IF YOU’VE EVER WANTED TO UNDERSTAND THE FAR LEFT And I don’t mean the crazy Antifa far left, because why would you bother, but I mean the lefty left wing of the mainstream, I’ve got a guest today so we can do just that. I’ve followed Deep Singh Badhesha on X for some time, which you can do here. I disagree with pretty much every policy position he’s got, but he’s smart and not nasty. He joins me at 1 to talk about the state of Democratic politics in Colorado and more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have in the studio a man that I've been
following on Twitter for some time, and I don't now.
I don't know how Deep sing Medisha became. I don't
know how he ended up in my Twitter feed and
and Deep, I'm gonna call it twitter till I die.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh no, yeah, okay, but I.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Started following him and I and I realized pretty quickly
that Deep and I are probably he's way far to
my left, but not like the crazy left, and he
presents his positions in a very clear way, and in
a way that is sometimes a little bit. You get
(00:39):
a little bit confrontational on occasion, but never nasty.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I enjoyed the confrontation, but I tried not to be nasty, because,
like you know, in America, you have to. We've determined
the way we get around our politics is through speech
and debate and voting, and I believe that's how we
got to get done and I don't think we've done
that yet.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
So yeah, I tried not to get nasty. But every
now and then it's kind of fun to duncome people,
you know it is.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
But as I always say, I used to fight on
social media, and then one day I realized I don't
get paid to fight on social media, so I stopped
fighting on social media, and my life got so much happier.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So I was like, Okay, I'm done with that.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Let me ask about you first, So tell me and
my audience a little bit about how a nice man
like you of Indian immigrant parents. I read your mom's
lovely eulogy, and she seemed like the person I would
I would like to know. Oh she was the best
as she immigrated hear from India, and you are a
first generation American. I'm assuming yes, Okay, how did you
(01:37):
end up a nice man like you? How did you
end up a democratic socialist?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's actually fun story, So I'll actually start with my parents' story.
So both of them unfortunately did pass away. They both
died at sixty five, so pretty young. They weren't able
to see the Golden years. So my father's family's actually
been in the US since nineteen twenty nine. So my
father's also an immigrant for Pajab India his great so
his grandfather, So my grandfather's eldest brother came to California
(02:04):
nineteen twenty nine for part of the really early first
wave of Pajabi immigrants for your viewers who are not
who might or your audience who might not know where
Bajab is. But job is the northern part of India.
It's home to the Sikh religion, Sikhism, Sikhism or sick
that's what the religion. I am. So early immigrants ended
up in California. My dad ended up there along with
(02:25):
a bunch of his cousins and siblings and parents and
all that kind of stuff as a teenager.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So he grew up in the Central Valley.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
He was a farm laborer, so fruit picker, irrigation ditchler,
worked on farms. Then he had an arranged marriage with
my mom, flew back overseas.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
They met and got married, flew back here.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
So my mom went from India to rural California. Oh
my gosh, in rural California. They're there for a couple
of months, and my Mom's like, I don't think this
is going to work. We should do something else for opportunity,
you know. It's like a hard life, like working as
a farm labor So they go from rural California to
New York City. So they go to New York City.
My sister and I are born there in Queens. My
(03:03):
dad's a taxi driver there, and then all of a
sudden they're chatting with you know. At this time, and
this is the eighties and nineties, you meet a lot
of people.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
This is the organic way.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You go to a house parties, you meet people and
there's a big uniqu comunity there. And they meet this
man who ends up becoming basically closer to me as
an uncle than my actual uncle's right.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
He's like, hey, it's like for the price of.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
A taxi medallion, we can go to this place called
Colorado and it's in the middle of.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
California, New York.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
He flew over it and we can buy a business
and a house and they're like, okay, he wore them down.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
He's like, I come up with me. So they fly
out here.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
When I was like eight months old, and they end
up in cars Prince Colorado, and they fall in love
with it. They're like, oh my god, look at these mountains.
And this is like in the early nineties, so like
I was born in nineties two, so this is like
ninety three.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
They're like, wow, this is like amazing. It's great.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
You can buy a house here for two dollars and
fifty cents ends. They end up like selling the tax
actually medallion coming here. My dad first works as a
minimum wage worker at a like gas station. My mom's
like a homekeeper, and they started Caller Springs and they
became like a pillar in the Indian community there, right.
My mom used to take the phone book in Caller
(04:15):
Springs and look through every single year when it came out,
and she would look for Indian names and she would
just cold call them.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah, so my mom has an interesting story. So she
was a citizen. My dad never became a citizen, but
so my mom was a citizen. So she supported uh
Clinton Clinton the Bush Bush. Then she was Obama Obama.
Then she loved Bernie Sanders in the primary and then
refused to vote in the general.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, it's it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Like my mom, like, uh, sometimes were Republicans, sometimes we
were Democrats. So I grew up in Carra Springs, very
conservative place. Nine eleven also happened there, So I grew
up in this atmosphere. So I actually grew up kind
of conservative and libertarian. I think you can be like
Google finding me quoting like libertarian scholars like a high
schooler and like the local gazette and stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So I grew up libertarian.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It was a it's an interesting moment where like we
supported Barack Obama and then the crash happened and Barack
Obama ran on hope and change. Hey, this economy is
not necessarily working for you. My parents worked seven days
a week. We owned a small mom and pop liquor store.
We worked seven days a week. You know these are
you open at nine am and you're there Tollriday night.
(05:27):
And as a like a brown kid, I would also
be there stocking the shelves, cleaning things, helping out with
the family business. Is like a very Asian American Indian
American story in that way. So like kind of bootstraps
and Barack Obama comes says he's going to run on
hope and change, Like, oh, finally, healthcare was a big
thing for my family right as small business owners. Health
care was so hard to access and my parents had
(05:48):
a lot of health issues, right, That's why they ended
up passing at sixty five, and they never really had
good healthcare covers. So him running on that was a
big deal for us. He kind of gets in there,
kind of folds instantly bails out the bankers and all
that kind of stuff. So I became an Occupy Wall
Street guy. Okay, so I became an Occupy Wall Street
guy saying, hey, he bade the banks, but not Main Street.
(06:10):
We didn't get the healthcare we were promised from there.
From Occupy Wall Street, which goes nowhere. I end up
becoming a libertarian big l you were registered. I don't
think it was register. I was still pretty U. I
was like, this is probably like mohe was eighteen. Going
to college, I became a fan of like Nicki Haley
and Bobby Jindall and these other Indian guys in Indian
folks down in the South that were like these libertarian
(06:32):
tea party movement.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
So I did that.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
And then eventually in college I studied economics, and I
kind of started economics and philosophy thinking I'm trying to
figure out what to do with my life. Ends up
becoming more mainstream. And then in twenty sixteen, Bernie Sanders
is there and like this makes sense to me, like
we need a new sort of societal contract. I'm still
okay with Hillary Clinton at this time. We lose against Trump. Yeah,
(06:56):
and I think a lot of liberals said, oh, we
lost against Trump for X y Z reasons. I'm like, no,
I think Trump was speaking to some parts of America
that we weren't and why was that. So that's kind
of leads me to keep going left. So joined Democratic
Social of America and I've been on the progressive left
since joined.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
This whole time, I'm working on campaigns.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I worked for Udall's twenty fourteen campaign where you lost
agains the Corey Gardner worked in Obama's campaigns Bernie Hillary
Clinton's a couple of local cadidates stay wide cadidates. Since
that time, I was a teacher, high school math teacher.
Eventually went to law school, worked a big law firm,
civil rights firms. Starting my legal career clerking at the
Colorado Supreme Court, Okay for Jessice Hart, and then from
(07:37):
there kind of.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Shifted into politics.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Run a fellowship program, worked for the Colorado House Democrats
and be consulting. It was a lobbyist, so.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
You had a h like a big credentials though, I mean,
that's that's actually I'm actually glad to know all that.
That gives me a lot of perspective of where you're
coming from So let let me jump in and let's
start with healthcare, because I know that this is a
huge issue any The reality is nobody wants somebody to
be unable to access or have access to a doctor.
(08:06):
And I think we're both in agreement that the system
we have now is not working. But I think the
difference is is that if you're leaning into a public option,
I have to say I now have multiple stories, and
I mean one of them is my best friend who
was a part of the national healthcare system in Northern Ireland,
who had an urgent surgical consult that just never got
(08:31):
taken care of, and had I not crowdfunded eight thousand
dollars so she could pay for a gallbladder removal in
an Irish hospital, she probably would have died of sepsis
because her gallbladder was gangreness when they actually went in
to take it out. So I have those perspectives about
standardized healthcare while I can still recognize that what we
have now is at working. But I don't think that's
(08:52):
the choice. I think there's other ways to inject free
market principles into healthcare that benefit the patient and the
healthcare system and doctors knowing that there's some things you
can't do that with that, that's when you have.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
To have some for that backstop.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
That is critical to making sure that nobody goes broke
because they.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Have a heart at that. Yeah, I mean, I have
a question for you.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
What percentage of bankruptcies in America are related to medical.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Last time I saw it was like eighteen percent. Now
it's actually two thirds. Now, two thirds are medical.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Bankers are related to medical issues, whether the it's broader
than that in terms of like sometimes your medical issue
leads you losing your job, which then also leads to
the bankruptcy. But two thirds are medically related one and
then the other one third is just Donald Trump just do.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
It over and over again. I mean, I thought you
were laughed at that joke.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Yeah, you know, yeah, Okay, wait, let me go back
to the healthcare Okay, So I think if there was
more developed economies all around the world that had our
style of healthcare system and they were doing it well,
I think we could have a leg to stand out
and be like, Okay, we can keep tweaking this tiency otworks.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
But it's actually the opposite when you go.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
All across the world, whether it's like a little bit
of a right wing government, more traditional or a little
bit left wing, and more diverse and different. Every single
development country, whether it's the Asia, Latin America, or Europe,
they figured out, Hey, having a lass a fair for
prophet system in healthcare doesn't work because the incentives in
healthcare are so different than making profit that the market
(10:27):
kind of breaks that. When you are eighty years old
and you know you need this health care and stuff that,
you know we can charge you whatever you want, right,
it is broken market in that way. So every single
country has sort of figured this out except for America,
And in America I think figured it out, but no,
I mean we pise. There's universal health care in almost
(10:47):
every single health country.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Universal health care, but they haven't figured it out because
you can't have fast, you can't have good, and you
can't have free. You you cannot have all.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Three of them.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
So America doesn't do any of those, right, So we
are the most. We spend the most on healthcare for
the worst results.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Okay, but that takes me to the third party payer.
You're talking about the market breaks. The market isn't being
allowed to operate in healthcare. No, wait, let me make
my point. When you've got a third party payer system
like we do now, we are taking away any incentive
for people to take care of themselves because they know,
if they are fat and they don't exercise and they
(11:22):
eat garbage all the time, they're still going to have
the same access to health care if they have, you know,
with Medicare or whatever.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Because a third party payer.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Has removed their sense of responsibility for their own health.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That's a huge problem. Now, can you force people to
try and be healthy? No, you really can't.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
But the reality is there's ways to inject market forces
into healthcare that are totally disconnected. Direct primary care is
a perfect example of that, where you pay a monthly
membership fee, practices take on as many patients as they
want to and not a single one more. That allows
them to spend time with their patients to actually do
preventive medicine instead of just trying to put a band
(12:00):
aid on whatever you're walking in the office with, you
know right now, combined with a catastrophic health care plan
that kicked in over a certain amount. If you have cancer,
you have a heart attack, you have any of these things.
Now you're talking about injecting free market solutions. And when
you tell someone, look, you've got this. You know you
broke your leg? Deep, sorry, you broke your leg. Oh geez,
(12:22):
that looks awful.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I broke it on January sixth oh. Now the capital.
But you know what capital?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You got chickstigs scars, So you're good. But so you
broke your arm and they say, deep, we've got you.
Get eleven thousand dollars for this particular injury. Figure out
where you want to pay it. We're giving you eleven
thousand dollars. If you want to go above that to
get the absolute best surgeon in the world, great, If
you want to go below that and pocket the rest,
do what you gotta do.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I sally a funny thing about this arm. Actually, yeah,
so I broke this arm. I was walking to work
ice snowstorm, walking to work. Freak accident.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
It's like a hill, so I slip, It's like a cartoon.
I go up to the power. I land on the arm.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
It breaks like oof, uh, call of the ambulance. Ambulance comes.
My wife comes out of the house too. I like,
broke it right outside of a contract. I come in, like, Hey,
which hospital do you want to go? To, which is
such a crazy statement to happen in America because even
the ambulance people know is like, oh, this is non
life anything.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
We don't have to go right away.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Do you have a preference on a hospital because we
know how your insurance works. I was in pain because
my arm had just snapped in half, so I just
said the closest one. So instead of them driving meat
just one extra block to the hospital that was in coverage,
they went to the hospital out of coverage. So I
ended up because of this mistake, paying the out of
(13:36):
pocket maps instead of the in pocket maxim or the
in network maximum, which ended up costing me six thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
And it was not even that further away.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I'm like, do I need to wear like a key
orico that you scan? And it's like, only in America
does this happen. Exactly the free market, Like even if
I'm buying the arguments from their side, the markets are
efficient and they're able to all resources and all that.
It has to happen when consumers are giving the full information,
which in healthcare they're not correct, people can actually make
(14:08):
a meaningful decision, which they can. Usually healthcare is being
provided to you at an emergency level, right, You're not
able to be like, oh you have cancer, yeah, give
me a couple of weeks or research that results.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
No, But that's I mean you're talking about a true emergency,
like what you experienced.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
That is a true emergency.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It's true emergency, whether it's like a cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Maybe. Let's say you are.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
A woman who gets pregnant and you're looking for options
about where you want to give birth. You're kind of
forced into like, oh, this hospital's a little bit further away.
We haben's if I go into labor right away, do
I need to drive anther fifteen twenty minutes?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It's funny, So my wife.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
She gave birth at Rose, but on the way we
passed three other birth in hospitals. Right that we're closer,
but Rose was the one.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We love Rose. It was great. It was the one
in network. Sure.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
And it's like the market doesn't necessarily work because when
you're looking for ice cream as a consumer, distance does
matter for you, right, Like you're trying to go for like.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
All, don't you drive for better ice cream?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Healthcare is not a consumer product, and if you treat
it like a consumer product, you're going to end up
sort of like how everything else has Helly. You recommend
this book called in Shitification.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
I read it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Oh yes, and it's the and for everybody you read
book wonders what it is the the way a system
is designed to purposely get worse over time. It's not
a bug, it's a feature.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
So if you have.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
A healthcare system that is trying to squeeze every single
drop of profit out of this system, right, that means consumers,
I actually don't care.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
About your health the most I care about profit.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Doctors, actually, I want you to work at forty eight
hour shift because that's what makes sense for me. Uh, Nurses,
It's okay, if you don't have this credential, this credential,
we're going to do this.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh we can pay with travelers every If.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
You want every single part of your system to put
profit above people, this is the system you're going to
get in. There are I think we can agree that
there are certain areas of the economy where profit probably
doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Another one I think, wait, respond to the industrial company.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Okay, we'll come to that in a second, because I
could talk about that as well. But you assume that
there is some incentive if the government takes it over,
that the government will put people first. And I would
have you look at Canada right now, where it seems
like they're just.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Killing people to get them off the national healthcare system.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
When you were in the western provinces of Canada, you
can't find a doctor, a primary care doctor because there
aren't enough doctors. And the difference between a hospital system,
which I could agree with you that that is also
a monopoly that needed to.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Be busted up.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The hospital systems are out of control now because of Obamacare.
But the reality is government has its own incentive. Government
has every incentive to put the squeeze on healthcare because
it becomes such a massive expt is when you look
at Medicaid in the state of Colorado, that is a
major chunk of our budget, and no one in that
ecosystem any has any desire to either save the taxpayers
(17:10):
who are now on the hook for someone else's health care, or.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Even save the patients.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
We just cut spending for care for disabled people because
we have a budget shortage. So to assume that such
pressures will never be brought to bear if the government
takes it over is just It's already been disproven.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I think you know.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
It's one of my comrades brothers in arm A Zorta
Mom Donnie talks about this in York City in particular.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Stuff like that government. People have lost faith in government. Right,
They're like, my trash isn't being picked up right now?
You can't Sometimes you're not running our schools appropriately. Like
how why would I trust you with the big stuff
if you get the little stuff wrong?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I do agree.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
We need to talk about government capacity and government efficiency.
We have let our public services dwindle so hard that
we're not able to solve problems. So I get everything
you're saying that, Like I don't trust the government, how
can I trust that it's going to do x y
Z fairly? Is that you need to build, you need
to I think we have underfunded.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I think one America is probably.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
One of the most corrupt countries in the entire world
in terms of our pace.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I never heard of Haiti.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Okay, hey, all that thought I the countries? How with
deep seeing Medasha. I put a link to his Twitter
feed if you want to follow.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
This is fascinating. We're going, We're going, We're keeping this going.
We'll be back.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I want to wrap up the conversation about healthcare with this,
We are now just now finding out that probably all
over the country, there is a staggering level of Medicaid fraud.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah. We are also seeing new.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Investigations into the Medicare advantage plans. My mom has a
Medicare advantage plan. She absolutely loves it, loves everything about it.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
But apparently they.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Are rife with corruption or the possibility of corruption. So
what makes you think that's better just that part of it?
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Can I just ask you a question, Sure, would you
agree that we should lock up anyone who's committed maybe
fifty million dollars more of medicare fraud?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And if it was like five hundred million dollars, definitely.
And Okay, so you agree that we should arrest and
lock up senator Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida because
he only five billion dollars of medicare fraud.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
No, well, he was ahead of Humana when all of
that happened, and that what deep do it? Yeah, I'm
perfectly fine with that, But again, you kind of glossed
over the fact you went to a private citizen ignored.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I mean, we're.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Talking about billions and billions and billions probably in fraud.
We just got a great and I don't know if
you saw the series in the Denver Gazette about one
company that has.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Probably built Colorado.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
For twenty six million dollars and all of the incentives.
There's no incentive in a government program for anyone to
look out for the taxpayer.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
And that's my issue.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
I believe that you can have a government that is
more responsive to the people that has that for example,
for example, when you have those forgot what they're called.
My lawyer friends are gonna the inspector generals right for
every single agency in the federal government or local government
that's supposed to go after and look for these frauds.
Donald Trump gutted all the inspector generals, so it's harder
(20:21):
to find these frauds. I want the dires you got
these things. I agree people who are scamming the American people,
this is our taxpayer money. Right. When this is when
you are robbing the American taxpayer, you should be treated
as a crime against society.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Agree with that, right?
Speaker 3 (20:41):
I see oftentimes when it is is medicare frauds, It
oftentimes is companies. Sometimes it's healthcare providers, and I agree
you need to if we're going to expand Medicare. I
believe in Medicare for all our universal health care system.
You need to be able to have government efficiency there.
But I think, but let me ask you.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
This, and you're assuming, you're assuming have they budded?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
But wait, let me just take it down to its
most like most basic point. Milton Friedman, my economic hero,
use the phrase like he would talk about, where are
these angels that you're going to get to work in government?
Where are these special magical people that are always going
to put the taxpayers best best needs at heart? Because
(21:25):
currently they're overseeing massive amounts of Medicaid fraud.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Currently they're turning a blind eye.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
When you have one home healthcare agency that has two
thousand hospice patients and one doctor.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You know they're not doing the job.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
So where do you find the people that are going
to run this this system that you think is going
to be superior to a system that is not perfect.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
It is very imperfect.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
But in the free market system, at least there is
some measure of potential accountability. You have the to you
have the courts, you have people that can be fired
for not performing at a high level. You various ways,
various levers to rectify the situation. You have no such
levers when government runs everything.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I don't believe that's true. Like a government needs to.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
I'm a democratic socialist, right, which would mean you need
a robust political system and a voting body that can
hold its government accountable. Right. It's not just like you
get people on the top and they have no accountability.
They have no checks and balance, Right, you need to
set up a government that would have them. But let
me talk about this for prophet system real quick, and
(22:30):
how little accountability is and what it does to our healthcare.
In America, there's oftentimes not pre screening for sea sections.
Oftentimes Asian women in particular and some Latin women have
smaller pelvises, and because they have smaller pelvisis in those
countries of origin, they oftentimes will actually screen to say, Oh,
(22:50):
it looks like you're gonna have like a rough natural delivery,
so I think we should opt for sea section kills
will be a safe view. My wife when she went
into labor, she was in labor for like almost three days,
and at the end when she was pushing, they're like, hey,
we don't think you're gonna be able to do this.
We have to do emergency C section. So it was
like a surreal experience. We were waiting for like twenty
(23:11):
four to forty hours, wielded her in GSC section and
it worked out well. And after that experience, my wife
started talking to our circle in our community and a
lot of Indian American women and they're like, Hey, that
the same thing that happened to me.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That happened to me, That happened to me.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
And I'm like, that's crazy. I know so many people
in the Medicare system, medical system. Let me ask what's
going on. Let me just my research. When I started
doing this research, this is what I found out. In
the American healthcare system, private healthcare providers and insurance companies,
a C section costs them five times or ten times
(23:45):
as much as a natural delivery.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Because the natural delivery.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
You're usually out of the hospital within twenty four to
forty eight hours. A C section you're usually there from
anywhere from four to eight days. Because medical because birth
is so expensive, you will always hit your auto pocket max.
So for the consumer, right, it doesn't really affect me.
I'm gonna pay a eight thousand dollars or sorry, eight
thousand dollars out of pocket max. Either way, the medical
(24:09):
companies and the healthcare providers have determined, hey, we are
writing in this provision here into the insurance protocol that
you have to try for a live birth at all costs,
and only when it's failing do you switch to a
C section and cost.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I mean, you've seen the information, You've seen the.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
And it's not all healthcare providers do this. Some healthcare
providers are like, no, you can scream for this. Some
healthcare providers the other way. But Unit says, America, of
all the developed countries, is the one that has the
highest maternal mortality rate. Mothers die more in childbirth in
America than any other development country in the world. And
(24:52):
it's because but here's the thing. Our healthcare companies are
making bank, our doctors are making bank because they prioritize
money over children, over babies, over moms. And that's the
system that we need to tackle. I actually believe that
free market economics is really good in terms of it's
(25:13):
really good at achieving its incentives. We have developed this
late stage capitalism, crony capitalism, if you want that if
you markets are really efficient at maximizing what they want.
Right now, we have told all our markets, we have
told our all economies, all the shareholders, we've told all
the capital in America. Maximize profit at all costs. If
you need to maximize profit above the environment, do it
(25:35):
above human life, do it above children. Do it if
you want to get these kids addicted to social media,
do it. And that's the thing. Markets will maximize all
the way to the top. And what happens in economics
is the companies that make the most money people might
have incentive to make a new company to compete against them.
(25:56):
But now what we have is market concentration, where if
you're a Facebook, you start getting a competition from another
social media, well, I'm ten billion dollars, I'm gonna buy
you in the.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Human or not even that.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I mean, then you're talking about monopoly. So because I'm
going to run out of town because we got to
take another break care. But but you know somehow, oh no,
it's okay. The notion that somehow you can use maternal
health and extrapolate that out to everything. There are there
are pressures in the current system. I hate the current system.
(26:28):
I think the current system sucks. But I'm not looking
for ways to have government which Obamacare was supposed to
get everybody on a health care plan that didn't work.
Obamacare was allegedly going to reduce costs.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Oh, I discat to Obamacare all the way. No, but
that's what government gave us. This is the problem.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
You want to put the same people in charge of
creating a national.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Run healthcare system. You brought it up earlier.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
They can't do anything well, and now you're going to
put them in charge of our health If you don't
think the government will deny a procedure because you need
it because they don't have money to pay for it,
that's just naive. The government will absolutely say no, and
they'll say no in a multitude of ways. They will
slow down the approval process for anything. They will you
won't have enough healthcare resources in order to access health
(27:13):
healthcare resources in a timely fashion. We'll continue this after
the break. We'll be right back with Deep Saying Prediesha.
Let me ask you a philosophical question in this last segment. Yes,
socialism has failed every single time it's been tried.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Well, I don't think it's actually been tried in the
way that we're aiming for.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Wait has failed. Talk about China's stop there.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
That is literally the answer of every socialist everywhere. And
I can tick off example after example after example after
example where it has been tried and it failed.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
So it's.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
We'll keep this a little bit philosophical, right in terms
of like when I go to Democratic Socialists of America
conferences and stuff, will just call me like a capitalist,
which is kind of funny because I see myself as
a democratic socialism and other people don't write so like socialism, capitalism,
these kind of buzzwords. Is it's people kind of missed
the point. Lauren Bilbert was on the floor of the
(28:14):
house talking about our corrupt system in America and how
the winners keep winning, and she called it crony capitalism.
Someone else went down to the floor and called it
Lake stage capitalism. And it's like, Okay, we seem like
we have a problem. And if we want to use
words like socialism capitalism to describe them, whatever it is,
what it is. I will say, when you look around
(28:35):
the world at collectivist societies, whatever you want to call them,
I think they are doing really well. China has a
population over a billion people. They have lifted more people
out of poverty than almost the rest of the world combined.
Their cities are becoming cleaner. They're on the track to
(28:55):
have a cleaner energy economy than we are.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
More coal fired power play us right now than anywhere
else in the world.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
They're also building ten new nuclear reactors, which are also
clean energies as well. They're building Their air is going
to be cleaner than ours, Their water is going to
be cleaner than ours. They're going to have more healthcare,
They're cast their kids go to school.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
More than us. They're going to have more vacation times
than us.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Social scores they can be prevented from flying if.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
They have social scores are high enough. Credit reports, Yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
If I have a credit card and if I have
a five and a credit score, the airline is not
going to check my credit score before running my credit cards.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Also, that's they have a lot down.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
It is because you have choices when you have dictators.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
We also talked about reflective his societies. Also, they call
themselves if you look at the left wing governments of Europe,
in the scandin Navian countries, they call themselves socialists or
the social democrats.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
No, they don't, and they get parties, but they do
not have a socialist system.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Will say this about all these ideas.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
These ideas were created one hundred, two hundred, three hundred
years ago, oftentimes not with an imagination about what the
economy would do, what would go on, the complexity that
would happen, not only in certain nations the States, but
the world.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
If you want to look at socialism in terms.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Of the class orientation, about do you want your government
to be for the working class first or do you
want capitalism which is for capital owners first.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
That's not necessarily true capitalist one thing. You're talking about
socialism and capitalism being created as systems. You know, they
should have been able to project out the end result
of whatever they're doing.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
But that's you.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You're missing the complete wait wait wait, you're missing the
complete underpinning of capitalism versus socialism, and that is human nature.
People work for themselves. They work to protect themselves, for
their and their families, way harder than they're going to
work for anybody else. And I would urge you to
talk to anyone who ever lived on a commune in
(30:51):
the sixties and they will tell you what true socialism
where everybody is supposed to come and pitch in together
for the collective. What ends up happening is you have
a group of people that decide to create this utopian
society in a very small way on a commune. And
what happens is word gets out and here come the
slackers and the losers, and they want to come in
and reap the benefits of that society, but they don't
(31:13):
want to do the work. That is where socialism fails.
And at that point you have to become totalitarianism in
order to force the people to do the crappy jobs
that no one wants to do for no personal benefit.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
I mean, if first you gonna have these fun hypotheticals,
I can have fun hypothetical too, right, Well, late Stag's
capitalism or capitalism that you're saying is also failing.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
We say, we're trying to look out for people's interests.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Right, Look what's happening in America, Look what's happening in
South Korea. Look at what's happening in Japan, Look at
the other countries that have rippled through capitalism.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Germany, people are starting.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
To op out of society almost they're like, you know, what.
I'm not gonna get married, you know what. I don't
want kids anymore. Things are too expensive. So capitalism is
actually leading to a point where I'm not even saying this.
It's the billionaires in the oligarchs and the millionaires who
are like, oh my god. If we don't figure out
if there's capitalism things, we might not have kids or
a population anymore. So if capitalism is so wonderful, why
is it feeling all across the world. But it's not.
(32:11):
The cheaters will always win.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
No, you you no.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
You use China as an example, So I'm going to
use China. China's got a billion people. They also enslaved
people to work in factories who happen to be millslim weekers.
They they don't treat their their people equitably. If you
say the wrong thing, you can still be disappeared. Just
ask the guy who owns Ali Baba in America. Trump,
he's not disappearing people.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
There are no people in labor here, journalists assuing uh.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Doing journalists, And he's going to lose. That's just the reality.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
He won those lawsuits, actually, and he got them to settle.
He got let me make.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
This way almost time We'll do this again. The reality
is is that socialism has failed over and over and
over and over again because of human names, because people
like to own stuff, because people are gonna work harder
to feed their family than they are gonna work ever
to feed someone else's family. You have to solve that
(33:09):
problem before I would ever buy into any socialist society ever.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
That we're at a time, I'm okay, I got on
my Twitter.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
I'm gonna have my last word there, Subscribe my Instagram, TikTok.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I'm gonna put a video. We'll do this again. This
has been on a social media I've.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Enjoyed the heck out of this. We'll we'll dissect another
topic next time
We have in the studio a man that I've been
following on Twitter for some time, and I don't now.
I don't know how Deep sing Medisha became. I don't
know how he ended up in my Twitter feed and
and Deep, I'm gonna call it twitter till I die.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh no, yeah, okay, but I.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Started following him and I and I realized pretty quickly
that Deep and I are probably he's way far to
my left, but not like the crazy left, and he
presents his positions in a very clear way, and in
a way that is sometimes a little bit. You get
(00:39):
a little bit confrontational on occasion, but never nasty.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I enjoyed the confrontation, but I tried not to be nasty, because,
like you know, in America, you have to. We've determined
the way we get around our politics is through speech
and debate and voting, and I believe that's how we
got to get done and I don't think we've done
that yet.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
So yeah, I tried not to get nasty. But every
now and then it's kind of fun to duncome people,
you know it is.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
But as I always say, I used to fight on
social media, and then one day I realized I don't
get paid to fight on social media, so I stopped
fighting on social media, and my life got so much happier.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So I was like, Okay, I'm done with that.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Let me ask about you first, So tell me and
my audience a little bit about how a nice man
like you of Indian immigrant parents. I read your mom's
lovely eulogy, and she seemed like the person I would
I would like to know. Oh she was the best
as she immigrated hear from India, and you are a
first generation American. I'm assuming yes, Okay, how did you
(01:37):
end up a nice man like you? How did you
end up a democratic socialist?
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's actually fun story, So I'll actually start with my parents' story.
So both of them unfortunately did pass away. They both
died at sixty five, so pretty young. They weren't able
to see the Golden years. So my father's family's actually
been in the US since nineteen twenty nine. So my
father's also an immigrant for Pajab India his great so
his grandfather, So my grandfather's eldest brother came to California
(02:04):
nineteen twenty nine for part of the really early first
wave of Pajabi immigrants for your viewers who are not
who might or your audience who might not know where
Bajab is. But job is the northern part of India.
It's home to the Sikh religion, Sikhism, Sikhism or sick
that's what the religion. I am. So early immigrants ended
up in California. My dad ended up there along with
(02:25):
a bunch of his cousins and siblings and parents and
all that kind of stuff as a teenager.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
So he grew up in the Central Valley.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
He was a farm laborer, so fruit picker, irrigation ditchler,
worked on farms. Then he had an arranged marriage with
my mom, flew back overseas.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
They met and got married, flew back here.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
So my mom went from India to rural California. Oh
my gosh, in rural California. They're there for a couple
of months, and my Mom's like, I don't think this
is going to work. We should do something else for opportunity,
you know. It's like a hard life, like working as
a farm labor So they go from rural California to
New York City. So they go to New York City.
My sister and I are born there in Queens. My
(03:03):
dad's a taxi driver there, and then all of a
sudden they're chatting with you know. At this time, and
this is the eighties and nineties, you meet a lot
of people.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
This is the organic way.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You go to a house parties, you meet people and
there's a big uniqu comunity there. And they meet this
man who ends up becoming basically closer to me as
an uncle than my actual uncle's right.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
He's like, hey, it's like for the price of.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
A taxi medallion, we can go to this place called
Colorado and it's in the middle of.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
California, New York.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
He flew over it and we can buy a business
and a house and they're like, okay, he wore them down.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
He's like, I come up with me. So they fly
out here.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
When I was like eight months old, and they end
up in cars Prince Colorado, and they fall in love
with it. They're like, oh my god, look at these mountains.
And this is like in the early nineties, so like
I was born in nineties two, so this is like
ninety three.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
They're like, wow, this is like amazing. It's great.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
You can buy a house here for two dollars and
fifty cents ends. They end up like selling the tax
actually medallion coming here. My dad first works as a
minimum wage worker at a like gas station. My mom's
like a homekeeper, and they started Caller Springs and they
became like a pillar in the Indian community there, right.
My mom used to take the phone book in Caller
(04:15):
Springs and look through every single year when it came out,
and she would look for Indian names and she would
just cold call them.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah, so my mom has an interesting story. So she
was a citizen. My dad never became a citizen, but
so my mom was a citizen. So she supported uh
Clinton Clinton the Bush Bush. Then she was Obama Obama.
Then she loved Bernie Sanders in the primary and then
refused to vote in the general.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, it's it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Like my mom, like, uh, sometimes were Republicans, sometimes we
were Democrats. So I grew up in Carra Springs, very
conservative place. Nine eleven also happened there, So I grew
up in this atmosphere. So I actually grew up kind
of conservative and libertarian. I think you can be like
Google finding me quoting like libertarian scholars like a high
schooler and like the local gazette and stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So I grew up libertarian.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It was a it's an interesting moment where like we
supported Barack Obama and then the crash happened and Barack
Obama ran on hope and change. Hey, this economy is
not necessarily working for you. My parents worked seven days
a week. We owned a small mom and pop liquor store.
We worked seven days a week. You know these are
you open at nine am and you're there Tollriday night.
(05:27):
And as a like a brown kid, I would also
be there stocking the shelves, cleaning things, helping out with
the family business. Is like a very Asian American Indian
American story in that way. So like kind of bootstraps
and Barack Obama comes says he's going to run on
hope and change, Like, oh, finally, healthcare was a big
thing for my family right as small business owners. Health
care was so hard to access and my parents had
(05:48):
a lot of health issues, right, That's why they ended
up passing at sixty five, and they never really had
good healthcare covers. So him running on that was a
big deal for us. He kind of gets in there,
kind of folds instantly bails out the bankers and all
that kind of stuff. So I became an Occupy Wall
Street guy. Okay, so I became an Occupy Wall Street
guy saying, hey, he bade the banks, but not Main Street.
(06:10):
We didn't get the healthcare we were promised from there.
From Occupy Wall Street, which goes nowhere. I end up
becoming a libertarian big l you were registered. I don't
think it was register. I was still pretty U. I
was like, this is probably like mohe was eighteen. Going
to college, I became a fan of like Nicki Haley
and Bobby Jindall and these other Indian guys in Indian
folks down in the South that were like these libertarian
(06:32):
tea party movement.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
So I did that.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
And then eventually in college I studied economics, and I
kind of started economics and philosophy thinking I'm trying to
figure out what to do with my life. Ends up
becoming more mainstream. And then in twenty sixteen, Bernie Sanders
is there and like this makes sense to me, like
we need a new sort of societal contract. I'm still
okay with Hillary Clinton at this time. We lose against Trump. Yeah,
(06:56):
and I think a lot of liberals said, oh, we
lost against Trump for X y Z reasons. I'm like, no,
I think Trump was speaking to some parts of America
that we weren't and why was that. So that's kind
of leads me to keep going left. So joined Democratic
Social of America and I've been on the progressive left
since joined.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
This whole time, I'm working on campaigns.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I worked for Udall's twenty fourteen campaign where you lost
agains the Corey Gardner worked in Obama's campaigns Bernie Hillary
Clinton's a couple of local cadidates stay wide cadidates. Since
that time, I was a teacher, high school math teacher.
Eventually went to law school, worked a big law firm,
civil rights firms. Starting my legal career clerking at the
Colorado Supreme Court, Okay for Jessice Hart, and then from
(07:37):
there kind of.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Shifted into politics.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Run a fellowship program, worked for the Colorado House Democrats
and be consulting. It was a lobbyist, so.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
You had a h like a big credentials though, I mean,
that's that's actually I'm actually glad to know all that.
That gives me a lot of perspective of where you're
coming from So let let me jump in and let's
start with healthcare, because I know that this is a
huge issue any The reality is nobody wants somebody to
be unable to access or have access to a doctor.
(08:06):
And I think we're both in agreement that the system
we have now is not working. But I think the
difference is is that if you're leaning into a public option,
I have to say I now have multiple stories, and
I mean one of them is my best friend who
was a part of the national healthcare system in Northern Ireland,
who had an urgent surgical consult that just never got
(08:31):
taken care of, and had I not crowdfunded eight thousand
dollars so she could pay for a gallbladder removal in
an Irish hospital, she probably would have died of sepsis
because her gallbladder was gangreness when they actually went in
to take it out. So I have those perspectives about
standardized healthcare while I can still recognize that what we
have now is at working. But I don't think that's
(08:52):
the choice. I think there's other ways to inject free
market principles into healthcare that benefit the patient and the
healthcare system and doctors knowing that there's some things you
can't do that with that, that's when you have.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
To have some for that backstop.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
That is critical to making sure that nobody goes broke
because they.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Have a heart at that. Yeah, I mean, I have
a question for you.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
What percentage of bankruptcies in America are related to medical.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Last time I saw it was like eighteen percent. Now
it's actually two thirds. Now, two thirds are medical.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Bankers are related to medical issues, whether the it's broader
than that in terms of like sometimes your medical issue
leads you losing your job, which then also leads to
the bankruptcy. But two thirds are medically related one and
then the other one third is just Donald Trump just do.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
It over and over again. I mean, I thought you
were laughed at that joke.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Yeah, you know, yeah, Okay, wait, let me go back
to the healthcare Okay, So I think if there was
more developed economies all around the world that had our
style of healthcare system and they were doing it well,
I think we could have a leg to stand out
and be like, Okay, we can keep tweaking this tiency otworks.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
But it's actually the opposite when you go.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
All across the world, whether it's like a little bit
of a right wing government, more traditional or a little
bit left wing, and more diverse and different. Every single
development country, whether it's the Asia, Latin America, or Europe,
they figured out, Hey, having a lass a fair for
prophet system in healthcare doesn't work because the incentives in
healthcare are so different than making profit that the market
(10:27):
kind of breaks that. When you are eighty years old
and you know you need this health care and stuff that,
you know we can charge you whatever you want, right,
it is broken market in that way. So every single
country has sort of figured this out except for America,
And in America I think figured it out, but no,
I mean we pise. There's universal health care in almost
(10:47):
every single health country.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Universal health care, but they haven't figured it out because
you can't have fast, you can't have good, and you
can't have free. You you cannot have all.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Three of them.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
So America doesn't do any of those, right, So we
are the most. We spend the most on healthcare for
the worst results.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Okay, but that takes me to the third party payer.
You're talking about the market breaks. The market isn't being
allowed to operate in healthcare. No, wait, let me make
my point. When you've got a third party payer system
like we do now, we are taking away any incentive
for people to take care of themselves because they know,
if they are fat and they don't exercise and they
(11:22):
eat garbage all the time, they're still going to have
the same access to health care if they have, you know,
with Medicare or whatever.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Because a third party payer.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Has removed their sense of responsibility for their own health.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That's a huge problem. Now, can you force people to
try and be healthy? No, you really can't.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
But the reality is there's ways to inject market forces
into healthcare that are totally disconnected. Direct primary care is
a perfect example of that, where you pay a monthly
membership fee, practices take on as many patients as they
want to and not a single one more. That allows
them to spend time with their patients to actually do
preventive medicine instead of just trying to put a band
(12:00):
aid on whatever you're walking in the office with, you
know right now, combined with a catastrophic health care plan
that kicked in over a certain amount. If you have cancer,
you have a heart attack, you have any of these things.
Now you're talking about injecting free market solutions. And when
you tell someone, look, you've got this. You know you
broke your leg? Deep, sorry, you broke your leg. Oh geez,
(12:22):
that looks awful.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I broke it on January sixth oh. Now the capital.
But you know what capital?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You got chickstigs scars, So you're good. But so you
broke your arm and they say, deep, we've got you.
Get eleven thousand dollars for this particular injury. Figure out
where you want to pay it. We're giving you eleven
thousand dollars. If you want to go above that to
get the absolute best surgeon in the world, great, If
you want to go below that and pocket the rest,
do what you gotta do.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
I sally a funny thing about this arm. Actually, yeah,
so I broke this arm. I was walking to work
ice snowstorm, walking to work. Freak accident.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
It's like a hill, so I slip, It's like a cartoon.
I go up to the power. I land on the arm.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
It breaks like oof, uh, call of the ambulance. Ambulance comes.
My wife comes out of the house too. I like,
broke it right outside of a contract. I come in, like, Hey,
which hospital do you want to go? To, which is
such a crazy statement to happen in America because even
the ambulance people know is like, oh, this is non
life anything.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
We don't have to go right away.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Do you have a preference on a hospital because we
know how your insurance works. I was in pain because
my arm had just snapped in half, so I just
said the closest one. So instead of them driving meat
just one extra block to the hospital that was in coverage,
they went to the hospital out of coverage. So I
ended up because of this mistake, paying the out of
(13:36):
pocket maps instead of the in pocket maxim or the
in network maximum, which ended up costing me six thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
And it was not even that further away.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I'm like, do I need to wear like a key
orico that you scan? And it's like, only in America
does this happen. Exactly the free market, Like even if
I'm buying the arguments from their side, the markets are
efficient and they're able to all resources and all that.
It has to happen when consumers are giving the full information,
which in healthcare they're not correct, people can actually make
(14:08):
a meaningful decision, which they can. Usually healthcare is being
provided to you at an emergency level, right, You're not
able to be like, oh you have cancer, yeah, give
me a couple of weeks or research that results.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
No, But that's I mean you're talking about a true emergency,
like what you experienced.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
That is a true emergency.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It's true emergency, whether it's like a cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Maybe. Let's say you are.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
A woman who gets pregnant and you're looking for options
about where you want to give birth. You're kind of
forced into like, oh, this hospital's a little bit further away.
We haben's if I go into labor right away, do
I need to drive anther fifteen twenty minutes?
Speaker 2 (14:44):
It's funny, So my wife.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
She gave birth at Rose, but on the way we
passed three other birth in hospitals. Right that we're closer,
but Rose was the one.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We love Rose. It was great. It was the one
in network. Sure.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
And it's like the market doesn't necessarily work because when
you're looking for ice cream as a consumer, distance does
matter for you, right, Like you're trying to go for like.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
All, don't you drive for better ice cream?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Healthcare is not a consumer product, and if you treat
it like a consumer product, you're going to end up
sort of like how everything else has Helly. You recommend
this book called in Shitification.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
I read it.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Oh yes, and it's the and for everybody you read
book wonders what it is the the way a system
is designed to purposely get worse over time. It's not
a bug, it's a feature.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
So if you have.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
A healthcare system that is trying to squeeze every single
drop of profit out of this system, right, that means consumers,
I actually don't care.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
About your health the most I care about profit.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Doctors, actually, I want you to work at forty eight
hour shift because that's what makes sense for me. Uh, Nurses,
It's okay, if you don't have this credential, this credential,
we're going to do this.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh we can pay with travelers every If.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
You want every single part of your system to put
profit above people, this is the system you're going to
get in. There are I think we can agree that
there are certain areas of the economy where profit probably
doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Another one I think, wait, respond to the industrial company.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Okay, we'll come to that in a second, because I
could talk about that as well. But you assume that
there is some incentive if the government takes it over,
that the government will put people first. And I would
have you look at Canada right now, where it seems
like they're just.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Killing people to get them off the national healthcare system.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
When you were in the western provinces of Canada, you
can't find a doctor, a primary care doctor because there
aren't enough doctors. And the difference between a hospital system,
which I could agree with you that that is also
a monopoly that needed to.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Be busted up.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The hospital systems are out of control now because of Obamacare.
But the reality is government has its own incentive. Government
has every incentive to put the squeeze on healthcare because
it becomes such a massive expt is when you look
at Medicaid in the state of Colorado, that is a
major chunk of our budget, and no one in that
ecosystem any has any desire to either save the taxpayers
(17:10):
who are now on the hook for someone else's health care, or.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Even save the patients.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
We just cut spending for care for disabled people because
we have a budget shortage. So to assume that such
pressures will never be brought to bear if the government
takes it over is just It's already been disproven.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I think you know.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
It's one of my comrades brothers in arm A Zorta
Mom Donnie talks about this in York City in particular.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Stuff like that government. People have lost faith in government. Right,
They're like, my trash isn't being picked up right now?
You can't Sometimes you're not running our schools appropriately. Like
how why would I trust you with the big stuff
if you get the little stuff wrong?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I do agree.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
We need to talk about government capacity and government efficiency.
We have let our public services dwindle so hard that
we're not able to solve problems. So I get everything
you're saying that, Like I don't trust the government, how
can I trust that it's going to do x y
Z fairly? Is that you need to build, you need
to I think we have underfunded.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I think one America is probably.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
One of the most corrupt countries in the entire world
in terms of our pace.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I never heard of Haiti.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Okay, hey, all that thought I the countries? How with
deep seeing Medasha. I put a link to his Twitter
feed if you want to follow.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
This is fascinating. We're going, We're going, We're keeping this going.
We'll be back.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
I want to wrap up the conversation about healthcare with this,
We are now just now finding out that probably all
over the country, there is a staggering level of Medicaid fraud.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah. We are also seeing new.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Investigations into the Medicare advantage plans. My mom has a
Medicare advantage plan. She absolutely loves it, loves everything about it.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
But apparently they.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Are rife with corruption or the possibility of corruption. So
what makes you think that's better just that part of it?
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Can I just ask you a question, Sure, would you
agree that we should lock up anyone who's committed maybe
fifty million dollars more of medicare fraud?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Absolutely?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And if it was like five hundred million dollars, definitely.
And Okay, so you agree that we should arrest and
lock up senator Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida because
he only five billion dollars of medicare fraud.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
No, well, he was ahead of Humana when all of
that happened, and that what deep do it? Yeah, I'm
perfectly fine with that, But again, you kind of glossed
over the fact you went to a private citizen ignored.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I mean, we're.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Talking about billions and billions and billions probably in fraud.
We just got a great and I don't know if
you saw the series in the Denver Gazette about one
company that has.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Probably built Colorado.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
For twenty six million dollars and all of the incentives.
There's no incentive in a government program for anyone to
look out for the taxpayer.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
And that's my issue.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
I believe that you can have a government that is
more responsive to the people that has that for example,
for example, when you have those forgot what they're called.
My lawyer friends are gonna the inspector generals right for
every single agency in the federal government or local government
that's supposed to go after and look for these frauds.
Donald Trump gutted all the inspector generals, so it's harder
(20:21):
to find these frauds. I want the dires you got
these things. I agree people who are scamming the American people,
this is our taxpayer money. Right. When this is when
you are robbing the American taxpayer, you should be treated
as a crime against society.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Agree with that, right?
Speaker 3 (20:41):
I see oftentimes when it is is medicare frauds, It
oftentimes is companies. Sometimes it's healthcare providers, and I agree
you need to if we're going to expand Medicare. I
believe in Medicare for all our universal health care system.
You need to be able to have government efficiency there.
But I think, but let me ask you.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
This, and you're assuming, you're assuming have they budded?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
But wait, let me just take it down to its
most like most basic point. Milton Friedman, my economic hero,
use the phrase like he would talk about, where are
these angels that you're going to get to work in government?
Where are these special magical people that are always going
to put the taxpayers best best needs at heart? Because
(21:25):
currently they're overseeing massive amounts of Medicaid fraud.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Currently they're turning a blind eye.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
When you have one home healthcare agency that has two
thousand hospice patients and one doctor.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You know they're not doing the job.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
So where do you find the people that are going
to run this this system that you think is going
to be superior to a system that is not perfect.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
It is very imperfect.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
But in the free market system, at least there is
some measure of potential accountability. You have the to you
have the courts, you have people that can be fired
for not performing at a high level. You various ways,
various levers to rectify the situation. You have no such
levers when government runs everything.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I don't believe that's true. Like a government needs to.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
I'm a democratic socialist, right, which would mean you need
a robust political system and a voting body that can
hold its government accountable. Right. It's not just like you
get people on the top and they have no accountability.
They have no checks and balance, Right, you need to
set up a government that would have them. But let
me talk about this for prophet system real quick, and
(22:30):
how little accountability is and what it does to our healthcare.
In America, there's oftentimes not pre screening for sea sections.
Oftentimes Asian women in particular and some Latin women have
smaller pelvises, and because they have smaller pelvisis in those
countries of origin, they oftentimes will actually screen to say, Oh,
(22:50):
it looks like you're gonna have like a rough natural delivery,
so I think we should opt for sea section kills
will be a safe view. My wife when she went
into labor, she was in labor for like almost three days,
and at the end when she was pushing, they're like, hey,
we don't think you're gonna be able to do this.
We have to do emergency C section. So it was
like a surreal experience. We were waiting for like twenty
(23:11):
four to forty hours, wielded her in GSC section and
it worked out well. And after that experience, my wife
started talking to our circle in our community and a
lot of Indian American women and they're like, Hey, that
the same thing that happened to me.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That happened to me, That happened to me.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
And I'm like, that's crazy. I know so many people
in the Medicare system, medical system. Let me ask what's
going on. Let me just my research. When I started
doing this research, this is what I found out. In
the American healthcare system, private healthcare providers and insurance companies,
a C section costs them five times or ten times
(23:45):
as much as a natural delivery.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Because the natural delivery.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
You're usually out of the hospital within twenty four to
forty eight hours. A C section you're usually there from
anywhere from four to eight days. Because medical because birth
is so expensive, you will always hit your auto pocket max.
So for the consumer, right, it doesn't really affect me.
I'm gonna pay a eight thousand dollars or sorry, eight
thousand dollars out of pocket max. Either way, the medical
(24:09):
companies and the healthcare providers have determined, hey, we are
writing in this provision here into the insurance protocol that
you have to try for a live birth at all costs,
and only when it's failing do you switch to a
C section and cost.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I mean, you've seen the information, You've seen the.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
And it's not all healthcare providers do this. Some healthcare
providers are like, no, you can scream for this. Some
healthcare providers the other way. But Unit says, America, of
all the developed countries, is the one that has the
highest maternal mortality rate. Mothers die more in childbirth in
America than any other development country in the world. And
(24:52):
it's because but here's the thing. Our healthcare companies are
making bank, our doctors are making bank because they prioritize
money over children, over babies, over moms. And that's the
system that we need to tackle. I actually believe that
free market economics is really good in terms of it's
(25:13):
really good at achieving its incentives. We have developed this
late stage capitalism, crony capitalism, if you want that if
you markets are really efficient at maximizing what they want.
Right now, we have told all our markets, we have
told our all economies, all the shareholders, we've told all
the capital in America. Maximize profit at all costs. If
you need to maximize profit above the environment, do it
(25:35):
above human life, do it above children. Do it if
you want to get these kids addicted to social media,
do it. And that's the thing. Markets will maximize all
the way to the top. And what happens in economics
is the companies that make the most money people might
have incentive to make a new company to compete against them.
(25:56):
But now what we have is market concentration, where if
you're a Facebook, you start getting a competition from another
social media, well, I'm ten billion dollars, I'm gonna buy
you in the.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Human or not even that.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
I mean, then you're talking about monopoly. So because I'm
going to run out of town because we got to
take another break care. But but you know somehow, oh no,
it's okay. The notion that somehow you can use maternal
health and extrapolate that out to everything. There are there
are pressures in the current system. I hate the current system.
(26:28):
I think the current system sucks. But I'm not looking
for ways to have government which Obamacare was supposed to
get everybody on a health care plan that didn't work.
Obamacare was allegedly going to reduce costs.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Oh, I discat to Obamacare all the way. No, but
that's what government gave us. This is the problem.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
You want to put the same people in charge of
creating a national.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Run healthcare system. You brought it up earlier.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
They can't do anything well, and now you're going to
put them in charge of our health If you don't
think the government will deny a procedure because you need
it because they don't have money to pay for it,
that's just naive. The government will absolutely say no, and
they'll say no in a multitude of ways. They will
slow down the approval process for anything. They will you
won't have enough healthcare resources in order to access health
(27:13):
healthcare resources in a timely fashion. We'll continue this after
the break. We'll be right back with Deep Saying Prediesha.
Let me ask you a philosophical question in this last segment. Yes,
socialism has failed every single time it's been tried.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Well, I don't think it's actually been tried in the
way that we're aiming for.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Wait has failed. Talk about China's stop there.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
That is literally the answer of every socialist everywhere. And
I can tick off example after example after example after
example where it has been tried and it failed.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
So it's.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
We'll keep this a little bit philosophical, right in terms
of like when I go to Democratic Socialists of America
conferences and stuff, will just call me like a capitalist,
which is kind of funny because I see myself as
a democratic socialism and other people don't write so like socialism, capitalism,
these kind of buzzwords. Is it's people kind of missed
the point. Lauren Bilbert was on the floor of the
(28:14):
house talking about our corrupt system in America and how
the winners keep winning, and she called it crony capitalism.
Someone else went down to the floor and called it
Lake stage capitalism. And it's like, Okay, we seem like
we have a problem. And if we want to use
words like socialism capitalism to describe them, whatever it is,
what it is. I will say, when you look around
(28:35):
the world at collectivist societies, whatever you want to call them,
I think they are doing really well. China has a
population over a billion people. They have lifted more people
out of poverty than almost the rest of the world combined.
Their cities are becoming cleaner. They're on the track to
(28:55):
have a cleaner energy economy than we are.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
More coal fired power play us right now than anywhere
else in the world.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
They're also building ten new nuclear reactors, which are also
clean energies as well. They're building Their air is going
to be cleaner than ours, Their water is going to
be cleaner than ours. They're going to have more healthcare,
They're cast their kids go to school.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
More than us. They're going to have more vacation times
than us.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Social scores they can be prevented from flying if.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
They have social scores are high enough. Credit reports, Yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
If I have a credit card and if I have
a five and a credit score, the airline is not
going to check my credit score before running my credit cards.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Also, that's they have a lot down.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
It is because you have choices when you have dictators.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
We also talked about reflective his societies. Also, they call
themselves if you look at the left wing governments of Europe,
in the scandin Navian countries, they call themselves socialists or
the social democrats.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
No, they don't, and they get parties, but they do
not have a socialist system.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Will say this about all these ideas.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
These ideas were created one hundred, two hundred, three hundred
years ago, oftentimes not with an imagination about what the
economy would do, what would go on, the complexity that
would happen, not only in certain nations the States, but
the world.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
If you want to look at socialism in terms.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Of the class orientation, about do you want your government
to be for the working class first or do you
want capitalism which is for capital owners first.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
That's not necessarily true capitalist one thing. You're talking about
socialism and capitalism being created as systems. You know, they
should have been able to project out the end result
of whatever they're doing.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
But that's you.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You're missing the complete wait wait wait, you're missing the
complete underpinning of capitalism versus socialism, and that is human nature.
People work for themselves. They work to protect themselves, for
their and their families, way harder than they're going to
work for anybody else. And I would urge you to
talk to anyone who ever lived on a commune in
(30:51):
the sixties and they will tell you what true socialism
where everybody is supposed to come and pitch in together
for the collective. What ends up happening is you have
a group of people that decide to create this utopian
society in a very small way on a commune. And
what happens is word gets out and here come the
slackers and the losers, and they want to come in
and reap the benefits of that society, but they don't
(31:13):
want to do the work. That is where socialism fails.
And at that point you have to become totalitarianism in
order to force the people to do the crappy jobs
that no one wants to do for no personal benefit.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
I mean, if first you gonna have these fun hypotheticals,
I can have fun hypothetical too, right, Well, late Stag's
capitalism or capitalism that you're saying is also failing.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
We say, we're trying to look out for people's interests.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
Right, Look what's happening in America, Look what's happening in
South Korea. Look at what's happening in Japan, Look at
the other countries that have rippled through capitalism.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Germany, people are starting.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
To op out of society almost they're like, you know, what.
I'm not gonna get married, you know what. I don't
want kids anymore. Things are too expensive. So capitalism is
actually leading to a point where I'm not even saying this.
It's the billionaires in the oligarchs and the millionaires who
are like, oh my god. If we don't figure out
if there's capitalism things, we might not have kids or
a population anymore. So if capitalism is so wonderful, why
is it feeling all across the world. But it's not.
(32:11):
The cheaters will always win.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
No, you you no.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
You use China as an example, So I'm going to
use China. China's got a billion people. They also enslaved
people to work in factories who happen to be millslim weekers.
They they don't treat their their people equitably. If you
say the wrong thing, you can still be disappeared. Just
ask the guy who owns Ali Baba in America. Trump,
he's not disappearing people.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
There are no people in labor here, journalists assuing uh.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Doing journalists, And he's going to lose. That's just the reality.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
He won those lawsuits, actually, and he got them to settle.
He got let me make.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
This way almost time We'll do this again. The reality
is is that socialism has failed over and over and
over and over again because of human names, because people
like to own stuff, because people are gonna work harder
to feed their family than they are gonna work ever
to feed someone else's family. You have to solve that
(33:09):
problem before I would ever buy into any socialist society ever.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
That we're at a time, I'm okay, I got on
my Twitter.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
I'm gonna have my last word there, Subscribe my Instagram, TikTok.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
I'm gonna put a video. We'll do this again. This
has been on a social media I've.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Enjoyed the heck out of this. We'll we'll dissect another
topic next time
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