January 2, 2025 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The Michael Very Show.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Is on the air, and it really looks like ancient
Rome here.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
This is sort of the conquering Republican caesar who's going
into the coliseum and everyone's cheering, and he's got his
political gladiators with him. That that appearance isn't just about
him enjoying the applause. He's sending a message to the
Senate for sure, like not only are you entertained, but
these are my people and are you willing to fight?
Because here's who I have.
Speaker 5 (00:47):
I also want to say a big, big thank you
President Donald Trump for being here tonight.
Speaker 6 (00:55):
Hey, what do you gotta hear about the version of
the Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
You? I'm proud.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I'm proud to be a great American champion.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I'm proud to be a Christian American champion. What don't say?
Speaker 7 (01:39):
I think the whole point with these nominees, several of them,
is their unqualification. Is there affirmative disqualification? That's Trump's point
because what he wants to do with these nominees is
establish that the congressized States will not stand up to
him with anything if they will confirm Matt Gates.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
They will do anything he wants.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms should be the name of a
chain of convenience stores in Florida, not a vetereral agency.
We need to abolish the ATF before they abolish our
Second Amendment rights.
Speaker 8 (02:20):
What kind of power and influence you think our.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
FK Junior would have, you know, Martha, I am outraged
because lives are at stake here. The head of Health
and Human Services touches programs that affect every single life
in our country. I've been focusing mainly on the public
health impacts you know. As you know, I'm a pediatrician.
I practiced pediatrics for more than thirty years, and there's
(02:56):
nothing that I've done for my patients that I know
has more positive impact then getting them vaccinated fully and
on time.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And to have someone.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Leading AHHS who is one of the biggest deniers of
vaccines in our country would undermine the confidence in that program,
and LIKELI, would cost lives.
Speaker 9 (03:16):
And that year nineteen eighty nine, we saw an explosion
in chronic disease and American children the neurological disease is
suddenly exploded in nineteen nine, add EIGHTYHD sleep god disorders,
languish delays, ASD, autism, to REGI syndromatics, narcolepsy. These are
(03:39):
all things that I never heard of. Autism went from
one in ten thousand of my generation, according to the
CDC data, to one in every thirty four units today.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
We would.
Speaker 10 (04:00):
Declassify everything or nothing. It was a binary choice. What
would you choose? This will tell you a lot your choice.
This choice will tell you a lot about whether we
can fix the problems in this country. I've been asking
(04:23):
this question of people, and a number of Americans are
brainwashed into believing that we can't declassify anything. It's classified
for a reason to protect us. Really, how are you
(04:44):
protected by not knowing the details of the Kennedy assassination?
If for nothing else, it's a who shot Jr? You're
curious what really happened? You don't believe a bolt action
rifle from that distance and that goober pull the trig
(05:07):
trigger for all the damage that was done. There's no
way you do, or maybe you do. If you do,
wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Like to have the proof?
Speaker 10 (05:23):
I mean, we had entire investigations done. Trump said that
they wouldn't let him declassified the first time. Why at
this point, sixty one years later, who could we possibly
be protecting.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
When you are convinced.
Speaker 10 (05:45):
That things that are declassified are declassified to protect you,
then you have bought the lie protect you from who?
What's Putin gonna find out? Putin already knows everything they've declassified.
You just don't know it because our media doesn't want
(06:07):
you to know it. You've got Joe Biden down at
the Amazon, wandering off into the Amazon after his speech.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I mean.
Speaker 10 (06:24):
They've got him. They've got him looking like some guy
that's on a photo shoot to be on an old
man going to the Amazon magazine cover. Maybe put an
expensive watch on him, and he strides off when he's done,
well stride would be he shuffles off when he's done.
(06:47):
You think I believe that he authorized the Ukrainians to
use American supplied long range missiles after Putin has declared, Hey,
I know you guys are funding the Ukrainians in this war.
I know you're doing all. I know that we're really
(07:09):
fighting against you. I know that I know you got mercenaries.
Remember the guy who was trying to assassinate President Trump
at mar A Lago had his gun through the fence.
He was a mercenary and a recruiter of mercenaries for Ukraine.
(07:30):
This is all tied together. It's a real small world.
But Putin has said, all along, you folks, I'm gonna
let you Americans do that, and that's what you're gonna do. Okay,
we've had this kind of hot satellite wars we've played
for a while, but we're involved here. But if one
(07:52):
of your US supplied long range missiles is shot into Russia,
game over. That's what and Biden's people claiming it was
Biden authorize that this weekend. They want a war. Biden
doesn't want a war. They want a war.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
When it comes to Bears, Briskets and Barry.
Speaker 10 (08:20):
Letting it all hang out, going against the grain is
what we do on the Michael Berry Show. I want
to live in the world of complete and utter honest.
You know, it's supposed to be a terrible thing to
find out that a white person is a racist.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
They don't like black people, But there are a lot
of black people that don't like white people.
Speaker 10 (08:48):
Plenty of them are serving in government, plenty of or
university professors, Plenty of them are presidents of universities, nobody
should have.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Have to like other people. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 10 (09:02):
You don't have to like me or anybody who looks
like me, or anybody who looks like anybody in my family.
You're not required to. That's dumb. What you can't do
is act on that basis unfairly. Unfairly, so nobody gets
(09:23):
mad at the head football coach that he doesn't pick
the fattest kit on the team, who also has the
slowest forty time to be the quarterback. Nobody's mad at
him for that. He gets to make that decision right,
because at the end of the day, we're going to
live with the consequences, win or lose. You better put
the best kid out there. Nobody is required to like
(09:45):
other people, but there has to be consistency. If a
black person is going to call for riots, notice how
many people won't say a word about it, because everybody
is afraid of being called a racist. Sometimes people will
(10:10):
tell me they'll send an email it's a chain of
where they got into an argument. Or they'll say, you know,
somebody at their workplace said Michael Berry's a racist, and
they'll say, no, he's not. His wife's from India and
his kids are from Africa, his wife is brown, his
kids are black.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And I say no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 10 (10:31):
Do not defend me on the basis of the skin
color of my family members.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I'm either a racist or I'm not.
Speaker 10 (10:42):
As each person gets to decide, we each get to
pass judgment on other people. I either am or I'm not.
But the skin color of my family members is not
a get out of jail free cart because the minute
you buy into that nonsense, Oh, he can't be racist
his kids are black. Well what about the next guy
(11:05):
who says exactly what I say, but his kids are white?
Is he racist because he doesn't have black kids he
can use as a crutch. I don't need to have
family members to speak to what I feel and what
I say. And by the way, when people will say
makes me so mad the people in my office think
(11:26):
you're a racist. Why do you care because you're not?
What is a racist? What does it mean? I am
a pursuer of truth. There are some black people I
do not like because they rape and murder.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
That's true as some white people. I don't like Hispanics.
Speaker 10 (11:55):
I don't like Asians, fat people, midgets, homos, you name it.
But who I like and don't like, and why I
like and don't like them is of really no consequence.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
It does not.
Speaker 10 (12:08):
Matter the idea that it does. You know, you take
this to its logical extreme. These trends, these guys that
become women, have been all over podcasts and it's a
couple of years ago this was a really big story
(12:29):
and they said that any man who doesn't want to
date a man who dresses as a woman is a
monster and an evil person. And they wanted that to
be the next big thing. Right, you would have to
say I would date one of those people. And that
was their big issue, because you shouldn't be allowed to
(12:53):
decide what you like and don't like and what turns
you on and what doesn't. What they want is here
is the rule. You must like that, and if you
don't like that, then you're a bad person. Once we
can prove you're a bad person, it's very easy to do.
(13:15):
We put a mark on you, scarlet letter, a brand,
a star of David. Now we can keep you from
being elected to office, we can keep you from getting
a job. Anytime you do something, everybody will have to
take the other person's side.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
See, this is what we do is call other ring people.
Speaker 10 (13:35):
You make human beings into something other than a human being.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
It's othering them. And that's what we've done with racism.
Speaker 10 (13:45):
See what you do is you find some way to
say that someone is a racist, and once that is said,
you can't defend against it. And once you're a racist,
you've been othered. You don't have any rights. There is
no presumption of guilt of innocence. You're just a bad person.
(14:11):
See the only reason Daniel Penny would ever defend the
people on that subway is because Jordan Neely is black.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Because he hates black blacks. And let's roll.
Speaker 10 (14:24):
Out the people who all day, every day scream that
everybody hates blacks. Al Sharpton, blm Into LACP, the same lawyers,
and that's what they do. They actually make a good
living doing that. I mean, imagine waking up in the
morning going all right, I gotta go find out who
(14:45):
I'm gonna call a racist today, and it pays well.
American society has decided we're going to have certain people
who are going to run around screaming racism and the media.
They're very useful to the media. They are the first
call for the media to make anytime anything's happened, anything happens.
(15:11):
But this is not how functioning societies work. This is
a cancer on our society. And I'm going to go
ahead and say it again. George Floyd was not choked out.
He said I can't breathe long before anyone was near him.
He couldn't breathe because he had ingested the fentanel that
(15:36):
he was taking when they came upon him as he
was committing the crime of passing counterfeit bills. Remember, there
was a call made that he was committing that felony,
and he was a felonye.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
But who cares.
Speaker 10 (15:49):
We just send that white police officer to prison and
we all feel better about ourselves because we don't be
called a racist.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Southern Pride.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Southern Pride to Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 10 (15:58):
As some of you know, I talk about my personal
life on the air. It's all I got to talk about,
and I share how I interact with the policies and
politics that we talk about, because at the end of
the day, these aren't academic discussions.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Right.
Speaker 10 (16:15):
If the government takes over our health care, that's going
to affect you. And just because you're young and healthy
and haven't needed health care yet or recently. You don't
realize that, and you see it as some sort of
arcane or ethereal existential discussion.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
But that's not where it is for me.
Speaker 10 (16:36):
I have a brother who died of the clot shot,
A perfectly able bodied law enforcement officer with over thirty
years who died of the clock shot.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
January twenty, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 10 (16:49):
My father is eighty four, and since he was twenty
years old and had to be discharged from the Coastguard
on his deathbed with a severe case of diabetes and
they didn't know how to treat it back then, they
sent him home to die, and he read and experimented.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And here we are.
Speaker 10 (17:08):
He's eighty four and still alive, still battling diabetes by
the day. He is in constant contact with doctors, and
many of them have told me your dad knows more
about diabetes than diabetes doctors do, because in an era
before we had proper insulin, he was managing his blood
sugar that's unheard of. And he still has his vision
(17:28):
in all ten of his fingers and toes well. He's
a man of great self discipline and the willingness to
experiment on himself and get enough sleep and not drink,
and you know, do the things that are necessary. And then,
of course my mother, five years younger than him. My
father was supposed to go first, and my mother would
nurse him until the end of his life. And she
(17:51):
up and passes on us. And she ended up having
als that basically just eventually took over her body and
left her unable to breathe.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Her lungs just wouldn't function, and it was a horrible,
horrible way to go.
Speaker 10 (18:07):
She died in hospice at our home. I have been
in and out of hospitals just with these things so
many times over the last few years that I have
come to learn a lot about the medical care system.
You know, I had a minor stroke on August first,
(18:29):
twenty sixteen. I you know, we've all had our medical issues.
I'm much better now about taking care of my health
and getting my checkups and all that. But the policy
issue of how we deliver healthcare in a marketplace of
people trying to heal you and provide wellness and prevent
(18:51):
all these things, it's gotten.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
It's all messed.
Speaker 10 (18:54):
Up, and I don't think people really even understand why
it's all messed up, and so today I would like
to step back from the news of the day and
address this. There is a fellow who has been highly
recommended when I bring these questions up, named Charles Silver.
(19:17):
He is the McDonald Endowed Chair of Civil Procedure at
the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. I
don't know if he was there when I was there
in the mid nineties. I don't know him, but his
work has been widely widely discussed, particularly his book Overcharged,
(19:38):
Why Americans pay too much for healthcare.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Professor Silver, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Thank you, Michael, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 10 (19:49):
I must first ask you if you were on faculty
from ninety three to ninety six when I was there.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I was.
Speaker 11 (19:58):
I started teaching at Texas in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 10 (20:01):
Oh well, okay, Well, I was a Lino Graulia acolyte
and I.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Was the first crop. There were two of us that were.
Speaker 10 (20:12):
Sent to England to get an LLM degree, So I
was kind of checked out after my second year. Once
I had my offer, I was kind of checked out.
But I'm sorry that I never met you. I had
a wonderful experience at the University of Texas School of Law.
It's a great university law school, and I am the
(20:33):
better for it. So I think a lot of you
for being on factory there. It's a great institution. Let's
thank you.
Speaker 11 (20:39):
I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you when you
were a student.
Speaker 10 (20:42):
Indeed, the book overcharged why Americans pay too much for healthcare?
If somebody says, Michael, I'm going to come back and
listen on the podcast later, but give me the one
minute answer, and then let's get granular and dig into this,
what's the one minute answer as to why we pay
too much for healthcare?
Speaker 11 (21:06):
The one minute answer, we rely far too heavily on
third party payment arrangements, which means insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid,
Trycare Va, whatever they happen to be, instead of paying
for health care directly the same way we pay for
pretty much everything else, food, cars, housing, You know, we
(21:32):
we pay for the vast majority of things directly, meaning
we pay for them ourselves, and we don't have the
problem of excessive spending or inflation or costs, or hidden
bills or surprise bills or phony charges. All that works
really well. The one exception is the healthcare sector where
(21:52):
we rely very very extensively on third parties to pay
for things, and that just screws everything up. Thing is,
we have way too much governmental involvement in the healthcare sector.
There are lots and lots of regulations that make things
worse for consumers. By and large, the regulations have the
purpose of protecting the producers, not the consumers. So we
(22:17):
should do a lot less in that way.
Speaker 10 (22:23):
You did that. You were technically finished at fifty eight seconds.
You added an addendum to the end that I will admit,
I will it is admissible in this case. But you
achieved the fifty eight seconds. I'm quite impressed that you
did that. So let's start drilling down on these things.
(22:44):
I've got a minute left in this segment, but I
have dedicated some time to talk about this because I
think a lot of people are frustrated, especially when they
start getting all these bills and they go to the
emergency room and the place is packed, and then they
can't get in to see a doctor, and then they wonder,
(23:04):
you know, why does something cost ten thousand dollars that
took twenty minutes. It just there's nothing else that requires this.
It all seems so frustrating to people, and I would
like to drill down and get into the actual reasons
why this works. Let me let me start by prefacing,
(23:27):
and we'll get to this in the next segment, because
I don't want to have to cut you off. I
want to first talk about what if we were to
do a zero based budget, we were to go back
to John Locke's state of nature, and let's start all
over and have a cash only health delivery system. Let's
do away with insurance, and let's talk about who the
(23:50):
winners and losers out of that would be. And more importantly,
if I'm a consumer of health services, because I don't
believe that healthcare is a right. If I'm a consumer
of health services, would this be better or worse for me?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
So hang tight right there. Our guest is Professor Charles Silver.
Speaker 10 (24:09):
I encourage you to read the book Overcharged, Why Americans
Pay Too Much for Healthcare?
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Coming up?
Speaker 10 (24:20):
This is the Michael Berry Show, Locked and loaded loaded.
Professor Charles Silver is our guest, and as promised at
the end, I giving him a moment to consider. Professor,
what if we go back the book is Overcharged Why
(24:40):
Americans Pay Too Much for healthcare. What if we did
away with all insurance and we went cash only, how
would that change things?
Speaker 11 (24:49):
It would change a lot of things for the better,
but some things for the worse. So a lot of
things would be better, you know. We wouldn't have to
worry about things like prize medical bills where you don't
even know what something is going to cost when you
get the service delivered. There's actually a very large retail
health sector. So if you want to get Lasik eye surgery,
(25:12):
for example, you have to pay for that yourself because
it's not covered by insurance typically, But you know what,
it's actually very affordable. And the price for laser surgery.
Are you ready for this? The price has substantially declined
since Lasik was developed, and it's gotten much better too.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
There are new forms of Lasik and all.
Speaker 11 (25:34):
That has happened because there is no overlay of insurance.
Where in the healthcare sector, except in the private payment sector,
can one find prices.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
That have declined.
Speaker 11 (25:47):
No, there are no hospital services that I'm aware of
that cost less now than they used to. But in
the private sector where we purchase cosmetic surgery I mentioned lasik.
There's also the surgery center of Oklahoma, which takes operates
on a cash basis. But there are lots of services
that people can buy directly, and those things that part
(26:10):
of the market works incredibly well with. As I said,
we don't have surprise bills. Everybody knows what they're going
to pay before the service is delivered, and nobody gets
billed for more than the price. The prices are posted,
we don't have to have a you know, in the
hospital sector, we have this federal Transparity rule transparency rule
that hospitals routinely ignore that's supposed to require them to
(26:32):
post their prices. But in the retail sector, we don't
have that, and everybody posts their prices anyway. So a
lot of things would work better if we did that,
But the one thing that would work worse would be
emergencies where you're facing a risk of a catastrophic cost
(26:53):
that you know, people just can't afford.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
To bear on their own. That's where insurance has a
role to play the cost.
Speaker 10 (27:00):
Yeah, Professor, I have long advocated that we should. If
people would understand, for instance, I only have liability insurance
on my vehicles, and people say you have to No, No,
I pay cash for my vehicles. The only reason people
are over insured in most cases is because the person
holding the loan wants you to have insurance for more
(27:22):
than the value of what they're of what they've loaned
you money for in case the thing gets burned down
or trashed. They want their money once. You don't have
to do that. In my opinion, I'm a safe driver.
I've never met an insurance claim. In my opinion, it's
a bad business deal. So what I tell people to
do is get catastrophic health insurance so when it hits
(27:45):
fifteen thousand and up, it's good. And then pay cash
and you'll be shocked how many doctors will discount what
you get and they're happy to have the cash. I
go to a doctor named Mary Tally Boden for all
my upper respiratory stuff, and she's a cash only doctor,
which is you know a lot of people are going
to and you go in and you make your payment
(28:05):
and it's insanely cheap, and then there's no documentation.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Later there's no you know, insurance letter arrives.
Speaker 10 (28:12):
Do we pay this? No, we wait to pay this.
She's happier, she doesn't have to have a bunch of
billing clerks. You literally pay the same way if you
bought yogurt there. I think this is the answer, Professor, Well.
Speaker 11 (28:24):
I agree with you because I go to a doctor
who works on the same basis. So my doctor I
pay a monthly subscription fee too, But I can go
as many times as I want. You know, I don't
need to go all the time, fortunately, but if I
need to go, she usually can see me either that
day or the next day, and I get some tests
(28:46):
performed in house at no charge. And it's it's a
great working arrangement. Like you, I don't get it. I
don't worry about my insurance company, you know, not paying
for something. So I think I agree with you. The
cash payment is a very good approach for basic healthcare.
Speaker 10 (29:07):
So let's have a little history lesson. Professor Charles Silver
is our guest. The book is called Overcharged, Why Americans
Paid Too Much for Healthcare. Let's go back to wherever
the starting point is you want it to be, nineteen
fifty or nineteen seventy. Where did it start going wrong?
Because we all know it's wrong. Now, where did it
(29:27):
start going wrong?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Oh, that's easy.
Speaker 11 (29:31):
It started going wrong in the mid nineteen sixties when
Medicare and Medicaid came online. In my book, I show
how doctors and hospitals fees changed after Medicare and Medicaid
took effect in nineteen sixty five. And basically, both of
those statutes initially let doctors and hospitals charge whatever they
(29:54):
wanted for services, and so not surprisingly, they started raising
their rates. I mean, really, immediately after the enactment of
those programs we were beset with health care inflation that
exceeded the real growth rate of the GDP, and we
have been struggling with healthcare inflation ever since.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
But everything about the arrangement is wrong.
Speaker 11 (30:18):
I mean, who in their right minds let's people who
are selling things set their own prices without any market constraints.
I mean, that's a recipe for disaster, right, And then,
of course that couldn't last forever. So the government eventually
did get into the price setting business in Medicare and Medicaid.
But of course we all know that government price setting
(30:40):
is terrible.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
It never works properly.
Speaker 11 (30:42):
It's really hard to set good prices, to set prices accurately,
and moreover, the government really doesn't have the right set
of interests, you know, I want. It's not just the
price that matters to me. It's the convenience, Right, how
long do I have to wait to see my doctor?
Or how friendly is my doctor? How good is my doctor?
(31:03):
There are all these things. Different doctors should have different prices,
and markets can work all that stuff out, but governments
just are notoriously unable to do that, and so as
a result, we've had this terrible system. And because it's
so terrible, it's constantly in need of patching. I mean,
(31:24):
every time I turn around, there's a new bill, a
new proposal being put on the table for some kind
of regulation to fix a problem that only exists because
the government created it.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
It's never going to be fixed. It's impossible to fix it.
Speaker 11 (31:40):
We really need to just scrap these arrangements and go
back to a simple cash based system for fundamental care,
and then things will start. It will immediately be out
of the spending crisis. The prices will moderate because hospitals
and doctors and drug companies and all that will have
to deal with the realities of the limited budgets of consumers.
(32:03):
They'll also have to face competition. That's hugely important. You know,
one I mentioned the retail health sector. You know, one
of the reasons LASAC is cheap is because there are
a lot of laser providers and any ophthalmologists can enter
the field who wants to. So there's a lot of competition,
and competition is good for consumers. So we need to
(32:24):
get rid of these competition frustrating regulations.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Let's increase the supply.
Speaker 11 (32:30):
Let you know, foreign doctors who can pass American exams
come in and treat people. We need to just open
the floodgates for providers because we have this artificially created shortage.
You know, that's one of the waves that doctors and
hospitals have increased their revenues. It's by preventing new entrants
(32:51):
from coming in and you know, out compete.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
So we have to get rid.
Speaker 11 (32:55):
Of all that stuff.
Speaker 10 (32:56):
Professor Charles Silver at the University of Texas School of
All my alma mater, is our guest.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
This book is overcharged.
Speaker 10 (33:04):
Why Americans pay to dang much for healthcare?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I added the dang, but I think we all feel
it more. With Professor Silver coming up to
It's that time time, time, time, luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The Michael Very Show.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Is on the air, and it really looks like ancient
Rome here.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
This is sort of the conquering Republican caesar who's going
into the coliseum and everyone's cheering, and he's got his
political gladiators with him. That that appearance isn't just about
him enjoying the applause. He's sending a message to the
Senate for sure, like not only are you entertained, but
these are my people and are you willing to fight?
Because here's who I have.
Speaker 5 (00:47):
I also want to say a big, big thank you
President Donald Trump for being here tonight.
Speaker 6 (00:55):
Hey, what do you gotta hear about the version of
the Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
You? I'm proud.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I'm proud to be a great American champion.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I'm proud to be a Christian American champion. What don't say?
Speaker 7 (01:39):
I think the whole point with these nominees, several of them,
is their unqualification. Is there affirmative disqualification? That's Trump's point
because what he wants to do with these nominees is
establish that the congressized States will not stand up to
him with anything if they will confirm Matt Gates.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
They will do anything he wants.
Speaker 5 (02:01):
Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms should be the name of a
chain of convenience stores in Florida, not a vetereral agency.
We need to abolish the ATF before they abolish our
Second Amendment rights.
Speaker 8 (02:20):
What kind of power and influence you think our.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
FK Junior would have, you know, Martha, I am outraged
because lives are at stake here. The head of Health
and Human Services touches programs that affect every single life
in our country. I've been focusing mainly on the public
health impacts you know. As you know, I'm a pediatrician.
I practiced pediatrics for more than thirty years, and there's
(02:56):
nothing that I've done for my patients that I know
has more positive impact then getting them vaccinated fully and
on time.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And to have someone.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Leading AHHS who is one of the biggest deniers of
vaccines in our country would undermine the confidence in that program,
and LIKELI, would cost lives.
Speaker 9 (03:16):
And that year nineteen eighty nine, we saw an explosion
in chronic disease and American children the neurological disease is
suddenly exploded in nineteen nine, add EIGHTYHD sleep god disorders,
languish delays, ASD, autism, to REGI syndromatics, narcolepsy. These are
(03:39):
all things that I never heard of. Autism went from
one in ten thousand of my generation, according to the
CDC data, to one in every thirty four units today.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
We would.
Speaker 10 (04:00):
Declassify everything or nothing. It was a binary choice. What
would you choose? This will tell you a lot your choice.
This choice will tell you a lot about whether we
can fix the problems in this country. I've been asking
(04:23):
this question of people, and a number of Americans are
brainwashed into believing that we can't declassify anything. It's classified
for a reason to protect us. Really, how are you
(04:44):
protected by not knowing the details of the Kennedy assassination?
If for nothing else, it's a who shot Jr? You're
curious what really happened? You don't believe a bolt action
rifle from that distance and that goober pull the trig
(05:07):
trigger for all the damage that was done. There's no
way you do, or maybe you do. If you do,
wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Like to have the proof?
Speaker 10 (05:23):
I mean, we had entire investigations done. Trump said that
they wouldn't let him declassified the first time. Why at
this point, sixty one years later, who could we possibly
be protecting.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
When you are convinced.
Speaker 10 (05:45):
That things that are declassified are declassified to protect you,
then you have bought the lie protect you from who?
What's Putin gonna find out? Putin already knows everything they've declassified.
You just don't know it because our media doesn't want
(06:07):
you to know it. You've got Joe Biden down at
the Amazon, wandering off into the Amazon after his speech.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I mean.
Speaker 10 (06:24):
They've got him. They've got him looking like some guy
that's on a photo shoot to be on an old
man going to the Amazon magazine cover. Maybe put an
expensive watch on him, and he strides off when he's done,
well stride would be he shuffles off when he's done.
(06:47):
You think I believe that he authorized the Ukrainians to
use American supplied long range missiles after Putin has declared, Hey,
I know you guys are funding the Ukrainians in this war.
I know you're doing all. I know that we're really
(07:09):
fighting against you. I know that I know you got mercenaries.
Remember the guy who was trying to assassinate President Trump
at mar A Lago had his gun through the fence.
He was a mercenary and a recruiter of mercenaries for Ukraine.
(07:30):
This is all tied together. It's a real small world.
But Putin has said, all along, you folks, I'm gonna
let you Americans do that, and that's what you're gonna do. Okay,
we've had this kind of hot satellite wars we've played
for a while, but we're involved here. But if one
(07:52):
of your US supplied long range missiles is shot into Russia,
game over. That's what and Biden's people claiming it was
Biden authorize that this weekend. They want a war. Biden
doesn't want a war. They want a war.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
When it comes to Bears, Briskets and Barry.
Speaker 10 (08:20):
Letting it all hang out, going against the grain is
what we do on the Michael Berry Show. I want
to live in the world of complete and utter honest.
You know, it's supposed to be a terrible thing to
find out that a white person is a racist.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
They don't like black people, But there are a lot
of black people that don't like white people.
Speaker 10 (08:48):
Plenty of them are serving in government, plenty of or
university professors, Plenty of them are presidents of universities, nobody
should have.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Have to like other people. I want to make that clear.
Speaker 10 (09:02):
You don't have to like me or anybody who looks
like me, or anybody who looks like anybody in my family.
You're not required to. That's dumb. What you can't do
is act on that basis unfairly. Unfairly, so nobody gets
(09:23):
mad at the head football coach that he doesn't pick
the fattest kit on the team, who also has the
slowest forty time to be the quarterback. Nobody's mad at
him for that. He gets to make that decision right,
because at the end of the day, we're going to
live with the consequences, win or lose. You better put
the best kid out there. Nobody is required to like
(09:45):
other people, but there has to be consistency. If a
black person is going to call for riots, notice how
many people won't say a word about it, because everybody
is afraid of being called a racist. Sometimes people will
(10:10):
tell me they'll send an email it's a chain of
where they got into an argument. Or they'll say, you know,
somebody at their workplace said Michael Berry's a racist, and
they'll say, no, he's not. His wife's from India and
his kids are from Africa, his wife is brown, his
kids are black.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And I say no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 10 (10:31):
Do not defend me on the basis of the skin
color of my family members.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I'm either a racist or I'm not.
Speaker 10 (10:42):
As each person gets to decide, we each get to
pass judgment on other people. I either am or I'm not.
But the skin color of my family members is not
a get out of jail free cart because the minute
you buy into that nonsense, Oh, he can't be racist
his kids are black. Well what about the next guy
(11:05):
who says exactly what I say, but his kids are white?
Is he racist because he doesn't have black kids he
can use as a crutch. I don't need to have
family members to speak to what I feel and what
I say. And by the way, when people will say
makes me so mad the people in my office think
(11:26):
you're a racist. Why do you care because you're not?
What is a racist? What does it mean? I am
a pursuer of truth. There are some black people I
do not like because they rape and murder.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
That's true as some white people. I don't like Hispanics.
Speaker 10 (11:55):
I don't like Asians, fat people, midgets, homos, you name it.
But who I like and don't like, and why I
like and don't like them is of really no consequence.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
It does not.
Speaker 10 (12:08):
Matter the idea that it does. You know, you take
this to its logical extreme. These trends, these guys that
become women, have been all over podcasts and it's a
couple of years ago this was a really big story
(12:29):
and they said that any man who doesn't want to
date a man who dresses as a woman is a
monster and an evil person. And they wanted that to
be the next big thing. Right, you would have to
say I would date one of those people. And that
was their big issue, because you shouldn't be allowed to
(12:53):
decide what you like and don't like and what turns
you on and what doesn't. What they want is here
is the rule. You must like that, and if you
don't like that, then you're a bad person. Once we
can prove you're a bad person, it's very easy to do.
(13:15):
We put a mark on you, scarlet letter, a brand,
a star of David. Now we can keep you from
being elected to office, we can keep you from getting
a job. Anytime you do something, everybody will have to
take the other person's side.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
See, this is what we do is call other ring people.
Speaker 10 (13:35):
You make human beings into something other than a human being.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
It's othering them. And that's what we've done with racism.
Speaker 10 (13:45):
See what you do is you find some way to
say that someone is a racist, and once that is said,
you can't defend against it. And once you're a racist,
you've been othered. You don't have any rights. There is
no presumption of guilt of innocence. You're just a bad person.
(14:11):
See the only reason Daniel Penny would ever defend the
people on that subway is because Jordan Neely is black.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Because he hates black blacks. And let's roll.
Speaker 10 (14:24):
Out the people who all day, every day scream that
everybody hates blacks. Al Sharpton, blm Into LACP, the same lawyers,
and that's what they do. They actually make a good
living doing that. I mean, imagine waking up in the
morning going all right, I gotta go find out who
(14:45):
I'm gonna call a racist today, and it pays well.
American society has decided we're going to have certain people
who are going to run around screaming racism and the media.
They're very useful to the media. They are the first
call for the media to make anytime anything's happened, anything happens.
(15:11):
But this is not how functioning societies work. This is
a cancer on our society. And I'm going to go
ahead and say it again. George Floyd was not choked out.
He said I can't breathe long before anyone was near him.
He couldn't breathe because he had ingested the fentanel that
(15:36):
he was taking when they came upon him as he
was committing the crime of passing counterfeit bills. Remember, there
was a call made that he was committing that felony,
and he was a felonye.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
But who cares.
Speaker 10 (15:49):
We just send that white police officer to prison and
we all feel better about ourselves because we don't be
called a racist.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Southern Pride.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Southern Pride to Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 10 (15:58):
As some of you know, I talk about my personal
life on the air. It's all I got to talk about,
and I share how I interact with the policies and
politics that we talk about, because at the end of
the day, these aren't academic discussions.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Right.
Speaker 10 (16:15):
If the government takes over our health care, that's going
to affect you. And just because you're young and healthy
and haven't needed health care yet or recently. You don't
realize that, and you see it as some sort of
arcane or ethereal existential discussion.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
But that's not where it is for me.
Speaker 10 (16:36):
I have a brother who died of the clot shot,
A perfectly able bodied law enforcement officer with over thirty
years who died of the clock shot.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
January twenty, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 10 (16:49):
My father is eighty four, and since he was twenty
years old and had to be discharged from the Coastguard
on his deathbed with a severe case of diabetes and
they didn't know how to treat it back then, they
sent him home to die, and he read and experimented.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And here we are.
Speaker 10 (17:08):
He's eighty four and still alive, still battling diabetes by
the day. He is in constant contact with doctors, and
many of them have told me your dad knows more
about diabetes than diabetes doctors do, because in an era
before we had proper insulin, he was managing his blood
sugar that's unheard of. And he still has his vision
(17:28):
in all ten of his fingers and toes well. He's
a man of great self discipline and the willingness to
experiment on himself and get enough sleep and not drink,
and you know, do the things that are necessary. And then,
of course my mother, five years younger than him. My
father was supposed to go first, and my mother would
nurse him until the end of his life. And she
(17:51):
up and passes on us. And she ended up having
als that basically just eventually took over her body and
left her unable to breathe.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Her lungs just wouldn't function, and it was a horrible,
horrible way to go.
Speaker 10 (18:07):
She died in hospice at our home. I have been
in and out of hospitals just with these things so
many times over the last few years that I have
come to learn a lot about the medical care system.
You know, I had a minor stroke on August first,
(18:29):
twenty sixteen. I you know, we've all had our medical issues.
I'm much better now about taking care of my health
and getting my checkups and all that. But the policy
issue of how we deliver healthcare in a marketplace of
people trying to heal you and provide wellness and prevent
(18:51):
all these things, it's gotten.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
It's all messed.
Speaker 10 (18:54):
Up, and I don't think people really even understand why
it's all messed up, and so today I would like
to step back from the news of the day and
address this. There is a fellow who has been highly
recommended when I bring these questions up, named Charles Silver.
(19:17):
He is the McDonald Endowed Chair of Civil Procedure at
the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. I
don't know if he was there when I was there
in the mid nineties. I don't know him, but his
work has been widely widely discussed, particularly his book Overcharged,
(19:38):
Why Americans pay too much for healthcare.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Professor Silver, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Thank you, Michael, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 10 (19:49):
I must first ask you if you were on faculty
from ninety three to ninety six when I was there.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I was.
Speaker 11 (19:58):
I started teaching at Texas in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 10 (20:01):
Oh well, okay, Well, I was a Lino Graulia acolyte
and I.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Was the first crop. There were two of us that were.
Speaker 10 (20:12):
Sent to England to get an LLM degree, So I
was kind of checked out after my second year. Once
I had my offer, I was kind of checked out.
But I'm sorry that I never met you. I had
a wonderful experience at the University of Texas School of Law.
It's a great university law school, and I am the
(20:33):
better for it. So I think a lot of you
for being on factory there. It's a great institution. Let's
thank you.
Speaker 11 (20:39):
I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you when you
were a student.
Speaker 10 (20:42):
Indeed, the book overcharged why Americans pay too much for healthcare?
If somebody says, Michael, I'm going to come back and
listen on the podcast later, but give me the one
minute answer, and then let's get granular and dig into this,
what's the one minute answer as to why we pay
too much for healthcare?
Speaker 11 (21:06):
The one minute answer, we rely far too heavily on
third party payment arrangements, which means insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid,
Trycare Va, whatever they happen to be, instead of paying
for health care directly the same way we pay for
pretty much everything else, food, cars, housing, You know, we
(21:32):
we pay for the vast majority of things directly, meaning
we pay for them ourselves, and we don't have the
problem of excessive spending or inflation or costs, or hidden
bills or surprise bills or phony charges. All that works
really well. The one exception is the healthcare sector where
(21:52):
we rely very very extensively on third parties to pay
for things, and that just screws everything up. Thing is,
we have way too much governmental involvement in the healthcare sector.
There are lots and lots of regulations that make things
worse for consumers. By and large, the regulations have the
purpose of protecting the producers, not the consumers. So we
(22:17):
should do a lot less in that way.
Speaker 10 (22:23):
You did that. You were technically finished at fifty eight seconds.
You added an addendum to the end that I will admit,
I will it is admissible in this case. But you
achieved the fifty eight seconds. I'm quite impressed that you
did that. So let's start drilling down on these things.
(22:44):
I've got a minute left in this segment, but I
have dedicated some time to talk about this because I
think a lot of people are frustrated, especially when they
start getting all these bills and they go to the
emergency room and the place is packed, and then they
can't get in to see a doctor, and then they wonder,
(23:04):
you know, why does something cost ten thousand dollars that
took twenty minutes. It just there's nothing else that requires this.
It all seems so frustrating to people, and I would
like to drill down and get into the actual reasons
why this works. Let me let me start by prefacing,
(23:27):
and we'll get to this in the next segment, because
I don't want to have to cut you off. I
want to first talk about what if we were to
do a zero based budget, we were to go back
to John Locke's state of nature, and let's start all
over and have a cash only health delivery system. Let's
do away with insurance, and let's talk about who the
(23:50):
winners and losers out of that would be. And more importantly,
if I'm a consumer of health services, because I don't
believe that healthcare is a right. If I'm a consumer
of health services, would this be better or worse for me?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
So hang tight right there. Our guest is Professor Charles Silver.
Speaker 10 (24:09):
I encourage you to read the book Overcharged, Why Americans
Pay Too Much for Healthcare?
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Coming up?
Speaker 10 (24:20):
This is the Michael Berry Show, Locked and loaded loaded.
Professor Charles Silver is our guest, and as promised at
the end, I giving him a moment to consider. Professor,
what if we go back the book is Overcharged Why
(24:40):
Americans Pay Too Much for healthcare. What if we did
away with all insurance and we went cash only, how
would that change things?
Speaker 11 (24:49):
It would change a lot of things for the better,
but some things for the worse. So a lot of
things would be better, you know. We wouldn't have to
worry about things like prize medical bills where you don't
even know what something is going to cost when you
get the service delivered. There's actually a very large retail
health sector. So if you want to get Lasik eye surgery,
(25:12):
for example, you have to pay for that yourself because
it's not covered by insurance typically, But you know what,
it's actually very affordable. And the price for laser surgery.
Are you ready for this? The price has substantially declined
since Lasik was developed, and it's gotten much better too.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
There are new forms of Lasik and all.
Speaker 11 (25:34):
That has happened because there is no overlay of insurance.
Where in the healthcare sector, except in the private payment sector,
can one find prices.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
That have declined.
Speaker 11 (25:47):
No, there are no hospital services that I'm aware of
that cost less now than they used to. But in
the private sector where we purchase cosmetic surgery I mentioned lasik.
There's also the surgery center of Oklahoma, which takes operates
on a cash basis. But there are lots of services
that people can buy directly, and those things that part
(26:10):
of the market works incredibly well with. As I said,
we don't have surprise bills. Everybody knows what they're going
to pay before the service is delivered, and nobody gets
billed for more than the price. The prices are posted,
we don't have to have a you know, in the
hospital sector, we have this federal Transparity rule transparency rule
that hospitals routinely ignore that's supposed to require them to
(26:32):
post their prices. But in the retail sector, we don't
have that, and everybody posts their prices anyway. So a
lot of things would work better if we did that,
But the one thing that would work worse would be
emergencies where you're facing a risk of a catastrophic cost
(26:53):
that you know, people just can't afford.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
To bear on their own. That's where insurance has a
role to play the cost.
Speaker 10 (27:00):
Yeah, Professor, I have long advocated that we should. If
people would understand, for instance, I only have liability insurance
on my vehicles, and people say you have to No, No,
I pay cash for my vehicles. The only reason people
are over insured in most cases is because the person
holding the loan wants you to have insurance for more
(27:22):
than the value of what they're of what they've loaned
you money for in case the thing gets burned down
or trashed. They want their money once. You don't have
to do that. In my opinion, I'm a safe driver.
I've never met an insurance claim. In my opinion, it's
a bad business deal. So what I tell people to
do is get catastrophic health insurance so when it hits
(27:45):
fifteen thousand and up, it's good. And then pay cash
and you'll be shocked how many doctors will discount what
you get and they're happy to have the cash. I
go to a doctor named Mary Tally Boden for all
my upper respiratory stuff, and she's a cash only doctor,
which is you know a lot of people are going
to and you go in and you make your payment
(28:05):
and it's insanely cheap, and then there's no documentation.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Later there's no you know, insurance letter arrives.
Speaker 10 (28:12):
Do we pay this? No, we wait to pay this.
She's happier, she doesn't have to have a bunch of
billing clerks. You literally pay the same way if you
bought yogurt there. I think this is the answer, Professor, Well.
Speaker 11 (28:24):
I agree with you because I go to a doctor
who works on the same basis. So my doctor I
pay a monthly subscription fee too, But I can go
as many times as I want. You know, I don't
need to go all the time, fortunately, but if I
need to go, she usually can see me either that
day or the next day, and I get some tests
(28:46):
performed in house at no charge. And it's it's a
great working arrangement. Like you, I don't get it. I
don't worry about my insurance company, you know, not paying
for something. So I think I agree with you. The
cash payment is a very good approach for basic healthcare.
Speaker 10 (29:07):
So let's have a little history lesson. Professor Charles Silver
is our guest. The book is called Overcharged, Why Americans
Paid Too Much for Healthcare. Let's go back to wherever
the starting point is you want it to be, nineteen
fifty or nineteen seventy. Where did it start going wrong?
Because we all know it's wrong. Now, where did it
(29:27):
start going wrong?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Oh, that's easy.
Speaker 11 (29:31):
It started going wrong in the mid nineteen sixties when
Medicare and Medicaid came online. In my book, I show
how doctors and hospitals fees changed after Medicare and Medicaid
took effect in nineteen sixty five. And basically, both of
those statutes initially let doctors and hospitals charge whatever they
(29:54):
wanted for services, and so not surprisingly, they started raising
their rates. I mean, really, immediately after the enactment of
those programs we were beset with health care inflation that
exceeded the real growth rate of the GDP, and we
have been struggling with healthcare inflation ever since.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
But everything about the arrangement is wrong.
Speaker 11 (30:18):
I mean, who in their right minds let's people who
are selling things set their own prices without any market constraints.
I mean, that's a recipe for disaster, right, And then,
of course that couldn't last forever. So the government eventually
did get into the price setting business in Medicare and Medicaid.
But of course we all know that government price setting
(30:40):
is terrible.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
It never works properly.
Speaker 11 (30:42):
It's really hard to set good prices, to set prices accurately,
and moreover, the government really doesn't have the right set
of interests, you know, I want. It's not just the
price that matters to me. It's the convenience, Right, how
long do I have to wait to see my doctor?
Or how friendly is my doctor? How good is my doctor?
(31:03):
There are all these things. Different doctors should have different prices,
and markets can work all that stuff out, but governments
just are notoriously unable to do that, and so as
a result, we've had this terrible system. And because it's
so terrible, it's constantly in need of patching. I mean,
(31:24):
every time I turn around, there's a new bill, a
new proposal being put on the table for some kind
of regulation to fix a problem that only exists because
the government created it.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
It's never going to be fixed. It's impossible to fix it.
Speaker 11 (31:40):
We really need to just scrap these arrangements and go
back to a simple cash based system for fundamental care,
and then things will start. It will immediately be out
of the spending crisis. The prices will moderate because hospitals
and doctors and drug companies and all that will have
to deal with the realities of the limited budgets of consumers.
(32:03):
They'll also have to face competition. That's hugely important. You know,
one I mentioned the retail health sector. You know, one
of the reasons LASAC is cheap is because there are
a lot of laser providers and any ophthalmologists can enter
the field who wants to. So there's a lot of competition,
and competition is good for consumers. So we need to
(32:24):
get rid of these competition frustrating regulations.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Let's increase the supply.
Speaker 11 (32:30):
Let you know, foreign doctors who can pass American exams
come in and treat people. We need to just open
the floodgates for providers because we have this artificially created shortage.
You know, that's one of the waves that doctors and
hospitals have increased their revenues. It's by preventing new entrants
(32:51):
from coming in and you know, out compete.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
So we have to get rid.
Speaker 11 (32:55):
Of all that stuff.
Speaker 10 (32:56):
Professor Charles Silver at the University of Texas School of
All my alma mater, is our guest.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
This book is overcharged.
Speaker 10 (33:04):
Why Americans pay to dang much for healthcare?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I added the dang, but I think we all feel
it more. With Professor Silver coming up to
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