October 16, 2024 • 27 mins
Wayne Resnick fills in for Bill who is out on vacation. Why Newsom’s wrist is sore. America’s New Millionaires. Dr. 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 Wayne about the latest Whooping Cough outbreak, OTC antidote for narcotic is actually working, and breakfast foods affecting women and men differently.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Bill Handles
Show on demand on the iHeartRadio f.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It is a Bill Handles show and he is back
from vacation on Monday. Now we're watching some stories for
you here at KFI. I do want to talk about
something that just happened. Even when they're wrong, sometimes the
police are right. And that happened in the case of
(00:30):
a theft call from a store in the Upland area
to the cops saying, hey, people just stole some stuff
from us and ran out. And so the officers are
responding to this call and they see a car that
matches the vehicle that was reported, so they pull it over.
But as soon as they pull it over and look,
they see the two people inside do not match the
(00:52):
description of the suspects. However, they noticed there was an
open beer in the car and that there was also
a meth pipe in one of the cup holders. And
then they looked a little more, just looking through the window,
and they saw a bunch of fancy perfume boxes in
(01:15):
the car. And guess what, ladies and gentlemen, these two
guys were not the guys that the store owner called
and described that the cops went out looking for. But
they also these two guys also had stolen stuff from
the same store. Bad timing for them, good timing for
(01:40):
the police. And I guess these two unrelated groups of
thieves drive similar cars.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's crazy, also crazy, not really crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Governor Newsom has been signing a ton of laws, vetoing
some of them, and that's why I said earlier, we're
going to find out why his risk is stared. His
risk is tired from working that pen. So I just
let's go through. Because the big news has been he
signed the law requiring the oil companies to keep a
(02:14):
stockpile of gasoline available so that when they cut down
their refineries for maintenance, we don't have a supply related
spike in the price of gas.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
And that's been getting a ton of.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Attention because it's very controversial, with the oil company saying
it's a terrible, terrible law that will actually raise the
price of gas, with the union workers who work at
the refinery saying it's a terrible, terrible law because it's
going to make things more dangerous, and consumer advocates and
economists saying, well, it might lower the cost of gas,
(02:45):
but it might not. We don't know, but he signed
a bunch of other stuff. So let's see how many
of these ideas we agree with him about. In the
world of healthcare, he signed a law that says the
local health officials can go into private detention facilities and
inspect them. And the thing about it is that includes
(03:08):
six immigration detention centers, which technically it's a federal issue
immigration detention. But these facilities are not being run by
the Feds. They're being run by contractors. And so this
new law that he signed says, oh, yeah, we can
send in local health inspectors to look around there. You know,
(03:31):
there's all these deadlines to retrofit hospitals so they don't
fall down in an earthquake, and there's currently a deadline
of the year twenty thirty. Well, the governor signed a
law that allows small hospitals, rural hospitals, or distressed hospitals
I guess, hospitals that are suffering financially to get an
(03:54):
extension up to three years from the deadline.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
But there was another law.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That would have given every hospital the ability to apply
for a five year delay in the deadline, and he
vetoed that. Man he said, look if you're just a
regular hospital, a normal hospital, you're gonna have to retrofit.
I'm not giving you any breaks now. You know, if
there's something about you, like you're way out in the sticks,
(04:20):
or you're having big financial problems, I'll give you a
little more time. Credit reporting agencies will not be able
to include medical debt on your credit report under this
California law, Senate Bill ten sixty one that Newsom signed.
Some people say the protections are not as strong as
they could be. We are ahead of the curve, though,
(04:42):
because you may remember, the Biden administration has proposed rules
that at the federal level would not allow unpaid medical
bills to affect your credit score, but California has already
passed a law like that. He also, you know, it's
already a crime, a misdemeanor in California to get in
(05:05):
the way of somebody trying to get an abortion, if
you obstruct or impede access to reproductive health care services.
And also, by the way, if you do a different thing,
which is you try to intimidate people by posting personal
information or photographs of a patient or of a provider,
those are misdemeanors. Well, Nussim has signed this law that
(05:25):
now makes them wobblers, meaning they start as a felony,
but they can be reduced to a misdemeanor.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Through a few avenues.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
So the potential punishment, not necessarily the actual punishment anybody
would get, has gone up. And one more that's interesting
to me, you know, because there's been a lot of
talk about police reform. So he signed a bunch of
laws related to helping the elderly, but one of them
(05:57):
affects cops, which is the bill that requires increased training
for cops and for healthcare professionals in helping people with dementia.
Sometimes a police officer shows up on the scene a
person has dementia, what does that mean? They may not
be able to follow instructions, they may not make sense.
(06:18):
And if a police officer is not well trained in
recognizing that as dementia instead of maybe being drunk as
a skunk or just being a butt head, if they
can't recognize the difference, it can go south very quickly.
That's just a little sampler plate of all the laws
(06:38):
that Newsom has signed. In a trend that has been
observed all around the country, a record number of early
votes were cast in Georgia yesterday as early voting began,
over three hundred and twenty eight thousand votes cast yesterday.
This blows through the previous first day record, which was
(06:59):
in the last presidential election and was only one hundred
and thirty six thousand votes, so more than double the
number of people wanted to vote as early as was
possible in Georgia. Meanwhile, there are unfortunately about one hundred
people still missing in North Carolina. This is over two
weeks after Hurricane Helen went through there. This is according
(07:22):
to the governor Roy Cooper, who was at a news
conference saying that and as always, that number could change.
More reports can come in, other reports are resolved, you
could still have reports of people missing coming in for
the first time now and a lot of times this
is cross our fingers.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
A lot of time. This is just people who could
not get a hold of anybody.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Okay, there's a new kind of millionaire in the United
States now. Right here on KFI, you will hear about
certain companies that are family businesses, companies that have been
passed down from say a father to a son. The
(08:10):
dad used to run the business, and now the son
runs the business and there are certain sectors of the
economy where this is very common. Plumbing, hvac, electrical. It's
kind of a time honored position. You know, somebody starts
(08:31):
a plumbing company and they grow it into a going business,
and then they give it to their children and they
run it and so on and so forth. And that's
why you see a lot of these kinds of companies
with the blank and sons in their names. Well, not
necessarily moving forward, I talked on this show last week
(08:55):
about how private equity firms were buying up the staffing
of emergency rooms all across the country and ruining the
emergency rooms. Well, private equity rears its ugly head again
when it comes to the quaint, lovely, family owned plumbing
(09:16):
or hvac or electrical company in your community. And private
equity is, in my opinion, one of the very, very
very worst aspects of capitalism, because you have people who
borrow a bunch of money buy companies, not to commit
(09:38):
to running and owning those companies' long term, but usually
to strip it for parts, to try to make it
as financially attractive on paper as possible, and turn around
and sell it to somebody else and make a big profit.
They basically flip companies the way that real estate flippers
flip houses. Is all private equity evil. No, is a
(10:03):
lot of it evil as heck. Yeah, So just as
private equity starting, I don't know, this started maybe five
years ago with the emergency room staffing companies, just as
they noticed an opportunity there, they have now noticed an
opportunity to take a small mom and pop and son
(10:24):
plumbing company and buy it and merge it with another
one that they bought and make a bigger company, or
fold it into a bigger company that they already have purchased.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
And do the same thing that they always do.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
The plus side of this phenomenon is for the dad
and the son or the daughter, or the mom and
the son or the daughter, whoever's running the HVAC company.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
They get massive paydays.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
You've got a plumbing company in a a in a
large city and it's doing pretty well. It's not a
fortune five hundred company, but it's doing pretty well. You know,
you might have a plumbing company that has but I'm
just throwing out numbers as you have to stee have
ten employees and you bring in three million dollars a year.
And that's not bad. But what do you do when
(11:23):
private equity shows up and they say, we'll give you
ten million dollars. Right now, a lot of these companies,
these small companies, the owners are saying, yes, please, thank
you very much. I will take the big money and
I'll retire, or I'll I'll do something else with my lie.
(11:44):
I'll go learn guitar and try to be a rock star,
whatever it is. The range of payouts is huge. You know,
you have you have plumbing companies being bought for thirty
million dollars. You have plumbing companies being bought for two
hundred million dollars. I'm not talking about mass I'm not
talking about Cohler the plumbing fixtures. Brand'm not talking about that.
(12:08):
I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Literally, you know, Hanian.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Sons Plumbing in Houston, Texas. In some cases, the owners
of those companies, they take the money and that's it.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
They're done. They don't want to work anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Now, in some cases, what happens, his private equity shows
up and they says, hey, Hanian Sons, we want to
buy your company. We'll give you, I don't know, fifty
we'll give you fifty million dollars. But also, we'll let
you hold a twenty percent equity in the company, and
you can even still be part of the company, but
you're not going to be part of the company the
(12:45):
way you are now, where you own the company and
you call the shots and it's your company. What you
can do is you can be in a management position
with the parent company that we already have that we're
going to fold you into.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And some people go for that.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
You know, they're people who run a plumbing company or
an electrical company and they get a big offer like
that and they look at it as an opportunity to
just not have to work anymore. And there are other
people who get an offer like that, and they still
they like plumbing, they like electricity, they like heating and
air conditioning, ventilation, they like it. So they take the
(13:25):
money and they still stay in the business. It's just
they no longer own their own small shop. They now
are a middle management person at a bigger company. But
they're all millionaires. Every one of them becomes a millionaire.
You don't think of plumbers and hvac people as being millionaires,
(13:47):
but five years from now, they're all going to be millionairess.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
What it looks like.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Downtown LA for this rally slash press conference starting at
one pm on behalf of the mennu As brothers serving
life sentences for murdering their parents. Cannot be sure exactly
what it's about. Whether it's a huge announcement, which would
be George Gascone, the distric Attorney of La County, announcing
(14:14):
that he is going to ask a judge to re
sentence them, or whether this is just going to lay
out the case from the Menents brothers lawyers about why
the DA should do it. But Michael Monks will have
all the latest as it happens for you. And right
now we have the latest medical news from our own
(14:35):
medical expert, doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for Dignity
Health Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. Welcome back
to the show, doctor Jim.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Thanks Wayne. Are you a scratch golfer?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Absolutely not, No, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Most people are not. Very few people really are scratch golfers.
This would be an amateur who can consistently what golf
at or below the course rating wherever they go.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Yeah, no, that's not me for sure. I lose probably
a case of balls every time I go golfing.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
All right, Well, that's okay because that is your avocation
and your profession is medicine, at which you are very
very good. So first tell us about this whooping cough outbreak.
What is it, where is it happening? What are we
supposed to do?
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Right? So, we're seeing like ten year highs in the
for the year so far in outbreaks of whooping cough
or pertussis in California, and so those same thing whooping
cough or pertussis. It got its name because when children
start coughing, they cough so violently from it that they
(15:53):
when they try and breathe in they make this whooping
sound just trying to catch their breath as they cough.
It can be hard on children under twelve months of age,
and that's usually the age group very young, you know,
first few months of life where we need to admit
the patients to the hospital because they just can't even
get enough oxygen from these violent coughing spells that they get.
(16:15):
So it's an interesting disease because it starts like with
one to two weeks of just being a mild cough
and then that's when they start between like two to
six weeks with this really severe coughing fits and then
they gradually recover over the next week two months. So
this thing lasts forever and you really want to try
(16:37):
and diagnose it early. But there is a vaccine for this.
It's a normal childhood vaccine. And then when you get
a tetanis shot. The DPT or t edapp is the
immunization the p in it is protessis. So adults also
every ten years normally would get vaccinated for this.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Okay, so what do they do?
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I'm curious what did they do with the child who's
admitted to the hospital and they can't get enough air?
Do they put them on a ventilator of some kind?
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah? So, I mean if we diagnose it in the
first few weeks, I mean, this is a bacteria, so
it's treatable with like a zpack or rhythromyasin something like that.
But it really has to be in the early stages
if it's going to be effective. Once you get to
it past about a week or two. So it's tough
because a lot of parents will look and for the
first week it just looks like a cough and an illness,
(17:30):
and they're hanging out at home and thinking they're being reasonable,
but then two weeks later the kid actually gets worse,
and by then antibiotics are minimally effective. So yeah, we
put them on oxygen, we give them breathing treatments, and
we really just try and support them through it.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Is the increase in these cases due to under vaccination
or some other factor.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah, I mean, just like a lot of other diseases,
what we're seeing is post COVID, a lot of children
fell hind on their childhood vaccines. So we're starting to
see a bigger emergence of this. The fact that you know,
during COVID, people were wearing masks and we're isolating and
so that dropped the rate of COVID pretty of whooping
(18:13):
cough pretty significantly. But now we're well above the normal rates.
So so you know, it's it's really improved. Sorry, it's
really gotten worse since COVID. COVID made it look like
it was improving, and now suddenly it's getting a lot worse.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah. Okay, now listen, here's what we're going to do.
Let's get some news from Amy King, and then doctor
when we come back, I'll let you pick what you'd
like to talk about next okay, because I want.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
To want to keep you interested in my golf.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Game for sure.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
No no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Now do you do you already know and we can
tease it or will we be surprised when we come back?
Speaker 3 (18:50):
How do you want to handle this?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
You know, let's talk about caryovascular disease.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Okay, good, although I was said good, but apparently the
news is not necessarily totally good. So you can explain
what's going on with that. It's doctor Jim Keeney. Here,
we have doctor Jim Keeney with US chief Medical officer
for Dignity Health Saint Mary Medical Center that's in Long Beach.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
And doctor Jim.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I remember when the American Heart Association issued a goal
that they were gonna cut the deaths from cardiovascular disease
and stroke by some amount. I don't remember the amount
that they said over a period of time.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
And you're here to tell us that we did it.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Yes, no, So you know they announced this in twenty twenty. Now,
if you look all the way back to two thousand
and look at what we've accomplished. I mean, back in
two thousand, the death rate was probably five hundred per
every one hundred thousand people from heart disease number one
killer still exceed cancer, and we drive from five hundred
(20:01):
to somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred per one
hundred thousand people. So that's a significant improvement. But after
twenty twenty it has absolutely stalled. In fact, it went
up in twenty twenty one the death rate, and so
we really have not improved, you know, from there, and
a lot of that has been There's so many reasons
(20:22):
for that, but one big reason as Americans, and then
their connection to a primary care doctor who can address
the fact that many of us are not where we
need to be as far as our cardiovascular health.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And that's because if I understand, well, they're not if
I understand it because I experienced it too. If you
have a health insurance plan and you can have a
primary care physician, but that physician might have three thousand
patients in order to write in order to have a
going practice, and that means, you know, what kind of
attention can you really expect from somebody who's said the
(20:59):
primary a care doctor for three thousand people. Is this
purely a money problem or is there another reason that
the primary care system has bogged down.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's a whole system problem. You know,
the system just is not well built for primary care.
There's people trying to change that, but it's coming too slow.
And almost half of Americans have some type of risk
factor or cardiovascular disease currently. And the look when they
(21:29):
look at studies, look at are you optimize as your
health optimized? Only about one out of ten are optimizing
their cardiovascular health, meaning they're addressing all the issues of
high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking, exercise, eating, and
so if you don't have that relationship with a primary
care doctor to really understand that these these are still risks.
(21:52):
There's a disconnect as well between Americans and their sense
of risk. They don't seem to recognize that their sense
of risk for coronary RD disease and cardiovascular disease can
be high and that there's things we can do to
correct it and to fix it.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Now, the good news is, I think a couple of things.
But you can jump in and you can be the
party pooper here since you're the expert. One of the
things of good news is that we know a lot
about cardiovascular disease, and we know the things that make
it worse, and we know things that make it better.
(22:32):
And if you can get to a primary care physician,
there are a lot of tools in their tool bag
that can help.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
So that's good at least in theory.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Yes, yeah, I mean we have that's the thing. We
have more tools than we've ever had to be able
to address this. But we're almost becoming both sides of
the equation here, both patients and doctors are becoming just
this the system that just wants to push Okay, here's
a prescription, this will fix everything. Now, there's a lot
(23:06):
more people that need more prescriptions. I'm not saying that
they don't. But at the same time, this is not
just a I write you a prescription and you get better.
That people have to take some ownership in their health.
I do think that it's hard man to eat healthy
in this environment of ultra processed foods. I'm sure that
that is contributing because we're seeing liver disease in people,
(23:28):
which contributes to coronary already these same risk factors, but
liver disease in young people really has to do with
your diet and things you're exposed to in the environment.
So it's kind of scary, the extent to which you
have to go just to try and live healthy in
this environment.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I've noticed something, and I bet you've noticed the same
thing I happen to. You know, I'll shop at Trader
Joe's sometimes, and so I'll go on their website and
I'll look at what new stuff they have.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I also, and don't please.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Don't ask me why I'm a weirdo, I follow some
websites that talk about new new products at restaurants and
these stuff like that. And I've noticed that the trend
is this, that the companies themselves, when they announce, oh,
we have a new menu item, it is overwhelmingly skewed
towards stuff full of sugar and fat, candies and cakes
(24:26):
and cookies and jams and jellies, and that the American
diet is in many ways not just unhealthy, but shockingly unhealthy.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Is that? Do you concur with my assessment?
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Oh? Absolutely, yeah. And that's because you know, there's only
so many stomachs in America, and they're all competing for
space in that stomach. So you've got to get past
the tongue for all that. So it's got to be
not but not only are they developing the foods to
be tasty, but they're even tapping into the texture and
things that make it so that you crave and are
(25:06):
addicted to these foods, you know, in a way similar
to like we've talked about another segment, similar to tobacco
products and and things like that. They're they're trying to
make food compulsive and addictive, and that's the stuff that
you come back for.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
So if you if you have.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
A restaurant, if you're if you're trying to sell food,
that's what you're competing with. If you don't make it
like that, you're not you're not gonna be able to
sell your food. So unfortunately, so you're absolutely right, and
that's what we see exploding because people those are the
successful groups. They're making that type of food, and people
that are just selling you know, an egg or or
(25:43):
fresh fruit. It's it's just a lot tougher to make
that sale.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, it's not a it's not a it's not a
sexy thing.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
You got to read the ingredients, That's what I mean.
That's how I chick pick food as I read the
ingredients and when it has all those things, you can't
pronounce in it. That's bad.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, you throw it. But I also I look at
the nutritional information. I look at the macros now and
I've seen things that are like I had no idea
that this would have eighty seven percent of my daily
allotment of sugar in it, or one hundred percent of
my daily allotment of sodium in it. It's shocking to
me how much poison basically is being sold as like
(26:24):
fun food to eat and have a good time. Doctor Jim,
I wish you all the eagles in the world.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Thank you on your golfing.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
We appreciate having you on every week. And Bill will
be back and he'll talk to you next Wednesday. Thank you, sir.
There he goes, Doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for
Dignity Health Saint Mary Medical Center in the Long Beach.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Gary Shannon are coming up next.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
This is KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
You've been listening to the Bill Hands Show. Catch my
show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Bill Handles
Show on demand on the iHeartRadio f.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It is a Bill Handles show and he is back
from vacation on Monday. Now we're watching some stories for
you here at KFI. I do want to talk about
something that just happened. Even when they're wrong, sometimes the
police are right. And that happened in the case of
(00:30):
a theft call from a store in the Upland area
to the cops saying, hey, people just stole some stuff
from us and ran out. And so the officers are
responding to this call and they see a car that
matches the vehicle that was reported, so they pull it over.
But as soon as they pull it over and look,
they see the two people inside do not match the
(00:52):
description of the suspects. However, they noticed there was an
open beer in the car and that there was also
a meth pipe in one of the cup holders. And
then they looked a little more, just looking through the window,
and they saw a bunch of fancy perfume boxes in
(01:15):
the car. And guess what, ladies and gentlemen, these two
guys were not the guys that the store owner called
and described that the cops went out looking for. But
they also these two guys also had stolen stuff from
the same store. Bad timing for them, good timing for
(01:40):
the police. And I guess these two unrelated groups of
thieves drive similar cars.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's crazy, also crazy, not really crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Governor Newsom has been signing a ton of laws, vetoing
some of them, and that's why I said earlier, we're
going to find out why his risk is stared. His
risk is tired from working that pen. So I just
let's go through. Because the big news has been he
signed the law requiring the oil companies to keep a
(02:14):
stockpile of gasoline available so that when they cut down
their refineries for maintenance, we don't have a supply related
spike in the price of gas.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
And that's been getting a ton of.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Attention because it's very controversial, with the oil company saying
it's a terrible, terrible law that will actually raise the
price of gas, with the union workers who work at
the refinery saying it's a terrible, terrible law because it's
going to make things more dangerous, and consumer advocates and
economists saying, well, it might lower the cost of gas,
(02:45):
but it might not. We don't know, but he signed
a bunch of other stuff. So let's see how many
of these ideas we agree with him about. In the
world of healthcare, he signed a law that says the
local health officials can go into private detention facilities and
inspect them. And the thing about it is that includes
(03:08):
six immigration detention centers, which technically it's a federal issue
immigration detention. But these facilities are not being run by
the Feds. They're being run by contractors. And so this
new law that he signed says, oh, yeah, we can
send in local health inspectors to look around there. You know,
(03:31):
there's all these deadlines to retrofit hospitals so they don't
fall down in an earthquake, and there's currently a deadline
of the year twenty thirty. Well, the governor signed a
law that allows small hospitals, rural hospitals, or distressed hospitals
I guess, hospitals that are suffering financially to get an
(03:54):
extension up to three years from the deadline.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
But there was another law.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That would have given every hospital the ability to apply
for a five year delay in the deadline, and he
vetoed that. Man he said, look if you're just a
regular hospital, a normal hospital, you're gonna have to retrofit.
I'm not giving you any breaks now. You know, if
there's something about you, like you're way out in the sticks,
(04:20):
or you're having big financial problems, I'll give you a
little more time. Credit reporting agencies will not be able
to include medical debt on your credit report under this
California law, Senate Bill ten sixty one that Newsom signed.
Some people say the protections are not as strong as
they could be. We are ahead of the curve, though,
(04:42):
because you may remember, the Biden administration has proposed rules
that at the federal level would not allow unpaid medical
bills to affect your credit score, but California has already
passed a law like that. He also, you know, it's
already a crime, a misdemeanor in California to get in
(05:05):
the way of somebody trying to get an abortion, if
you obstruct or impede access to reproductive health care services.
And also, by the way, if you do a different thing,
which is you try to intimidate people by posting personal
information or photographs of a patient or of a provider,
those are misdemeanors. Well, Nussim has signed this law that
(05:25):
now makes them wobblers, meaning they start as a felony,
but they can be reduced to a misdemeanor.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Through a few avenues.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
So the potential punishment, not necessarily the actual punishment anybody
would get, has gone up. And one more that's interesting
to me, you know, because there's been a lot of
talk about police reform. So he signed a bunch of
laws related to helping the elderly, but one of them
(05:57):
affects cops, which is the bill that requires increased training
for cops and for healthcare professionals in helping people with dementia.
Sometimes a police officer shows up on the scene a
person has dementia, what does that mean? They may not
be able to follow instructions, they may not make sense.
(06:18):
And if a police officer is not well trained in
recognizing that as dementia instead of maybe being drunk as
a skunk or just being a butt head, if they
can't recognize the difference, it can go south very quickly.
That's just a little sampler plate of all the laws
(06:38):
that Newsom has signed. In a trend that has been
observed all around the country, a record number of early
votes were cast in Georgia yesterday as early voting began,
over three hundred and twenty eight thousand votes cast yesterday.
This blows through the previous first day record, which was
(06:59):
in the last presidential election and was only one hundred
and thirty six thousand votes, so more than double the
number of people wanted to vote as early as was
possible in Georgia. Meanwhile, there are unfortunately about one hundred
people still missing in North Carolina. This is over two
weeks after Hurricane Helen went through there. This is according
(07:22):
to the governor Roy Cooper, who was at a news
conference saying that and as always, that number could change.
More reports can come in, other reports are resolved, you
could still have reports of people missing coming in for
the first time now and a lot of times this
is cross our fingers.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
A lot of time. This is just people who could
not get a hold of anybody.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Okay, there's a new kind of millionaire in the United
States now. Right here on KFI, you will hear about
certain companies that are family businesses, companies that have been
passed down from say a father to a son. The
(08:10):
dad used to run the business, and now the son
runs the business and there are certain sectors of the
economy where this is very common. Plumbing, hvac, electrical. It's
kind of a time honored position. You know, somebody starts
(08:31):
a plumbing company and they grow it into a going business,
and then they give it to their children and they
run it and so on and so forth. And that's
why you see a lot of these kinds of companies
with the blank and sons in their names. Well, not
necessarily moving forward, I talked on this show last week
(08:55):
about how private equity firms were buying up the staffing
of emergency rooms all across the country and ruining the
emergency rooms. Well, private equity rears its ugly head again
when it comes to the quaint, lovely, family owned plumbing
(09:16):
or hvac or electrical company in your community. And private
equity is, in my opinion, one of the very, very
very worst aspects of capitalism, because you have people who
borrow a bunch of money buy companies, not to commit
(09:38):
to running and owning those companies' long term, but usually
to strip it for parts, to try to make it
as financially attractive on paper as possible, and turn around
and sell it to somebody else and make a big profit.
They basically flip companies the way that real estate flippers
flip houses. Is all private equity evil. No, is a
(10:03):
lot of it evil as heck. Yeah, So just as
private equity starting, I don't know, this started maybe five
years ago with the emergency room staffing companies, just as
they noticed an opportunity there, they have now noticed an
opportunity to take a small mom and pop and son
(10:24):
plumbing company and buy it and merge it with another
one that they bought and make a bigger company, or
fold it into a bigger company that they already have purchased.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
And do the same thing that they always do.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
The plus side of this phenomenon is for the dad
and the son or the daughter, or the mom and
the son or the daughter, whoever's running the HVAC company.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
They get massive paydays.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
You've got a plumbing company in a a in a
large city and it's doing pretty well. It's not a
fortune five hundred company, but it's doing pretty well. You know,
you might have a plumbing company that has but I'm
just throwing out numbers as you have to stee have
ten employees and you bring in three million dollars a year.
And that's not bad. But what do you do when
(11:23):
private equity shows up and they say, we'll give you
ten million dollars. Right now, a lot of these companies,
these small companies, the owners are saying, yes, please, thank
you very much. I will take the big money and
I'll retire, or I'll I'll do something else with my lie.
(11:44):
I'll go learn guitar and try to be a rock star,
whatever it is. The range of payouts is huge. You know,
you have you have plumbing companies being bought for thirty
million dollars. You have plumbing companies being bought for two
hundred million dollars. I'm not talking about mass I'm not
talking about Cohler the plumbing fixtures. Brand'm not talking about that.
(12:08):
I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Literally, you know, Hanian.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Sons Plumbing in Houston, Texas. In some cases, the owners
of those companies, they take the money and that's it.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
They're done. They don't want to work anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Now, in some cases, what happens, his private equity shows
up and they says, hey, Hanian Sons, we want to
buy your company. We'll give you, I don't know, fifty
we'll give you fifty million dollars. But also, we'll let
you hold a twenty percent equity in the company, and
you can even still be part of the company, but
you're not going to be part of the company the
(12:45):
way you are now, where you own the company and
you call the shots and it's your company. What you
can do is you can be in a management position
with the parent company that we already have that we're
going to fold you into.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And some people go for that.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
You know, they're people who run a plumbing company or
an electrical company and they get a big offer like
that and they look at it as an opportunity to
just not have to work anymore. And there are other
people who get an offer like that, and they still
they like plumbing, they like electricity, they like heating and
air conditioning, ventilation, they like it. So they take the
(13:25):
money and they still stay in the business. It's just
they no longer own their own small shop. They now
are a middle management person at a bigger company. But
they're all millionaires. Every one of them becomes a millionaire.
You don't think of plumbers and hvac people as being millionaires,
(13:47):
but five years from now, they're all going to be millionairess.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
What it looks like.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Downtown LA for this rally slash press conference starting at
one pm on behalf of the mennu As brothers serving
life sentences for murdering their parents. Cannot be sure exactly
what it's about. Whether it's a huge announcement, which would
be George Gascone, the distric Attorney of La County, announcing
(14:14):
that he is going to ask a judge to re
sentence them, or whether this is just going to lay
out the case from the Menents brothers lawyers about why
the DA should do it. But Michael Monks will have
all the latest as it happens for you. And right
now we have the latest medical news from our own
(14:35):
medical expert, doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for Dignity
Health Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. Welcome back
to the show, doctor Jim.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Thanks Wayne. Are you a scratch golfer?
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Absolutely not, No, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Most people are not. Very few people really are scratch golfers.
This would be an amateur who can consistently what golf
at or below the course rating wherever they go.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Yeah, no, that's not me for sure. I lose probably
a case of balls every time I go golfing.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
All right, Well, that's okay because that is your avocation
and your profession is medicine, at which you are very
very good. So first tell us about this whooping cough outbreak.
What is it, where is it happening? What are we
supposed to do?
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Right? So, we're seeing like ten year highs in the
for the year so far in outbreaks of whooping cough
or pertussis in California, and so those same thing whooping
cough or pertussis. It got its name because when children
start coughing, they cough so violently from it that they
(15:53):
when they try and breathe in they make this whooping
sound just trying to catch their breath as they cough.
It can be hard on children under twelve months of age,
and that's usually the age group very young, you know,
first few months of life where we need to admit
the patients to the hospital because they just can't even
get enough oxygen from these violent coughing spells that they get.
(16:15):
So it's an interesting disease because it starts like with
one to two weeks of just being a mild cough
and then that's when they start between like two to
six weeks with this really severe coughing fits and then
they gradually recover over the next week two months. So
this thing lasts forever and you really want to try
(16:37):
and diagnose it early. But there is a vaccine for this.
It's a normal childhood vaccine. And then when you get
a tetanis shot. The DPT or t edapp is the
immunization the p in it is protessis. So adults also
every ten years normally would get vaccinated for this.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Okay, so what do they do?
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I'm curious what did they do with the child who's
admitted to the hospital and they can't get enough air?
Do they put them on a ventilator of some kind?
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah? So, I mean if we diagnose it in the
first few weeks, I mean, this is a bacteria, so
it's treatable with like a zpack or rhythromyasin something like that.
But it really has to be in the early stages
if it's going to be effective. Once you get to
it past about a week or two. So it's tough
because a lot of parents will look and for the
first week it just looks like a cough and an illness,
(17:30):
and they're hanging out at home and thinking they're being reasonable,
but then two weeks later the kid actually gets worse,
and by then antibiotics are minimally effective. So yeah, we
put them on oxygen, we give them breathing treatments, and
we really just try and support them through it.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Is the increase in these cases due to under vaccination
or some other factor.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah, I mean, just like a lot of other diseases,
what we're seeing is post COVID, a lot of children
fell hind on their childhood vaccines. So we're starting to
see a bigger emergence of this. The fact that you know,
during COVID, people were wearing masks and we're isolating and
so that dropped the rate of COVID pretty of whooping
(18:13):
cough pretty significantly. But now we're well above the normal rates.
So so you know, it's it's really improved. Sorry, it's
really gotten worse since COVID. COVID made it look like
it was improving, and now suddenly it's getting a lot worse.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah. Okay, now listen, here's what we're going to do.
Let's get some news from Amy King, and then doctor
when we come back, I'll let you pick what you'd
like to talk about next okay, because I want.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
To want to keep you interested in my golf.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Game for sure.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
No no, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Now do you do you already know and we can
tease it or will we be surprised when we come back?
Speaker 3 (18:50):
How do you want to handle this?
Speaker 4 (18:52):
You know, let's talk about caryovascular disease.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Okay, good, although I was said good, but apparently the
news is not necessarily totally good. So you can explain
what's going on with that. It's doctor Jim Keeney. Here,
we have doctor Jim Keeney with US chief Medical officer
for Dignity Health Saint Mary Medical Center that's in Long Beach.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
And doctor Jim.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
I remember when the American Heart Association issued a goal
that they were gonna cut the deaths from cardiovascular disease
and stroke by some amount. I don't remember the amount
that they said over a period of time.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
And you're here to tell us that we did it.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Yes, no, So you know they announced this in twenty twenty. Now,
if you look all the way back to two thousand
and look at what we've accomplished. I mean, back in
two thousand, the death rate was probably five hundred per
every one hundred thousand people from heart disease number one
killer still exceed cancer, and we drive from five hundred
(20:01):
to somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred per one
hundred thousand people. So that's a significant improvement. But after
twenty twenty it has absolutely stalled. In fact, it went
up in twenty twenty one the death rate, and so
we really have not improved, you know, from there, and
a lot of that has been There's so many reasons
(20:22):
for that, but one big reason as Americans, and then
their connection to a primary care doctor who can address
the fact that many of us are not where we
need to be as far as our cardiovascular health.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And that's because if I understand, well, they're not if
I understand it because I experienced it too. If you
have a health insurance plan and you can have a
primary care physician, but that physician might have three thousand
patients in order to write in order to have a
going practice, and that means, you know, what kind of
attention can you really expect from somebody who's said the
(20:59):
primary a care doctor for three thousand people. Is this
purely a money problem or is there another reason that
the primary care system has bogged down.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's a whole system problem. You know,
the system just is not well built for primary care.
There's people trying to change that, but it's coming too slow.
And almost half of Americans have some type of risk
factor or cardiovascular disease currently. And the look when they
(21:29):
look at studies, look at are you optimize as your
health optimized? Only about one out of ten are optimizing
their cardiovascular health, meaning they're addressing all the issues of
high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking, exercise, eating, and
so if you don't have that relationship with a primary
care doctor to really understand that these these are still risks.
(21:52):
There's a disconnect as well between Americans and their sense
of risk. They don't seem to recognize that their sense
of risk for coronary RD disease and cardiovascular disease can
be high and that there's things we can do to
correct it and to fix it.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Now, the good news is, I think a couple of things.
But you can jump in and you can be the
party pooper here since you're the expert. One of the
things of good news is that we know a lot
about cardiovascular disease, and we know the things that make
it worse, and we know things that make it better.
(22:32):
And if you can get to a primary care physician,
there are a lot of tools in their tool bag
that can help.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
So that's good at least in theory.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Yes, yeah, I mean we have that's the thing. We
have more tools than we've ever had to be able
to address this. But we're almost becoming both sides of
the equation here, both patients and doctors are becoming just
this the system that just wants to push Okay, here's
a prescription, this will fix everything. Now, there's a lot
(23:06):
more people that need more prescriptions. I'm not saying that
they don't. But at the same time, this is not
just a I write you a prescription and you get better.
That people have to take some ownership in their health.
I do think that it's hard man to eat healthy
in this environment of ultra processed foods. I'm sure that
that is contributing because we're seeing liver disease in people,
(23:28):
which contributes to coronary already these same risk factors, but
liver disease in young people really has to do with
your diet and things you're exposed to in the environment.
So it's kind of scary, the extent to which you
have to go just to try and live healthy in
this environment.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
I've noticed something, and I bet you've noticed the same
thing I happen to. You know, I'll shop at Trader
Joe's sometimes, and so I'll go on their website and
I'll look at what new stuff they have.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I also, and don't please.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Don't ask me why I'm a weirdo, I follow some
websites that talk about new new products at restaurants and
these stuff like that. And I've noticed that the trend
is this, that the companies themselves, when they announce, oh,
we have a new menu item, it is overwhelmingly skewed
towards stuff full of sugar and fat, candies and cakes
(24:26):
and cookies and jams and jellies, and that the American
diet is in many ways not just unhealthy, but shockingly unhealthy.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Is that? Do you concur with my assessment?
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Oh? Absolutely, yeah. And that's because you know, there's only
so many stomachs in America, and they're all competing for
space in that stomach. So you've got to get past
the tongue for all that. So it's got to be
not but not only are they developing the foods to
be tasty, but they're even tapping into the texture and
things that make it so that you crave and are
(25:06):
addicted to these foods, you know, in a way similar
to like we've talked about another segment, similar to tobacco
products and and things like that. They're they're trying to
make food compulsive and addictive, and that's the stuff that
you come back for.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
So if you if you have.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
A restaurant, if you're if you're trying to sell food,
that's what you're competing with. If you don't make it
like that, you're not you're not gonna be able to
sell your food. So unfortunately, so you're absolutely right, and
that's what we see exploding because people those are the
successful groups. They're making that type of food, and people
that are just selling you know, an egg or or
(25:43):
fresh fruit. It's it's just a lot tougher to make
that sale.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, it's not a it's not a it's not a
sexy thing.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
You got to read the ingredients, That's what I mean.
That's how I chick pick food as I read the
ingredients and when it has all those things, you can't
pronounce in it. That's bad.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, you throw it. But I also I look at
the nutritional information. I look at the macros now and
I've seen things that are like I had no idea
that this would have eighty seven percent of my daily
allotment of sugar in it, or one hundred percent of
my daily allotment of sodium in it. It's shocking to
me how much poison basically is being sold as like
(26:24):
fun food to eat and have a good time. Doctor Jim,
I wish you all the eagles in the world.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Thank you on your golfing.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
We appreciate having you on every week. And Bill will
be back and he'll talk to you next Wednesday. Thank you, sir.
There he goes, Doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical officer for
Dignity Health Saint Mary Medical Center in the Long Beach.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Gary Shannon are coming up next.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
This is KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
You've been listening to the Bill Hands Show. Catch my
show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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