Dr. Dean Waldman - Former Director, Center for Healthcare Policy at TPPF Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Seven, twenty two is our time here in Houston's Moaring News.
The scare tactic always used with seniors involves either Social
Security and or Medicare and Medicaid. Right now they're using Medicare,
and the cuts that the Republicans want to make in Medicare,
these are not cuts that will take away benefits. These
are cuts that hopefully will save it for the future.

(00:22):
I would hope the same strategy would be used to
try to save Social Security. Doctor Dean Waldman joins this
former director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at the
Texas Public Policy Foundation. I think one thing we learned
from Doge, doctor Waldman, is just how much fraud and
waste there are in these systems.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
There's no question about that. But when you say fraud
and waste, you have to realize that half, I repeat half,
of all the money we spend the United States spends
on healthcare produces no care. It goes to bureaucracy, to regulations, rules, enforcement,

(01:00):
all these things that have nothing to do with actually
giving a patient care. And by the way, if I
may correct you, you were saying Medicare in the big
beautiful bill when the cuts are to Medicaid that's what
the Democrats are yelling and screaming about. And we need
to understand three things about Medicaid if I may, which

(01:24):
is number one, insurance doesn't equal care. Number two, the
seesaw effect, which I'll explain to Number three death by Q.
Anyone on Medicaid who hasn't can't find a doctor knows
that having insurance doesn't mean you get care. More than
a third of all US doctors won't accept Medicaid patients.

(01:45):
Why because of the incredible ridiculous bureaucratic hassle and the
low payments that are often delayed by years. I repeat
years when I doing operations on baby's hearts might charge.
I'm retired now. My charges ranged from fifteen hundred dollars
to as much as ten thousand if I had to

(02:06):
implant a device. Whatever my charge was, regardless, Medicaid paid
the maximum allowable reimbursement. You're ready three hundred and eighty
seven dollars.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
The seesaw effect, which nobody seems to know about, even
though I've reported it and showed data, shows that the
number of people enrolled in Medicaid. As that goes up,
the access to medical care goes down. When Biden locked

(02:37):
millions of able bodied Americans out of work and enroll
them in Medicaid, the average maximum weight time to see
a primary care doctor increase to nearly five months, repeat
five months. These medically dangerous long wait times produce what
we call death by q on. Colleges tell us that

(02:57):
even one month delay in diagnosis for answer increases mortality. Well,
now imagine five months in Illinois. One report showed seven
hundred and fifty two Medicaid enrolles dying with treatable conditions
while they're standing in line waiting for care.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
This sounds a lot like socialized This sounds a lot
like socialized medicine. Doctor, this is this is what happens
when you socialize any medicine.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Isn't it that absolutely correct? But let me say one thing.
That's the little optimism. If a seesaw goes one way,
it can also go the other way. If increased enrollment
reduces access, decreased enrollment should increase access. Now, who is

(03:48):
Medicaid intended for the truly medically vulnerable? So if you
cut able bodied Americans, healthy Americans who are eligible for
employers supported insurance, because they're now back at work. If
you cut them, you'll actually increase the access to care

(04:09):
for those who really need it, which is the medically vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
That makes sense.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
So what we are proposing in this book that I
want everybody to read, call empower Patients. It's a call
to arms to stop insurance companies in Washington from telling
us what care we can't have. In other words, empower patients.

(04:33):
Give Americans control of their own hard earned dollars, and
watch what happens. Caair will go up and will stop
wasting two trillion dollars, repeat, two trillion dollars on the
bureaucracy that is the healthcare bureaucracy that doesn't produce one
pill or one doctor visit.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Got you, doctor Waldman, We have to leave it at that.
We are over our time, Doctor Dean Waldman, former director
of the Center for Healthcare Policy at the Texas Public
Policy Foundation,