This is later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you
here weekday afternoons on the Drive. Senator James Langford, we are not only
getting ready for a four day holiday for many for the big Independence Day,
but we are also on the cusp of another very significant anniversary. Yeah,
we really are. So we're right at the Dobbs anniversary. So we're talking
one year ago this week. The Supreme Court stepped in and said, note,
the Supreme Court fifty years ago was wrong when they changed the rules without
law and shifted it two hundred and fifty years or so as a nation.
Two hundred of those years, states have selected how abortion is going to be
done into individual states. Nineteen seventy three, the Court said, nah,
we shouldn't do it that way. It just switched back to like it was
fifty one years ago, where this is legislatures and states all over the country
that are actually making that decision. And now since in the past year,
half of the states have made a decision to limit abortion, and half of
the states have said they either want to increase it or keep it. But
that's the nature of this dialogue about how do we value children and what's the
value of a life. Well, they also seem to underscore with a recent
decision where they kind of threw some election law back to the state when they
stepped in and said, yeah, the states have certain election laws, but
the Feds do as well. And you tend to listen to the national media.
This dad's decision. Oh at banned abortion. At Band abortion didn't ban
abortion. It just said the states can decide. Absolutely did not ban abortion.
Abortion is still legal in many parts of the nation. We said,
as a state in Oklahoma, you know what, we think all children are
valuable. We don't think some children are disposable in some children are valuable.
We think all children are valuable. California stepped forward and said, not only
are we going to have abortion or state, We're going to do it literally
right up until the moment before birth, and we're going to help people in
other states that want to have an abortion to be able to come here.
There's a completely different attitude about the value of each child in California than what
there is an Oklahoma. So the debate is both a legal debate of what's
going to be legal in each state, but it's also a heart debate to
be able to say, Okay, what is it. Who are we as
a country? What do we really think about the value of every single child?
Who has more rights here? A child or the parent or do they
both have rights? And if they both have rights, how do we be
respectful of both a child and the parent here? But understand there is a
child in this conversation. Well, in most states that still allow abortion are
also limiting it to a heartbeat. At heartbeat, you can no longer abort,
so that kind of is hyperbole and literal at the same time. Yeah,
it's been interesting so that the dialogue really, I think is the place
it should be. We should have this ongoing dialogue about when is a child
a child. That's not a legal question, that's an ethical moral question.
Some people say a child is not a child literally until they're out of the
womb fully delivered, than they're a child. Other people will say literally ten
minutes before they're born, that's when they stop being a child. Some people
will back it up to viability, which is about twenty one week suggestation is
viability. Some people would look at it and say, no, it's when
the child can have pain. That's at about fifteen weeks of gestation. Some
would say it's a heartbeat that's about six weeks, and then some would say
it's that conception. It's when the DNA is different from the mom, So
you know you've got a different person there. You've got cell division happening with
unique DNA different than the mom's DNA. That's when it's a different person.
Let's have that argument. Let's talk about it. But for Pete's sake,
let's at least talk and acknowledge that is a baby in that conversation. So
let's talk about when we value that life. Senator James Langford, you're also
on the Finance Committee, and I know there's been a lot of work about
drug prices lately. There have been, and we've got some major pieces coming.
I've worked on this for several years on what's called pharmacy benefit managers.
It's incredibly complicated on the details of how it runs, but the basic part
is drug companies don't sell the drugs directly to the pharmacy. There is a
warehousing system for wholesale, and then this pharmacy benefit manager is in between everyone
the drug companies, the warehousers, and then the folks that are the pharmacies
themselves. They're setting a lot of the formularies and a lot of the prices,
and there's an awful lot of gaming in the system that are happening at
those ppfs, and so I've been very focused on how do we actually solve
this problem to lower the cost of prescriptions so that the money that can be
saved doesn't just go to some entity, it actually goes to the actual consumer
to be able to save that money, because we're paying a lot more for
drugs than we should and the person in the middle is the one who's making
all the money. So we've got several solutions on this. We've got generics
that are coming up, For instance, that the pharmacy benefit managers are making
sure they go on the more expensive branded tier. So when you go into
pharmacy and say, hey, is there a generic of this, and the
pharmacist says yes, but it's the same price, that should never be So
that generic should always be allowed to be at a cheaper price than the branded
price, and so there's competition in the market. The PBMs are blocking that.
I've got a build to be able to solve that. But there's a
bunch of details that we've gone through to try to find out where are the
loopholes and then closing those down. I would ask your doctor when you get
the prescription, hey, make sure that you prescribe the generic. That way,
there is no middleman to ask. Yeah, that's a good thing to
do, except for some of the doctors actually make more money if they prescribe
the branded rather than the generic, but often the pharmacists. In fact,
it's one of the things we actually changed a few years ago. It used
to be illegal for the pharmacists to be able to tell you there's a cheaper
option here. We change that and so the PBM's then shifted it and said,
well, we'll just put the generics on the branded tier and we'll try
to drive them out that way. On it, there's always this fight for
them to be able to sell them more expensive because they get a cut of
the more expensive We're trying to make sure the consumer at the end of it,
all of us actually get acts as to the cheaper drug. Senator James
Langford and are there particular drugs that are targeted here? Are there particular drugs
you're featuring when you think about this legislation? So I go through every drug
that has gone through what is the initial patent process. So when a new
drug comes out, they're protected for several years. They can sell it at
a higher price because they're trying to make their money back from all the development.
But after about a decade they've got to allow generic competition. It's those
drugs that are about ten years old, and that, by the way,
that's the vast majority of drugs. Those are the drugs that I am actually
going after to be able to make sure we get those at a lower price.
Senator James Langford on you, You've got another a lot of other stuff
that is in the work too, you have time to touch on those.
Sure, yeah, obviously a lot that we're working on. The border still,
I mean, this is still one of the biggest issues. I've been
back and forth. In fact, I literally just finished up a call walking
through some different border issues to be able to try to figure out how we're
going to resolve how we can build some unity. I know everybody gets frustrated
with the Senate. Believe me, I'm on the front row. I get
very frustrated with the Senate. But you've got to build Republicans and Democrats to
acknowledge the same set of facts and determine the same set of solutions. One
of those big ones is actually how you're dealing with asylum. Who qualifies for
asylum? Right now, the Biden administration literally just waves just about everybody in
and says, yeah, you y you qualify, you qualify. We've got
to be able to tighten that doubt in the law, so this president and
no future president can literally just wave people in and say, I'm just not
going to enforce the border. I'm going to make everybody automatically eligible for asylum.
That's not how it works in the vast majority of the world. Certainly
it's not how it works in our neighbors. So I want to be able
to make sure that we can actually clean that up. So we've got a
lot of work going on to be able to fix that issue, because we've
got to solve the millions of people coming across our border unchecked and unvetted.
Well, just the other week you were down there. Is it any worse
or any better or about the same. It is about the same. We're
still In fact, the Bidy administration was just growing about how the numbers were
down. But we had to ride about one hundred and fifty thousand people that
illegally across the border just in the last month. So those those numbers may
be down, but they may be down by a handful. The numbers are
still extremely high. Senator James Langford. I know it's been hot lately,
but I don't think it's as hot here as it is in Washington, DC.
Figuratively and literally. We'll take that the temperatures down a little bit in
DC. Yeah, you know what, I'd take Oklahoma heat and being home
in Oklahoma more than being in Washington, d C. In time. But
we've got to get the work done. Well, it's that humidity in that
area. It just doesn't go away, does it. It just stays there.
So it doesn't go away. When you're that close to the Atlantic,
you just have it all the time. That's all right, It's got to
be done, and there's work to be done, and there are real productive
things that are actually going on energy policy, on immigration. We've got some
very blunt conversations that are happening right now to say, everyone just admit the
facts. We've got to have more energy, we've got to be able to
solve the border. Let's actually get to it and stop just talking about let's
do it. Yeah, I'm tired of seeing those Oklahoma pump jacks. Sits
still. Yeah, at the end of the day, we need every form
of energy. I'm not opposed to electric or anything else when solar bring it
all. We need all forms of energy, but at least be realistic.
There is no future in the next thirty to fifty years that doesn't include oil
and natural gas. So everyone can talk about what we may use in the
days ahead. Here's what we are using and will be using for decades.
And anyone who's driving an F one fifty pickup right now assumes they're going to
be driving it for decades that we need to make sure that they can still
do that. And the second thing is I am not going to allow us
to finally be energy independent of Saudi Arabia and then to become energy dependent on
China. That's not going to happen. And so my five years to say,
if we're going to use electric vehicles, fine, we've got to get
the lithium here, not from China. Senator to James Langford, thanks for
joining us today and have a happy holiday weekend. Thanks for listening to Later
with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The
Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation