlier, I think they're missing the bigger picture here.
The op ed argues the Congress is locked in the
wrong battle. They're debating subsidies instead of tackling the underlying issue,
soaring healthcare spending. Doctor Cooper notes that rising health costs
(06:38):
since the nineteen seventies have pushed down wages and wiped
out jobs, especially for low and middle income workers, and
premiums on the Obamacare exchanges show the scale of the problem.
So a sixty year old couple making eighty five thousand
dollars a year could face nearly thirty two thousand in
(06:59):
premium without subsidies, and employer coverage in a whole lot better.
The average family plans now run about twenty seven thousand
dollars a year, And even though we might not really
see it or feel it, those costs flow back to
workers through lower pay. And it's also why so many
companies balk and making positions that they need to fill
(07:22):
full time.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
How often have you heard about that?
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Well, yeah, they don't want to have to pay for
insurance premiums.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah, they don't want to pay the benefits. Goes on
to say this piece the research links decades of health
care inflation to a roughly ten percent wage hit, and
a few of the reasons for these higher prices. The
US pays more than other nations for the same care.
For prescription drugs, we adopt expensive technology that comes out
like right away, we immediately start implementing that kind of tax.
(07:51):
It's really expensive, and we have lots of administrative overhead costs.
He also pointed out that healthcare markets have consolidated so
much in a lot of parts of the country, hospitals
and other providers can charge near monopoly prices, and he
gave this example. There's a Medicare payment rule created in
(08:11):
the eighties to where the government program Medicare pays more,
sometimes double, for care delivered in a hospital or hospital
owned doctors practice versus in an independent doctor owned practice,
even if the care is identical.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So what does that do?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It makes it more profitable for the doctors to merge
their practice with the hospitals than to remain independent. Yeah,
those mergers give doctors and hospitals bargaining power, drives up
prices and insurance premiums.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
He did note in his piece that the Trump administration
recently introduced some policies that could save ten billion dollars
over the next decade by requiring Medicare to pay hospitals
the same rate they pay physicians to admit drugs like chemotherapy,
so kind of a new rule in place to uh
pull back from some of that.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
Now.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Doctor Cooper says, there's no silver bullet systems, too big reforms.
And I mentioned this a number of times. You know,
you make one change here, well someone's gonna win and
someone's gonna lose. Yeah, that's just how it works. And
he said, you know, the politics because of all of
that gets real messy. He did offer a couple of
steps to try to fix this. The first one to
(09:29):
fix obvious inefficiencies like what we just talked about with
those Medicare payment rules, you know, things like that, to
kind of break up the monopolies a bit. The second step,
he says, is to pass a series of small, targeted reforms,
so you start doing little things as supposed to.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
You know, a big comprehension thing.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
All the upheaval within the whole system is one particular
thing that's not working that you can focus on make
it more efficient.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Do that right, He said, these one percent steps, that's
what he calls them. If you put it all all together,
it could cut spending by more than two hundred and
fifty billion dollars a year. And then the third step
is to study bigger structural changes like and I've talked
about this a lot before, decoupling insurance from jobs. So
(10:16):
the way I see it, and I'm no expert on this,
so this is just me, you know, looking at it
from kind of a common sense perspective. But we don't
have as much choice as we think we do. If
we have employer based insurance, kind of get what the
company gives us. Yeah, and within that, you hope the
company puts together a pretty good plan. And that's part
(10:39):
of you know, companies competing with each other for workers.
But it gets messy if you're trying to leave jobs
and you're changing insurance.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, then you've got to try to change your doctor
and get all new people. And it's also really hard
when you look at those plans to even understand what
you're getting and not getting what you need in network
out of network productibles.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
It's just so complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, and you know, is your doctor still going to
be in the network to choose And then sometimes they
just like last year they changed insurance providers. I had
no idea, but they switched, and you know, then you've
got your dental coverage here and your vision there, and
you know, it's all fricking over the place. And then
a lot of people that are working on their own.
Now you've got small businesses, You've got people who are
(11:19):
doing these gig economy jobs and so they have to
rely on the exchanges.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
So you've got you really don't have one.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Big marketplace for competition and transparency and pricing and all
of that.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
You've got all of these little different ones.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And you've got you know, big companies that have more
negotiating power than the little guy because they've got more employees,
so the insurance they want to get them on. But
there are just so many issues I think tied to
insurance where if it was just a big marketplace kind
of like what we see with car insurance, I feel
like you.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Might well with car insurance or with property insurance because
I just went through this when I got my house.
You can reach out to all these different insurance companies
and you get a quote, tell them what you need
and you can get a quote, and then you can
compare whether or not that's what you want.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, and you're isolating.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
You know, you've got sick people spread out and then
if you have too many of them in one part
of the healthcareunt and that drives up. There's just so
many different mechanisms in play here. And one of the
things that he also pointed out the big problem, and
this is why part of the reason you're not going
to see bigger changes, he said, one person's health care
(12:29):
spending is another person's health care income.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
That's right. It's a big money business.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Profits, jobs, paychecks, tens of millions of people who work
in the healthcare sector.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
It's all dependent upon this.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And how many times have I said the confusion and
the complexity is on purpose because it covers all of that.
He said, if the US health system were a country
in dollar terms, it'll be the third largest economy in
the world. So there's no question there are, you know,
these massive, massive problems, and there's not going to be
a simple fix. But what you're seeing from Congress right
(13:01):
now really is int ad dressing any of that kind
of stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
It's not fixing the cost issue is just trying to
figure out who's going to pay for it.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Exactly can't afford it, right, And and like I said
a little while ago, neither one of these bills at
the Senate's putting up today's gonna pass.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
You got a pass, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Nothing's actually getting done period.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And right now, let's bring in our national correspondent, Rory O'Neil,
whose reports brought to you by Mark Spain Real Estate. So, Rory,
Federal Reserve for the third time this year cut interest rates.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
How is this going to impact all of us?
Speaker 6 (13:36):
Well, you know, these lower rates don't necessarily change mortgage rates,
even car loan rates directly, but they do have an
influence on those rates now hopefully trending downward.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
But I thought it was fascinating with the FED.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Chair and his news conference that followed the announcement yesterday,
essentially saying that the Fed's done for a while, you know,
to start the year, we're like, oh, six rate cuts
ahead in the year ahead, but the tariff complications have
made it difficult to calculate, you know, what's inflation, what's tariffs.
We had about forty five days of a blackout of
data being collected, so right now they're flying a bit blind.
(14:12):
But the Fed chair said they're happy that three rate
cuts in a row.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
They're ready to wait and see the impact that that's
going to have.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, you had the most dissent in a FED meeting
since twenty nineteen. Two of the members wanted to keep
rates where they were, one wanted an even bigger cut.
You had six of nineteen top FED officials saying they
preferred no cut at all. So you kind of add
(14:41):
all of that up and there's just a difference of opinion.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Right now.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
You've got one camp who basically sees a weakening job
market and some temporary inflation, and the other sees inflation
that's been a bit more stubborn than expected, but a
still strong market. I would say you've got a bit
of a weakening job market. I think that's pretty clear.
(15:05):
And you've got inflation that again has been a bit
more stubborn than was expected. And some of that, you know,
might have to do with the tariffs. So well, what's
just a point on the teriffs? The question is was
it a one time blip?
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Right?
Speaker 6 (15:21):
If they put a tariff on Ryan widgets imported from
China and it's ten percent, now that's that tariff is
so now that one hundred dollars widget is one hundred
and ten dollars, was that it?
Speaker 5 (15:32):
Did you pass the cost along? Are we done well?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It depends. It depends what Trump does.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
All right, or did the Ryan Widget company say well,
we can absorb some of this, so we're going to
make it one.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
Hundred and two dollars.
Speaker 6 (15:45):
A year goes by like, oh, we can't keep swallowing
all that cost.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
And let's make it one hundred and eight dollars or
is it that?
Speaker 6 (15:51):
So is it a one time bump or is it
something that we're going to see continue to increase.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
That's just unknown. And again we just went through six
weeks of no data. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a point.
And then also you just don't know what President Trump
is going to do. I mean tomorrow he could say,
you know what, I don't like what John is doing.
I'm gonna jack up tariffs again and unpredictable. Yeah, then
it's not a temporary cost. So and then looking ahead
to twenty twenty six, I mean, they say maybe just
(16:16):
one more rate cut next year. Again, we thought they
were gonna be six this year, so you never know.
They do expect pretty strong growth next year in lower
inflation than earlier projections. I had just talked to somebody
recently who deals in mergers and acquisitions, and this person
said you know, based on the small to medium sized
businesses they talk to, pretty positive outlook for twenty twenty six.
(16:40):
Obviously you got the Trump administration saying it's gonna be
the best year ever. So you know, plus plus yeah,
I think just still a lot of uncertainty going into
the new year. I think that's kind of right.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
And then you know, whatever Jerome Pouli says, write it
down in pencil because he's on his way out the door.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
That's another good point.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
All right, we're joined by our national correspondent Rory O'Neil.
Let's get to this seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker
that took place. First time we've done something quite like
this with Venezuela and oil right.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
In our hemisphere.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
I'm pretty remarkable to have this happen. I thought it
was interesting that the news really came from Attorney General Bondi.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
You know, President Trump was having a meeting.
Speaker 6 (17:20):
I think, in the Roosevelt Room, and you know, sort
of told reporters that this thing had happened, but didn't
have a whole lot of detail. Instead on posting on
social media, ag Bondi said it was the Coastguard FBI
Homeland security investigations executing a seizure warrant for this crude
oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
The allegation is this thing.
Speaker 6 (17:41):
Had been spoofing its location, selling oil all around the
world and using the profits to fund Iran's military even
has Belah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, and this tanker tied to Cuba, so they resell
some of that Venezuela and crude on the black market.
A lot of that ends up going to China for
their oil demand. So you know, it sounds like we
did something that might have impacted negatively Venezuela, Cuba, and
maybe even China too, So that's pretty good. And the vessel,
(18:10):
I don't know if you knew this. It's a VLCC
oh okay, which stands for and I'm not kidding, a
very large crude carrier. Basically it holds a lot of
crude oil or.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
As the President said, the biggest ever.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, the biggest effort.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And it was funny because I think he was saying
they were asking him like, what are you gonna do now?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I guess we can keep it. It's ours now.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And I'm sure you know those three hundred and twenty
thousand gallons or tons tons of crude that were on
that tank er. I'm sure if we do keep it,
that is, without it not going to help bring gas
prices down. I'm sure we'll immediately see that Trump.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
They've already gone down, there have been lately. The other day,
I was psyched.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
How about that? I always please miss out.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I always end up going and filling up after the
prices have gone back up.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Boogie gas anyway, And who fills your tank for you?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Rory, our national correspondent with us this morning. Rory, thanks
so much.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
Thanks Ryan.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
The Ryan Gorman Show five to nine every weekday morning
on news radio w f l a
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