April 7, 2022 • 37 mins
Hour 3 of Thuesday's A&G: Craig Gotwalls joins to discuss government healthcare and the national debt. Lanhee Chen joins to discuss Hunter Biden and more of the political world of Washington. Nancy Pelosi has covid, and Jack is worried that Biden is next. Aliens exist? and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington
Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty show,
I intended to get healthcare passed even if it costed
me reelection, which for a while looked like a Mike
(00:38):
that's a Barack Obama. The other day showed up the
White House for the anniversary of Obamacare passing, and I
know I celebrated at home. We had a cake and
balloons and that whole thing. It was just a wonderous occasion.
Here are the Republicans started calling an Obamacare as a pejorative,
thinking it was going to be politically damaging, and it
did you know? The tide turned over time and is
(00:58):
now something a name the embrace and works to his credit,
But the celebration of Obamacare leaves out some realities that
people are either unaware of or have forgotten. And we
thought we'd bring in the smartest guy around healthcare that
we know, Craig got Walls, Craig the healthcare guru. We
call him attorney at law and benefit consultant, Benefit Revolution.
(01:21):
You're probably still hungover from the party. Craig celebrating the
passage of Obamacare. Well, yeah, yeah, you know, obviously I'm hungover,
but at least I made it into the show. You know,
you're a valued partner there. He's he's just he's still hungover.
He turned into a Tiger Woods fanboy, and he's just following,
following Tiger around all day. Yeah, Joe is at the Masters,
a dream of his for as long as I've known him,
(01:43):
and I've known him over half his life to go
to the Masters. And he's there with his dead and brother,
which sounds pretty cool. And I'm sure we'll hear about
it on Monday or hopefully he's going to try to
call in. But they don't allow phones there, which is
pretty cool. I think that's a good thing. Oh I
wish more events didn't allow cell phone. I think that
should become a common thing. That'd be awesome, totally, totally
(02:03):
and it's cool. I mean, he COVID postponed him twice
on this deal, right, so it really is something long
awaited for him. So the celebration of the passage of Obamacare, Um, yeah,
first of all, where are we with the popularity of Obamacare?
As far as you know, it's pretty popular now, isn't it. Yeah, No,
I think it is. Yeah, that's that's why I don't
have it my fingertips Jack. But I think I think
(02:25):
if you ask the general public, they probably more than
fifty percent at this point approve of Obamacare, and you
know what they know of as Obamacare, right, Yeah, they
generally conflated as more people got coverage, you know, more
people got coverage, and so they just think of it
as a good thing. They don't realize, you know, what
they're paying for it, and they don't realize exactly what
(02:46):
it's done to healthcare. So you know, overall, it's kind
of like kind of like what happened with Medicare and Medicaid,
you know people that was a big contentious thing back
in the in the sixties, and now they're cemented in
and the idea of pulling away Medicare or Medicaid is
something that you can't even mention. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
it's very troubling to me that how really expensive programs
(03:06):
that don't do what they were intended to do, or
or doing you know, a whole bunch of things that
they weren't supposed to do, or just do it so unwell,
to do it so incredibly poorly, but there becoming grained
into our system and everything like that, and they don't
go away. Run through some of the things that Obamacare
was supposed to do, and then the reality of how
it turned out, because I was looking over your list
(03:27):
that you sent me and a lot of them, including
number one, are shocking. Well, yeah, and it's it's important
to you know, this is twelve years ago now, so
it's important to reset twelve years ago. Twelve years ago.
I know, isn't that that's unbelievable. But Obamacare was intended
to do two things. One reduce the cost of healthcare
and two make reduce the number of uninsured, you know,
(03:51):
maybe even eliminate the number of uninsured in America right
because we have all these safety nets. The idea was
that we're going to be able to reduce greatly or
eliminate the uninsured, reduced the cost of healthcare. So the
number one promise that I thought was so interesting and
it was it was political political or politifacts. The lie
of the year in twenty twelve, the lie of the
year was if you like your healthcare, you can keep it.
(04:12):
That Obama said that over and over over again. That
was that that might have been the biggest selling point. Hey,
if you don't want to do this, nothing's gonna change
for you. Everything's gonna be fine. If you like your healthcare,
you can keep it. How did that turn out? Well,
the latest data we have on that is twenty nineteen,
so it's three years old still. But as of twenty nineteen,
eighty seven percent of workers lost that healthcare that they
(04:32):
had that they liked. Eighty seven percent. So practically everybody. Yeah,
I would I would be shocked if it's not over
ninety percent now, but I just couldn't find anything recently
on it. So yeah, basically everybody's lost the healthcare that
they would have promised they could keep. Am I wrong?
My memory is that my deductibles were never even close
to this before Obamacare came along. Ah deductibles. Yeah, so
(04:56):
you know, promise promise number two, right, or promised number
I guess. Promise number two would have been the cost
of healthcare will go down. And so I even I
even linked it here because you can you can google
this and find it anywhere. Oh, Barack Obama said repeatedly,
once we pass this into law, the cost of healthcare
is going to go down by two thousand, five hundred
dollars per family. So when we're looking at healthcare, we
(05:18):
got to look at a minimum of two things on cost.
One is premium. So what have premium's done. Well, The
average premium in two thousand and nine, before the passage
of Obamacare, was thirteen thousand, three hundred and seventy five dollars.
The average premium for a family today is twenty four
thousand dollars. That's a seventy nine percent increase. Wow, now
that's just premium, Jack. You started with deductibles, as we know,
(05:42):
those are very important too, because that's what you pay
when you show up at the office. So the average
deductible in two thousand and nine was just over a
thousand dollars. Today that's only gone up sixty eight percent
to seventeen hundred dollars per person. That's one's not so
that's per person, which is important because the per family. Yeah,
that is that. Yeah, that's absolutely incredible because I lived
(06:04):
my life like most people where you didn't hardly pay
that much attention to your deductible. Well, now it's a
very very big deal unless you have a pretty bad
health situation. You're way into the year before it starts
covering anything. That's right, that's right. So on promise number one,
costs are going to go down. We're going to reign
in the cost of healthcare. It's just really important for
(06:25):
people to understand. Twelve years in, premiums are up eighty percent,
deductibles are up seventy percent. How you're you're an expert
on the dollars and cents of this and the math
on this, and you're really really good at it. You
your thing is not figuring out the political wins. But
I just kind of throw in, how in the hell
is this popular? I mean, how did it get more
(06:46):
popular as healthcare got more expensive? And it needs to
be studied by polycide people all around the world? What
the hell? Yeah? I think I think a lot of
it is just the cult of the cult of personality
and the popularity of President Obama. You know, they just
they don't people. This thing was you know, another thing
(07:06):
we didn't even talk about prior to this, but this
thing was twenty five hundred pages as a statute. It's
now over forty thousand pages and regulations. Whoa forty thousand
pages of regulations? Wow, So you know there's something like
less than one percent of us in the legal community
to have read the statute. None of us, zero of
(07:27):
us have read all the regulations because you can't. So
they just don't know what's in it. They don't know
what it's done, they don't know all of the circumstances.
So you couldn't keep your plan. Plans have darnear doubled
in cost, but the other you know, and to give
it it's fair due it did cover more people. Now,
I think I think it's arguable that it's underperformed in
(07:47):
that category, but the numbers on that are in two
thousand and nine, when we passed this into law, we
had fifty million uninsured, and as of today, the best
estimates are that in the United States we have thirty
one million in short and the most experts agree that
twenty to twenty four million people do now have coverage
due to Obamacare. But it's also important to remember a
(08:09):
bunch of those people, maybe as many as half, were
funneled into medicaid because that was cheaper, and Medicaid is
the coverage we've talked about here on the show before,
where university studies have shown that having medicaid might be
worse than having no coverage at all because it's so
few doctors in the care is so poor in that
system overall. So if you're going to give Obamacare any
(08:31):
credit at all, you could say, well, it almost cut
the number of uninsured in half. It cut it by
forty percent. Okay, how about weight times for the average
person out there. Yeah, Wait, times are a little harder
to get at because the studies are done not as frequently.
But the best analysis on this I've seen just looked
at the difference from twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen, which
was kind of the prime hit of Obamacare, and that
(08:54):
was a pretty significant increase because weight times in the
number of days went up thirty percent from eighteen days
to get a primary care visit in twenty fourteen to
twenty four days in twenty seventeen. More importantly, on that topic,
I feel I feel like I've noticed that irl also
in my real life where I've got to make an
appointment for me or my kids. It's like shocking to
(09:15):
me when when it's going to be and I didn't
you used to be you know, fairly quick, and now
it's like what not till on different month? Well, and
then that's that's another good point. Does I just looked
at primary care visits for this to keep it simple,
So primary care visits are up at least thirty percent,
But if you want to talk about specialists or mental
health experts, you could be three to six months out
(09:39):
if you can even find an expert that'll, for example,
treat certain mental health issues for children. That some of
those people just don't exist because because the way this
system works, the reimbursements within the government care programs are
so incredibly low that people opt out of those fields
or they just say, oh nope, I no longer do
insurance for that kind of care. So I know you
(10:01):
got into I know you got into how in because
I want to get to this before we run out
of time. I know you got into how inflation you know,
at the current eight nine percent or whatever is going
to affect all this. Well, then that's a frightening thing
because over the last fifteen to seventeen years, healthcare has
run at three times the rate of typical inflation. So
you know, when we've had these two percent inflation years,
(10:22):
healthcare has been running at six I fear that when
now that we're looking at eight percent inflation annually. I
shudder to think at what this is going to do
to healthcare now. I have not seen anything coming out
at twenty four percent. You know, year over year premium increases,
but it's not going to surprise me if we see
the ten to twenty percent increase this for twenty twenty three. Poo.
(10:44):
It's just so much there's so much more pressure on
healthcare than there is on general goods and all that
stuff that's that's causing inflation, and the regular economy is
just going to be exacerbated in healthcare with the technology
we rely on from overseas, pay raises, etc. Wow. I
should ask you this ahead of time. Do you have
time to stick around if I want to talk to
(11:05):
you when we come back? Sure, because I got a
question for you, and I know you have the answer,
and I know what the answer is and I'm not
looking forward to hearing it. But I think our listeners
should of where you think this is headed and how
soon in terms of government just taking over healthcare and
then you want expensive So stick around for that. That's
coming up. Armstrong and Getty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
(11:48):
We're talking with Craig Gottwill's Craig the healthcare Door, who
we've had on for years now in the Armstrong and
Getty show around anything about healthcare, and we'll give you
some contact information here at the end if you want
to follow Craig's thoughts anytime a giant story breaks on
this sort of stuff, because man, healthcare has gotten expensive
and complicated. And before we jump into that, how about
(12:11):
the horror out of Ukraine. You following this very closely? Yeah,
I am Jack. It's it's it's hard to it's hard
to believe, but it I just think in the you know,
as a as a guy who doesn't follow that stuff
and follows healthcare and the way people have made decisions
around economics within a country, it just it just really
shows that, you know, human nature doesn't change. Governments don't
(12:34):
change what you know, meglomaniacs out there countries do things
in their own self interest and power given to these
to these leaders in unchecked ways, it results in horrors,
whether you're talking about war or healthcare or uh, you know,
inflation or whatever. I mean, I'm just the way I roll, Jack.
(12:54):
I got the debt clock up on my desktop all
the time. I just take a look at it. Right now,
we're at five hundred and six thousand dollars of unfunded
liabilities per citizen. So if each of us cuts a
check for five hundred and six thousand, US will be solvent.
But it's not so simple because last year twenty twenty one,
fifty seven percent of citizens didn't pay federal taxes. Right,
(13:17):
So if you break that down to tax we each
owe a milldoll Each taxpayer owes a milldoll to make
this country solvent. Again, it's just it's never going to happen,
and that the problem becomes when how how much longer
can we stave off this collapse? And I don't I
don't know the answer. I mean, I don't think anybody
nobody knows. But there is a limit. There is a limit,
if a limit. If something can't go on, it will stop.
(13:40):
I don't remember what principle that is, who said it,
but it is true if something can't continue, and you
can't continue to outspend what you make forever. So if
something can't go on, it will stop. And it's just
a matter of when. And yeah, we'll see. And speaking
of giving more power, you have been saying for years
on the show before when we were arguing over whether
(14:02):
Obamacare should be a thing, that this was going to
lead us toward some sort of government takeover of healthcare
like they have in Great Britain, which I looked up
the headline I knew I had seen a couple of
weeks ago private healthcare boom in Great Britain. Adds to
fear of two tier system in the UK because so
many people are dissatisfied with the government healthcare that if
(14:23):
you can afford it at all, you pay for the
private stuff. Are we headed towards some sort of private
or government takeover of healthcare? Do you still think that's
the map we're on? Yeah? You know, I've said publicly
on your show and other places for I think four
or five years now that I do think we will
be fully socialized by probably twenty twenty eight is the year,
(14:46):
because just because of the way elections work and cycles go,
I just think that's probably about the right time that
this will happen. You know, some of some of my colleagues,
and it would point out that we're already socialized. You know.
That was another another fact I wanted to share with
you on Obamacare. When Obamacare passed in twenty twenty nine,
fifty three percent of US healthcare costs were borne by taxpayers.
(15:08):
And people think that's high, but you got to remember
it's Medicare plus Medicaid plus the VA, plus state and
local and federal workers. And so when you cobbled all
that together, it was fifty three percent. So that was
twelve years ago. Today it's seventy one percent in blue
states and sixty seven percent federally. So you look at
that and say, well, gee, aren't we already socialized? Wow?
(15:28):
So you're only arguing over the last thirty percent. Yeah,
the last third exactly, So you know, you could make
an argument that we are socialized now. I have firmly
thought that Obamacare is going to lead to people talk
about medicare for all, but that's the old Morton Bailey
thing where they talk about that, but then they'll settle
for something less further back. And I think what this
(15:51):
will end up being as medicaid for all. And I
know healthcare geeks don't really know the difference. The difference
is Medicare is what we all pay into for our
elves as we age. That's that's the stuff we get
when we're over sixty five, So it's it's typically better,
it's typically a much better reimbursement for the provider, meaning
a lot more doctors will take better care, and it's
(16:11):
and it's an effective system for the most part. I mean,
you'll you'll talk to hospitals and doctors and say, oh, yeah,
we can make money on metacare all day long. But
the problem is Medicare costs significantly more than Medicaid, more
than double. Now some of that's due to age, but
some of it's also just due to reimbursements. So when
they talk about Medicare for all, what they'll ultimately do
is slide back into something like what's happened with Obamacare,
(16:32):
and it'll default into be like a sort of a
Medicaid for all. Well that Medicaid again. Now we're talking
about the system that reimburses so little that it might
even be better to not have it at all. And
I just think that's where this is headed. But I
do have some good news, Jack, I do have some
good dude. I think in light of the fact that
(16:53):
we've gone over thirty trillion in debt and that we're
now at want more than a million dollars of unfunded
liability for taxpay I just I think the economic collapse.
I think the the inflation and the the serious trouble
that we're going to be in for with food shortages.
I think that could change the intestinal fortitude of the country.
(17:14):
I think that we could see people say no, no, no no, no, no,
we're not taken on the additional thirty two trillion that
it would cost to provide universal healthcare. I hope you're right.
We're about out a time. I want to make sure
you pimp. What do you want people to follow you
at your website? Twitter? Where do you want people to
follow you? Oh yeah, benefit dash Revolution dot Com, Benefit
Dash Revolutions my website. You can hit me on Twitter.
(17:36):
I think it's Benny Revolution on Twitter, or just google
my name. Craig got Wals is what you google. He's
the smartest guy out there on this stuff. Thanks for
coming on, Craig got Walls. Armstrong and Getty, The Armstrong
(17:58):
and Getty Show. How long have you been wearing a
bad sheriff? Thirty eight years? In thirty eight years, have
you ever seen anything like what we're facing right now?
This is the worst I've ever seen it. Are you
go there's an Arizona sheriff saying in thirty eight years,
(18:19):
the border is the worst he's ever seen it. And
it has been bad many many times over the last
four decades, and it's the worst it's ever been. And
it's shocking how little coverage is this gets. I realized
we got the worst war since World War Two going on,
and that's a pretty big story. But this was going
on before Putin invaded Ukraine and it was not getting
(18:39):
any attention. Then we have breaking news. This is full
on breaking news. Donkey breaking news right here. I'm not
abusing the donkey over this one. Breaking news. How Speaker
Nancy Pelosi has COVID. She's tested positive. Now, two things
to that, Good morning. It's the new omicron variant, almost certainly,
(18:59):
which is incredibly mild compared to the original COVID. On
the other hand, she's ancient, and we all know that
COVID's way worse for ancient people. But here's the biggest
part of it. She was unmasked at an event with
President Biden yesterday. I don't know which event they're talking about. Now,
that's that's very unspecific. Was it an event where there
(19:23):
were ten people in the Oval office, or are you
talking about there were five hundred people in a giant room.
But if it was in any sort of room that
was even at all closed dish, then Biden's got it
because this new omicron variant spreads crazy easily, and Biden
getting like, I don't worry about I've had COVID twice,
(19:45):
I think, And I don't worry about it at all
for me or my kids. But if you're as old
and frail as Biden, getting COVID would be a big deal.
Like my parents get COVID, I'm worried about it. Joe
Biden gets COVID. It's a problem. So Nancy Pelosi has
tested positive. She was unmasked in a room with Joe
Biden yesterday. True in our stuffage of pressure, so I'm
(20:08):
sure the president gets tested multiple times a day. But
that is a boy. We don't need it an even
more weekend Joe Biden dealing with the problems of the world.
I'll tell you that. And if that wasn't a problem,
we have a teenage gorilla at a zoo who is
getting too much screen time. It's become obsessed with his iPad.
(20:31):
Gorilla parents are just as upset as regular parents are
all across America. Maybe we'll get into that story next hour.
I was going to do more on that, but I
used up all my time on Nancy's illness and possibly
Joe Biden's illness. I was pretty I have to apologize
Alex in the news room. I don't know if he's listening.
I apologize for the way I overreacted to your FBI
story the other day. Oh it's okay, I accept your apology.
(20:52):
I'm still waiting on Joe and Michael's I thought you
gave me a crap story and embarrassed me by making
me read it. It It turns out it's real information. Well
whether or not the facts are accurate, but the story
is real. So i'll explain that here in just a second.
But executive producer Mike Hanson just dug up. The picture
from yesterday looks like a fairly smallish room, and Nancy
(21:15):
Pelosi her head is what two and a half feet
from Joe Biden's head. From what I know about the
way the new omicron spreads, I don't think there's a
chance that anybody in that picture Schumer, Stenny Hoyer, I
can't I can't name all those people there and Joe
Biden have the omicron, so look for that being a
(21:38):
story that was yesterday afternoon, and Nancy's tested positive. So
I think we've laid out how this happened. If you
don't know, we'll catch up real fast. A freedom of
information request is powerful, and they got one going with
the government in particular there archive around UFOs and aliens,
(22:04):
and so a whole bunch of information has come out
in the last week, including like one story that a
spaceship actually crashed in Roswell back in the day and
they recovered three three foot tall bodies wearing silvery jumpsuits. Now,
just because some wacky farmer who was all hopped up,
hopped up on you know whatever payote he was smoking.
(22:28):
Just because he said it and it's in a letter
in the archives and it legitimately exists in the archives,
doesn't mean it actually happened. Do you understand what I'm
saying here? But here's William Loginess reporting on this yesterday
for Fox. A fifteen hundred page Pentagon report of previously
classified documents cataloging accounts from witnesses and victims claiming radiation burns,
(22:49):
brain damage, even paralysis after close encounters with UAPs. This
is the most hunting of all the reports from my perspective,
because it shows immunological deficiency, It shows altering human DNA,
it shows degradation on a cellular level. Good job by
Fox by finding a crackpot who's taking this completely seriously
(23:13):
to give it some credibility. What's a UAP? Anybody remember
what that is? I think we knew at the time.
UAP unidentified. I don't know. We'll figure that out. Look
that up, please, Alex William Lagenness goes On. Prepared in
twenty ten by the Pentagon's secret Advanced Aerospace Weapons Program.
The report was released only after a Freedom of information request.
(23:36):
It found sufficient incidents accidents have been accurately reported and
medical data acquired as to support a hypothesis that some
advanced systems are already deployed and opague to full US understandings.
This is from within the documents themselves. Unidentified alien phenomena
(23:57):
is that what he said? Aerial unidentified aerial phenomena is
what it UAP is, and I liked in the first
segment there where Lugon has said the witnesses and victims
or crackpots and liars, crazy people and pranksters trolling you
or their victims, and one more. The report says humans
(24:21):
have been injured from exposure to UFOs, from abductions at
perceived time, loss to sexual encounters, and unexplained pregnancies. We're
talking about an area where there's intervention with the human
being on such a level that it's beyond just negative
health effects. Some of this stuff is really bizarre. So
what's next. While this program ended in twenty ten, Corbell
(24:45):
says the Pentagon continues to study UFOs, and more military
videos and documents are likely to be released this year.
Unexplained pregnancies Come on now, yeah, Paul, that's what happened.
That's what happened. They ducted me, a name, pregnant, made
me or something. That's how. That's why I'm pregnant. That's it.
(25:05):
That's why store, and I'm sticking to it. Okay, Well,
I hope you enjoyed that. If you're a certain sort
of person, I guess you did. We are going to
who do we got coming up next? Oh? Umlan he Chim.
We love talking to long He and we haven't talked
politics that much today, so cool. Um, he's on the way.
He's great, stay with us, Armstrong and get the Armstrong
(25:42):
and Getty Show. So there's evidence that the President at
one point was office meets with Hunter and his brother
Jim Guaran DC. It's not accurate. That is not accurate.
So when Hunter Biden is emailing a lamb lord, please
have keys made available for new office mates Joe Biden,
(26:03):
Jill Biden, Jim Biden, that they were not office mates,
were not office mates. Okay, I gotta I gotta admit
I would find it somewhat. But the story was apparently
that they had keys made for Joe for the office.
I just I don't see a guy like Joe Biden
having had to carry a key for anything for like
(26:24):
forty years. Just I doubt that he has keys for anything.
But anyway, um, I do think the whole Hunter Biden
thing is for real. Well so does CBS Now and
the Washington Post in the New York Times and lots
of other people and people and where it goes, who knows.
Let's welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show. Lon Hea Chen.
He's a candidate for California State Controller for one thing,
(26:47):
But we've been having him on four years David and
Diane Stephie Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the
Hoover Institution, the director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University,
which is pretty impressive a lot. He welcomed to the
Armstrong and Getty Show once again. It's good to be
back with you, guys. Thanks. Not about the details of
the Hunter Biden thing, but don't you don't you think
them if there ever was a bloom on the rose,
(27:08):
the bloom is off the rows of the whole. Joe
Biden brings us back to normalcy. Grown ups are in charge.
No more craziness. That's gone, right, Yeah, I mean, I
think there's two reasons why it's gone, guys. Number one
is because of Biden's own, you know, kind of his
own behavior in office, just in terms of what we're
(27:29):
seeing from him as somebody whom you know, sometimes it
looks like it's unclear whether he understands exactly what the
nature of the challenge is and whether it's because he
just doesn't pay much attention or because, you know, for
whatever reason it might be, it does feel a little
bit like sometimes he doesn't grasp the gravity of the situation.
Give an example, when he off handedly says that Vladimir
(27:52):
Putin's got to go. You know, it means something when
an American president says that. It's not just a throwaway comment.
So you have to wonder, you know, Joe, what's part
of I think what made Joe Biden appealing at some
point in his career was that he kind of just
said what came to mind. But that's not really something
that in this situation, I think serves them all that well.
(28:13):
The second reason why the bloom is off the Rose
guys is because of just the policy decisions that he's
made and the various things that he has said about
you know what it is that you know, we have
to do with respect to all sorts of different issues, right,
massive economic stimulus that's resulting in big time inflation, you know,
(28:33):
various things we're seeing in domestic policy that really are
far left of center. When it comes to what we expected,
you know, we expected a moderate, We got a far
left progressive. And so I think for those reasons, people
are kind of saying, huh, this wasn't exactly what we expected. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely true. And I wanted to get into policy since
that's your Wheelhouse, Is there anything that would launch Well,
(28:54):
I did see us up all the other day that
had immigration as the third biggest priority of American voters.
It was inflation, economy, which are so close to the
same for one and two, and then the border. It
gets so little coverage in the news. It's hard for
me to know how much people care. I suppose you
see these numbers from time to time. Is the border
on people's minds because we're we're hearing from all kinds
(29:16):
of different fronts that it's the worst it's been in decades? Yeah,
I think Jack, there's a There's two different things there
too as well. Number one is how much the media
covers it or doesn't cover it. I think if the
media wanted to cover it, they could have a story
about what's happening on the border and the lack of
kind of efforts to secure our southern border. You would
(29:37):
probably see that, you know, pretty often. The other thing
I think is that immigration is kind of a as
an issue. Interestingly enough, it tends to correlate with the
state of the economy. So when the state of the
economy is perceived to be unsteady for whatever reason, immigration
tends to rise an issue as well, because people directly relate,
(29:58):
you know, let's say, for example, competition for labor supply
with the state of the economy, and if the economy
is relatively weak or let's just say precarious, the labor
market's pretty strong right now. Anyone who largely wants a
job can probably find one. But the problem is when
you've got inflation running at levels it's running at, people
have a little bit of uncertainty about the economy and
(30:18):
about where it's headed. Some people think we're actually headed
for recession, and if that's the case, then immigration becomes
a more salient issue. So Jack, I think what you're
seeing is people express that concern about immigration in part
because of some unsteadiness we're seeing in the economic numbers.
And as you said, one and two, issues one and
two are the economy and inflation, So we know where
(30:39):
people said they're at. The Republicans will take back the House,
and that's not that's surprising historically in recent cycles. That's
just the way it works, and there are extra reasons
that's going to be true this time around. But as
far as the presidency, and I'm operating on the assumption
Joe Biden is not going to be the anominee in
one way or another. Is there a chance for some
sort of political reset of some sort where we get Yeah,
(31:05):
because Biden wasn't elected for any normal reason. He was
elected because not Trump and then Hilary and and and
Trump were the two most unpopular candidates in our nation's history.
So is there a chance for some sort of I
don't know, normal like presidential election, I don't know, you know,
I part of me wants to wish we could get
(31:25):
back to that, you know, where where we actually had
debates over things like tax policy or what would happen
in terms of our policy around the world. I wonder
if that um trains left the station on the nature
of our politics. Wow, that's a guy like you, A
serious guy like you, and and an optimistic guy. I
(31:46):
haven't talked to him for several years now to say that,
I find that pretty striking. So well, it's it's a
function I think of who ends up running right and
uh and and who ends up being sort of involved
in the contest. I think if it's you know that
there's a certain category of politician whom if they ran
for president and both sides kind of had nominees of
(32:06):
that ilk you could see things going back. But the
problem is, I think as you think about, you know,
who the leading contenders might be on either side, I
have great doubt that you would see that, you know,
sort of retro kind of campaign. I think in some
ways we're moving into a new era. And by the way,
it's not just because of the candidates. It's because of
how people consume media now, right, I mean you think
(32:28):
about social media. Social media has accelerated the way and
the nature of every news cycle, and it's so much
easier for stories to catch on like wildfire than it
was in the day and age when you had some
major television networks and you had some big newspapers and
that was about it. So it's not just because of
the candidates that things have changed. It's also just because
(32:48):
of the nature of the consumption of media and how
stories kind of do or don't take off. Do you
mean that train has left the station for now or
like permanently, because I mean, if I don't know, I
don't know. I mean I wish I could say it's
for now, but some of these trends are are not
going away anytime soon, right, I mean do we see
(33:10):
ourselves moving away from a social media world? I don't know,
do we see ourselves You know, candidates increasingly need to
say and do things that are you know, sort of
attention grabbing in this era where people have very very
short attention spans, and so that adds to the likelihood
that you're going to get candidates encouraged to run for
these high offices. Who are you know, kind of more sensationalistic.
(33:31):
I mean, I you know, in my own campaign, I
really try not to go there, you know. I try
to be reasonable and talk about the reasons why we
need better accountability for state spending in California, and you know,
have the sexiest issues. But from my kind of an office,
in this kind of a campaign, I can do that.
But I know the pressures that are on friends and
colleagues who are running for other kinds of offices, and
(33:51):
you know, all the pressure, in my view, is in
the wrong directions in terms of the kind of issue
that they need to engage. In a win, I guarantee
you would raise more money today. You would raise more
money a day than you've raised in any day. If
you said, you know, who's a war criminal? Joe Biden
is a war criminal. Right, that would be retweeted I
don't know how many thousand times, and you'd raise the
post money of your career. Yeah. Unfortunately, my tweet about
(34:13):
the disability insurance scandal did not quite make the make
the top ten list today. So no, you're you're absolutely right.
I think that there is a definite desire and an
intention sometimes that politicians feel in need to just say
wacky stuff because it does get a lot of attention,
you know, And that's not that's not the kind of
politics that I grew up in, but it is the
(34:34):
nature of our politics today and it is what drives
um you know, uh in sort of engagement, and at
the end of the day, that's what politicians want. They
want engagement. Yeah. Well, I've been a listener reading a
lot of Sarah Izeger of The Dispatch has been writing
about this a lot that the changes in Yeah, and
she's been great on this. The campaign finance reform that
(34:54):
we thought would make politics better have made it worse
and ving having more are small donations from people who
just want to see you say something crazy on Twitter
or a cable news show has not taken us the
right direction. No, I agree. I agree. It's too bad.
It's really too bad. Any chance that changes, any chance
we go back to some people are calling for the
(35:15):
return of the smoke filled rooms. You don't let the
parties decide candidates and that sort of thing. Well that
you know that that wasn't so great either, right, because
it wasn't the kind of process that we would hope,
you know, I think in America we would pride ourselves
on transparency, on processes where you understand kind of who
comes out of it, and public voices can be heard
(35:37):
and considered. I do think if we had stronger political parties,
and that may sound strange because but the kinds of parties,
you know, the party at labels and identifications are strong,
but the institutions of the political parties aren't strong anymore. No,
no, no no, it's whoever whoever gets the nomination, all of
a sudden you adopt their policies. That's not the way,
it's the way it's supposed to work. And and it
used to be that the party stood for things and
(35:58):
candidates kind of you know, either adhere to that or not.
But nowadays you don't have that strength of association of
the party anymore. If you had a stronger political party mechanism,
stronger Democratic and Republican parties that might have more control,
for example, over presidential primary processes, you wouldn't have these
long drawn out primary fights that you know, unfortunately many
(36:18):
times end up devolving into who can be the most liberal,
who could be the most most conservative, And I don't
think that generates presidential candidates at the end of the
day who are going to govern from the middle out.
And I think ultimately that's probably what we need as
a country to get back to the kind of normalcy
you're talking about. Lanhe Chen knows what he's talking about
for all kinds of different reasons, including being involved at
(36:39):
the highest levels of major campaigns, and he's a candidate
for California state Controller. You were endorsed by the Chronicle.
Is that right? I wasn't endorsed by the chronicle. I
had There was a column we read from the common writer. Yeah,
it was an opinion writer. He basically said, hey, listen,
one position where you need, where you need a watchdog,
you know in government in California is a controller. And
(37:01):
that's why you probably want to think about electing a
Republican so as I like to say, Jack, we need
we need a watchdog in this office, not a lapdog.
There you go. That's pretty often, for too often we've
had that. Yeah, that's pretty awesome when somebody in the
chronicle San Francisco Chronicle says, this is a Republican you
need long each and hey, thanks for your time today.
I appreciate it. That's the most interesting thing I've heard today.
A serious guy like that who doesn't say crazy stuff
(37:24):
just you know, for fun. That train has left the
station of us having serious discussions. Wow, Armstrong and Getty
From the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington
Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty Armstrong and Getty show,
I intended to get healthcare passed even if it costed
me reelection, which for a while looked like a Mike
(00:38):
that's a Barack Obama. The other day showed up the
White House for the anniversary of Obamacare passing, and I
know I celebrated at home. We had a cake and
balloons and that whole thing. It was just a wonderous occasion.
Here are the Republicans started calling an Obamacare as a pejorative,
thinking it was going to be politically damaging, and it
did you know? The tide turned over time and is
(00:58):
now something a name the embrace and works to his credit,
But the celebration of Obamacare leaves out some realities that
people are either unaware of or have forgotten. And we
thought we'd bring in the smartest guy around healthcare that
we know, Craig got Walls, Craig the healthcare guru. We
call him attorney at law and benefit consultant, Benefit Revolution.
(01:21):
You're probably still hungover from the party. Craig celebrating the
passage of Obamacare. Well, yeah, yeah, you know, obviously I'm hungover,
but at least I made it into the show. You know,
you're a valued partner there. He's he's just he's still hungover.
He turned into a Tiger Woods fanboy, and he's just following,
following Tiger around all day. Yeah, Joe is at the Masters,
a dream of his for as long as I've known him,
(01:43):
and I've known him over half his life to go
to the Masters. And he's there with his dead and brother,
which sounds pretty cool. And I'm sure we'll hear about
it on Monday or hopefully he's going to try to
call in. But they don't allow phones there, which is
pretty cool. I think that's a good thing. Oh I
wish more events didn't allow cell phone. I think that
should become a common thing. That'd be awesome, totally, totally
(02:03):
and it's cool. I mean, he COVID postponed him twice
on this deal, right, so it really is something long
awaited for him. So the celebration of the passage of Obamacare, Um, yeah,
first of all, where are we with the popularity of Obamacare?
As far as you know, it's pretty popular now, isn't it. Yeah, No,
I think it is. Yeah, that's that's why I don't
have it my fingertips Jack. But I think I think
(02:25):
if you ask the general public, they probably more than
fifty percent at this point approve of Obamacare, and you
know what they know of as Obamacare, right, Yeah, they
generally conflated as more people got coverage, you know, more
people got coverage, and so they just think of it
as a good thing. They don't realize, you know, what
they're paying for it, and they don't realize exactly what
(02:46):
it's done to healthcare. So you know, overall, it's kind
of like kind of like what happened with Medicare and Medicaid,
you know people that was a big contentious thing back
in the in the sixties, and now they're cemented in
and the idea of pulling away Medicare or Medicaid is
something that you can't even mention. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
it's very troubling to me that how really expensive programs
(03:06):
that don't do what they were intended to do, or
or doing you know, a whole bunch of things that
they weren't supposed to do, or just do it so unwell,
to do it so incredibly poorly, but there becoming grained
into our system and everything like that, and they don't
go away. Run through some of the things that Obamacare
was supposed to do, and then the reality of how
it turned out, because I was looking over your list
(03:27):
that you sent me and a lot of them, including
number one, are shocking. Well, yeah, and it's it's important
to you know, this is twelve years ago now, so
it's important to reset twelve years ago. Twelve years ago.
I know, isn't that that's unbelievable. But Obamacare was intended
to do two things. One reduce the cost of healthcare
and two make reduce the number of uninsured, you know,
(03:51):
maybe even eliminate the number of uninsured in America right
because we have all these safety nets. The idea was
that we're going to be able to reduce greatly or
eliminate the uninsured, reduced the cost of healthcare. So the
number one promise that I thought was so interesting and
it was it was political political or politifacts. The lie
of the year in twenty twelve, the lie of the
year was if you like your healthcare, you can keep it.
(04:12):
That Obama said that over and over over again. That
was that that might have been the biggest selling point. Hey,
if you don't want to do this, nothing's gonna change
for you. Everything's gonna be fine. If you like your healthcare,
you can keep it. How did that turn out? Well,
the latest data we have on that is twenty nineteen,
so it's three years old still. But as of twenty nineteen,
eighty seven percent of workers lost that healthcare that they
(04:32):
had that they liked. Eighty seven percent. So practically everybody. Yeah,
I would I would be shocked if it's not over
ninety percent now, but I just couldn't find anything recently
on it. So yeah, basically everybody's lost the healthcare that
they would have promised they could keep. Am I wrong?
My memory is that my deductibles were never even close
to this before Obamacare came along. Ah deductibles. Yeah, so
(04:56):
you know, promise promise number two, right, or promised number
I guess. Promise number two would have been the cost
of healthcare will go down. And so I even I
even linked it here because you can you can google
this and find it anywhere. Oh, Barack Obama said repeatedly,
once we pass this into law, the cost of healthcare
is going to go down by two thousand, five hundred
dollars per family. So when we're looking at healthcare, we
(05:18):
got to look at a minimum of two things on cost.
One is premium. So what have premium's done. Well, The
average premium in two thousand and nine, before the passage
of Obamacare, was thirteen thousand, three hundred and seventy five dollars.
The average premium for a family today is twenty four
thousand dollars. That's a seventy nine percent increase. Wow, now
that's just premium, Jack. You started with deductibles, as we know,
(05:42):
those are very important too, because that's what you pay
when you show up at the office. So the average
deductible in two thousand and nine was just over a
thousand dollars. Today that's only gone up sixty eight percent
to seventeen hundred dollars per person. That's one's not so
that's per person, which is important because the per family. Yeah,
that is that. Yeah, that's absolutely incredible because I lived
(06:04):
my life like most people where you didn't hardly pay
that much attention to your deductible. Well, now it's a
very very big deal unless you have a pretty bad
health situation. You're way into the year before it starts
covering anything. That's right, that's right. So on promise number one,
costs are going to go down. We're going to reign
in the cost of healthcare. It's just really important for
(06:25):
people to understand. Twelve years in, premiums are up eighty percent,
deductibles are up seventy percent. How you're you're an expert
on the dollars and cents of this and the math
on this, and you're really really good at it. You
your thing is not figuring out the political wins. But
I just kind of throw in, how in the hell
is this popular? I mean, how did it get more
(06:46):
popular as healthcare got more expensive? And it needs to
be studied by polycide people all around the world? What
the hell? Yeah? I think I think a lot of
it is just the cult of the cult of personality
and the popularity of President Obama. You know, they just
they don't people. This thing was you know, another thing
(07:06):
we didn't even talk about prior to this, but this
thing was twenty five hundred pages as a statute. It's
now over forty thousand pages and regulations. Whoa forty thousand
pages of regulations? Wow, So you know there's something like
less than one percent of us in the legal community
to have read the statute. None of us, zero of
(07:27):
us have read all the regulations because you can't. So
they just don't know what's in it. They don't know
what it's done, they don't know all of the circumstances.
So you couldn't keep your plan. Plans have darnear doubled
in cost, but the other you know, and to give
it it's fair due it did cover more people. Now,
I think I think it's arguable that it's underperformed in
(07:47):
that category, but the numbers on that are in two
thousand and nine, when we passed this into law, we
had fifty million uninsured, and as of today, the best
estimates are that in the United States we have thirty
one million in short and the most experts agree that
twenty to twenty four million people do now have coverage
due to Obamacare. But it's also important to remember a
(08:09):
bunch of those people, maybe as many as half, were
funneled into medicaid because that was cheaper, and Medicaid is
the coverage we've talked about here on the show before,
where university studies have shown that having medicaid might be
worse than having no coverage at all because it's so
few doctors in the care is so poor in that
system overall. So if you're going to give Obamacare any
(08:31):
credit at all, you could say, well, it almost cut
the number of uninsured in half. It cut it by
forty percent. Okay, how about weight times for the average
person out there. Yeah, Wait, times are a little harder
to get at because the studies are done not as frequently.
But the best analysis on this I've seen just looked
at the difference from twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen, which
was kind of the prime hit of Obamacare, and that
(08:54):
was a pretty significant increase because weight times in the
number of days went up thirty percent from eighteen days
to get a primary care visit in twenty fourteen to
twenty four days in twenty seventeen. More importantly, on that topic,
I feel I feel like I've noticed that irl also
in my real life where I've got to make an
appointment for me or my kids. It's like shocking to
(09:15):
me when when it's going to be and I didn't
you used to be you know, fairly quick, and now
it's like what not till on different month? Well, and
then that's that's another good point. Does I just looked
at primary care visits for this to keep it simple,
So primary care visits are up at least thirty percent,
But if you want to talk about specialists or mental
health experts, you could be three to six months out
(09:39):
if you can even find an expert that'll, for example,
treat certain mental health issues for children. That some of
those people just don't exist because because the way this
system works, the reimbursements within the government care programs are
so incredibly low that people opt out of those fields
or they just say, oh nope, I no longer do
insurance for that kind of care. So I know you
(10:01):
got into I know you got into how in because
I want to get to this before we run out
of time. I know you got into how inflation you know,
at the current eight nine percent or whatever is going
to affect all this. Well, then that's a frightening thing
because over the last fifteen to seventeen years, healthcare has
run at three times the rate of typical inflation. So
you know, when we've had these two percent inflation years,
(10:22):
healthcare has been running at six I fear that when
now that we're looking at eight percent inflation annually. I
shudder to think at what this is going to do
to healthcare now. I have not seen anything coming out
at twenty four percent. You know, year over year premium increases,
but it's not going to surprise me if we see
the ten to twenty percent increase this for twenty twenty three. Poo.
(10:44):
It's just so much there's so much more pressure on
healthcare than there is on general goods and all that
stuff that's that's causing inflation, and the regular economy is
just going to be exacerbated in healthcare with the technology
we rely on from overseas, pay raises, etc. Wow. I
should ask you this ahead of time. Do you have
time to stick around if I want to talk to
(11:05):
you when we come back? Sure, because I got a
question for you, and I know you have the answer,
and I know what the answer is and I'm not
looking forward to hearing it. But I think our listeners
should of where you think this is headed and how
soon in terms of government just taking over healthcare and
then you want expensive So stick around for that. That's
coming up. Armstrong and Getty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
(11:48):
We're talking with Craig Gottwill's Craig the healthcare Door, who
we've had on for years now in the Armstrong and
Getty show around anything about healthcare, and we'll give you
some contact information here at the end if you want
to follow Craig's thoughts anytime a giant story breaks on
this sort of stuff, because man, healthcare has gotten expensive
and complicated. And before we jump into that, how about
(12:11):
the horror out of Ukraine. You following this very closely? Yeah,
I am Jack. It's it's it's hard to it's hard
to believe, but it I just think in the you know,
as a as a guy who doesn't follow that stuff
and follows healthcare and the way people have made decisions
around economics within a country, it just it just really
shows that, you know, human nature doesn't change. Governments don't
(12:34):
change what you know, meglomaniacs out there countries do things
in their own self interest and power given to these
to these leaders in unchecked ways, it results in horrors,
whether you're talking about war or healthcare or uh, you know,
inflation or whatever. I mean, I'm just the way I roll, Jack.
(12:54):
I got the debt clock up on my desktop all
the time. I just take a look at it. Right now,
we're at five hundred and six thousand dollars of unfunded
liabilities per citizen. So if each of us cuts a
check for five hundred and six thousand, US will be solvent.
But it's not so simple because last year twenty twenty one,
fifty seven percent of citizens didn't pay federal taxes. Right,
(13:17):
So if you break that down to tax we each
owe a milldoll Each taxpayer owes a milldoll to make
this country solvent. Again, it's just it's never going to happen,
and that the problem becomes when how how much longer
can we stave off this collapse? And I don't I
don't know the answer. I mean, I don't think anybody
nobody knows. But there is a limit. There is a limit,
if a limit. If something can't go on, it will stop.
(13:40):
I don't remember what principle that is, who said it,
but it is true if something can't continue, and you
can't continue to outspend what you make forever. So if
something can't go on, it will stop. And it's just
a matter of when. And yeah, we'll see. And speaking
of giving more power, you have been saying for years
on the show before when we were arguing over whether
(14:02):
Obamacare should be a thing, that this was going to
lead us toward some sort of government takeover of healthcare
like they have in Great Britain, which I looked up
the headline I knew I had seen a couple of
weeks ago private healthcare boom in Great Britain. Adds to
fear of two tier system in the UK because so
many people are dissatisfied with the government healthcare that if
(14:23):
you can afford it at all, you pay for the
private stuff. Are we headed towards some sort of private
or government takeover of healthcare? Do you still think that's
the map we're on? Yeah? You know, I've said publicly
on your show and other places for I think four
or five years now that I do think we will
be fully socialized by probably twenty twenty eight is the year,
(14:46):
because just because of the way elections work and cycles go,
I just think that's probably about the right time that
this will happen. You know, some of some of my colleagues,
and it would point out that we're already socialized. You know.
That was another another fact I wanted to share with
you on Obamacare. When Obamacare passed in twenty twenty nine,
fifty three percent of US healthcare costs were borne by taxpayers.
(15:08):
And people think that's high, but you got to remember
it's Medicare plus Medicaid plus the VA, plus state and
local and federal workers. And so when you cobbled all
that together, it was fifty three percent. So that was
twelve years ago. Today it's seventy one percent in blue
states and sixty seven percent federally. So you look at
that and say, well, gee, aren't we already socialized? Wow?
(15:28):
So you're only arguing over the last thirty percent. Yeah,
the last third exactly, So you know, you could make
an argument that we are socialized now. I have firmly
thought that Obamacare is going to lead to people talk
about medicare for all, but that's the old Morton Bailey
thing where they talk about that, but then they'll settle
for something less further back. And I think what this
(15:51):
will end up being as medicaid for all. And I
know healthcare geeks don't really know the difference. The difference
is Medicare is what we all pay into for our
elves as we age. That's that's the stuff we get
when we're over sixty five, So it's it's typically better,
it's typically a much better reimbursement for the provider, meaning
a lot more doctors will take better care, and it's
(16:11):
and it's an effective system for the most part. I mean,
you'll you'll talk to hospitals and doctors and say, oh, yeah,
we can make money on metacare all day long. But
the problem is Medicare costs significantly more than Medicaid, more
than double. Now some of that's due to age, but
some of it's also just due to reimbursements. So when
they talk about Medicare for all, what they'll ultimately do
is slide back into something like what's happened with Obamacare,
(16:32):
and it'll default into be like a sort of a
Medicaid for all. Well that Medicaid again. Now we're talking
about the system that reimburses so little that it might
even be better to not have it at all. And
I just think that's where this is headed. But I
do have some good news, Jack, I do have some
good dude. I think in light of the fact that
(16:53):
we've gone over thirty trillion in debt and that we're
now at want more than a million dollars of unfunded
liability for taxpay I just I think the economic collapse.
I think the the inflation and the the serious trouble
that we're going to be in for with food shortages.
I think that could change the intestinal fortitude of the country.
(17:14):
I think that we could see people say no, no, no no, no, no,
we're not taken on the additional thirty two trillion that
it would cost to provide universal healthcare. I hope you're right.
We're about out a time. I want to make sure
you pimp. What do you want people to follow you
at your website? Twitter? Where do you want people to
follow you? Oh yeah, benefit dash Revolution dot Com, Benefit
Dash Revolutions my website. You can hit me on Twitter.
(17:36):
I think it's Benny Revolution on Twitter, or just google
my name. Craig got Wals is what you google. He's
the smartest guy out there on this stuff. Thanks for
coming on, Craig got Walls. Armstrong and Getty, The Armstrong
(17:58):
and Getty Show. How long have you been wearing a
bad sheriff? Thirty eight years? In thirty eight years, have
you ever seen anything like what we're facing right now?
This is the worst I've ever seen it. Are you
go there's an Arizona sheriff saying in thirty eight years,
(18:19):
the border is the worst he's ever seen it. And
it has been bad many many times over the last
four decades, and it's the worst it's ever been. And
it's shocking how little coverage is this gets. I realized
we got the worst war since World War Two going on,
and that's a pretty big story. But this was going
on before Putin invaded Ukraine and it was not getting
(18:39):
any attention. Then we have breaking news. This is full
on breaking news. Donkey breaking news right here. I'm not
abusing the donkey over this one. Breaking news. How Speaker
Nancy Pelosi has COVID. She's tested positive. Now, two things
to that, Good morning. It's the new omicron variant, almost certainly,
(18:59):
which is incredibly mild compared to the original COVID. On
the other hand, she's ancient, and we all know that
COVID's way worse for ancient people. But here's the biggest
part of it. She was unmasked at an event with
President Biden yesterday. I don't know which event they're talking about. Now,
that's that's very unspecific. Was it an event where there
(19:23):
were ten people in the Oval office, or are you
talking about there were five hundred people in a giant room.
But if it was in any sort of room that
was even at all closed dish, then Biden's got it
because this new omicron variant spreads crazy easily, and Biden
getting like, I don't worry about I've had COVID twice,
(19:45):
I think, And I don't worry about it at all
for me or my kids. But if you're as old
and frail as Biden, getting COVID would be a big deal.
Like my parents get COVID, I'm worried about it. Joe
Biden gets COVID. It's a problem. So Nancy Pelosi has
tested positive. She was unmasked in a room with Joe
Biden yesterday. True in our stuffage of pressure, so I'm
(20:08):
sure the president gets tested multiple times a day. But
that is a boy. We don't need it an even
more weekend Joe Biden dealing with the problems of the world.
I'll tell you that. And if that wasn't a problem,
we have a teenage gorilla at a zoo who is
getting too much screen time. It's become obsessed with his iPad.
(20:31):
Gorilla parents are just as upset as regular parents are
all across America. Maybe we'll get into that story next hour.
I was going to do more on that, but I
used up all my time on Nancy's illness and possibly
Joe Biden's illness. I was pretty I have to apologize
Alex in the news room. I don't know if he's listening.
I apologize for the way I overreacted to your FBI
story the other day. Oh it's okay, I accept your apology.
(20:52):
I'm still waiting on Joe and Michael's I thought you
gave me a crap story and embarrassed me by making
me read it. It It turns out it's real information. Well
whether or not the facts are accurate, but the story
is real. So i'll explain that here in just a second.
But executive producer Mike Hanson just dug up. The picture
from yesterday looks like a fairly smallish room, and Nancy
(21:15):
Pelosi her head is what two and a half feet
from Joe Biden's head. From what I know about the
way the new omicron spreads, I don't think there's a
chance that anybody in that picture Schumer, Stenny Hoyer, I
can't I can't name all those people there and Joe
Biden have the omicron, so look for that being a
(21:38):
story that was yesterday afternoon, and Nancy's tested positive. So
I think we've laid out how this happened. If you
don't know, we'll catch up real fast. A freedom of
information request is powerful, and they got one going with
the government in particular there archive around UFOs and aliens,
(22:04):
and so a whole bunch of information has come out
in the last week, including like one story that a
spaceship actually crashed in Roswell back in the day and
they recovered three three foot tall bodies wearing silvery jumpsuits. Now,
just because some wacky farmer who was all hopped up,
hopped up on you know whatever payote he was smoking.
(22:28):
Just because he said it and it's in a letter
in the archives and it legitimately exists in the archives,
doesn't mean it actually happened. Do you understand what I'm
saying here? But here's William Loginess reporting on this yesterday
for Fox. A fifteen hundred page Pentagon report of previously
classified documents cataloging accounts from witnesses and victims claiming radiation burns,
(22:49):
brain damage, even paralysis after close encounters with UAPs. This
is the most hunting of all the reports from my perspective,
because it shows immunological deficiency, It shows altering human DNA,
it shows degradation on a cellular level. Good job by
Fox by finding a crackpot who's taking this completely seriously
(23:13):
to give it some credibility. What's a UAP? Anybody remember
what that is? I think we knew at the time.
UAP unidentified. I don't know. We'll figure that out. Look
that up, please, Alex William Lagenness goes On. Prepared in
twenty ten by the Pentagon's secret Advanced Aerospace Weapons Program.
The report was released only after a Freedom of information request.
(23:36):
It found sufficient incidents accidents have been accurately reported and
medical data acquired as to support a hypothesis that some
advanced systems are already deployed and opague to full US understandings.
This is from within the documents themselves. Unidentified alien phenomena
(23:57):
is that what he said? Aerial unidentified aerial phenomena is
what it UAP is, and I liked in the first
segment there where Lugon has said the witnesses and victims
or crackpots and liars, crazy people and pranksters trolling you
or their victims, and one more. The report says humans
(24:21):
have been injured from exposure to UFOs, from abductions at
perceived time, loss to sexual encounters, and unexplained pregnancies. We're
talking about an area where there's intervention with the human
being on such a level that it's beyond just negative
health effects. Some of this stuff is really bizarre. So
what's next. While this program ended in twenty ten, Corbell
(24:45):
says the Pentagon continues to study UFOs, and more military
videos and documents are likely to be released this year.
Unexplained pregnancies Come on now, yeah, Paul, that's what happened.
That's what happened. They ducted me, a name, pregnant, made
me or something. That's how. That's why I'm pregnant. That's it.
(25:05):
That's why store, and I'm sticking to it. Okay, Well,
I hope you enjoyed that. If you're a certain sort
of person, I guess you did. We are going to
who do we got coming up next? Oh? Umlan he Chim.
We love talking to long He and we haven't talked
politics that much today, so cool. Um, he's on the way.
He's great, stay with us, Armstrong and get the Armstrong
(25:42):
and Getty Show. So there's evidence that the President at
one point was office meets with Hunter and his brother
Jim Guaran DC. It's not accurate. That is not accurate.
So when Hunter Biden is emailing a lamb lord, please
have keys made available for new office mates Joe Biden,
(26:03):
Jill Biden, Jim Biden, that they were not office mates,
were not office mates. Okay, I gotta I gotta admit
I would find it somewhat. But the story was apparently
that they had keys made for Joe for the office.
I just I don't see a guy like Joe Biden
having had to carry a key for anything for like
(26:24):
forty years. Just I doubt that he has keys for anything.
But anyway, um, I do think the whole Hunter Biden
thing is for real. Well so does CBS Now and
the Washington Post in the New York Times and lots
of other people and people and where it goes, who knows.
Let's welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show. Lon Hea Chen.
He's a candidate for California State Controller for one thing,
(26:47):
But we've been having him on four years David and
Diane Stephie Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the
Hoover Institution, the director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University,
which is pretty impressive a lot. He welcomed to the
Armstrong and Getty Show once again. It's good to be
back with you, guys. Thanks. Not about the details of
the Hunter Biden thing, but don't you don't you think
them if there ever was a bloom on the rose,
(27:08):
the bloom is off the rows of the whole. Joe
Biden brings us back to normalcy. Grown ups are in charge.
No more craziness. That's gone, right, Yeah, I mean, I
think there's two reasons why it's gone, guys. Number one
is because of Biden's own, you know, kind of his
own behavior in office, just in terms of what we're
(27:29):
seeing from him as somebody whom you know, sometimes it
looks like it's unclear whether he understands exactly what the
nature of the challenge is and whether it's because he
just doesn't pay much attention or because, you know, for
whatever reason it might be, it does feel a little
bit like sometimes he doesn't grasp the gravity of the situation.
Give an example, when he off handedly says that Vladimir
(27:52):
Putin's got to go. You know, it means something when
an American president says that. It's not just a throwaway comment.
So you have to wonder, you know, Joe, what's part
of I think what made Joe Biden appealing at some
point in his career was that he kind of just
said what came to mind. But that's not really something
that in this situation, I think serves them all that well.
(28:13):
The second reason why the bloom is off the Rose
guys is because of just the policy decisions that he's
made and the various things that he has said about
you know what it is that you know, we have
to do with respect to all sorts of different issues, right,
massive economic stimulus that's resulting in big time inflation, you know,
(28:33):
various things we're seeing in domestic policy that really are
far left of center. When it comes to what we expected,
you know, we expected a moderate, We got a far
left progressive. And so I think for those reasons, people
are kind of saying, huh, this wasn't exactly what we expected. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely true. And I wanted to get into policy since
that's your Wheelhouse, Is there anything that would launch Well,
(28:54):
I did see us up all the other day that
had immigration as the third biggest priority of American voters.
It was inflation, economy, which are so close to the
same for one and two, and then the border. It
gets so little coverage in the news. It's hard for
me to know how much people care. I suppose you
see these numbers from time to time. Is the border
on people's minds because we're we're hearing from all kinds
(29:16):
of different fronts that it's the worst it's been in decades? Yeah,
I think Jack, there's a There's two different things there
too as well. Number one is how much the media
covers it or doesn't cover it. I think if the
media wanted to cover it, they could have a story
about what's happening on the border and the lack of
kind of efforts to secure our southern border. You would
(29:37):
probably see that, you know, pretty often. The other thing
I think is that immigration is kind of a as
an issue. Interestingly enough, it tends to correlate with the
state of the economy. So when the state of the
economy is perceived to be unsteady for whatever reason, immigration
tends to rise an issue as well, because people directly relate,
(29:58):
you know, let's say, for example, competition for labor supply
with the state of the economy, and if the economy
is relatively weak or let's just say precarious, the labor
market's pretty strong right now. Anyone who largely wants a
job can probably find one. But the problem is when
you've got inflation running at levels it's running at, people
have a little bit of uncertainty about the economy and
(30:18):
about where it's headed. Some people think we're actually headed
for recession, and if that's the case, then immigration becomes
a more salient issue. So Jack, I think what you're
seeing is people express that concern about immigration in part
because of some unsteadiness we're seeing in the economic numbers.
And as you said, one and two, issues one and
two are the economy and inflation, So we know where
(30:39):
people said they're at. The Republicans will take back the House,
and that's not that's surprising historically in recent cycles. That's
just the way it works, and there are extra reasons
that's going to be true this time around. But as
far as the presidency, and I'm operating on the assumption
Joe Biden is not going to be the anominee in
one way or another. Is there a chance for some
sort of political reset of some sort where we get Yeah,
(31:05):
because Biden wasn't elected for any normal reason. He was
elected because not Trump and then Hilary and and and
Trump were the two most unpopular candidates in our nation's history.
So is there a chance for some sort of I
don't know, normal like presidential election, I don't know, you know,
I part of me wants to wish we could get
(31:25):
back to that, you know, where where we actually had
debates over things like tax policy or what would happen
in terms of our policy around the world. I wonder
if that um trains left the station on the nature
of our politics. Wow, that's a guy like you, A
serious guy like you, and and an optimistic guy. I
(31:46):
haven't talked to him for several years now to say that,
I find that pretty striking. So well, it's it's a
function I think of who ends up running right and
uh and and who ends up being sort of involved
in the contest. I think if it's you know that
there's a certain category of politician whom if they ran
for president and both sides kind of had nominees of
(32:06):
that ilk you could see things going back. But the
problem is, I think as you think about, you know,
who the leading contenders might be on either side, I
have great doubt that you would see that, you know,
sort of retro kind of campaign. I think in some
ways we're moving into a new era. And by the way,
it's not just because of the candidates. It's because of
how people consume media now, right, I mean you think
(32:28):
about social media. Social media has accelerated the way and
the nature of every news cycle, and it's so much
easier for stories to catch on like wildfire than it
was in the day and age when you had some
major television networks and you had some big newspapers and
that was about it. So it's not just because of
the candidates that things have changed. It's also just because
(32:48):
of the nature of the consumption of media and how
stories kind of do or don't take off. Do you
mean that train has left the station for now or
like permanently, because I mean, if I don't know, I
don't know. I mean I wish I could say it's
for now, but some of these trends are are not
going away anytime soon, right, I mean do we see
(33:10):
ourselves moving away from a social media world? I don't know,
do we see ourselves You know, candidates increasingly need to
say and do things that are you know, sort of
attention grabbing in this era where people have very very
short attention spans, and so that adds to the likelihood
that you're going to get candidates encouraged to run for
these high offices. Who are you know, kind of more sensationalistic.
(33:31):
I mean, I you know, in my own campaign, I
really try not to go there, you know. I try
to be reasonable and talk about the reasons why we
need better accountability for state spending in California, and you know,
have the sexiest issues. But from my kind of an office,
in this kind of a campaign, I can do that.
But I know the pressures that are on friends and
colleagues who are running for other kinds of offices, and
(33:51):
you know, all the pressure, in my view, is in
the wrong directions in terms of the kind of issue
that they need to engage. In a win, I guarantee
you would raise more money today. You would raise more
money a day than you've raised in any day. If
you said, you know, who's a war criminal? Joe Biden
is a war criminal. Right, that would be retweeted I
don't know how many thousand times, and you'd raise the
post money of your career. Yeah. Unfortunately, my tweet about
(34:13):
the disability insurance scandal did not quite make the make
the top ten list today. So no, you're you're absolutely right.
I think that there is a definite desire and an
intention sometimes that politicians feel in need to just say
wacky stuff because it does get a lot of attention,
you know, And that's not that's not the kind of
politics that I grew up in, but it is the
(34:34):
nature of our politics today and it is what drives
um you know, uh in sort of engagement, and at
the end of the day, that's what politicians want. They
want engagement. Yeah. Well, I've been a listener reading a
lot of Sarah Izeger of The Dispatch has been writing
about this a lot that the changes in Yeah, and
she's been great on this. The campaign finance reform that
(34:54):
we thought would make politics better have made it worse
and ving having more are small donations from people who
just want to see you say something crazy on Twitter
or a cable news show has not taken us the
right direction. No, I agree. I agree. It's too bad.
It's really too bad. Any chance that changes, any chance
we go back to some people are calling for the
(35:15):
return of the smoke filled rooms. You don't let the
parties decide candidates and that sort of thing. Well that
you know that that wasn't so great either, right, because
it wasn't the kind of process that we would hope,
you know, I think in America we would pride ourselves
on transparency, on processes where you understand kind of who
comes out of it, and public voices can be heard
(35:37):
and considered. I do think if we had stronger political parties,
and that may sound strange because but the kinds of parties,
you know, the party at labels and identifications are strong,
but the institutions of the political parties aren't strong anymore. No,
no, no no, it's whoever whoever gets the nomination, all of
a sudden you adopt their policies. That's not the way,
it's the way it's supposed to work. And and it
used to be that the party stood for things and
(35:58):
candidates kind of you know, either adhere to that or not.
But nowadays you don't have that strength of association of
the party anymore. If you had a stronger political party mechanism,
stronger Democratic and Republican parties that might have more control,
for example, over presidential primary processes, you wouldn't have these
long drawn out primary fights that you know, unfortunately many
(36:18):
times end up devolving into who can be the most liberal,
who could be the most most conservative, And I don't
think that generates presidential candidates at the end of the
day who are going to govern from the middle out.
And I think ultimately that's probably what we need as
a country to get back to the kind of normalcy
you're talking about. Lanhe Chen knows what he's talking about
for all kinds of different reasons, including being involved at
(36:39):
the highest levels of major campaigns, and he's a candidate
for California state Controller. You were endorsed by the Chronicle.
Is that right? I wasn't endorsed by the chronicle. I
had There was a column we read from the common writer. Yeah,
it was an opinion writer. He basically said, hey, listen,
one position where you need, where you need a watchdog,
you know in government in California is a controller. And
(37:01):
that's why you probably want to think about electing a
Republican so as I like to say, Jack, we need
we need a watchdog in this office, not a lapdog.
There you go. That's pretty often, for too often we've
had that. Yeah, that's pretty awesome when somebody in the
chronicle San Francisco Chronicle says, this is a Republican you
need long each and hey, thanks for your time today.
I appreciate it. That's the most interesting thing I've heard today.
A serious guy like that who doesn't say crazy stuff
(37:24):
just you know, for fun. That train has left the
station of us having serious discussions. Wow, Armstrong and Getty
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