Speaker 1: This system is no longer controlled by the doctor and
the patient and what the doctor says and with consultation
with the patient, what the standard of care should be.
From there, there medical groups, whether it's for US E
and T or internal medicine, that doesn't have any power anymore.
It's the insurance companies driving the delivery of healthcare and
the choices, unfortunately, that the doctors can make. It's not right.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network where you
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Speaker 3: And welcome you are listening to the Financial Survival Network.
I'm your Carrie Lutz. Well make America healthy again? Will
RFK Junior get the confirmation to a Secretary of HHS
and will he be able to make a difference? Why
does medicine cost so much? Why is everything so corrupt?
If you've been watching Elon Musk rip the federal budget
to shreds and perhaps rejoicing at the prospect of the
tyranny of the purse actually being exposed, then you're going
to want to hear this show with us. Is it esteemed?
Doctor Elena George. We've been talking for years, doctor George,
you and I, and well, what do you think of RFK?
Do you think he can bring some sanity to this
insane system.
Speaker 1: I think that anything that exposes the underbelly and how
the machine works is a positive. I think it's one
of the most open take parts of our economy, and
it's huge, and at this point it's just gotten more bloated,
but it doesn't serve the interests of the doctor or
the patient at this point.
Speaker 3: So just for big Pharma, we got this thing called
prescription benefit managers and they set the price for everything
and everywhere, and one of them is owned by CBS,
if I'm not mistaken, care Mark, and I don't remember.
There's two or three of them, and they get a
piece of every transaction that takes place. And who died
and made them king? Is what I'd like to know,
doctor George.
Speaker 1: I think even said the axiom fall of the money
is what you really have to keep your mind on.
There's so much conflict of interest written into the system.
It's amazing. So if the insurance companies are able to
work with the pharmacy benefit management companies and they have
a preferred pharmacy to go to, that actually limits the
way for the patient to shop and save money because
they are actually setting the price. But not only do
they set the price, they change the formulary. So as
a doctor, if I want to write a prescription that
I know works and the patient has this insurance plan,
they will not pay for that medication. The patient is
out of luck, or I have to change what I
know to be from what I know to be the
best treatment to something that I'm not happy with. This
system is no longer controlled by the doctor and the
patient and what the doctor says and with consultation with
the patient, what the standard of care should be from
their medical groups, whether it's for US E and T
or internal medicine. That doesn't have any power anymore. It's
the insurance companies driving the delivery of healthcare and the
choices unfortunately that the doctors can make. It's not right.
Speaker 3: And so what about hospitals. They're like taking over the practice.
You know, all the doctors are working for them now.
Very few doctors, it seems, are left to be able
to work for themselves. How did that happen?
Speaker 1: You know, it was a slow and steady slide. I
had the benefit of being in this, you know, in
medical school and in residency during all these changes, so
I saw it coming at the beginning of my training.
When people had insurance plans, they didn't cover the first
dollar of healthcare. They only covered big ticket items like
if you had to have an expensive lab or if
you had to have surgery. Otherwise, the patient was paying
out of pocket directly to the doctor. And when the
insurance companies took over the pocketbook or the purse, then
they got to control everything. And people don't think about
but they have a conflict of interest. By definition, as
a you know, an entity that's about making money, their
job is to give value to their you know, their stockholders, right,
So they want you to pay a premium, but they
don't really want to pay out the cost of what
your doctor wants or what you need. And it's become
completely mercenary. So you have horrible stories that people have
heard about where cancer treatment is denied because it's quote experimental.
I can tell you from day to day, because I
see patients every day that were always caught out. Even
if we get a pre authorization, it doesn't mean they're
going to pay for the procedure or the office visit,
and so it's a it's a very one sided system.
It's a h win, I win, you lose, I win
kind of system. Does it make sense to you as
a lay person? If you come to my office, I
need to do a procedure around you. I ask your
insurance if it's okay called a pre authorization because I
have all the medical reasoning behind it. They say yes,
I do the procedure, and then they deny it after
the fact, after they approved it, and I don't have
any grounds to fight for it because I'm contracted to
follow whatever they say. You know, that goes on every
day throughout the country. And at this point, that's one
of the reasons that doctors have left private practice. It's
one of the reasons don't they'll leve practice altogether. And
now we have a situation where we don't have enough
doctors to take care of patients, and now we have
a whole influx of other healthcare providers, whether they be
nurse practitioners, physician, assistants, aids, all of these things, and
I don't mean just medicine. It's gone through pharmacy, every
single aspect of our healthcare system. Because its system is
not designed to actually do what it's supposed to do,
which is to help people. It's about making money and
there's no recourse. It's just really sad that the doctors
and patients are the victims in this. And of course
it's so opaque. You can't say this is a doctor
because the patient can't necessarily see it. But they're thinking
that you're the problem, when in actuality it's these big
entities and this infrastructure that's enormous.
Speaker 3: It seems like they don't really want to cure diseases anymore.
They just want to treat them, and then you become
a lifelong customer of the drug company.
Speaker 1: It's a business model, isn't it. It makes perfect sense
if you have a customer for life on more than
one medication daily and you're managing the disease and you're
never really curing it. So you know, I would love
to see if we do get a change over at HHS,
a change from treating a disease to preventing the disease.
It seems that we have all these treatments for after
the fact. But if we can change things that make
people sick, whether that be what's in the water, what
chemicals are in various things that we're exposed to, would
that cut down on the reason you know, or the
disease itself, the amount of people who get it. That
would say the ultimate amount of money as opposed to
trying to find the disease and then have some algorithm
to treat it forever. It doesn't seem like it doesn't
really make a lot of sense. If you think about
cost and human cost and quality of life cost, this
is a no brainer.
Speaker 3: And let's not forget that we didn't have this epidemic
of chronic diseases.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: Forty fifty sixty years ago, we didn't have obesity to
the level we have it now. It was relatively unusual
to see an obese person and now it's really gone rampant.
Speaker 1: Well mean, think about the food industry, and we didn't
have we had cane sugar back in the day. Now
we have high fructose corn syrup. We have other chemicals
that make our estrogen levels go up or affect our
blood pressure. You know, all these things the children were
I think the number one disease may be now obesity
or diabetes. It's going through the roof in younger and
younger kids. But no one seems to be looking at
what's the common denominator, what's in the food where they're
all eating, what's in the what additives or put in
that weren't there fifty years ago, and get rid of
I mean, this is not really hard if we just
take a look at it and be try to be
on the side of the patient instead of getting back
in you know, whatever position you're in, getting it re elected.
It's all what people care about is the money coming
in to get them back in. Come hell or high water.
That's the problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So RFKA Junior is talking about seed oils, which
we know are inflammatory agents, fati omega sixes that cause
inflammation in the body, healthy eating, whole food, odds, all
these things. You know, so many of the so called
food products that are sold in the United States aren't
sold in aren't allowed in Europe, not even in Canada,
our next door neighbor. They gave the example of fruit
loops had eighteen ingredients and the ones in Canada did
as well, but the difference was that none of the
ingredients in the Canadian fruit loops were artificial. They were
all natural and breakfast cereals like the worst thing in
the world. It's pure, pure sugar, pure poison and chemicals.
Speaker 1: And it's expensive too. So for those who keep saying that,
you know, if we make these changes, it's going to
be cost prohibitive, you know, five or six dollars for
you know, a box of cereal is cost prohibited and
it's full of toxins. I'm sure people, but then we
people do. I think there's a growing number of people
who are making healthy choices. I love to see that
side of our food industry and our healthcare system work
in tandem. Doctors have a lot of power. I don't
think we spend enough time as a group talking about
health to our patients. It's about what drug can we
give them, as opposed to how do we get you
off of the medication? Right, And that's a different mindset.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And you know, the whole chronic illnesses, you know,
they just didn't exist. And then when we studied primitive
cultures out there, right, and they don't have any of
these diseases, until until, you know, until they get modernized, right,
and the tempt to adopt the Western or American diet.
Speaker 4: That's true, I mean it's our diet has got a
lot to be a lot to be desired, frankly, And
if we can have an honest conversation and everybody's voice
should be heard, I don't think it should be one way.
Speaker 1: And I don't subscribe to censorship. You know, if you
don't like something doesn't mean you just shut it down.
You have to how about cite your source. How about
have a discussion and come to a conclusion that everybody
can live with as opposed to my way or no way.
And maybe this is a good atmosphere now to open
up the conversation to thinking a different way. I just
don't think doing the same thing and expecting a different
result is working. Because the cost of the healthcare system
for an individual they get into it is prohibitive. Nobody's
looking at that. But the best thing is not I
tell my patients don't get sick, right, This is how
you work the system. Don't enter it because you're not
sure what's going to happen when you're in it. And
I practice what I preach on this one. And you know, ultimately, Carrie,
it's about choice, individual choices. I think we need to
work want better for ourselves as individuals. So if people
want to take a pill because it's a fast track
to lose in weight or to growing hair or whatever
they're doing, but not think about any of the adverse effects,
and you hear them on TV, I swear the list
is getting longer and longer the Cutees commercial. If you
just you know, slow down and not listen to the music,
but listen to the words it's amazing and anything that
causes death as one of its side effects, I personally
would be having really second, third, and four thoughts about
taking that.
Speaker 3: Seriously, Yeah, well yeah. But on the other hand, the
weight loss pills, the glip ones, clip twos, you know,
ozempic and Manjaro, you know, they enable people to take
off these pounds and it's easier to lose the weight.
It's easier to keep the weight off than it is
to lose it. So they're you know, just that obesity
itself is so unhealthy that maybe it's worth taking some
of these weight loss drugs.
Speaker 1: But they all have side effects to them, and potentially
you'd have to be on them for the rest of
your life. I don't have a problem. It's something if
it's short term as a bridge to give you means
to but that's not really what's going on. It's a
lot of the for the rest of your life kind
of thing. And well, you know you're losing muscle, not
just that when you're losing weight and you're not eating,
so your vitamin status and your nutrition goes down. So
I mean, there's a lot of things we need to
have a sense of balance. Throwing everybody on it and
having kids go on it without changing the reason that
they're faked exactly. So you know, it's just going to
go down to infants needing it at some point. They
don't have an off switch with this. As soon as
that door is open, they find someone who's going to
be able to use it.
Speaker 3: So doctor George just switching up a little bit here,
Elon Musk breaks into the HHS computers, the Medicaid, the
Medicare computers. What shocks are instead in store for us there?
Speaker 1: Gee, that's a great question, you know, I don't I
can only speak about it from the doctor's side of it,
and those are two of our healthcare delivery systems that
I don't partake in because they don't serve the patient.
So I don't know, but I know that I would
think that from the pharmacy side, they definitely have a
protocol of what medicines that they allow. And the reason
I love Medicare Medicaid was I couldn't prescribe medicines that
worked for my patient because they were never on formulary.
So I wonder how much the pharmacy benefit management company
is involved with that side of the healthcare system because
the government's involved, so they're going to want to get
the lowest denominator in terms of cost savings as they
can get. But I wonder where that money's going to.
So I don't know. I can't answer that, but I
wouldn't be surprised if we find some real whoppers in there.
Speaker 3: Will. You got to realize that from that system there's
way more money coming out than from USAID or even
the Department. I think Health and Human Services is putting
out more than Defense, like one point seven billion, So
it's got to be it's going to be shocking. I'm
just telling you it's going to be prepared to be shocked.
Speaker 1: I would bet that most of the money is going
to medication and not to services like doctors and physical
therapists and PT and you know that sort of thing,
chronic care. I bet you most is going to medicine.
I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Well, if there's only half the upheaval like
there is in the foreign aid sector, we're in for
quite a show, aren't we.
Speaker 1: I think we are. And hopefully it'll clean out the
whatever disease is in there so we can start.
Speaker 3: Over all right, So brief things you can do to
improve your health right now.
Speaker 1: Number one is clean up your water intake. Right So,
there was a lot of things about filtering your water
and about bottled water versus tap water. Water is we're
seventy percent water. What we drink does matter. So I
would recommend people, if they can afford it, to invest
in a home system reverse cosmosis that takes some purities out.
I would stay away from plastics because microplastics are one
of the main problems. Is one of those forever type
of things that want and ends up in your system.
We can't get it out, and we don't know what
that's going to cause down the road, so investing in
the systems using glass bottles, I personally think things like
hydrogen putting hydrogen, getting a hydrogen system for your water,
or definitely not drinking tap would be number one. The
second thing is to try to eat as organic as
you possibly can. As we already know that there's so
many chemicals in the system itself, in the food distribution system,
in the supply that if you can clean it out
what you're putting in with organic where they're not getting
eating food that's generically modified or anything that's you know,
all these vaccines are being put into the food industry
on the cattle, et cetera. I try to clean that
out as well and shop local. So there are plenty
of co ops in every kind I'm sorry, every city,
every state that you can actually join and you can
work with farmers locally and get food that's much cheaper,
better quality, and consistent, so you're not going to have
to be at the mercy of something going down in
the commercial shopping sector. You know what happened with the
different Krogers and publics, et cetera. When you have when
they go down for whatever reason, the supply chains effect.
So that would be number two and three. It sounds
kind of out there, but I would have a relationship
with God, to be honest, because there's so much I
don't know. You can't trust anything that people say right where.
Human beings are notoriously everywhere. But if you have a
relationship with a higher power, someone bigger than yourself, I
think that gives you stability. I think that makes you
less likely to be at the whim and emotionally, you
know the ebb and flow of what goes on emotionally,
because fear is what gets people into trouble, and when
you're fearful, you fall for anything. And I think we
as human beings need to be much more mindful of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And so it
starts with attitude, and your attitude affect your behavior and
from there, once your behavior changes, everything else changes too. Right.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you're you're you're in a position of power, right,
so you're not waiting for something to come down the
pipe that you have to react to. You're prepared, you
have a plan. Whatever goes down, you can you can
fall back on that knowing that I've prepared, I've got
what I need. I know the direction that I want
to go to and more importantly, the direction that I
don't want to go to, because that's why I think
people get into trouble. It's I want to follow the group.
I think, you know someone's there to help me and
they care about me. That is the worst position to
be and you will be, you know, net up for
God knows what.
Speaker 3: So dirt, Yes, yes, I couldn't agree with you. More
on that, doctor George, And yeah, so water attitude, relationship
with God. And then find the healthy food. It's out there.
It's not just that Whole Foods. It's in a lot
of other places. A lot of the foods at Whole
Foods are what I call fake health foods. Right, They're
not real, They're not really healthy. If something's swimming in
sugar and seed oil, I don't care. If it's on
the first aisle at the Whole Foods, I don't want it.
Speaker 1: So I think you're absolutely right. I mean, the thing
that people don't realize is that if you go local,
if you have a relationship with people who are farmers,
people who produce, then you have a pathway around every
single thing that can happen in the bigger picture the
bigger system. It doesn't affect you the same way at all, exactly.
Speaker 3: All right, Hey, we appreciate as always you're coming on
sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us, doctor George. How
do we find you? How do we find your podcast
and how do we connect with you on the web.
Speaker 1: Well, you can go to Libertytalk dot fm, and that's
where I have a Living in the Solution. It's a
podcast that runs live on Saturdays and Sundays at noon
Eastern time. You can also go to my website, doctor
Lane a joy dot com, and I have podcasts that
have been going on for many, many years and links
that help people do what I recommend. You know, everybody
has to be has to have a skin in this game,
and the more knowledge you have, the more power you have.
I'm all about that, and I think everything has a solution,
and we are our own solution, not looking for somebody
else to do it for us.
Speaker 3: All right, doctor George, appreciate that, And the links are
in the show notes this interview on Financial Survival Network
dot com. We ask you if you go there, just
sign up for a free complementary newsletter. As over seventy
thousand FSN community members have in the past, and if
you've got a question for myself, Doctor George Heyl at
Carrie LUTs dot com is the email address, Doctor George.
We always appreciate you taking time out to talk with
us and we wish you the best.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Kerrie, God bless thanks for.
Speaker 2: Listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to
today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork
dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,