BHS - 7A – More Money for the Homeless | Who Really Has Brain Worms?

They want more money for the homeless! New ballot initiative wants to convince L.A. County voters to pay higher sales tax. Hospitals are refusing to do surgeries unless you pay in full first. Who really has brain worms? 

Episode Transcript

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You're listening to KFI AM six fortythe Bill Handle Show on demand on the
iHeartRadio app. You are listening tothe Bill Handle show Money KFI AM six
forty handle. Here it is afruity Friday, May tenth. Foody Friday
means that at eight o'clock we dofoody Friday, Neil and Molah and we

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always have a good time. Todayis one of my favorite topics, and
that's free stuff. Yes, freefood doesn't get better than that, does
it. A couple of things someof the big stories we're looking at.
After President Biden said he is notor he is stopping the transfer of certain

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munitions Israel, that is that wouldbe used in the attack on Rafa,
it has just blown up Natagnan,who said, and then we'll do it
ourselves. Nothing is stopping Israel fromgoing after Hamas. Boy, you telling
me there's not a backlash on thatone. And oh, Brazilian rainfall entire
neighborhoods, an airport runway, justhuge. So it's not just flooding here,

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it's flooding in Brazil. To whata shaker that one is? Now?
And oh here's a shocker too.Another segment on homelessness in which we
do. Now you've often heard mesay, as a matter of fact,
I have often said over the years, there is a way of dealing with
the homeless problem, and that isto front burner it. Throw in massive

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amounts of money, almost to theexclusion of everything else in a municipal or
a county or a state government.Make this happen, and it's going to
be incremental changes, that's it.And incremental changes do change over the course
of years. Quick analogy I was, and I've talked about this, when

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the city of Los Angeles, forexample, made shake roofs, would roofs
the shakes illegal. We can onlyreplace them with concrete or tile or asphalt
roofs. It took a generation.But there aren't any same thing with catalytic
converters. Initially first year is onlynew cars. Well, now everybody has
a catalytic converter, and now thesame thing is going here. If you

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spend enough money over a generation,something's going to happen. So here's what's
going on. A new ballot measurein La County raising the sales tax another
quarter of ascent. Now that doesn'tmean a very big deal, except we
had a quarter of percent sales taxapproved in twenty seventeen. We had Measure

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H to help with the homeless.Okay, that did a lot. So
now there's a new measure to supersedMeasure H, which was supposed to sunset
in twenty seven. This one neversunset and it's a new half cent sales
tax. It'll take us place.So with all the billions, literally billions
of dollars that are being spent inthe City of La, the County of

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La, the unhoused population love thatyou can't use homeless anymore has gone up
thirty seven percent since Measure H waspassed. And we know, I mean,
the cost of housing has just exploded. The pandemic didn't help, I
mean all in all. And here'sthe other problem. I reported on this
too. There was a state auditthat was done the state of California.

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There's no clear data on outcomes.A federal judge just ordered the City of
La to submit an auditive. It'shomelessness spending. No one really knows.
We know how much, we justdon't know where it's going. Most of
the homeless money goes to NGO nongovernmental organizations contracts with the city to run

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places to build housing, because ofcourse the city goes to contractors to build
and it's a mess. And theother thing is permanent housing. All right,
how much is permanent housing? Well, how about this half a million
dollars per unit that taxpayers have topay and it's an annual cost after that,

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because not only the maintenance, youalso have to provide all the ancillary
services, rehab training, mental services. I mean, the homeless people are
not the paragons of mental and physicalhealth. Very very few homeless Olympics are
going on. It's not the Olympicsand then the Paralympics and then the homeless

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Olympics. That doesn't help. Sobe prepared for another race. And just
to give you an idea, theten the ten most expensive sales tax cities
in the United States. LA actuallyisn't there. LA is. Well,
let me put it this way.Tacoma, Washington ten point three percent.

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This is just city, Chicago,Long Beach, and Oakland. Long Beach
and Oakland are tied for number two. LA is down there number twelve or
thirteen. But we're talking about theseare incremental changes, little tiny ones.
Figure ten percent sales tax and thenyou really want to make a move and

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make some money. What we dois we follow the European model, which
is value added tax effectively a salestax. In England, for example,
it is twenty percent value added taxfor goods that are bought and services doctors,
lawyers, accountants, and if theyadd sales tax on that, and

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in some states even food is taxed. So we'll deal with a homeless just
going to keep on spending more andmore and more money, and we'll see
what happens come November La County.Are the voters going to vote for it?
Measure H passed huge amount of money, So I think that maybe a

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little different. You think people havereached the point where enough taxes are enough.
Remember Prop thirteen to cut the taxespeople or we're talking about property taxes,
and people were being taxed out oftheir homes, could not afford to
live in their homes because of taxes. And Prop thirteen turned it all the

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way around and said there'll be onepercent plus junk fees. So it's about
one and a quarter percent of yourvalued the value of your house evaluation,
that's what you pay per year.It was two three percent in some cases.
It was just insanity. I getquestions on handle on the law constantly
about medical bills and how hospitals anddoctors send a bill for a patient someone

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who's had a medical procedure a yearlater bill, Do I have to pay
this? Well, yeah, yousort of do. But they waited a
year, Yes they did. Ididn't know how much money going in?
That is correct. How can theydo this because we have a broken system,
That's what, and that's how.So for years still doing it.

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Hospitals and surgery centers wait to performprocedures and then send the bills, which
means they get to chase after patientsfor payment and keep on sending invoices.
These are the questions I get,and then going to debt collection and then
gaining people on their credit, andwhat hospitals are doing now is in many
cases demanding patients pay in advance.And you go, wow, that's tough.

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Let me tell you. I'm goingto give you the good side of
that, because counterintuitively speaking, thatactually makes sense. Now, it's tough
for you to come up with it, granted, but here is the advantage.
You get to comparison shop, youget to know how much it's going
to cost, and let me tellyou, medical care is just wildly different.

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Hospital to hospital, doctor to doctor. You can have one procedure costing
you three thousand dollars and you godown the street to another place and it's
gonna be thirteen thousand dollars. Andwhen's the last time you comparison shopped when
you went to the doctor. When'sthe last time you got an approximation?

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All insurance will carry it. Ihave a twenty five hundred dollars reductible and
that's it, and an insurance picksup the rest. No, because the
insurance comes. God, no,we don't cover that. Because what the
doctor did we don't believe should havehappened, and he treated you too much
around one test too many, andwe're not paying for it. You get
to pay well. Our system iscompletely broken, by the way. You
know that. I've told you thatover and over again. A single payer

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system is when a single payer readthe government negotiates with everybody. It's what
happens with Medicare. Medicare. Onceyou hit sixty five, you have socialized
medicines on your hands and the governmentis paying for your medical care. And
believe me, they negotiate. Askany doctor that takes Medicare, any hospital
that takes Medicare, and they allhave to basically, and you'll see that

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the amount paid is way way lessthan anything you're ever going to pay anything
else left, anything that your insurancecompany doesn't pay. So you're not given
the opportunity. You can imagine goingin buying a car, and you can't
and you're not told how much itis. We'll let you know after the
fact. We'll let you know afteryou've done it for a while, we'll
send you a bill. How muchis it, We don't know, We'll

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figure it out. Now. Theydo have an internal price setting price points
where they know this is what wecharge for ther the rent on the oar,
if you will, and the doctor'scharged this, and the nurses charge
this, and the surgeons charge this, and the equipment that you're going to

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use because a lot of his disposabledisposable. Now, yeah, I keep
in mind, I've talked to somesurgeon, I have friends talked to Jim.
You know, most of the surgeries, I mean major massive surgeries.
It's one use of the instrument,one used to throw it all away when
you're done. Thousands and thousands ofdollars. Boy, how's that for a
scam and you get to pay forit one use hey go figure which they

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switched to that bill because they usedto use the autoclave to just still doing
very limited but now it is uh, it's disposable. Even with my bariatric
surgery. They laid out all ofthe instruments everything. Crack open this plastic
blister pack, use it all onceand then throw it all away because it

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makes a lot of money. Hey, once I sell you a scalpel,
IM not gonna say, well youanother one, am I until it wears
out. If I sell you ascalpel that you use once next surgery,
I sell you the next one.The whole thing is completely insane. The
argument is it is it is what'ssafer, which it is to some extent,

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but come on, I mean completelycrazy. So the point is is
we have a system where we don'tknow how much is going to be paid
by the insurance company. We don'tknow how much anything is going to cost.
We find out after the fact,and then you start getting a bill.
So here here are a couple oftakeaways. Negotiate no kidding. Let's

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say you're going to have your kneereplaced, and it's going to be eighteen
thousand dollars or twelve thousand dollars.Get a couple of bids at good hospitals.
I mean, you can go toMexico Tijuana and get a really great
bid and you say, hey,you know I'm not going to pay you
twelve thousand because I can do itfor two thousand there, and they go,
see goodbye. I know who've goneto get surgery. You can get

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some you can get some very goodmedical care to you. One dentists,
you know, they they're American dentistswho've gone. People have gone to medical
school in United States. That's setup in uh Mexico on the other side
of the border. And you're talkingreally good care for a fifth or a
quarter of the price. But thebottom line is by forcing you to pay,

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and a lot of people can't affordit anyway, even with insurance because
our system is so broken. Andthat's a different story entirely about single payer.
But wouldn't it be nice to walkin and go this and this for
elective surgery, this is what itis going to cost, and then you
take it down the street and sayhere it is. Can you beat this.
Now you got to do your homeworkin terms of the quality of the

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care for sure. You know,you want to see how many times this
doctor has been sued for malpractice,which is an open uh a open book
if you will, because that's available. Well that's a public document. But
you know it's just it's like younegotiate a car. Yeah, but people
are gonna have to take out loansfor this bill. People aren't going to

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have this money laying, true,but they do anyway, they have to
figure it out afterwards. You knowhow many people go bankrupt? Do you
know how many people that have insurancecan't afford it? So do you wait
for the insurance to go ahead andpay you back? Or sometimes there's nothing
good about this system. It iscompletely they brought If insurance says no,
you negotiated poorly or that's not wewon't pay for that. You know.

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Yeah, that happens all the timeanyway. And here's the other deal.
When you negotiate, say can youset up a payment plan? Can I
give you two hundred bucks a month? But there's no debtors president at least
they could say, hey, Ijust can't pay it, that's correct.
And then you have no credit,so you're never buying another car, certainly
not getting a loan for a house. Not that you're going to afford a
house if you can't afford a surgery. We're talking abou knee replacement, et

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cetera. You know, hip replacements, even berths, because you can sort
of schedule those and negotiate those.I mean, is it is a mess.
I mean, there's no good wayof dealing with the system. What
you had a cash only system,it might be much much cheaper. If
doctors new or getting paid, itwould absolutely all right. Now, this

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was a fun one because a lotof people think, including me, think
that RFK Robert Kennedy Junior is kindof nuts. And okay, got the
answer. Worms worms in his head, And this is a New York Times
story that broke. According to atwenty twelve deposition, Robert Kennedy was involved

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in a case and he said heonce suffered from end quote in his own
words, a worm that got intomy brain and ate a portion of it
and then died. Oh okay,that makes sense. That's why you're so
crazy out of your mind. Butno, as I'm looking at this thing,
it's a thing. Matter of fact, it's a number of things.

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What he described could apply to anynumber of parasitic ailments. Now, most
of the experts that were contacted regardingto the story, you can imagine this
story went nuts immediately suspected a conditioncalled NCC. I don't even know how
to pronounce it, neurocystic serricosis.I have no idea. And this is
the larvae of the pork tapeworm trigonosis, although I don't think that is trigonosis

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specifically. And this shows up inthe brain. I mean it's brain worms,
literal brain worms. Now it doesn'tactually eat your brain, it doesn't
munch your brain, like he said, It's not even your standard issue worm.
It's a kind of tapeworm that typicallymakes its homes and pigs lives in

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picks for the most part. Andthis is the most common one found in
the brain, and as a matterof fact, is one of the most
common causes of epilepsy in adults.I didn't know that, did you?
That in many cases epilepsy is causedby the tapeworm or the worm in your
brain. So how do you getit? Well, if you've been exposed

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to feces that contain the eggs ofa pork tapeworm. Now, I granted,
very few people go around eating pigcrap, but it's if you're on
a farm, a pig farm,or handling uncooked contaminated food. And I
had thought and Neil, yes,you correct me on this. Eating Yeah,
no, we all have. Imean to the extent if you eat

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anything with pig or anything other stuffon food. Right, yeah, in
general, But I thought trichinosis wasbasically gone, that it just didn't exist
anymore. But do you still cookpork like I have pork chops and I
cooked the medium. That's what they'reserving restaurants, you can now. So
back Gosh, which is probably twelveyears ago or so, the it changed.

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So you used to have to cookpork to one sixty five like you
would hamburger. Hamburger you cook toa higher temperature than you would a steak
because you're grinding it up. Bacteriais on the outside of steak for the
most part, So when you grindit up into ground beef, now the
bacteria goes on the inside, whereasa steak you can cook, you know,

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very rare. When it came topork because of the concern with you
know, parasites and like it wascooked to one sixty five. We have
now learned that it can be cookedto one forty five, which is,
you know, a little more thanmedium rare, and it is, yeah,

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it's about medium, and that you'refined. So growing up we'd have
those, you know, leather shoesole pork chops. But now, yes,
you can cook your pork to onefor five or what I do is
about one thirty eight and then letit raise to the temperature. Yeah,
and you'll be totally fine. Yeah, I'm going to continue on with this

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story because this belies everything you've said. Very very rare. But it does
happen. And I'm not talking aboutyeah it does. Yes, it can
happen. There can be depending onhow the animal was raised, yeah,
treated, and what you've done exactly. And that was just an off shoe,
just a question I had about cookingpork. But this is pork in

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worms end up in your brain,eat your brain kind of sort of,
and then they die. This iswhat Robert F. Kennedy said, and
the doctor saying, yeah, yeah, worms in the brain. Is what's
with politicians? Bill going on?I killed a dog brain. I'm gonna

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finish this up because this has todo with a New York Times to that
Robert regarding Robert F. Kennedy,when he in a twenty twelve deposition said
that a worm got into my brainand ate a portion of it and it
died. He was explaining some cognitivedifficulties. He had go WHOA, worms
in your brain dying. Yeah,it's a thing, and it's a big

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thing. Now. Medical experts immediatelysuspected that this was the most common of
these worms in your brain that diediseases, and that's the larvae of the
pork tapeworm. And no, itdoesn't involve brain munching, it doesn't need
your brain. It does die inyour brain. It's a kind of tapeworm

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makes its home in pigs, andwhat ends up happening happening is people are
exposed to the feces that contained theeggs of a pork tapeworm. They're on
a pig farm, or they handuncooked contaminated food, and it does happen,
which is why it used to bewe used to cook our pork,

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and now well it happens so rarelythat you can still have pork chalks,
pork chops cooked medium, so theeggs are swallowed. Now you're talking tiny,
tiny little guys, right, you'reeating pork. It's in the pork.
The eggs are swallowed with the porkand then they hatch into larvae in
the gut. Okay, so nowyou've got a gut with these larvae in

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it all right. Now, peoplearen't the appropriate host for these little tiny
tapeworm larvae. So they start goingthrough the body looking for a place to
go. Where can they go andfind sustenance and eat what they eat well,

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usually it ends up in the brain, which, by the way,
they never find the ability to eat. They can never find a host part
of the body, so they endup in the brain and they're unable to
complete their life cycle, so theydie and that can cause some cognitive impairment.

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According to an infectious disease physician atEmory Baghuma Gabisian Taitanji, Okay,
why not? He said that somepeople with these lots of these little larva
cysts that can cause inflammation, swellingof tissue and in fact people have headaches

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or seizures. But that takes yearsdecades, and the vast majority of people
don't even know they have it.It is fairly common sorta but unless you're
looking for it doesn't even show up. And experts say millions of people can
have this around the world, particularlyin Latin America, Sub Saharan Africa,
East Asia, India. Frankly,it's a disease of poverty, according to

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the doctor, and it's very preventable, easily preventable good hand washing habits.
In the US, where we haveCT scans all day long. It can
be diagnosed very very early and caughtearly, not even to have any lingering
damage. It ends up you mayhave some cognitive impairment, like Robert F.

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Kennedy did, but it goes awaypretty quickly. Even so, it's
only temporary. Unless you get intodeciding that vaccines are all this huge plot.
I guess there's a connection. There'sgoing to be the medical paper.
I was going to ask you,is there a vaccine for these things?
I guess, Well, he won'ttake it, that's for sure. By
the way, you've got to bea mute. And finally, okay,

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I want to end up with thisbecause these tapeworms you shouldn't worry about.
However, there is a worm.Naia galire, Are you a fowlery Uh?
It's actually an amiba that camps outin warm bodies of water. And
you hear about this a few timesa year and people going in the old

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swimming hole and uh, through yournostrils in certain has gone through the urethra
of the penis. It's eurethra Franklin, as you know. And it goes
into your brain and it does eatyour brain. It literally munches your brain.

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Swimming in the old water hole causesthe old hole in your brain.
You're fine in the ocean, Sothere you go. The good thing is
once a parasite swims up your eurethwhere you want to die. Yeah,
yea, yeah, it can bepretty miserable, that's true. Okay.

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And by the way, if itshows up in two different places, than
it really is a parasites. Okay, we're done, Yeah, we are,
yeah, I know, completely done. All right. This is KFI
AM six forty live everywhere on theiHeartRadio app. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my ShowMonday through Friday six am to nine am,

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