12-04-25 FULL SHOW - Hospitals Are Driving The Cost of Healthcare

How hospitals are driving the cost of healthcare, helping people with developmental disabilities, and the progressive income tax is coming.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
No, it's Mandy Connell and Dona Ka ninety one FM.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Got way to say? Can the nicety through three?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Andy Coronald Keithing Sadda.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Welcome, buncle, Welcome to a Thursday edition of the show.
Just kidding, I knew it was Thursday the whole time.
I'm here your host for the next three hours, Mandy Connell.
That guy over there running things, he is Anthony Rodriguez.
You can call him a rock and together we will

(00:47):
take you right through three p m. Well, notes up
to three pm, I should say, because that's when KOA
Sports takes over. But boy, howdy do we have a
lot of stuff to talk about today. Super interesting guests
coming on. There's gonna be a lot of come in
your way today. And if you need to go back
and check the knowledge later, you can go to mandy'sblog
dot com. Mandy's blog dot com. Look for the headline

(01:09):
in the latest post section that says twelve four blog
hospitals are driving the cost of healthcare. Click on that
and here are the headlines you will find within.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
I think you're in office half America all with ships
and clipments.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Say that's going to press flat today on the blog,
how hospitals are driving up healthcare costs. The House GOP
calls foul on electrification edicts. Jerry Shemmel has a cause.
The Progressive income tax is coming. I like the new
rockygm hire How Democrats ruined Colorado's economy. Wolf Ree introduction

(01:43):
kills something else. Drug use on transit isn't just an
RTD problem. Denver Public school season rollment drop. This is
dpso's way more than it's worth. Mike Rosen talks open borders.
Colorado has good drivers, Why do it's a snub? Mike
Shanahan how Trump's told Biden's drug plan layoffs are piling up.

(02:06):
If I know your If I know this, you're going
to know it too. These aliens probably won't kill us.
Peta demands three walks per day. The FBI arrested a
suspect in the j six pipe bombs. Jared Polis wants
to blame our woes on tariffs. Every kid's Christmas concert
in one video and their parents. Elan Omar defends her

(02:28):
homeland like paintings are really amazing. What a remarkable man,
this football coach is and Trump is mad at Polis.
Those are the headlines on the blog at mandy'sblog dot
com tech tot All Winner. Yeah, that's right. As I
went back through, I just published the blog like fifteen

(02:51):
minutes ago because I had a meeting this morning. Blah
blah blah. You don't care about any of that, but
it's published now. But as I was reading the headlines, Anthony,
I need your help here because this is like the
everything on the blog today is everything's horrible. It's not
all horrible, but I really there is some horrible things
going on that we've got to talk about. But we
need something fun today. So what what fun? Maybe you

(03:14):
should ask the listeners to respond on the Common Spirit
Health checks line on five six six nine. Oho, can
you just respond at five six six nine, Oh, if
you could just go ahead and tell me something fun
to talk about today, because I don't. I don't have
anything fun to talk about.

Speaker 5 (03:33):
Big if true? In confirmed just now today is National
Cookie Day.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
That's not as fun for me as you might think.

Speaker 5 (03:40):
I'm not a bit COOKI I love cookies, but I
can't have them right now.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
I'm not a big cookie person. Normally, like I just
I went to Panera. You know, Paris trying to put
meat back in their sandwhich is now, which is nice
because they you go to Panera like two years ago,
you get a piece of meat like one one strip
of turkey or whatever. They're trying to make a comeback
to popera fantastic soups. And we went there for lunch
with my mom and they were like, hey, you can

(04:04):
get a cookie half price because you bought the full
meal or whatever. And I was like, sure, I'll take
a cookie. I tasted. I took a tiny bite, and
then I was like, this cookie is not worth the calories. Okay,
second attempt at something good. Yep. Three weeks from today
is Christmas. That's fun. What kind of Christmas shopping have
you done? Point two four percent? I'm almost done, but

(04:26):
only because I have so few people to shop for anymore.

Speaker 5 (04:29):
And only point two four percent for me because we
had to get the gifts for an upcoming uh secret
standard party.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Oh otherwise I would have not have been done. Well okay,
well you know what whatever works? Are you all? I mean,
when do you actually do your shopping week before? Okay,
it's not as bad as a day before. I mean, no, no, no,
I'm not a savage. I've done the Christmas Eve shopping.
I've done it. Mandy, you still hunkered down in the
Southern compound? Did did you go into work? I am

(04:58):
in the studio today, folks. I want to abuse that privilege.
I am here today in the studio and I had
a meeting. So you know, maybe it's national poke your
ex in the Iday. That would mean I would have
to be close to my ex, which I will pass on.
Are you one of those people who's like, you gotta
stay friends with your exes? No, I don't get it.

(05:19):
I don't understand why. I mean, if they're not good
enough to be your boyfriend or girlfriend, why would you
want them in your life as your friend friend? Something
was obviously fundamentally wrong with that relationship. I don't young
people in there. No, I just sort of stay friends. No, No,
you don't, No, you really don't. Here's something fun, says

(05:39):
this Texter. My wife and I are going to try
and work things out. After three years of separation. We
are moving back in with each other. I love this,
assuming that their reasons for separation were not addiction or abuse.
I love this, and you know what, whoever you are
out there in listening land, I'm gonna say a little prayer,

(06:00):
but I'm gonna give you a little piece of advice.
If you guys have the same commitment to commitment, you
can work out pretty much everything. Unless one of you
wants to have kids and the other one doesn't. That
really that's a deal breaker. And again, addiction or abuse
in the relationship is another deal breaker as well. So yeah,

(06:20):
I love that for you, and I hope it works out. Mandy.
Animals and liquor stores. Okay, did you see the raccoon yesterday?
Did you not see this? Drunks, Yes, the drunk raccoon.
I mean you asked if you guys didn't see this.
So in a in Virginia, a raccoon breaks into a
liquor store with his little human hands and he breaks

(06:41):
in and he wreaks hav it. He busts up a
bunch of stuff, and then he does what you do
in a liquor story, gets really liquored up and passes
out face down in the bathroom. That's what made it
so funny to me. He didn't pass out in the aisles.
It's almost like he knew he was gonna puke, so
he went into the bathroom and and then he just
passed out on the floor of the bathroom. He's been

(07:03):
returned to the wild, by the way. And here's my
this is what I think about last night. I couldn't
go to sleep, and I'm thinking, do you think that
raccoon went back to wherever he came from? And was like, dude,
you guys are not gonna believe this. Just curious. What
is that conversation between raccoons? And like the other raccoons
are like, God, you smell horrible. What have you been eating?

(07:27):
And that's from raccoons. We eat garbage? Right, Did I
ever tell you my raccoon story?

Speaker 4 (07:31):
Ay?

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Rod, Okay, So when I was living in downtown Orlando,
and I promise I'll get to some news, it's all
bad news, so trust me, we're sorting off on a
better note right now. So I lived in downtown Orlando
and our trash kept getting like broken into by these
raccoons and they would, you know, knock the can over
and they would spread all their garbage everywhere. So I

(07:52):
started doing things like the first I went and got
a cinder block, and I was like, oh, cinderblock will
take care of it. I'll put the cinder block on
top of the top of the big trash can. It'll
be fine.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Oh no.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
The next day I come out, trash is everywhere, cinder
blocks laying on the ground. So then I got seriously,
it got more progressive, Like I got more aggressive with howl.
I was trying to keep the raccoon out of my
trash can. And we get up to the point where
and I have now taken a small bungee cord, right,
so I have now bungee corded the lid of the

(08:22):
trash can down, and I'm like, I got it. These
raccoons are never going to be able to get into this.
I feel like I've won. I drive up into my driveway,
my headlights hit my trash can, which is wide open,
and two raccoons pop their heads out of the top,
and I swear to you, one of those raccoons lifted

(08:42):
up his hand and flipped me off. I got a
middle finger from the raccoon, who then proceeded to knocked
the trash can over again and run away. Dr It
didn't happen trash cans. This was before cell phones. This
was back in the nineties, Anthony, when we didn't have
a camera in our pocket every single day. Mandy, here's

(09:03):
an idea to separate rich people from their money. Offered
a poke the eye of the rich person's ex Oh,
I like it. I like it a lot, Mandy. Do
you think that raccoon went to his friends and told
him what happened and said something like that was freaking awesome?
I mean, come on, why wouldn't you if you were
a raccoon, Mandy. It would be easier to read your
blog if you posted it earlier now, ladies and germs,

(09:25):
m I post my blog roughly at nine point thirty
every single morning. But I had a meeting this morning.
Nancy was annoyed. She almost didn't give you the winner.
You know what, though, But I got it done, didn't I.
Nancy's a slow reader.

Speaker 5 (09:37):
I'm just saying he got out at least two three
hours early.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
Mandy. Not a Broncos fan enjoying Shanahan not getting in
the hall. You're mean, You're just mean. You're what we
call wrong. Yes, Mike Shanahan snubbed again to get into
the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and yet Bill Belischeck
he's on the short list now, but Mike Shanahan doesn't
get to be on the show. Lest well, I mean
that one kind of makes sense. I mean it's well, really,

(10:03):
how well did he do without Tom Brady doesn't matter.
I'm just saying that many rings, just say, I know,
I get to Statistically, I get it. I think so.
And that coaching tree, by the way, because people like,
oh my gosh, Don Shula zero rings, He's in the
Hall of Fame. Just saying, just throwing that out there, Mandy,

(10:26):
just do the whole show on a helium. No news
is sad delivered with a helium voice. Any Do we
have any helium laying around? Anything more fresh out? No
dang anyway, Mandy. Dog zoomies that is more of a
visual thing. I mean, we could talk about dog zoomies,

(10:47):
but the reality is is that dog zoomies need to
be seen to truly be enjoyed. And y'all have seen
nothing until you have seen a one hundred and fifty
five pounds Saint Bernard with the zoomis. Oh, I beg
to differ. She'll take out furniture too. She's nuts. She
is on crack. It's fantastic. Awesome, fantastic, are getting wound up.

(11:08):
I'm think of that raccoon went back to missus raccoon
and got an earful from her. Yes, correct, I think
so too, Mandy. The separation was due to her depression
after finding out that our son had a stroke in utero.
We found out the day that he was born. He
is the happiest kid in the world. His cerebral palsy.
She was able to forgive herself. I gotta tell you,

(11:31):
there's nothing worse than when something is wrong with your child.
My daughter had a dramatic, dramatic birth, and the doctor's
told me after like, we have no idea why that happened.
Sometimes it just happens. But as the mom, as the
person who was carrying that child, I that guilt. It
wore on me for years and now she's fine and

(11:52):
everything's okay. It's just it was horrible. From Facebook, Hanover
County officials have launched a limited addition T shirt campaign
inspired by the drunken raccoon that broke into and ransacked
in Ashland ABC store. Well, I know what I want
for Christmas now? This person says the national animal of

(12:13):
Scotland is a unicorn. I did not know that. Somehow
it fits. Why not? Why not NeSSI? Why not the
luck Ness monster? At least? Yeah, do they have no?
I don't think they have narwals and they don't have unicorns.
Never mind, never mind, Mandy, Since you're talking about Florida,

(12:35):
would you ever move back there again? Do you like
it better there than you like Colorado? As a matter
of fact, in my meeting this morning with my friend Travis,
I literally said I would never move back to Florida.
I would never. It's just I grew up there, I'm good.
I cannot stand to go there in the summer. It's
so oppressive. I just cannot do it. So no, I

(12:57):
will never move back to Florida. I like Colorado's other
much better. I like Florida's politics much better. How about that,
Mandy don Shula actually has two Super Bowl rings? Who
with who? Who? And I should know this? And I'm
having a blank you'll find that out look that up
a rod. What's even funnier is when the dog and

(13:20):
cat have the zuomies at the same time. Nothing is safe.
Cats with the zoomis can literally destroy your entire house
in like thirty five seconds too, with the Dolphins and
seventy four back. Oh I forgot he was coaching back then.
He was the head coach though, was he? Uh? He was? Okay, okay.

(13:41):
I always think of Dan Marino without any Super Bowl rings,
which is just wrong, completely wrong. Props to the couple
reconciling from separation from a guy possibly heading into the
throes of divorce. Good for you too. I'm gonna give
out some free advice if you're having a tough time
in your marriage, and this is for you, guys, this
is for you. If you want to fix your marriage

(14:03):
and you want to save your marriage, here's what you do.
Start working on yourself. Start figuring out the parts you
have in the relationship that are not going well and
work on those. And then let your wife know, hey,
I'm working on these things. If that means being a therapist,
if that means, you know, talking it out with with
religious or clergy members that you trust. But when you

(14:25):
say to your wife, hey, I'm working on me so
I can work on us, you'd be amazed how far
that goes. And don't expect it to be an instantaneous thing.
You have to commit and you have to do the work,
and then you have to take that work into the
relationship that you're trying to repair. Fun fact.

Speaker 5 (14:40):
By the way, Don Jula won three world championships. He
also won one before it was the Super Bowl. Oh
he's a three time winner.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
All right, there you go, there you go, Mandy. How
could you forget that undefeated dolphin team was coached by
Don Sjule. I don't know, I don't know anyway, Yeah,
super Bowl. I immediately thought of that little raccoon waking
up in the middle of the forest yelling at the
birds to be quiet and putting his little paw hands

(15:06):
over his eyes. Yes, indeed, raccoon, Yes and bird Mandy,
first day of job training today, gonna flick a booger
on the floor. If you missed that story yesterday, that
was a great follow up. Thank you so much. No
one should say anything, Nope, nope, they'll say. By the way,
not a single person agreed with you yesterday and all wrong.
And you all need to understand when and where to

(15:29):
say something. Well, I'm not saying you do it out
in front of everybody, but it's.

Speaker 5 (15:32):
Kind don't tell it period. It's weird, it's awkward. It
creates a weird relationship. The rest of that person's career. Yeah,
you're the person that told me, or I'm the person
that told you to tell me about a booger.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
No, no, I don't care. Well, if you don't say something,
then you're going to be the guy who knows that
guy flicked a booger on the floor. Anyway you can
know it, you don't say it. If I'm gonna be
working with people, how are you gonna avoid shaking that
guy's hand for the rest of the time.

Speaker 5 (15:56):
I don't say yeah the first time. If he keeps happening,
you say something the first time, you'll let it go.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
If they're doing it in a job intake, then they're
gonna keep doing it. Mandy my raccoon story. Oh great,
now we're gonna do raccoon stories. Late at night, the
Diagonal Highway between Boulder and Longmont, no traffic. A raccoon
runs into the highway right in front of me. At
the last second, he turns around and I have zero
time to react. My left front tier ran over it.

(16:22):
At seventy miles an hour. I felt like I ran
over a small boulder significant joint to my Toyota Highlander.
It damaged the lower bumper valance. The jolt also caused
a large crack in the windshield. Twenty six hundred dollars
repair bill, one hundred dollars deductible. But man, I bet
that raccoon learned its lesson just saying just saying. Okay, Jared,

(16:49):
I'm confused. Many if you don't like cabbage, you don't
like it reheated. Move on to the next course. Oh,
the ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend thing. I like it.
I like it a lot. Okay, here's what we're gonna
do today. Let's talk about what's really on the blog,
because coming up next I have Assistant House Minority Leader
thy Winter. Yesterday I regaled you with the new rules

(17:09):
put out by the Public Utilities Commission. I'm going to
call it the laughably named Public Utilities Commission because they
are not looking out for the public. They really aren't.
They are completely captured by the Sierra Club and other
environmental activists who don't give a rats ask how much
our energy costs here? They don't care. Well I care.

(17:32):
So we're going to talk to ty Winter at twelve thirty.
The House Republican Caucus has responded to these changes. We'll
get into that next we're also going to talk at
one o'clock with a guy named Peter Pitts. He is
the former Associate FDA Commissioner and also president of the
Senator Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. What are
we talking about. We're talking about one of the biggest

(17:55):
underlying drivers of healthcare costs. We talk a lot about
how health insurance costs, but we need to be talking
about why health care costs so much. One of the
biggest drivers is the fact that hospitals are creating essentially
monopolies by buying up every sort of healthcare situation out there,

(18:17):
and then they are driving the cost of healthcare up.
We're going to talk to him about his recent testimony
in front of Congress about this issue, and it's one
of the things that we have to address if we
are ever going to significantly bring down health insurance costs.
So that's coming up at one o'clock, and then at
two point thirty. You guys know Jerry Schimmel as part

(18:39):
of the broadcast team from the Colorado Rockies, and now
he is he's venturing on a new mission, and it's
a mission for an organization called Best Day Ministries and
what they do is they try to ensure that people
living with developmental disabilities of a variety of sorts have

(19:00):
access to programs and assistants to help them live the best,
most fulfilling, most fabulous life that they can achieve at
their highest level, whatever that is. And we're going to
talk to Jerriyott two thirty about best Day ministries. It's
going to be one of those shows where we got
a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
We'll kick it all off with Ty Winter next keep
it on KOA. I talked extensively about new rules that

(19:22):
were just approved by the Public Utilities Commission. And if
you think electricity is expensive now, just you wait, because
it is about to get really, really expensive. And I'm
very happy to announce that the House Republican Caucus has
said enough is enough. They have sent a letter to
the PUC and I wish that I thought that would

(19:43):
do anything, but maybe Assistant House Minority Leader Ty Winter
will convince me that it will do something. Ty welcome
back to the show.

Speaker 6 (19:51):
First of all, well thanks for having me, and hope
you had a good Thanksgiving. And you know what a
gift to get in December than this mess that's coming
our wa Oh my.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
Goodness, I saw this yesterday. And don't get me wrong,
we all know that Governor Jared Poulis believes that this
state can run on unicorn farts and sunshine, and he
is determined to shove renewable energy down our throats, regardless
of the fact that it's been shown around the world
to cost far more to run on renewables than it

(20:22):
does on abundant and cheap fossil fuels. But what exactly
did you guys see in these rules that you found
the most egregious?

Speaker 6 (20:31):
You know, for me, I'm going to speak from a
rule representative's perspective. Down here where we're at, there's times
that you can get a blizzard out here on the
Eastern Plains and it'll knock power out for two or
three days. I have an aging community down here. To
think that they forced him to go to all electric appliances,
and to think that Miss Jones can't heat her house.
There's times that even the National Guard can't get to

(20:53):
these people because there's snow, snow snowed in on these
farms and ranches. So it's a safety thing, you know,
for me, first and foremost, I mean, don't get me wrong.
I think it's an energy choice thing. I think, you know,
natural gas is the way to go. I come from
lost Animous County other than a wild County is one,
you know, one of the biggest producing counties for you know,
COVID methane. But at the end of the day, it's
a safety concern for me. In rule Colorado, we need

(21:15):
to be able to use propane, we need to have
those type of appliances in our homes. And it's based
off the safety choice next. But for me it's safety.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Well, I mean representative Winters, I am. I have been
looking and watching and I and I'm telling you that
I think this is a huge part of what should
be in the Republican you know, messaging going into the
next election cycle. And if you look around the world,
and I'm going to focus like a laser on Germany.
Germany is the largest economy in the EU and they

(21:44):
have been in recession or near recession for the past
few years while everybody else around the world is recovering.
And part of the reason is that they have gone
to renewable energy. They've even gone so far as to
shut down perfectly fine nuclear plants and all they've done
is accomplished two things. Number One, Germany's electricity rates are insane.

(22:05):
They're the highest in the world for a developed nation,
and they have destroyed the economy of Germany, absolutely gutted it.
Because when your electricity rates are through the roof, who
wants to bring their industry there? And that's for me,
is the big talking toint like, we already know how
this is going to go, and yet we are pursuing
the same failed policies that have destroyed the economy of Germany,

(22:28):
and we're going to do that here in Colorado. So
I would love for you guys to pick up that
part of the messaging because that's when you get the
business community engaged.

Speaker 6 (22:37):
Yes, ma'am, you're one hundred percent correct. And we saw
something especially over the last year. So I'm going into
my fourth year in the building, but I've seen this
problem grow, but I've seen the support against this problem grow.
So we've been working with labor. I mean, labor is
disgusted because they're seeing their good paying jobs. He shipped
out of the States And actually I was talking to
one of the men that worked in labor and he's like,

(22:57):
we are losing members to other states because we're and
foremost we see like command see shutting down in Pueblo.
We've seen what's happening in Prague. That's a disaster. We've
seen what's happened to oil and gas. Like I said,
I'm from Los Anemos County. It's killed tons of jobs
and killed the community. So it's killed and their agenda's
killed jobs and killed communities. We've lost the severance tax
revenue that we pump into our roads and schools, and

(23:18):
not just in goil and gas communities, it's went around
state wide. And now we're going to tell people that
we're going to tell you how to heat your home.
We're going to make you pay ten times more because
of this pie and the sky idea that we have, Mandy.
We've been beating this drum and we've been talking about
this message quite a bit. We've had the business community
come in to hearings and say, based on your clean

(23:39):
air and agenda, we have people not only leaving this
state that's business, but we have people that want to
move into this state that want to put chipbuilding factories
and so many other things, but they don't know where
the state's going to go, so they're not going to
invest time, money, energy, and to bring employees into these states.
So I've said it from the well numerous times. You
may have your clean energy agenda, but wouldn't you think

(23:59):
about back in off of it and get the state
back on its feet. You brought up Europe. We have
a president who wants to basically geopolitically shut Rush out
of the world. And the reason he wants to do
that is he wants to sell compress natural gas to
European countries so they don't have to get their energy
from Russia. We sit in one of the states some
of the best natural gas in the country, and we're

(24:20):
totally missing the butter our workers, for safety, for our people,
for tax dollars, and for being able to run the state,
all based off of you're in America. We're buying solar
panels that are made by coal plants in China. We're
buying windmill parts that are made and then we're putting
them up in America and we'll feeling good about ourselves
and really we're not doing anything to save the planet.

(24:42):
It's out aside, out of mind politics.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
You just made a perfect point right there when you said,
we're not doing anything to save the planet. And these
are the kinds of questions that I would like to
see the PUC address. Question number one, what exactly are
these emissions controls going to How exactly is that going
to impact worldwide global warming? I'd like to know the
answer to that question. I'd like to know what exactly

(25:05):
they believe they're going to be able to do when
we're trying to loo things like AI and technology, when
we're essentially saying we're not going to be able to
supply you reliable energy, right because renewables are not reliable.
So we're either going to have to back up all
the renewable energy with oil and gas or nuclear or whatever,
or we're going to have to say to industry, you

(25:26):
can't come to Colorado and expect the energy to be
there when you need it. The notion that somehow we
are going to have this massive green economy has already
been proven to be a lie. Why can't What does
the puc as say about any of these questions?

Speaker 6 (25:42):
You know, to be honest with you, the governor appoints
the PUC, and you brought it up in your opening.
It's the agenda and It goes back to we've asked
for crazy a little grave studies. If you could tell
me how many metric tons of coal it takes to
create these things in the carbon footprint to get them
here and get them set on the pad. If you
can show those to me and they make sense, numbers
wise to be able to kill our jobs, kill our economy,

(26:04):
take away from our schools, then I'll have that conversation.
But I don't think the numbers are there. I mean,
you know, and I'm a huge nuclear proponent. The three
years that I've been there, I've worked on, you know,
three different nuclear bills, and I believe, I believe in
well as I want to keep that going for our economy.
But we see where this is going. So we obviously
have to set up because at the end of the day,

(26:24):
if the lights ever go out, don't think that all
the power gets pumped to the urban areas and my
people are going to be left literally in the dark.
So I want to make sure we have firm, reliable energy.
But I can't live with the fact is is you know,
we're we're running this state based off the climate goals
that aren't making a difference because at the end of
the day, the products that they're buying to put into
our state, or just polluting another part of the world,

(26:46):
or being mine by child slave labor in another part
of the world. And it may feel good here that
it don't feel good to me when I know that
we're polluting another part of the world. We're doing it
on the backs of kids, and then we're doing it
on the backs of our constituents who want to go
to work and mind cold. They want to go to work,
and they want to pump oil and gas. They want
to feed their families with good paying blue collar jobs,
and they want to power the economy of this state.

(27:09):
And we have a state government that decide to be
run by the enviros, run by the envirol lobby, and
they're in there making a mess of our state. And
right now, with what we're seeing in the state, this
isn't the time to be playing games with livelihoods and
now literally people's lives when they can't either afford to
heat their home, Mandy, A quarter of Coloradoans are already
on heat assistance. Into that number, this number is going

(27:32):
to fly, I mean, this number is going to go.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Through the roof.

Speaker 6 (27:35):
So I mean, and there's been some studies done. I mean,
I don't know exactly the pulling data, but over fifty
percent of Colorados still want to be able to use
natural gas heat. So I just think that this is
one more, one more example of government being done to you,
not for you. They're not listening to the voice of
the people, and unfortunately, there's a lot of legislators in
that building that think that they know better than you

(27:55):
because they were elected by you, and that's totally not fun.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
We'll leave this interview with the statistics I just pulled up
right now. The average kill awat hour for electricity is
about fourteen eight It's fourteen dollars and eighty four cents.
In Germany it is oh, excuse me, kill a whata hour,
No wait, fourteen cents per kilowat hour. In Germany it
is forty four cents. So it is three times what

(28:22):
we pay here. So if you were to power bills
to go up three times, then we should just continue
down this path. Assistant House Minority Leader Ty Winter, I
appreciate your time today.

Speaker 6 (28:31):
Thank you, Mandy. I appreciate you keep fighting the good fight.
And you know what, this is a call to the House,
Republicans need the people of Colorado to get behind them.
What happens in that building is a simple numbers game.
There's more of us in there, or more of them
in there than us, and we need to get this
message out to the people of Colorado. And you're doing
your part. We're going to keep doing our part. And
we're just asking our constituents and the cavalry to talk

(28:52):
to your friends and neighbors, let them know what's happening
to our state, and let them know. The way we
fix that is at the ballot box.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
All right, Thanks toy Winter. We'll talk to you again soon.

Speaker 6 (29:00):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
All right, have a good one. We'll be right back
starting January first. In Colorado, from a bill that was
passed a couple of years ago, you are going to
have to replace your furnace if you have a furnace
with a low NOx meaning low nitrous oxide furnace, which
sounds fine, right, except lownox furnaces struggle at high altitude.

(29:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, listen to this. High altitude regions like
much of Colorado have lower air density and lower oxygen content,
and low KNOX burners are already more sensitive to air
flow and combustion quality. When combined, several problems emerge. Low knocks,
burners rely on leaner fuel, air mixtures, lower cooler combustion,

(29:49):
and specialized burners in baffles. At altitude, the reduced oxygen
level causes these systems to struggle to maintain stable combustion.
This can result in flame instability, higher carbon dioxide output
excuse me, carbon monoxide output, and formation. The US Department

(30:12):
of Energy explains that high altitude installations require adjustments to
avoid incomplete combustion, not recommended for higher than forty five
hundred feet in altitude starting January first, if you have
to replace your furnace, you will have to replace it
with one of these furnaces that may or may not

(30:32):
work at altitude. Manufacturers often do not certify low OX
units about forty five hundred to five thousand feet because
adjustments can't fully compensate. That's already in the books. So
I'm just saying I talked to George from fix to
twenty four to seven yesterday about this because somebody texted

(30:55):
in and said, did you know this is happening? They
had to get a new furnace, and the air conditioning
company they called said Look, you're lucky you got it now,
because after the first of the year, it could be
like fifteen twenty thousand dollars more just to get one
of these furnaces that may or may not work and
could very well fill your house with carbon monoxide, all

(31:15):
in the name of free energy, All in the name
of Jared Polus's scheme. Oh one more thing about the PUC,
Just to let you know, somebody else pointed this out.
If you watch Power Gab on the Independence Institute's TV channel,
they mentioned that two of the PUC members, currently the chairman,

(31:36):
both come directly from the renewable energy field. One of
them made his money by making solar and wind happen.
We're so screwed, so so so screwed, Mandy, So could
we just get a furnace from a different state. Who's
going to install it? I'm just saying. Low Knox also

(31:57):
affects water heaters as well. Uh said, they've kind of
fixed that a little bit better. On the hot water
heater situation, George from six to twenty four to seventy,
he said, that's not as bad, but the furnace situation
is a real and it is a huge, huge problem.
So if you need a new furnace, you may want
to do that for Christmas.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
Accident and injury Lawyers.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
No, it's Mandy Connall and Conall on KOLA.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Ninety one FM, s got Way, the Nicys three, Thy Connell.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Keeping You're a real sad thing.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Welcome local, Welcome to the second hour of the show.
I'm your host, Mandy Connell and Anthony Rodriguez is there
keeping everything moving. And you know we're talking about things
that are ridiculously expensive. And my next guest is on
to talk about, well, what is making healthcare so expensive?
Health insurance is directly reflected in how much health care costs,

(33:06):
So what are driving the costs of health care? And
joining me now former Associate FDA Commissioner and president of
the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest Peter Pitts.
He just testified before Congress about how hospitals are driving
the cost of healthcare. First of all, Peter, welcome to
the show.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
Why pleasure, Thanks for evering me on.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Well, I think you know when you say, well, hospitals
are driving the cost people are like, well, of course
they are that's where people go for expensive medical care.
But it's more than that. Explain how hospitals are actually
creating and driving some of the health care increases that
we're seeing right now.

Speaker 4 (33:44):
You know, when we talk about, you know, out of
control healthcare costs in this country, people generally assume that, well,
it's the price of drugs that drive health care costs,
and that's wrong. Drugs are about a little bit more
than a dime on the dollar of health care costs.
I think they're a great deal. Hospitals are over certain percent.
It's the biggest cut of healthcare spending in this country.
So that's kind of point one. Point two is where

(34:06):
does the money that we pay hospitals go. And the
answer isn't always to doctors and to buy new MRI
machines and to pay nurses more and to add to
the patient experience as it should be. Oftentimes, where the
money goes is to pay administrators multi millions of dollars
a year per person. It's out, it's outrageous, you know.

(34:28):
And hospitals get to pass me because people see them
as the good guys in the community. Their names are
on the back of Little League uniforms. But when you
look at how they spend money, there's enough to make
a lot of people very angry because it doesn't necessarily
go towards quality care.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
So let me talk about a couple of different angles
about this. Because back when I was a kid, you
had a hospital that existed in your community, and it
was there for critical care, you know, difficult problems, cancer treatments,
and surgeries. Now hospitals own my doctors office that I
go to. Hospitals are buying surgical centers, hospitals are buying
urgent care centers. Why is that and how does that

(35:08):
distort the healthcare market?

Speaker 4 (35:11):
Well, distort is exactly the right word, and to make
you even angrier, it makes even more confusing. It's not
just for profit hospitals that are buying doctors' offices for example,
I'm going into urgent care centers. It's not for profit
hospitals as well. And most hospitals in this country are,
at least technically speaking, not for profit. But when you
look at the way they do business, it's sure like

(35:33):
it sure looks like a for profit business. Write down
how much they pay their non medical administrators.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
So how what is the incentive? Why did this start?
Why did we start moving down this path? And I'm
going to call it hospital consolidation for lack of the
better way to put it, because they're essentially consolidating everything
in a community under their umbrella. Why is that beneficial
to a hospital? Uh, you know, chain or whatever you
want to call it.

Speaker 4 (36:00):
You know that's exactly right. So you have to ask yourself,
why is where's the value in consolidation? And the value
in consolidation is the massive amounts of money that hospitals
bill the government and private insurance companies and they get
reimbursed with with no questions asked, And you ask yourself,
how does this happen? You know's the where's the oversight?

(36:22):
And then you look at the line item in most
large hospital systems budgets both not for profit and for
profit of basically lobbying, and what you see is that
these hospitals are spending millions of dollars a year lobbying
state government, lobbying the federal government to get sweetheart deals.
So even though you know they look like the good
guys and get and don't get me wrong, you know,

(36:43):
the doctors and the nurses and the text work at
hospitals really are healthcare heroes I'm talking about. The administrators
were absolutely taking advantage of the system in many respects
to line their own pockets and get six figure salaries,
whether their for profit hospitals or not for profit quote
unquote charity hospitals.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
So once they buy everything up, what does this do
when they're negotiating with insurance companies on rates and things
of that nature. Because if they're thirty percent of what
we're spending, and now hospital covers, primary care covers, all
your basic you know, obgyn visits, and all that stuff
is now under that hospital umbrella, what does this do
to the way they negotiate rates with insurance companies, which

(37:21):
are basically the main driver of health insurance costs.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
That's a really smart question because they're in cohuts with
each other, and when you lessen the degree of competition
when there are fewer players, the large players who are
left work together to make sure that costs are as
high as possible. Right, everybody a bigger piece of a
bigger pie, and the person that gets stuck holding the
bag is the consumer wins up with higher insurance payment rates. Now,

(37:50):
what's insidious is that when you go to the hospital
and you run up, let's say, fifty thousand dollars in
healthcare costs because you had a heart attack, and you
don't see that. You know, you don't see I mean,
if you ask, you'll give you the itimization. But most
people don't. All they see is your charge was fifty
seven thousand dollars, U owe seven hundred and fifty dollars.

(38:10):
People go, wow, this is great. I've got this great
care only cost me seven hundred fifty dollars, and then
don't realize that that the money is being really vacuumed
out of the system to fund these enormous hospital organizations
who are in essence paying themselves these huge salaries through
these monopolistic types of pricing situations.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
So you're not giving me a lot of hope that
there's going to be any any big changes right now.
I actually have been working since I got my first
show in two thousand and five, and I've been thinking
about this. I read all of the iterations of the
Affordable Care Act, and I used to sell health insurance,
and when this bill was passed, I said, there's nothing
in this bill to control costs. Right There was nothing

(38:49):
in the entire Affordable Care Act to address the underlying
drivers of the high cost of health insurance. So now
we've even made it worse by allowing these hospital consolidations
to happen. How do we even begin to address this?
And I want to throw this at you. One of
the things that seems to me would be the most
logical and rational would be to simply make the edict
that you cannot charge anybody more for a service than

(39:12):
you're charging anybody else. Like medicine is the only area
where you can go get your appendix taken out and
it can cost fifteen thousand dollars, and I can get
mine taken out and it can cost thirty thousand dollars.
That would be insane in any other business, and yet
it is standard procedure in medicine. How much of that
is part of the problem, the huge.

Speaker 4 (39:34):
Part of the problem. And the problem is that these
large hospital systems and large insurance companies are in this together.
And the problem is and I think that the solution
is there is no transparency. All this is hidden. No
one sees what's happening behind closed doors. Part of the
solution is to make sure that there's oversight and not
necessarily from the FEDS, but from state governments to make

(39:55):
sure that hospitals operating in any given state is under
the the regular scrutiny of regulators who want to know
what's going on, that basic fair business practices are being
followed because they're not. And you look at the line
item and a lot of these hospitals' budgets, the line
item for lobbying is enormous. And that's not a mistake,

(40:16):
you know, thought to buy little uniforms. It's not to
paint the color of the parking lot brighter for safer parking.
It's political lobbying one hundred percent. And the only reason
out they're lobbying is because they want to protect their
ability to many respects, rape the system and earn as
much money as they can as quickly as they can,
without being transparent at all. So part of the solution
here is looking where the problem is and giving state

(40:39):
level local authority the ability to make a difference. Well,
Eric asked the tough questions.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Here in Colorado, they passed the bills several years ago
that I was really excited about, and it is a
medical transparency bill that you have to as a medical
system post all of your information. You're pricing everything online. Now,
if we had a functioning free market with healthcare, then
some enterprising person would use that data to pull together
on an app where you could check and see, oh,

(41:07):
I can go to Baptist and get this done for
ten grand I can go here and get it done
for fifteen thousand. But we've created such a level of
obfuscation around everything medical, and I think people are comfortable
enough with the devil they know that they don't want
to dip their toe into something that's new and different.
In case in point to what you're saying about lobbying,

(41:28):
I'm very involved in the direct primary care movement. I
think it is the wave of the future and can
save people a tremendous amount of money. And when they
were just trying to get a bill passed where they
could say, look, you can use your HSA money to
pay for your primary care, all of the big players
showed up against it. All of the hospital systems showed
up against something that should have no impact on them

(41:50):
whatsoever in the grand scheme of things. And yet they
all had their lobbyists there to say, no, you can't
do this because somehow it's going to harm us. Which
is insane.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
You know, hospitals have the ability to say, you know,
we're the good guys here. You know, we're we're foundational
bedrock members of our community. And then when you try
to say, well, why are you charging different people different
prices for the same procedure based on their ability to
pay or the time of day or the urgency of
their care? Oh no, no, no, you know, we're doing

(42:20):
the best that we can. You know, we need more
federal funding. We're under tremendous amounts of squeezing. We have
to cut staffing. Meanwhile, executive staffing isn't being cut. Nurses
are being cut, TETs are being cut, doctors are being cut.
But when you look at the where the fat is
in the CEO suite, they're giving themselves literally six figure
bonuses at the end of the year. So you gotta
follow the morning to recognize the games that are being

(42:42):
played here.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
Now, does your organization, the Center for Medicine and the
Public Interest, do you have available Like if I wanted
to get behind or try we have a very robust
citizen initiative process here in Colorado. If I wanted to
put some kind of initiative on the ballot. Do you
have ballot language that would be available for someone to
move some of these things forward, Because my thinking is

(43:04):
if you could just get that one thing like, hey,
you know what, whatever you're charging Bob over there, you're
not going to charge me anything more. I think that's
an easy way to help people begin to understand how
the system is rigged, and just getting them to understand
how it's rigged is like half the battle.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
I agree with that. In fact, on our website, which
will give myself a shameless plug, which is cmpi dot org,
we've looked at a number of different states and how
their hospital systems are really defrauding public dollars and patient
dollars as well. And the next step, to your point,
is to draft good legislation that states can model and
use to get their hospital system under control. But I

(43:41):
think that the headline here is states have to do
it locally. If you let the fedes do it, nothing's
going to happen. The lobbying power of hospitals is too
enormous to fight on a national level, hard enough on
the local state level, right almost on the federal level.
But it's time to start doing that.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
To your point, so I mean, is that something that's
coming soon, because I'm I'm ready. I'm ready, Peter, let's
do it. Let's let's it's time to do something aggressive
and different and help people understand that the status quo
does not have to be the status quo.

Speaker 4 (44:11):
I totally agree on some states are doing a better
job than others, So you know, I guess you're to
your point that maybe the next topic on our to
do list is to show some model state legislation that
could get some good to headlines and try it out
in other states as well, with the obvious kind of
caveat that each state has to personalize this legislation for
their own needs. But you know, sooner or of the
later two points really completely out of control.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
I just think it's it would be a fascinating comparison
to be able to really understand the differences here and
how much underimbursements with Medicare and Medicaid or just cost
spread their cost shifted to everybody else. We're paying the
extra freight on those and I just think this is
such a complex issue, and people just want to be
able to go to the doctor when they need it, right,
They're just like I just want to be able. I

(44:54):
want a hospital to be there when I need it.

Speaker 4 (44:58):
A key point to look at it if you look
at the various reports on the CMPI website. We look
at executive salaries, you know, at it through a host
of states, and the executive salaries for not for profit hospitals,
which are the majority of hospitals in this country, are
well into the six figures across the board. You have
to ask yourself what is wrong with this picture?

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Well, do you guys address certificates of need the sort
of false scarcity that is created when a new healthcare
provider wants to come into a market, they have to
demonstrate that the need exists before they're allowed to come
into the market. If they use that same strategy for
car washes, my community would be much different because we
have seven thousand car washes. But guess what, I can

(45:40):
get a car wash cheap if I want it. Why
don't we do the same kind of like inject more
competition into the system.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
You know, competition is what large. You know, monopolistic organizations
are most afraid for obvious reasons. And you know, and
what we did in our report is that we looked
at as I mentioned earlier, the lobbying spending the hospitals astounding,
and they're not lobbying to make their hospitals bigger or
to hire more doctors and nurses. They're hired to make

(46:08):
sure that no legislation has passed that in any way
stops them from making money hand over fist any which
way they can, including to your point, limiting competition, which
is a huge part of this conversation.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
Is there a difference between this the urban hospital situation
and we have rural hospitals that we're told we have
maternity deserts in Colorado where there is no maternity care
and people are driving hundreds of miles to have a baby.
How does that happen? How do we have a disconnect
where we have urban hospitals that are making a huge
profit and we have rural hospitals that they can't stay open.

Speaker 4 (46:40):
Well, when you put rural hospitals or regional hospitals out
of business, where does that business go? Yeah, it doesn't
go well. It simply forces people into their cars to
drive to the city to get their care at large
centers which are a lot more expensive and where all
the overhead is significantly higher. So, you know, a good
kind of marker of the problem is the less ability.

(47:02):
You know, the fewer local hospitals there are kind of
the traditional local hospital as they disappear your self. Why
is that. It's not because the need isn't there. It's
because the opportunity to make money by taking business away
from local hospitals to a larger urban center are there.
It's and those opportunities are taken aggressively and robustly and regularly.

(47:22):
And it is a crime against the public that these
things are continue to happen without any legislative oversight whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
So how do we fix that issue specifically because here
in Colorado that's significant.

Speaker 4 (47:34):
Well, you know, the first thing to do is that
legislators have to say, this is a problem, we recognize it,
and how do we fix it. Okay, this is howly difficult,
except that when you look at the amount of lobbying
dollars paid by large hospitals in states to state level politicians,
there's a lot of there are a lot of palms
being grease, let me put it to that way.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
But but that doesn't necessarily answer my question about how
to address that. Other than saying you're getting your palms green,
I mean, are there are there steps that we can
use to solve that problem at the same time that
we're trying to address I mean, I guess maybe we'll
handle that when it comes up later. That's what.

Speaker 4 (48:12):
I mean. The big, the big headline. There is transparency,
right make these things. When you shame people on their behavior,
that's the first step, and then you can take legislative
action to fix it because you have public support. What
I was trying to mention for about kind of palms
being in grease is that nothing is happening from nothing.
Nothing is happening from a legislative perspective, not because legislators
are stupid because they don't know what's going on. Is

(48:35):
because they're purposely being incentivized, shall we say, you know,
not to do anything to look the other way, to
allow the status quotes to remain in place. And as
you said, most people don't reach into their pockets to
pay the full cost of hospital care. But that doesn't
mean that the amounts of money being sucked out of
the system, even to both for profit and especially for
non for profit hospitals who have the have the nerve

(48:56):
to hide behind a charity mission. You know, you know
it's being allowed to happen by politicians were being told
to look the other way.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Peter Pitts is my guest. He is with the president.
He's president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interests.
Very interesting conversation, Peter. It's one that is going to continue,
I'm sure, and one that I'm going to keep having
because we've got to do something and throwing more government
money at inflated prices is not what we need to
do at this point. I appreciate your time today, my pleasure.

Speaker 4 (49:27):
Thank you very much. Let's talk on the fight together.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Absolutely. Thanks. That's Peter Pitts. You know, there's it's hard
to make people realize that it doesn't have to be
this way because we're all sort of conditioned in, programmed
because this is the way it's been for so long.
And instead of trying to prop up the broken system

(49:51):
that we have. Now, when you start talking about real innovations,
like guys, I think that innovation of just telling hospital
systems you can can't charge anybody more than you charge
anybody else. Now they're gonna come back and howl and
scream and talk about how oh Medicare and Medicaid. They
don't pay it up. Okay, great, we'll take them separately.
Let's just put Medicaid and Medicare off to the side.

(50:13):
But you can't charge somebody who has Blue Cross, Blue
Shield any more or less than you charge somebody who
has United Healthcare any more or less than you charge
anybody who has Kaiser. That's a huge starting point. And
they would howl, they would. And can you imagine being
at a congression or a legislative hearing where you have,
you know, people from hospital systems talking about how they

(50:36):
have to be able to charge people completely different amounts
for the exact same care. Can't you? I mean, I
can't wait. And here's the thing, you guys. I have
nothing against great hospitals, I really don't. But what they're doing,
the way they game the system is simply a huge
part of the problem. And we cannot get health insurance

(50:57):
costs down if we don't get the cost of health
healthcare down. I'm going to do a little digging. I
did not. It didn't even occur to me to look
and see what the cost of administration versus care is.
One of the things I look at when I am
deciding what charities to donate to is how efficiently they

(51:18):
use the funds that are donated. And if I see
a charity that I perceive to be extremely top heavy,
with a lot of administration, a lot of paid stuff,
a lot of headquartered logs, I'm not going to donate
to them. I don't want to pay for a bloated staff.
I don't want to pay for a bloated staff when
I donate to charity. I don't want to pay for
a bloated staff when I am making a charitable donation

(51:39):
and going to the hospital. Mandy was at the doctor's
office this morning. From the text line, was told the
technis shot I'm due for is free at the pharmacy,
but not at the doctor's office on medicare What in
the world to put it nicely? Hey, anyway, Mandy, what

(52:01):
about drug prices? Can pay twenty dollars for eloquist and
another patient, We'll pay two hundred dollars for the same prescription,
just depending on their insurance. Same rules for the drug
companies should apply. We'll be right back. I live on
the Eastern Plains, says this Texter. When I had a
high deductible plan, I found out that it costs ten
more times more for services, X rays, MRI surgery at

(52:24):
our local hospital than it does in Denver, g Really
or Loveland. That drives us away from our local hospital,
which employs many people in our area, to use the
big hospital systems. So they're bad at business, I mean legit,
like if you're going and you're finding out that things
are more expensive and you're taking your business elsewhere and
they don't know that. I don't have a lot of sympathy.

(52:47):
I mean, don't get me wrong. I want people in
rural areas to have access to healthcare that they need.
But ultimately, if they're bad at business, they're bad at business. Mandy,
I recently needed a chest X ray at Boulder Community Hospital.
They asked me if I wanted to use my insurance
or or pay cash for labs at that same hospital.

(53:08):
My insurance was working well with no copay or a
thirty dollars copay, so I took the insurance option and
I got a statement. They build my insurance company fourteen
hundred dollars, which resulted in me having a four hundred
dollars copay After the fact, I called and found cash
pay would have been one hundred and fourteen dollars there's

(53:29):
no way to reverse that, and I had to pay
the four hundred insane. I'm assuming that the one hundred
and fourteen dollar cash pay was their actual cost, So
they gouged my insurance company and me. This is why
I advocate for direct primary care because let me tell
you what would have happened had you gone and you

(53:50):
went to your direct primary care that you had a
membership to. First of all, you don't pay anything for
the visit. Then they would have said, oh, you know what,
we need to do a chest X ray and guess
what then, And the next thing they would have said
is that's going to be one hundred and fourteen dollars.
None of this do you want to do and share
it to you? No, it's gonna be That's gonna be
one hundred and fourteen dollars. Only I would bet that

(54:10):
it's even cheaper because they charge a wholesale pricing there. Anyway,
I will absolutely Texter just said, please read Carl Denninger's
proposal to fix healthcare. I absolutely will. I'm gonna email
that link to myself. I will read it later because
I want to fix healthcare. I at this stage in

(54:32):
the game, you guys may notice I'm not talking about
politics as much as I used to. And I said
it the other day. I'm kind of out of outrage,
and it feels like talking about politics is all about outrage.
I just want to fix the problems that we are having.
And here's the thing. If Democrats pick this stuff up
and run with it, I don't care. I don't care,

(54:55):
I don't care who gets the credit, I don't care about.

Speaker 6 (54:59):
It of it.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Just fix the damn problem. Right, Oh, it would be
so nice anyway. Now, a couple of things coming here
in Colorado. I found an article and I'll put it
on tomorrow's blog because I mentioned this in the last hour.
And if you didn't know this, starting in January, a
new Colorado law is going to dramatically increase the cost

(55:26):
of getting a new furnace and a new water heater.
The law, passed in twenty twenty three, prohibits the sale
of certain types of furnaces and water heaters, instead requiring
sellers to sell appliances that are in compliance with low
nitrogen oxide output requirements. This is going to drive up
the cost of hot water of water heaters and furnaces.

(55:50):
For example, if you were quoted fifty five hundred for
a furnace replacement this year. The newer model next year
would likely cost you between sixty six hundred and seventy
one point fifty. Also, the furnaces that they're talking about,
the low Knox furnace, they don't work well above forty
five hundred feet in altitude, So that is going to

(56:12):
be a huge problem, a really really big problem. Now
with the water heaters, they seem to have fixed that problem,
but with the furnaces they still have not. And most
of those furnace companies don't really kind of they're basically like,
we stand behind our product below forty five hundred feet
in altitude. Who in Colorado is below forty five hundred feet? Anyone? Anyone?

Speaker 4 (56:37):
Anyone?

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Any of us? Anyone I don't know, don't see anybody,
do not see anybody. I'll put that on tomorrow's blog.
Everything is so depressing on the blog today. I mean,
here's some good new US ish a little bit. A
sweeping new national study is revealing just how widespread open

(57:01):
drug use has become on public transit systems across North America.
Denver's RTD was one of only five agencies selected to participate.
Released by the research group Leading Mobility, the report found
that substance use on buses, trains, and platforms is not
isolated to any single city, but is a system wide

(57:24):
issue affecting transit systems from Portland to Philadelphia. Now this
is the part of this and by the way, it's
good news because hey, it's not just RTD, right, I
mean maybe not. Oh, I forgot to tell you this.
So why was I in. I was in downtown Denver
a couple of days ago. What was oh, I was
going to step Denver. I was going to do my

(57:46):
step Denver tour, and I was driving downtown and I
started looking. I was like, Okay, every time I dress
drive by a covered bus stop, meaning you know, with
a bench in the cover to keep you out of
the elements, I'm just going to check out and see
what's going. So I only drove by seven of them,
seven covered bus stops. Three of them had people smoking

(58:06):
drugs on the bus. I mean, I'm watching people with
foil in their hand. Maybe they were unwrapping a Hershey's kiss,
I don't know, but they also had a lighter in
the other hand. So out of the seven or eight,
I can't remember if it was seven or eight. Out
of the seven or eight, three of them had people
smoking drugs at the bus stop. But please tell me

(58:27):
how I need to use mass transit more. Please. This
is the part that concerns me. Researchers say agencies are
increasingly facing mission creep as they're expected to address issues
like homelessness, mental health crises, and addiction challenges. They were
never designed to manage alone. They should not be dealing
with any of that. They should be enforcing the law,

(58:51):
arresting people and letting drug courts sort it out. The
notion that somehow every drug addict to a smoking mess
on an RTD train needs some kind of specialized professional
who's hired by RTD to manage things like this is absurd.
Enforce the law and let the courts sort it out.

(59:13):
That should be the like, if I'm RTDs, this is
what I do, I'm just like, you know what, We're
just gonna have RTD police arrest them. We're gonna hand
them over to the Denver cops, and we're gonna be
on our way. We're gonna set the tone that open
drug use will not be tolerated near or in any
of our facilities, and if you do it, you're gonna
be arrested, and then we can let that get sort
it out. And if you have to arrest the same

(59:35):
people ten, fifteen, twenty times, do it, just do it.
What I would love to see is all of these
different agencies just decide they've had enough, and all of
these different agencies can get together and just start arresting
people and create so much, so many newly arrested people
that they're gonna have to do something about it. And

(59:56):
I'm sorry, cops, I'm so sorry, Oh sorry that I'm
I'm basically dumping this at your feet. It's not your
responsibility to get these people clean anyway. It is the
responsibility to make sure that the trains are safe. That
is what RTD's police should be doing. Are the Are
the trains safe when people are smoking meth inside them?
No they are not. Are the trains safe when people

(01:00:18):
are smoking meth at the bus stops? No they are not.
Focus on that. Clean that up and stop worrying about
the squishy you know, Oh and at the fair.

Speaker 7 (01:00:28):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
I shouldn't have to. It's not your job. You should
be making sure that other people whose job it is
are looped in on a regular basis. We'll be back
right after this. There was a time when sleepy Joe
was anything but and thanks to the interwebs I have
with you. Now give me my audio, please, Anthony, do

(01:00:49):
you need my audio? Okay, Now we have evidence that
Donald Trump is simply copying Joe Biden. Oh hold your fire.
I'm talking about Joe Biden from nineteen eighty nine. Please
listen to Senator Joe Biden back then, talk about the
war on drugs.

Speaker 8 (01:01:10):
Every president for the past two decades, Democrat and Republican alike,
has declared war on drugs, and each of them has
lost that war and.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Lost it miserably.

Speaker 8 (01:01:22):
They lost because they attempted to deal with only part
of the drug problem. They lost because their initiatives were
pulled apart by bureaucratic squabbling among their advisors. They lost
because they always did too little and they did it
too late. We don't oppose the President's plan. All we
want to do is strengthen it. We don't doubt is resolve.

(01:01:43):
All we want to do is stiffen it. The trouble
is that the President's proposals are not big enough to.

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Deal with the problem.

Speaker 8 (01:01:50):
We think we should do more to stem the flow
of drugs across our borders. And we think we should
go one step further. Let's go after the drug lords
where they live.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
With an international strike force. Yep, strikeforce.

Speaker 8 (01:02:04):
There must be no safe haven for these narco terrorists
and they must know it. We have to lock up
the dealers for a long long time, and we have
to attack the source from which the drugs come. And
we have to do that not a piece of a time,
but all at once. And we have to do it now.
And there's not any reason why we can't do that.

(01:02:28):
We have the power, we have the money, and we
have the knowledge.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Oh thanks Joe that from nineteen eighty nine. Now you
remember Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan, the War on drugs, just
say no at the beginning of dare all of these
things that went after the demand side, right, And Joe
Biden in this clip from nineteen eighty nine is making
the point that we have to go after the supply side.

(01:02:55):
So now Donald Trump is going after the supply side. Still,
you guys, I remain I remain concerned about the fact
that yet again we are talking about, you know, sort
of blowing up people that are in drug boats. I
get it. I've now gone back and watched enough of

(01:03:15):
these videos to be absolutely certain that these are not
fishing boats. These are drug boats loaded with big, you know,
loads of drugs that they're bringing either to the United
States or Europe. And this, when I saw this clip yesterday,
it's something dawned on me. We've had the war on
drugs now, and wait for it, for almost fifty years.

Speaker 6 (01:03:38):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
I know you're like me when I say fifty years,
You're like, no, Mandy, that was in the eighties. Do
the math, my friends, do the math. Almost fifty years,
and yet we've never had anyone a president who went
after it as aggressively as this president is going out

(01:04:00):
after it now. On the flip side of that coin,
I need someone to make me understand why Donald Trump
pardoned the former president of Ecuador, who, at the time
he was telling us he was our ally. He was
We're going to crack down on the drug trade. Well,
apparently he was profiting from that same drug trade quite

(01:04:21):
quite handsomely. He was convicted, sentenced to a bunch of
years in prison, and Donald Trump just pardoned him. I
don't know why I have no idea. I don't understand it.
We're going after the country of Venezuela, nol for drug trafficking,
which seems like a pretty legit thing to do. What else,

(01:04:42):
what We're going to pardon this guy who basically said
whatever he needed to say to our faces, and then
I'm guessing probably turned around and let the cartels know
what we were saying. So there's the inconsistency of the
Trump administration is very very frustrating, very very frustrating. This

(01:05:03):
texter said, it's all about oil. I mean to a
certain extent, but we have a president who doesn't need
to buy oil from Venezuela. Remember Joe Biden begged for
more oil from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Donald Trump is
just like, we've got oil in the United States. We'll
just get it here. I actually think the whole thing
with Venezuela has something to do with drugs a lot,

(01:05:25):
but it also has to do with breaking up the
bricks alliance China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran. You know, was sort
of creating a disruption there. Mandy Trump has always had
the same policies as nineties Democrats. Oh it was the
president of Honduras. Thank you, Texter, My apologies, My apologies, Mandy.

(01:05:46):
What will the people that want drugs, no matter what
they know, what they buy on the streets will kill them?
Switched to when the fentanyl is gone? I don't know.
I shudder to think. I think we're a long way
from being able to say that the fentanyl is gone.
A long way away. So supply side will always be
there as long as there's a demand from the US.

(01:06:08):
There is truth in that statement as well, Texter. Absolutely,
But if we make it harder, if we create some
scarcity on the supply side, perhaps we stop the next
generation of attics from even getting started in the first place.
Actually says this, Texter. Richard Nixon started the War on
drugs in nineteen seventy. I was only one then. I

(01:06:30):
don't remember. I'll take your word for it, though. When
we get back, I'm going to try and find some
good news because I don't know you know what I'm
going to tell you the most genuinely, I don't even
know horrifyings the wrong word. But I learned something today
and I'm not going to be the only one to
know this. It's coming up next.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
The Mandy Connell Show is sponsored by Belle and Pollock
accident and injury lawyers.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
No, it's Mandy Connell.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Got wait stay the nicey keep sad babe. Welcome local,
Welcome to the third hour of the show. I know,
I know, I promised you a story that have you
read something and you don't know how to react, but

(01:07:27):
you find yourself just sitting there, mouth of gog, like
what did I just read? And the whole break I
have been sitting here trying to figure out how to
tell you what this story is about, thinking about the
fact if you might have kids in the car. I
don't know if I can if I I don't know,

(01:07:49):
We're gonna have to wait and see. Nope, I'm okay,
let me just let me just try this. No, I
can't do it. I can't do it. It's on the blog.
And if you want to see what I'm talking about,
it's on the blog at mandy'sblog dot com. Just look
for the headline on the blog that says, if I

(01:08:10):
know this, you're gonna know it too, and click on that.
I can't I I nope, nope. But if you ever
want to know what leaves your humble host Speechless. Go
to the blog mandy'sblog dot com and look for that headline,
because yeah, there are things that I learn doing show
prep that I very clearly would like to Unknow what

(01:08:36):
is that? Let me ask this question of you, guys,
because I can think of very specific examples right now
in my mind that I'm not going to share with
you because a couple of them are gossip related and
I don't gossip. I have a strict no gossip policy.
And here's why. I've worked in radio and in talk
radio for a very long time. It's not like this anymore.

(01:08:59):
But when I first started, it was like an old
It was like a boy's locker room all the time.
And I found after a couple of years that I
had been the subject of a lot of gossip that
was completely fabricated. Yet the guys had a lot of
fun at my expense. And at that moment, I was like,
I am never engaging in office gossip again. It's not

(01:09:19):
happening now. I'll have a conversation with someone who's going
through something in their lives, absolutely, but I'm not going
to talk. And then sometimes people tell me things that
I don't want to know, and I mean, you know,
you ever want to put your fingers in your ears
like la la la, la la la like that. That's
that's so. I know some things, but you guys are
fairly anonymous. I'm not going to read out your phone

(01:09:41):
number on the ear or anything. I want to know.
Is there something you've ever learned that you wanted to
unknow because I and I'll give you an example of
something I learned. I learned many years ago. This was
probably twenty years ago. I learned that a friend's husband
was having an affair. And it was a friend that

(01:10:01):
was a friend, but not a super close friend, so
I had no and I learned I literally saw him
with his mistress and and I was like, I don't
want to know this. You can't unknow it. What do
you do with that information? This thing that's on the
blog today with the headline of if I'm gonna know it,
you're gonna know it too. You can go look at it.

(01:10:23):
But what are some of the things that you've learned
that you did not want to know? And then if
you could just wipe it off your brain, what would
that thing be? I'm just curious. Five six six nine
zero is the common spirit health text line, Mandy, if
you need something funny, what does a cow say when
it's out of milk? Nothing? There's utter silence. Okay, Mandy.

(01:10:51):
The newscast keep reporting ow Colorado gas prices are coming down.
I'm eagerly awaiting Governor Polis, Senator Bennett, or Senator Hickenlooper
to take credit. But weirdly, when our gas prices go
up because of the summer blend that we now have
to use, because Governor Jared Polus refuses to ask for
dispensation from the EPA because of our ozone issues, because

(01:11:12):
of wildfires and Chinese pollution, they don't take credit for that. Mandy,
did you post the article about the efficiency of those
new furnaces. I will put that on tomorrow's blog. I
don't want to go back in and change today's blog.
It's longer anyway. I'm just curious. I want to know
what you guys want to unknow. One thing I am

(01:11:36):
happy about. The FBI is arrested a man in the
January sixth DC pipe bomber investigation. And I'm watching the
news media coverage about this today and it's shocking to
me how much extremely clear video they have of this guy.
And the guy is from Woodbridge, Virginia. He is a man.

(01:11:57):
Name is Brian Cole Junior. Brian cold Junior is apparently
some kind of anarchist. And Pam Bondi threw the Biden
doj under the bus with this comment. She said, let
me be clear, there was no new tip, there was
no new witness, just good diligent police work and prosecutorial work.

(01:12:22):
And she literally said, look, the Justice Department and her
former Joe Biden didn't make an arrest and the cold
case just languished. You would think that would be an
important story. Just asking, Mandy, I'd love to know some
secrets about a Rod. Would you like me to tell you?

Speaker 6 (01:12:41):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
Wait, is that b Rod? Oh please tell me some
secrets about ay Rod. Mandy. How about being a father
and finding out your daughter is on OnlyFans? Oh yikes, yikes,
that's gotta hurt. Yeah, yeah, Mandy. The gossip is you

(01:13:09):
are a fox and very smart. Happy Thursday. A fox
meaning no fox and it you had to hear yesterday's
Yesterday's show. This gentleman just looked up the article and
uh said nasty and I'm a guy. It's about a
certain fetish that is apparently rising in popularity, and I

(01:13:30):
try not to Joy, I try not to judge what
you know, what butters other people's biscuits. You do you right,
like you whatever you do in your bedroom and you're
consenting adults and all that. Whatever whatever you want to
do there, get your freak on. But I didn't need
to know about I don't need to know everything about it.

(01:13:52):
I just I don't. I don't wanna. Nope, some things
are better left unknown. Something I want to unlearn. Not
only did my wife have multiple affairs, but one of
my kids isn't mine. DNA tests confirmed. Ultimately, I decided
to stay as the father, and sir, you are an
outstanding human being. I have had multiple friends over the

(01:14:16):
years that have had this same situation, and every single
one of them kept being a dad because it's not
the kid's fault. So I think that's I mean, one
thing about when you're the mom, very little chance of
that baby's not yours. That's something who was terribly wrong

(01:14:37):
at the hospital. Something. How about being a father and
finding out your son is on only fans and that
he made over one hundred thousand dollars last year on
it what do you do with that, guys? I mean,
if I found out at some point in the future
that the Q was on OnlyFans, I don't know. I mean,

(01:15:01):
I'm hoping that I'm raising her in such a way
that that wouldn't be appealing. But let's be real, you guys.
Like when I was a kid, when women need to
make a little money, they sold avon or they sold upperware,
and now they're selling something totally different. I just can't
even imagine, Mandy. I would like to unsee the movie Deliverance.
No one should see that movie. Mandy. My father bragging

(01:15:25):
in his old age to me about how many women
he cheated on her with over the years. Ah. Oh,
I hate that. I hate that, Dad. We're not bonding.
It's just kind of gross, just actually really really gross.
When we get back, we'll have a news story that
has nothing to do was like weird fetish porn because

(01:15:49):
I ech straight from our friends at PETA People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Now, PETA has long had
a war on pets. They don't believe that any animals
should be kept by humans. But the reality is, like,
my dog would never survive in the wild. My dog

(01:16:12):
she's just my dog. She's a Saint Bernard, and literally
I think the Saint Bernard's are programmed for cuddling. That's
pretty much. She would starve to death in a matter,
although she could live off the fat of the land
for a while, you know, her own anyway. But Pete's
been anti pet ownership for a long long time, and

(01:16:32):
they realize that that is not working because not only
has pet ownership gone up in the United States, we
now spend I mean like two hundred billion dollars on
our pets every year, some crazy number like that. So
they're taking a different tact. In Delaware, people for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a proposal to state legislators

(01:16:55):
urging them to make Delaware the first state to require
a minimum of three dog walks per day. According to
the proposal, dog parents would have to make one of
those walks an hour. Peda points out that dogs need
them for necessary bathroom breaks and to maintain healthy weight.
They say it's also important for mental stimulation for most dogs.

(01:17:18):
Peta says a walk is a real relief. Pawn intended
a chance to sniff the neighborhood news with their sensitive
snouts and to see things other than four walls, and
allowing them at least three times a day isn't asking much.
Now you may think this is completely Craig Cray, but
touring Italy finds pet guardians if they fail to walk

(01:17:40):
their dogs three times a day. And here's my big question,
how do they know? Do they set up like a
little dog hotline or your dog if they can figure
out how to use the phone without thumbs where your
dog is gonna call and rat you out? And what
is that call gonna sound like?

Speaker 8 (01:17:56):
Room?

Speaker 3 (01:17:59):
This is the kind of sound. I mean, it's it's comical.
And I have to give it to Peta because they
do these things. And then I find myself in a
position where I have to talk about Peta because it's
so crazy. I mean, it's just it's absolutely nuts. By
the way, the aforementioned fat Saint Bernard that I have,
or as we like to call her, fat Puppy or

(01:18:20):
fatsy Cline or Fatty Fat Fat, or the fluff Meister
or Fluffy McGhee or fatsy McGee, we have a bunch
of them. If I told her she was going to
take three walks a day, you know what my dog
would say, I'll be here when you get back. I'm
good now. Granted we have a fence sinyard, so she
gets to go in and out of the yard. She's

(01:18:42):
good for one walk and on occasion I will be
walking her and she will just stop. Now, I know,
when you have a small dog, you can just scoop
them up, right, you just pick them up, throw them
under your army keep with a Saint Bernard who weigh
one hundred and fifty five pounds. Who's done, who's decided?
She's ready to stop you? You just stop? You just

(01:19:02):
there's no you know, you can get behind her, you
can push her. She's not going anywhere, So I this.
I mean right now, I can hear my dog lobbing
actively in Delaware. She would be like, yeah, no, don't
don't force me to exercise three times a day, Mandy.
If I have a I have a ten year old

(01:19:23):
Bassett Hound. If I can get her to stand up
and walk around the room, that's an accomplishment. Yep. And
I do know that PETA should stand for people eating
tasty animals. Mandy. I would like to undo watching the
Human Centipede movie with my mom. I don't know what
that is what is it?

Speaker 4 (01:19:43):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:19:43):
What is it? What is it? A rod? You don't
want to know, And I'm not gonna tell you anything. No,
you have to tell me. I'm gonna have to look
it up on life me in my search history. You
have to tell me in my ear. Absolutely not tell
me in my ear, no chance, Come on, No, I
know you trust me.

Speaker 5 (01:19:59):
You don't want to know. Imagine just what those two
words are. What's the name of the side.

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):
Of the movie the human centipee?

Speaker 5 (01:20:06):
Think about it, think about it, don't think too much,
and do not look it up?

Speaker 3 (01:20:13):
Are you sure? Textures have that it? If you want to.
Mandy's asking for it. I'm not going to do this
for this texture. Dogs always have to check their p mail.
That's actually very funny. More of you. My dog is
too damn lazy for three long walks a day. Correct.
Nobody in the room temperature above IQ pays attention to pete. Mandy.

(01:20:33):
When my wife is walking our dog and she stops
to sniff a spot, my wife says that the dog
is reading her pemil. I thought you met your Your
wife stopped to sniff a spot, and I was like,
that is a neat trick. Because I can't get my
nose down there afternoon, Mandy, three times a day. I
told my old dog that and he said it will
interfere with his sleep. Amen to that. It's just another

(01:20:56):
way to get their name out there. And Pete does
a great job with that. Excellent marketing for bad ideas.
The Human Centiped movie A Rod did tell me enough
to know I will not be looking up the Human
centiped movie. And this is my favorite text about it.
This texter said, Mandy, I watched The Human Centipede with
my team when I was in a rock. I was

(01:21:18):
getting combat pay to watch it, and I still felt
ripped off. The movie has no redeeming qualities. I will
take your word for it. You know does have redeeming qualities.
Jerry Shemel first of all superhuman being. And now he
has taken on a new task, and that is to
support an organization that does its best to support people

(01:21:38):
who have developmental disabilities live life to the absolute fullest
and achieve their highest dreams. And now Jerry Shemmel joining
me to talk about it. Hi, Jerry, how you.

Speaker 6 (01:21:48):
Doing, Mandy?

Speaker 9 (01:21:50):
I'm great, how are you doing?

Speaker 6 (01:21:51):
Really good to talk to you.

Speaker 3 (01:21:52):
It's very good to talk to you as well, my friend.
You know, Jerry, I did not know that you had
a grandson who has Down syndrome.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:22:01):
Yeah, it was a shock to us. He's two years old.
We didn't know that that was going to be that way.
We weren't given any indication that he had anything wrong
with him. Looked like a perfect healthy baby when he
came out down syndrome. And Andy when I when I
first heard that news, I was shocked. I was depressed.
I was down. And then I started doing research on

(01:22:23):
Down Center kids and everybody's congratulations, It's the greatest thing
you it's ever going to happen to you. It's the
greatest blessing you're ever going to have. And it turned
out that way. For the last two years, little Henry
couldn't be more of a joy to me in my life.

Speaker 3 (01:22:36):
So, Jerry, years and years ago, like when you and
I were young, back in the olden times, when you
had a child that had Down syndrome or so some
other developmental delay, they were sort of kind of, for
lack of the better way to put it, warehoused a
little bit, right, they were just kind of put on
a shelf. You were told they were never going to
accomplish anything, and they you know, they just had to

(01:22:57):
kind of live like a lump of coal, I guess.
But now we see the exact opposite, and I'm guessing
that Best Day Ministries has tapped into the notion that
people with Down syndrome can do a.

Speaker 9 (01:23:10):
Lot, absolutely absolutely, and they're just bundles of joy as well.
And you know Hendriason only too, Mandy, But I know
through this ministry lots of adults with Down syndrome, and
you know what, I want to live my life the
way they've lived their life. They don't complain, they don't criticize,

(01:23:30):
they don't judge, They measure life. But how many hugs
they can get people and how much joy they can
bring people, That's the way I want to live my life.
So not only are we seeing a change in how
people look at and treat people with downtren them or
any kind of disability, but I think we're seeing the
blessing that comes along with that as well. And that's
what this ministry is all about. Best Day Ministries is threefold.

(01:23:52):
They have an online business center where adults with disabilities
can make their projects to help to make and sell
their projects online. They got this coffee shop, and they've
got a church that they do once a month, so
and all led by disabled our adults with disability. So

(01:24:12):
it's a credible, beautiful ministry. I'm learning from it and
I couldn't be more excited about being involved in it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:19):
When I was very young, my mother was the activities
director for what was at the time called the Columbia
Association for Retarded Citizens. And it was the first time
in my life. I'm like ten, eleven, twelve years old,
it was the first time I was around people and
these were all adults that had developmental disabilities. It was
probably the greatest thing that could have happened to our

(01:24:42):
family in in terms of learning about folks who are
trying to make a living and trying to be productive
members of society. And you know what, maybe somebody with
down syndrome isn't going to cure cancer, right, but they
can work in a coffee shop. And this is a
group of people that are historic under employed at drastic levels.

(01:25:03):
But does best day ministries provide opportunities to learn some
of those life skills you just mentioned a coffee shop.
Tell me about that.

Speaker 9 (01:25:11):
Yeah, coffee shop's a great example that, Mandy, they employ
sixteen adults with disabilities, sixteen different people. It's not a
great business model when you want to make money. They
gets extra costs and you have coaches that are on
site as well that help these people, and so you
got to pay them as well. So it's not the

(01:25:33):
best foundation for making money of a coffee shop, but
it's what this ministry wants to do. They employ sixteen
special needs adults anywhere from down center to autism to
dramatic brain injuries, straight physical disabilities. There are people wheelchairs
that are working there. And for many of them, Mandy,
like you're getting that it's their first job. It's the

(01:25:53):
first time they're gainfully employed. And not only are they
making money, that's secondary. What it does for their life.

Speaker 2 (01:25:59):
The value you.

Speaker 9 (01:26:02):
What they can bring to society, how it makes them feel,
how it makes their family and their parents feel, is invaluable.
And I'm seeing this and people are just giddy about
work at this coffee shop. And there's sixty to these
people that wouldn't be employed otherwise, and think big majority
of them are working for the first time their lives
as adults.

Speaker 3 (01:26:20):
And that's the thing. It's like what they're you know,
they're just like us, Jerry. We want to feel like
we have purpose, right, we want to have a reason
to get up in the morning. And people with Down
syndrome or other developmental disabilities like autism, they have that
same drive, but they don't usually get the same opportunities.
So how can people I'm assuming Best Day is going
to be a part of Colorado Gives Day.

Speaker 9 (01:26:42):
Yes, it is that, and they have a website that's
got a new platform to it, and I'm helping them
raise money and get exposure, which I'm doing today, Manny,
thank you for.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
Having me on.

Speaker 9 (01:26:51):
But it's Best Daysministry dot org. Best Days Ministries dot org.
So it's like I said, it's threefold, and they're vastly underfunded,
and I'm trying to help them get to where they're
financially solving a little bit. So anybody has an idea
and notion to help out. And incredibly beautiful ministry that
services adults with disabilities. Best Dadministries dot org is the

(01:27:16):
place to go. It really is a beautiful thing, and I.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
Will put it on my I do a blog every
Colorado who Gives Day with organizations that I think are
doing a really good job. But I want to ask
you something about if someone owns a business, are there
opportunities to maybe bring some of these people into your business.
And I say this because I have now over three

(01:27:41):
different markets, had the opportunity to see how when you
let people know, Look, if you want somebody who's going
to show up and be the brightest star on your
you know, on your crew every single day, if you're
willing to work with them and work within what their
capabilities are, you will have a crew member that will
never leave you, that will never you know, give you

(01:28:03):
a hard time, that doesn't show up late, that doesn't
call in say. And it's remarkable to see how once
you get into the community what people begin to see
the possibilities are. And I think that's part of the
mission here, Isn't it just show people their possibilities.

Speaker 9 (01:28:19):
Yes, exactly, Mandy, that's a big part of this ministry.
And you're right, And there are other businesses out there,
and this one has kind of modeled their program after
some of the others. There's an ice cream shop I
know in Aurora where I used to take my grandson
before they move. That employee especially needs adults and other
coffee shops do it, and other businesses do it, and

(01:28:39):
once a while you'll see those sorts of people at
chickpil A. There's a lot of different opportunities for these individuals.
What we have in this coffee shop at sixteen of
those working in the same spot, and it just becomes beautiful.
And if you ever get to this coffee shop, and
I just people love going there, Mandy, because you see

(01:29:00):
what is happening behind the counter and you just you're
amazed by it, especially these people running a coffee shop,
and it just it makes your heart stir a little
bit and it makes you smile. And there's not a
single person that known that has not gone in that
place and come out different, come out affected by it,
watching what is happening in that special place. So yeah,
what you're getting at is that there are other opportunities,

(01:29:23):
or there should be, for other businesses to hire people
in this capacity. And I think it's probably growing that way.
And I think the best Day Ministers has probably opened
the door for other businesses to look at that and
be that model for them.

Speaker 3 (01:29:35):
Where is the coffee shop? It's the best day ever
a coffee and crape shop.

Speaker 9 (01:29:38):
Where is that it is in downtown Longmont, Colorado, Okay
on Coffman Street, Okay, really.

Speaker 3 (01:29:45):
Easy to get to.

Speaker 9 (01:29:46):
I don't know if you've been to Longmont before. Beautiful downtown.
It's a great little place I have And I'm looking at.

Speaker 3 (01:29:50):
The coffee prices, they're very affordable. That's a pretty affordable thing.

Speaker 6 (01:29:55):
Carrie.

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
I know that you are a man with a big heart,
and I I love that you're working with Best Day
Ministries to bring that the sort of the message to
us here in the larger metro area. Do you know
if they have any plans or the ability to scale
to other areas.

Speaker 9 (01:30:16):
Yeah, yeah, there are plans. There is a lot of
talk that way. I think it's probably going to be
a slower process because and you could certainly look at
a franchise Moble or fast food does, but it's not
a business model. It's hard to make money. Which you
employ sixteen special needs adults in a coffee shop, and
I'll be honest with they're not your typical coffee shop

(01:30:40):
employee at Starbucks that knows how to make You've got
to train them and they're a little slower and they're
less efficient. But that's the whole idea is to give
them opportunities. So yes, there is talk about that. In
fact that Joe Truett, one of the owners that he
and his wife started this whole ministry, was telling me
the other day that there's a development and Boulder that
wants to put that coffee shop another best day ever

(01:31:04):
coffee shop in one of their developments in their shopping center.
So yes, there's a lot of talk that way, and
I think it will happen. I don't know how quickly.
These things probably go slower than what you ever expect,
but yeah, there are plans and certainly a lot of
talk to expand it and make it not only more
coffee shops, but other businesses doing the same thing.

Speaker 3 (01:31:22):
So apparently they're working on joy House, which is going
to be a shop where you can buy stuffs that
already up and running.

Speaker 9 (01:31:29):
It is it's in the coffee shop.

Speaker 3 (01:31:31):
Oh wow. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:31:32):
They have yeah them online presence as well, but they're
goods that special needs adults makes kids do for that matter,
are in the store. You can see samples of them,
you can buy them there, but their big presence is
online and not just in this area many but all
across the world. They got special needs people making all

(01:31:53):
kinds of things, not only the United States but overseas.
So another beautiful ministry, just another opportunity for bults with
special needs to be out there, to feel valuable, to
make a product and sell a product and make some
money in the product and feel great about it. And
you should, Mandy, I hope you gets to the coffee
shop someday because if you see some of the things

(01:32:13):
these people make, you'll be blown away. I was in
there buying Christmas gifts the other day and stock the
back of my car with him.

Speaker 3 (01:32:19):
Oh that's fantastic. The next time I'm in Long Munt,
I go to Longmunt for two things. I go for
Georgia Boys Barbecue and the Cheese Importers. And now I'll
have to add Best Day Ministries Coffee Shop to that list.
I'll just do a circuit when I get to Long Run. Jerry,
you know what.

Speaker 9 (01:32:34):
The coffee shop is kind of right between those two businesses.

Speaker 3 (01:32:37):
Oh perfect, Oh excellent. That makes it even easier for
me to find my way. Cherry, it is so good
to talk to you, my friend, and thank you for
all you do. And I'm going to put Best Day
Ministries on my annual Colorado Gives Day list. So if
people would like to contribute, make a donation, find out
more that will be available for them on the website.

Speaker 9 (01:32:57):
Outstanding. I appreciate it, Mandy.

Speaker 3 (01:32:59):
All right, Jerry, we'll talk again soon. That is Jerry
Shimmel one of the best. He's just one of the
best human beings, truly. Hey, Mandy from the Common Spirit
health text line, a big shout out to brew Ability
in downtown Englewood and Tiffany who runs it. They also
employ developmental developmentally delayed individuals as well with disabilities. And

(01:33:22):
you know, there's when you start to hear the numbers
of unemployment for people with disabilities, it's staggering, staggering, and
they just want to do something, They just want to
be a part of things, Mandy. When I taught, I
had a whole class of students with developmental disabilities. Our

(01:33:42):
team's goals were to give them the skills to get
a job. I'll never forget one student it was able
to get a job at McDonald's as their bun man.
He could not have been prouder. Mandy, won't work at Starbucks.
They only hire whiners and elitist The people that work
at the Starbucks that I occasionally frequent are lovely, lovely,

(01:34:05):
And again, this is a Longmond story, but you can
donate and if you'd ever want to replicate this. I
think it's fantastic that people are doing this for a
group of people that this is really gross to me.
The Netherlands has eliminated Down syndrome in the Netherlands because

(01:34:29):
they just abort any baby that they think might have
Down syndrome. The problem is is that I personally know
three women who were told their child had Down syndrome
and then was born perfectly fine, perfectly fine, nothing wrong
with them, nothing at all. So those tests are not

(01:34:50):
necessarily accurate. Joey House is awesome. They used to be
in Estas Park. They are in Estes Park. I think
I do believe that they are still in Estes Park now.
Before we turn the station over to KOA Sports, we
got to talk about two sports stories. I didn't start
with sports this time, but a rob That little colonel

(01:35:14):
of hope about the Rockies just got a little bit bigger.
The little colonel of dreams of a winning team. It
got a little bit larger with the hiring of Josh
Burns as the new general manager senior vice president of
baseball Operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Is what he
was doing right before he just got hired by us

(01:35:36):
to be the general manager. An you know how those
Dodgers doing. How do they do every year? They're pretty good? Right?
Pretty good?

Speaker 5 (01:35:44):
Yeah, there's something else on that resume that really really
piqued my interest as well.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
What is that for with the Red Sox?

Speaker 6 (01:35:51):
Correct?

Speaker 3 (01:35:53):
Yep, That's what I'm talking about this, my friends, is progress.
He's a four time World Series champion. Yeah, he knows what.
He's a gentleman, Josh.

Speaker 5 (01:36:02):
Burns and started his career right here in Colorado.

Speaker 3 (01:36:07):
He's back home with the Rockies. He's been with the Padres,
the Diamondbacks, the Red Sox, and more importantly, the Dodgers.
I gotta tell you, I am I I'm feeling a
little excited, like I'm trying to tamp it down.

Speaker 5 (01:36:24):
Okay, almost starry. By the way, two thousand Rockies is
second job. Oh wait, the Cleveland Indians.

Speaker 3 (01:36:32):
There you go, there you go. So now we have
a new head of baseball operations, We got a new
general manager, both from outside the franchise. Our franchise. I mean,
I'm not saying I'm ready for the World Series. I'm
just saying I'm ready to feel like I might win

(01:36:52):
over five hundred games. Not me personally, I don't play.
But I mean, could could I have been any worse
than what we've seen? Any Mandy, the lady at Starbucks
gave me a nasty look because I asked her to
fill my drip coffee all the way to the top.
I had no creamer. By the way, their coffee always
tastes burnt. Anyway, I was just in a pickle. I

(01:37:13):
think I'm done with Starbucks. I like dark roast coffee,
so I'm fine with dark roast coffee. I know that one,
mister Ryan Edwards, it's coming to Is it the end
of PSL? Is it over? And now it's like everything's peppermint?

Speaker 7 (01:37:30):
You can still get PSL, but I'm I've switched to peppermint.

Speaker 3 (01:37:34):
It's on the way out. Yeah, I mean, you got
to go with the times. Have you tried the eggnog
latte that they just brought back. I don't like eggnog.

Speaker 7 (01:37:41):
I don't like apparently I heard that they're doing like
powdered eggnog. What I know, as a cost cutting thing,
I'm not into that. So I'll probably avoid the eggnog
this year, but I generally like the eggnog.

Speaker 3 (01:37:55):
I mean, if it's just dehydrated eggnog, that's no big deal.
I mean, all they're doing is taking the water out.

Speaker 4 (01:38:00):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:38:00):
If it's like a chemic chemical dumpster fire like pumpkin
spice latte is I mean, you're all over here, Like
I don't do the powdered egg, NOTTSL chemical poop storm.
I have standards.

Speaker 2 (01:38:16):
If I can't.

Speaker 3 (01:38:16):
Identify all the chemicals in my coffee, I'm not drinking it.

Speaker 7 (01:38:20):
That's right, not at all. It's pumpkin puree or anything
in there. Like well, first of all, pumpkin spice, you guys,
it has nothing to do with pumpkin. Like I've a
dump some cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and all.

Speaker 3 (01:38:33):
Spice into your coffee. Same thing without all the chemicals
real pumpkin in there. No, I don't even know what
that means. But no, it doesn't. That's just not a thing, Bryan.
Why why do they hate Mike Shanahan at the NFL
Hall of Fame? What is that about?

Speaker 2 (01:38:50):
Well?

Speaker 7 (01:38:51):
I believe in this case, it's more to do with
Bill Belichick being considered the greatest coach of all time,
and when you're head head see the one of the
weird things that probably doesn't get talked about enough, and
I'll make this quick, is that when it's like head
to head, there'll be this from the committee mindset of, well,
we can't get this guy in ahead of this guy

(01:39:12):
if they're both there. So where the greatness of Mike
Shanahan has been acknowledged league wide, they would say on
a season when he's head to head against Bill Belichick,
we can't possibly put him in ahead of Bill Belichick.

Speaker 3 (01:39:26):
Power. Now, I don't listen, I don't love it. I'm
just saying I know this justifying it for the league.
And they all suck. We did sports writers. They all
suck anyway anyway, not like sports talk guys on the radio.
What's coming up on KA Sports today? Oh, we're gonna
have a lot of fun.

Speaker 7 (01:39:40):
We've got Judge Lill mclougham joining us here in the
first segments, which would be good.

Speaker 3 (01:39:44):
And Betty Fowler's gonna join us little later.

Speaker 7 (01:39:45):
I'll see if we get some comparisons to the twenty
fifteen team going in there.

Speaker 3 (01:39:50):
You go, they're winning games. I know it's time for
the most exciting segment on the radio all its kind
in the world. Day. What is our dad joke of
the day? Please, Anthony.

Speaker 5 (01:40:03):
This one's not quite in the Hall of Fame, but
it's knocking on the door. Okay, my dad joke Hall
of Fame. I just accidentally hit a truck loaded with
electric guitars.

Speaker 3 (01:40:11):
Luckily it was just a fender bender. Oh wow, that's
a good one. Yeah, that is a very good one.
Today's trivia or word of the day.

Speaker 5 (01:40:20):
Peri is an adjective adjective frowsy.

Speaker 3 (01:40:25):
I ever heard of frowsy? Frowsy rowsy With an F
FROWSI means kind of unseerious, kind of a lightweight. So
she's such a frowsy You're so frowsy, right or sad?

Speaker 6 (01:40:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:40:39):
Something described as frowsy has a messy or dirty appearance.

Speaker 3 (01:40:43):
Oh like pig Pen from Charlie Brown, who plays Margaret
Thatcher in the fourth season of the TV show The Crown.
If I'm not mistaken, that was Julian Anderson from X Files,
and I am correct. She was amazing. She crushed it.

Speaker 7 (01:40:58):
My wife and kids love that show, really really good
job in one episode.

Speaker 3 (01:41:02):
I enjoyed it. I stopped watching when they got to
like the more modern era because I don't care about that.
I just want to know about, you know, Queen Elizabeth.
I don't care about the drama with Charles and Diana. Drama.
No drama for me. Okay, what is our Jeopardy category?
Right now? Right? Righd or writ first one. The former.

Speaker 5 (01:41:24):
On film Brendan Fraser played this title Canadian Mounte Mandy.

Speaker 3 (01:41:28):
Who is Dudley? Do you Wright? That is carrash.

Speaker 5 (01:41:31):
It's the land covered by a public road or over
a what's the right of way?

Speaker 3 (01:41:36):
That is correct?

Speaker 5 (01:41:37):
Founded in nineteen seventy eight, the group called this Watch
is a smaller US counterpart to Amnesty International.

Speaker 3 (01:41:45):
Manny, what is Human Rights Watch? That is correct? We're playing,
bud No. It's a game going on right here.

Speaker 5 (01:41:51):
It's a claim on property by a person who openly
possesses and occupies it without legal authority?

Speaker 3 (01:41:57):
Manny? What are squatter's rights? That is correct? And far
this weep?

Speaker 5 (01:42:01):
The Supreme Court decided States must provide a lawyer to
the accused, and the ruling Gideon versus this person.

Speaker 3 (01:42:11):
Right in the name. I don't know, not the right brothers.
Wayne Wright. I didn't know that one. I missed on all.

Speaker 5 (01:42:22):
That one.

Speaker 3 (01:42:23):
Dominance had nothing on that one. Uh So, who the
who do the Broncos play this week? The Raiders? No,
this is a trap game, I tell you, you.

Speaker 7 (01:42:33):
Know, I would agree with you, except for the fact
that they just played him and the team feels like
they played a terrible game, like the coaches, Yeah, prove
they do. And and even Sean said that yesterday's press conference,
He's like, it was terrible film to watch. Our office
needs to play significantly better. So he's like he's riding
him pretty hard on this one. It'd be one thing
if you won easily over the Raiders a couple of

(01:42:55):
weeks ago.

Speaker 3 (01:42:56):
That wasn't the case.

Speaker 7 (01:42:57):
And and to a man, they all came out and said,
we play terrible game.

Speaker 3 (01:43:01):
You know, they can't all be winners, except they have
been most of them. There you go, all right, KO
Sports coming up next. We'll be back tomorrow for a
big Friday show. The wine Yogi's talking holiday bubbles. We'll
do all that. Keep it right here on KOA