11-19-25 - 9am - KOA Food Drive and Medical Costs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Michael, today's your first opportunity to interact with goobers.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I hope you'll looking forward to it, because we sure
are you. Seriously, goobers are not allowed to show up
today because the last thing I want to do is
have to rub elbows with a goober. It's bad enough
that I'm sitting here with Shannon Scott, who's back there
with a pro paine tank. He actually has a propane
tank and he's trying to light it. So if you
hear a big kaboom, somebody just call an ambulance and

(00:28):
at least try to save Shannon because nobody cares about me.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
We are.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
We're broadcasting live today from the King Supers at Colorado
Boulevard and Yale in University Hills shopping area. If you
guys know where that is. There's a Marshall's and Pet
Smart and everything, so you can you can actually stop
buy and get me some dog food the Limburgers and
donate that too. But we're collecting donations for the Colorado
Food Bank of the Rockies. We're gonna be here until

(00:52):
nine o'clock tonight Colorado and Yale. We're trying to help
those in need with Koa's holiday food drive that does
benefit the Food of the Rockies. So you can donate turkeys, food, cash,
and there's going to be a QR code here somewhere.
I think I think they put the QR code on
the desk over there, so they'd be a QR code
if you want to donate some cash. This is presented
by Red Bird Farms and their generous donation of more

(01:14):
than four thousand pounds of chicken breasts and the Colorado
GMC dealers. Visit your local gmced ealer for the full
seer of family lineup. Let me just tell you we're
gonna we're gonna talk about the Chinese Communist Party and farmland,
which I think is kind of ironic in just a moment.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
But before we get to.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
That, let me just give you a I have a
little cheat sheet here about the Colorado Food or the
Food Bank of the Rockies. So some of the items
that they that make gronation that make great donations include
peanut butter, apasta, tuna, beef stew, chili, baked beans, soup,
canned fruit, canned veggies, jelly. They don't want anything, though,
don't bring your crazy can good out here. If it's damaged,

(01:52):
or it's ex expired. We're not just trying to let
you offload your expired food that.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
You looked at. H I'll take this out and give
it to them. No, you can't do that.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Or if you've got something as package and glass, don't
send that. So canned vegetables on a peanut butter, pasta, tuna,
be stoochially baked bean soup, canned fruit, canned veggie's jelly,
all of that be here and bring it out. We're
at Colorado and Yale at the King Soupers. I'm sitting
out here out front freezing my butt off because Shanny
can't get the profane tank to light. So at some

(02:20):
point we'll blow up and that'll be the end of
it and it'll make for great radio and you guys
can laugh your butts off. I want you to imagine,
for a moment, receiving a hospital bill for fifty thousand
dollars fifty grand, and then you see your insurance company
slash it to one hundred and fifty dollars out of pocket.
So suddenly relief washes over you because now you're not
paying as much.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Right. But here's the problem.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Those savings are completely illusionary because they're funneled straight back
into your and other taxpayers monthly premiums and your tax bills.
This is kind of a seductive sleight of hand of
the US health insurance system. It's a machine that inflates
the costs, it lines pockets of the insurance companies, and
it propels this country toward fiscal ruin. So you're gonna

(03:06):
hear a lot in the next couple of weeks as
they start to debate the next continuing Resolution, because it
expires sometime in January. They'll debate it a little bit.
I'm just knowing how Congress works. What they'll do is
they'll start the debate sometime the next week or so,
as soon as they get over the Epstein stuff, which
we will address that in a minute too. But once
they get through some of the Epstein stuff, then they're

(03:27):
gonna start looking at the Affordable Care Act Obamacare and
try to start talking about the tax credits that actually
go to the insurance companies. Let me just tell you
real quickly how it works. So they set up the exchange.
You have these insurance companies that are required because of
Obamacare to create a risk pool that covers everything. So

(03:51):
instead of having a risk pool that I might join
because I obviously don't need maternity care. My wife doesn't
need maternity care. We're kind of beyond that child age.
I mean we might you know, adopt a child or something.
Don't don't soon, so they don't I'm gonna do that,
but we're not going she's not going to get pregnant. Okay,
let's just you can figure out why, but it's not
going to happen. No, it's not, because it means because

(04:13):
of her man. So there, what they do is they
create these risk pools, but because they're required to cover everything,
they can't. The insurance company cannot minimize its risk by saying, oh,
we could put you over here into this pool, and
so your rate would be X because you don't want
any sort of maternity costs or try, you know, pediatric

(04:34):
services or.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Anything, so you would go into that risk pool.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Then they might have another risk pool that would obviously
be for younger people, young families starting out. They're gonna
have pediatric care, they're going to have obgyn care, they're
gonna have maternity care, all of that. So then they
create a risk pool over here for those people, and
those rates would be different obviously than the rates for
me because I don't have those things. However, my rates

(04:59):
might be equally a little bit more because I'm getting older.
So as you get older, you have more health problems,
although I'm fortunate to have very little of any health
problems whatsoever. So that's how they design a risk pool,
and that's how they design the rates. But what happens
with Obamacare is those insurance companies that are on the exchange,
and here's here's a good reason why they remain on

(05:21):
the exchange is because they're able to keep all of
the tax credits that go to the insurance company. So
let's just say the tax credit is it's either twenty
or twenty five thousand dollars. I forget what the amount is,
but let's just say it's twenty thousand dollars a policy.
So of that twenty or maybe twenty five, but I'm
going to use twenty of that twenty thousand dollars. That's

(05:44):
a so called air quote here tax credit. It gets
paid directly to the insurance company. So when you sign
up for a policy on the exchange, they get a
twenty thousand dollars cash payment into their coffers.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
There's the deal.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
The insurance company's allowed to take I think somewhere between
twenty and twenty five percent, about a quarter of it
they can take off the top to line their own
pockets by saying that it's going to be for administrative
costs for their share of profits, blah blah blah. So
of the twenty thousand dollars, a quarter of that five
thousand dollars immediately goes into their pockets. Then, of course

(06:25):
they would only use those credits. What's left of the
you know, the twenty the fifteen thousand dollars, they would
then use that to cover any you know, costs that
are incurred because you use one of the benefits under
the policy that you got on the exchange. So you
get the one hundred and fifty third, you get the
fifty thousand dollars hospital bill, it gets slashed one hundred

(06:46):
and fifty dollars out of pocket.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
You breathe a deep sigh relief because you think, oh,
that's really good.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
But the fact is, those savings, as I said, are
illusory because they're funneled straight back into your and other taxpayers.
The premiums and the tax bills. This is what I
call the seductive sleight of hand that the health insurance
system does. It's a machine that inflates your costs. It
lines the pockets of the insurance companies. As I said,
it propels us toward this complete fiscal run that we're

(07:15):
doing because of Obamacare. And that's why nobody wants to
touch it over the past fifteen years, because they can't
forget what to do with it. Let me just give
you a little top line idea. What if instead of
giving that twenty thousand dollars to the insurance companies, it
was put into a pseudo whatever you want to call it,
health savings account I know, not technically not a health

(07:38):
savings account, but something like a health savings account for you,
so that you could use it for FSA or HSA
approved expenditures, or you could use it to pay towards
your deductible. So that means that the full twenty thousand
dollars would actually go to healthcare costs and wouldn't go
to part of the cost involved in running the insurance company. Now,

(08:03):
national health expenditures in this country are around for the
last number I found was about four point eight trillion
dollars almost five trillion dollars for calendar year twenty twenty three.
That is about twenty percent of GDP if it keeps
growing by twenty thirty, If we don't do something, so

(08:24):
twenty percent of the entire gross domestic product of this
country will go toward healthcare. If we don't do something
about this way of doing business, the villain. The villain
is this intricate web of insurers, the providers, and quite frankly,
the politicians to profit from all the chaos. And this
is not anything new. Think about before the nineteen sixties.

(08:47):
Go prior to nineteen sixties. That's when employers sponsored insurance exploded,
alongside Medicare and medicaid. Medical care was a straight forward transaction.
What do I mean by straightforward transaction? You knew when
you went to see your doctor what it was going
to cost. You, you knew what the office as it
was going to be, and then you could ask the doctor, oh,

(09:10):
you want to do this procedure? Does that cost? It's
going to be five hundred dollars? Okay, well let me
shop that around so you might go to another doctor
in town. He does it for four hundred dollars, but
that went away. But go back to say nineteen fifty five,
a year that maybe some of you were born. A
hospital bill for a three night stay to deliver a

(09:31):
baby in Kansas, to just take or an average hospital
in Kansas totaled sixty dollars sixty six zero dollars that
included the drugs, the meals, the lab work. That's about
six hundred dollars today after inflation, after adjustments for inflation. However,
fast forward to last year, the average uncomplicated vaginal delivery

(09:56):
costs more than eighteen thousand dollars. C section pushes it
past twenty six thousand dollars. That's all according to Forbes.
That is a three thousand percent increase and that obviously
far outstrips inflation or wage growth. Well, why is that happening?

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Why? Nobody ever asked the why?

Speaker 2 (10:17):
And then when you find out the why, the problem
is the political leadership inside the beltwait doesn't want to
do anything about it because and heads will explode when
I say this, but it's the truth. It's because have
you ever asked yourself why do we end up with Obamacare?
Have you ever asked yourself why? Because not one single

(10:38):
Republican voted for it, not one. It was purely a
Democrat transaction, a Democrat bill that was pushed through solely
with Democrat votes. Now, they could have worked on it.
They could have worked on immigration, they could have worked
on inflation, they could have worked on foreign affairs, they
could have worked on anything. But they chose to work
on this. Know why, because they knew once they got

(11:02):
this program started it would never go away. Now it
can go away, but they're relying on everybody just sitting
back on their laurels and nobody wanting to do anything
to upset the Apple card because they've completely destroyed I
shouldn't say completely, but they have destroyed an awful lot
of the private insurance market. Insurance severed the direct go

(11:28):
back to nineteen fifty five, when you went directly to
the hospital, you went directly to the doctor, or you
went to the hospital and you paid that five hundred
dollars or sixty dollars in nineteen fifty five for a
delivery of a baby. Insurance, when we started doing employer
based insurance, that severed the direct link between you as

(11:48):
a patient and your doctor, and that unleashed a pricing
free for all where so called list prices, they'll start
to balloon because third party payers, the insurance and the
government program they foot the bill. And truthfully, it's not
even that the insurance and the government programs foot the bill.
I don't really have that worded right. It's actually that

(12:11):
we're all footing the bill. Because if it's a quote
government program, that means it's being paid for by taxpayer dollars.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
And that's what's happening now.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
So enter the Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act twenty ten,
fifteen years of this abomination. Now remember historically we forget,
but it was sold as an antidote skyrocketing uninsured rates,
and Obama promised that requiring insurance for everybody. Remember the
big debate about oh my gosh, this is the first

(12:40):
time that the government has required us to go purchase
a private product. Yes, purchasing a private product, something that
was purely personal that you could choose not to purchase
if you didn't want to. So you can't make a
comparison to say, a license plate for your car, because
you're required to do that because you're operating your car

(13:02):
on a public roadway. So it does not it does
not reduce costs. We're all footing the bill. When Obama
promised that requiring insurance for all would lower costs for
all Americans by capping family premiums at eight to eleven

(13:23):
percent of income, and that somehow that would bend the
cost curved downward, it charged it, turbocharged the inferno. Before
Obamacare individual market premiums they averaged two hundred and forty
four dollars a monthly in twenty thirteen. Six years later,
they doubled five hundred and fifty eight that's one hundred

(13:44):
and thirty percent surge according to the Heritage Foundation. So
overall health spending growth continued to climb. Per person cost
balloon from little over elevenenty twenty ten to over fourteen
twenty twenty three. And that's actually in twenty twenty three dollars.
So allays jump well almost eight percent between twenty two
and twenty twenty three, hitting that four point eight trillion,

(14:06):
almost five trillion dollars that I told you about at
the beginning of the segment. And now with enhanced government
Obamacare subsidies expiring at the year's end, premiums could spite
seventy five percent nationwide next year. According to the Peterson
Kff analysis, that would undo even the illusion of affordability.

(14:27):
So what's the fatal flaw. What's the fatal flaw of Obamacare?
It doubled down on the falsehood. It doubled down on
the myth that more insurance equals lower costs. In reality,
it guaranteed demand because when you mandate coverage for twenty

(14:47):
million more people and you insulate the providers from market discipline,
that guarantees the demand and inflates the demand. And in
other words, it guaranteed the companies could overcharge knowing that
the insurance is going to pay for it. If you
happen to be on Medicare right now and you get
one of those explanation of benefits from Medicare, you get

(15:09):
to get electronically, or you get a paper copy in
the mail, you look at it sometime and you see
what the You see what the provider charge. You might say,
I could look at my my retina doctor and let's
just I'll just pick some numbers out of my butt.
So the retina doctor charges five hundred dollars, Medicare might
pay sixty dollars, and then my supplement might pay an

(15:32):
additional forty dollars, so the doctor gets paid one hundred dollars.
He's required to do that. How do I not know?
Because you would look at that and say, wait a minute,
he charged five hundred dollars, but then he got reimbursed
one hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
How do you.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Stay in business? Because the five hundred dollars figure is inflated.
The five hundred dollars figure is higher than what he
would normally charge a patient coming in either paying privately
or pay with cash. That's the inflation because insurance is
going to pay, so they just jack up the prices.

(16:07):
It's we're broadcasting live from Colorado and Yale Boulevard. It's
the annual KOA Food Drive. Drop by. I'm sitting here
right out front. You can make some donations and cash.
You can give some can goods, peanut butter, whatever it is.
But stop by, say hello. We'll be here until nine
o'clock tonight. Well I won't be, but the team will

(16:28):
be here until nine o'clock tonight. Be right back. Hey,
let's go to Gary over the retirement planning set of
the Rockies. You going to have a simple question for you.
What are some of the reasons that people end up
coming to the retirement planning set of the Rockies when
they've after they've gone to say other financial planners.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Well, that's a great question, Michael. Let me share a
true story if I can, that's happened just this last year.
We had a client who came to us about eight
months ago from an event we held, and they had
another advisor they had been with for many years back
and thought they were pretty happy. They did sense however,

(17:05):
he didn't want him to really spend and enjoy their money,
and that concerned them. They had two major concerns.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
They wanted to.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Buy a new home, a second home, if you will,
and they wanted to be able to leave a substantial
inheritance to their four kids, their grandkids, I'm sorry. So
they went through our comprehensive Summit Retirement Guide process and
we discussed that in great detail. Long story short. When
all was said and done, they had plenty of money

(17:35):
to accomplish the things they wanted to do. In fact,
we were able to help them buy a new home,
which says the second home which they now live in,
and we showed them how to leave a substantial amount
of money a million dollars to each of their four
grandkids and do it in a way where it will
not hamper their retirement plans moving forward. And by the way,

(17:55):
we did all that the money to the grandkids in
fact in a tax free way, and it won't be
included in their state at the time of their passing.
So it's a wonderful thing to just have this opportunity
to help people dig in research and see how they
can do things that they didn't think they can do.
And these people are just happy as can be.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
And that is exactly why I'd recommend my listeners get
in touch with you guys.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
It's really easy to do.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Like you just pick up the phone, call the Retirement
Planning Center of the Rockies, make sure you like them
as much as I do, and then if you do,
they'll take you through their trademark Summit Retirement Guide process.
So call the Retirement Planning Set of the Rockies today
nine seven zero six sixty three thirty two eleven. That's
nine seven zero six six three thirty two eleven, or
go to their website rpcenter dot com.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Well, here we are. It's nine o'clock. My earballs are
all a Twitter for the.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Dragon and Michael Brown Show, whereas it call Michael Brown
and Dragon Show.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
I can never remember.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
By the way, if your earballs need surgery, do you
go see an Aaron Osen throat specialist or are urologist?

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Just curious? Have a good day.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
And the answer to that is yes, you can go
to either one, because well doesn't really make you a
difference whether it's sure your balls or otherwise, So you
just go either either place doesn't make any difference. And
in fact, that's a pretty good question, because the better
question would be is whether or not it's gonna be
covered by your Obamacare plan, Whether it's not it's going
to be covered by your insurance, and how much is
it going to cost you through your insurance versus if

(19:22):
you just paid it out of pocket. That's the real question.
So the Obamacare fatal flaw is this. It doubled down
on this falsehood, an absolute falsehood that morece equals lower costs.
In reality, what it did if you again supply and demand.
It guaranteed demand by mandating coverage for twenty million more people,

(19:46):
and then it insulated the people that provided the insurance.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Of those million people.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
It insulated those insurers from market discipline, so it guaranteed
that the companies could overcharge because they knew that, Well, hey,
the insurance is go to pay, so I can charge
whatever I want to charge. Now, if you're on Medicare
of Medicaid, it might be subjected to some limitations, but
otherwise it's just gonna be whatever your policy pays. So
they have figured out, hey, we know we're gonna get

(20:13):
amount of money, so we can charge X amount of
money regardless of what the market might demand for that
particular procedure that you want to get done. This drives
me crazy. Now, think about Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare and
Medica covered about forty percent of Americans. Such rates for
they for what they'll pay. They're influenced by the medical industry,

(20:36):
lobbyists and the donors. Then private insurers use those same
rates to set their own reimbursements, and that creates a
feedback loop of price gouging. Politicians in greenlight those rates
believed by the industry cash pharma health product political action committees.
They funneled sixteen million dollars to federal candidates last year alone,

(20:56):
More than two thirds of congress seventy two senators three
hundred two House members getting checks in the prior cycle.
It's a mutual backscratching. The industry gets inflated reimbursements, lawmakers
get re election war chess. And don't think that I'm
just sitting here complaining about Democrats. The top recipients Marshall BlackBerry, Republican, Tennessee.

(21:20):
Three hundred and sixteen thousand dollars bill cassidy from a
Republican from Louisiana who happens to be a doctor. Two
hundred ninety thousand dollars from the Farmer healthcare packs and
employees back in from twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four.
Between nineteen ninety nine and twenty eighteen, Farmer spent four

(21:41):
point seven billion dollars lobby That's more than any other
labbying sector. And they spent four hundred and fourteen million.
In addition to the four point seven billion on lobbying,
they spent four hundred and fourteen million dollars on federal campaigns.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
Who's the mark?

Speaker 2 (22:01):
If this is all a shell game, and this is
all fraud, then who's the mark?

Speaker 1 (22:06):
You the patient? Go back to that fifty thousand bill.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Fifty thousand dollars hospital bill, but out of pocket only
one hundred and fifty dollars. You're still paying the full freight.
You're still paying the full freight through the premiums that
average over seven thousand dollars annually for family coverage in
twenty twenty four, and that is up twenty percent since
twenty thirteen. And then all the taxes you pay that

(22:30):
fund Medicare, Medicaid's one point five trillion dollar tab. This
is an invisible toll that makes healthcare the most our healthcare.
While yes it's the best, it doesn't have to be
the most expensive.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yet it is because the.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Insurers then negotiate these so called discounts that still exceed
fair market value, and the costs they just spill over
in cascade right down to you uninsured patients. Well, that does
negotiate cash prices that are fifty to seventy percent lower,
and that exposes the bracket. You should just try it sometime,

(23:09):
even though you know you're maybe you're not going to
do it. You should just go in and just ask
your doctor sometime. Hey, listen, you want to do it?

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Appen.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
You know, maybe it's not an emergency, it's you need
to have. You need to have a mole removed. Okay,
what would you charge the insurance coming for this doc? Okay,
so you'd charge one thousand dollars to do that. If
I paid cash to have by this mole removed, what
would you charge for that? Oh, I charge you fifty dollars.
That's where that is how you expose the racket. Now,

(23:40):
imagine a healthcare system without this chill game going on.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Step number one.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
No insurance would mean that competition kicks in because patients
would to start shopping around, just like we do for cars,
like people coming into this King superspic groceries, because very
few people could afford the prices that the industry charges
under the car an insurance system.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
You look at your insurance, you look at.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
A bill that you get for a procedure, and look
at how much that is, and then imagine trying to
pay that amount without the insurance. Ninety percent of the
country you go bankrupt. So companies would simply lose all
their business if they don't structure more realistic and a
fair pricing structure. But there is no incentity for them

(24:24):
to do that while this system remains in place.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
That would be.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Step Number one, just no more mandated insurance. Step two
overpriced services. I'll explain that next.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Good Morning, Michael and Dragon.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Let the
good control. Where shall we say, fly high have a
good day?

Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yes, So, Shannon, do you hear what those nice goober
said about me?

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (24:56):
And what they say that I'm their favorite talk show
hope fake news.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
I heard them say they do exterior work in Nay.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Some healthy GQ painting, right. Yeah, they said he've been
doing it for forty years. But he looks like he's
twelve years old, So you know, I don't know whether
they're beleev him or not GQ painting.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
So we are.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
We're here at Colorado and Yale Kiene Supers raising money
for the Food Bank of the of the Rockies. Here's
some ideas if you want to drop by. There's a
QR code here if you want to donate cash. But
we'll also take good things like peanut butter, pasta, tuna,
be stew, chili, baked beans, soup, canned fruit, canned vegetables,
jelly chess.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Don't do this because I know you guys.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Don't bring stuff that's out of date because you're trying
to clean out your pantry. Okay, don't do that. We
want to think. You want to think Redbird Farms, they've
donated four thousand pounds of chicken breasts and Colorado GMC dealers.
Visit your local GMC dealer for the full Sierra Family
lineup and come out here and help the food Bank
of the Rockies.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
So let's go back.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
I want to finish up real quickly about this whole
thing on insurance, because this is not a pipe dream.
I think it's something that really could be that can
really happen. First, no insurance, just get rid of insurance.
Obviously you'd have to phase it in. But number two,
think about overpriced, overpriced services. So you get charged ten
grand for an MRI. That would push the patients to

(26:23):
cheaper alternatives. That would force the hospitals, the providers to
cut fat. It would allow other companies entry into that
marketplace where they wouldn't be overcharging prices would start to drop.
Existing companies that are already providing MRIs could tram all
the administrative bloat. Do you know that almost a third
of our health care spending goes toward administrative costs in

(26:47):
peer nations. So I'm not talking about Uganda or Zambia.
I'm talking about like you know, France, Germany, Australia or Japan.
You know what they spend on administrative costs for their
healthcare between twelve and sixteen percent, more than double that.
And so that would allow for the negotiation of real efficiencies,
and without the insurance bureaucracy, all the trappings and costs

(27:08):
of the red tape would be saved on both ends
of the transaction. And then the third thing would happen
with that supply would meet demand at some sort of equilibrium.
They would eventually get at equilibrium, prices would plummet because
there's no third party payer to absorb the excess. Now,
I know this sounds like a pipe dream, but it
doesn't have to be. It can be phased in over time. Now,

(27:31):
if you don't want to phase it in over time.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
Then do this.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Just get rid of Obamacare, because Obamacare is the driver
of everything else. No insurance. Go back to the nineteen
fifties world. Oh, Michael, that's impossible. You can't do that really. Now,
in nineteen fifties, would a full baby delivery cost you

(27:55):
sixty because patients paid out of pocket. Providers competed on value,
people competed on price. Columbia, of all places, has a
hybrid system. They have universal coverage via a regulated private insurance.
It ranks number twenty two globally by the World Health Organization,

(28:15):
which is better than US at number thirty seven, and
costs a fraction of what we're spending in Colombia and
MRI one hundred and eighty dollars. In the US between
one and three thousand dollars. Medicare pays about five hundred
dollars private up to about twenty five hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Controls another issue.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Universal insurance just entrenches that control the government in the
industry didn't collaborate, and they dictate approved treatments, sidelining innovations
that don't juice the profits.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
It's got to change because if it.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Doesn't change, we're going to price ourselves into oblivion. So
when you hear about the debate over the Obamacare subsidies,
think why don't you guys think outside of the ball.
I know it's difficult when you're getting you know, three
hundred thousand or two hundred fifty thousand or whatever. From
big farmer or the insurance companies. But until Congress actually
starts being honest with us, I'll just tell you the

(29:12):
truth they're lying to. Youbet Obamacare. It's that simple. Be
right back