Speaker 1: Yorks Toxic. This is the seventy seven WABC Mini Cast.
Speaker 2: Folks, this is the More Money Show. And thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining and taking some time out of
Speaker 2: your weekend to become educated about what's going on with
Speaker 2: our government because it is out of control. I think
Speaker 2: everyone agrees, if you're a Democrat, Republican, independent, I think
Speaker 2: everybody agrees that our government is out of control, the
Speaker 2: costs are out of control, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: by the way, I am going to tomorrow. I feel
Speaker 2: very privileged because I will be going to the Grand
Speaker 2: Prix event in Washington, c. I believe that will be
Speaker 2: also televised. But this is kind of what once. I
Speaker 2: don't think this has ever happened in Washington way of
Speaker 2: an auto race right down Pennsylvania Avenue, so I'm really
Speaker 2: looking forward to it. I hope it stays dry because
Speaker 2: it's supposed to rain themorrow afternoon, and of course the
Speaker 2: ground pre racers can't go very fast if the if
Speaker 2: the roads are wet, So I'm praying for some sunshine
Speaker 2: and stay dry. My next guest, by the way, and
Speaker 2: don't forget in about ten minutes or so, we'll will
Speaker 2: be taking your calls. I want your solutions to the
Speaker 2: debt crisis. I want your one or two three things
Speaker 2: that you would do to bring down this debt. And
Speaker 2: if you think we should do this by raising taxes,
Speaker 2: come on, come on the show. I want to hear
Speaker 2: from you. This is freedom of speech radio. If you
Speaker 2: disagree with me on this, I think raising taxes would
Speaker 2: be a total disaster. I think they'll just spend the
Speaker 2: money if you give them more money. But I'm open
Speaker 2: to any suggestion that you might have about how we
Speaker 2: can bring this debt down. One of the guys who's
Speaker 2: dedicated his career's career to doing that is Phil Kirpin.
Speaker 2: He works with me at Unleashed Prosperity as our executive director.
Speaker 2: He also runs a group called America Commitment and has
Speaker 2: been a long time advocate of a limited government and
Speaker 2: economic freedom.
Speaker 1: Phil.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1: Hey, my pleasure.
Speaker 2: So the reason I wanted to bring you on today, Phil,
Speaker 2: you've been on the show many times is that I
Speaker 2: read a story about healthcare costs coming down. Prescription drug
Speaker 2: prices came down, and some of my more liberal friends
Speaker 2: were saying, see see Biden's Inflation Control Act worked and
Speaker 2: we brought the drug you know, we had all these
Speaker 2: drug price controls and that's lowered the price of drugs.
Speaker 2: And you're telling me that is not true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that had very very little to do with it.
Speaker 1: If you look at the drugs that have actually been
Speaker 1: subject to the price controls, they really are not. First
Speaker 1: of all, they're not enough of them. They've only been
Speaker 1: ten of them. They're not enough of them to have
Speaker 1: moved the entire category down in the consumer Price index.
Speaker 2: But also, wait, hold on, hold on, you mean when
Speaker 2: you say there's not enough of them, you mean there
Speaker 2: weren't enough drugs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, were subject of the price controls. Is okay, got me.
Speaker 1: They're too few to have been the main factor behind
Speaker 1: you know, price drop across all the prescription drugs. And
Speaker 1: also the price reductions were much less than they told
Speaker 1: us were going to happen, because what actually, you know,
Speaker 1: when they actually went through this process of justifying the
Speaker 1: prices and going through this review at the HHS and
Speaker 1: so forth, what they found is that these prices were
Speaker 1: already pretty heavily negotiated with the individual Drug plan and
Speaker 1: they were not able to deliver the reductions that they
Speaker 1: thought they were going to which is probably good. By
Speaker 1: the way, although you know some of the details of
Speaker 1: how they want to do it going forward, they actually
Speaker 1: could make more stringent price control. So I'm sort of
Speaker 1: of two minds. You know, the price controls have been ineffective,
Speaker 1: but that's probably good because if they'd been effective, they
Speaker 1: would have undermined, you know, the incentives for new cures
Speaker 1: and so forth. But what's actually brought prices down has
Speaker 1: been the Trump administration policies to increase competition and choice
Speaker 1: and increase investment in the US, and in particular Steve,
Speaker 1: I think the key has been direct to consumer sales,
Speaker 1: and these have really taken off out the middle now
Speaker 1: Mark Mark Cuban has a site and there, and what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is, you know, a lot of the pharmacy
Speaker 1: counter sales are lower because they're trying to compete because
Speaker 1: they know that people now can go other places. And
Speaker 1: so I think that's been been a very big But
Speaker 1: I mean, we shouldn't overstate this. You know, the twelve
Speaker 1: month decrease of three point one percent is the largest
Speaker 1: decrease we've ever seen since they started keeping these stats
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. But see, it's still only three percent,
Speaker 1: So most people are going to say, well, the drugs
Speaker 1: are still very expensive, so look directionally, it's great, it's
Speaker 1: still pretty small overall, and of course, you know, the
Speaker 1: bigger challenges are you know, insurance costs and hospital costs,
Speaker 1: and hospital costs have been almost vertical, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: it's nice. I do think the president there's a lot
Speaker 1: of credits for it, but I really would like to
Speaker 1: see Republicans doing much more on healthcare than what they've
Speaker 1: done so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too. So when we talk about our forty
Speaker 2: trillion dollars national debt, which is actually about thirty two trillion,
Speaker 2: it's still a gigantic number. Healthcare really has been one
Speaker 2: of you know, Medicare and Medicaid really have been a
Speaker 2: drivers of our debt and also the higher costs of healthcare.
Speaker 2: In other words, when we put in Medicare and Medicaid,
Speaker 2: they were supposed to hold down prices of healthcare. But
Speaker 2: the more we spend on Medicare and Meta, it seems
Speaker 2: like the more the prices go up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the you know, this is the problem
Speaker 1: with the Democrats solution to every problem being for more
Speaker 1: taxpayer money at it. Oh, it's too expensive, so we'll
Speaker 1: subsidize it more. Well, what happens is it flows through
Speaker 1: into higher prices. And in particular in healthcare, we've got
Speaker 1: really high barriers to entry, many of which are caused
Speaker 1: by all of the rules and regulations and so forth.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we've now got you basically three
Speaker 1: giant insurance companies. Most markets have one or two giant
Speaker 1: hospital systems. And so when you pour more money in,
Speaker 1: you pour more subsidies, and it flows right through into
Speaker 1: higher prices. It does not actually, it does not actually
Speaker 1: increase supply or increase access. It flows through into higher prices.
Speaker 1: And of course, when you've got open ended obligations to
Speaker 1: provide healthcare for all the old people in Medicare and
Speaker 1: all the poor people in medicaid, you can imagine how
Speaker 1: that destroys the budgetary outlook.
Speaker 2: Now, the Democrats, Phil, I'm talking about Phil Kirpan, who's
Speaker 2: with an economist at American Commitment and also works with
Speaker 2: me at Unleashed Prosperity.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: If I had a Democrat on uh, you know, debating you, Phil,
Speaker 2: the Democrat would say, oh, what we need is medicare
Speaker 2: for all, So everybody would just get the Medicare that
Speaker 2: senior citizens got. I know, a lot of people think, hey,
Speaker 2: that's a great idea, you know, that'll reduce costs. What
Speaker 2: do you make of that idea?
Speaker 1: Well, uh, Medicare is not doing so great. So when
Speaker 1: they say all the exactly people on it, I kind
Speaker 1: of touched my head a little bit. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the this is the horrible irony of where we
Speaker 1: are on healthcare right now. The same party that put
Speaker 1: a huge government imprint on our healthcare system it's working
Speaker 1: so poorly. Then they say, see, the problem is there's
Speaker 1: too much free market. We need even more government total
Speaker 1: deving to take over. But you know, you look, you
Speaker 1: look around the world at countries that have the most centralized,
Speaker 1: bureaucratized healthcare systems, like the United Kingdom, like Canada, and
Speaker 1: they do contain costs in a way, but they contain
Speaker 1: costs by rational care, by having long waiting less. That's
Speaker 1: not that that's not a solution that I think most
Speaker 1: Americans would want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let people die and you reduce your health care costs,
Speaker 2: right right exactly?
Speaker 1: Or many people live with a brace and painkillers instead
Speaker 1: of getting joint replacement. Joint replace is very hard to
Speaker 1: get in most of those countries.
Speaker 2: That's a great point, a really good point. So I've
Speaker 2: been uh, well, one other issue I want to bring
Speaker 2: on bring up with respect to healthcare costs. Something that
Speaker 2: we've advocated is this idea of more price transparency. So
Speaker 2: when you go to the hospital or the insurance company
Speaker 2: or the you know, buy a drug or go to
Speaker 2: a clinic, that you know that you know what the
Speaker 2: prices are. Because nobody really knows what anything costs, you
Speaker 2: don't really have a functioning market.
Speaker 1: It's so important, it's so important, and you know, Trump
Speaker 1: has done a lot of things on executive authority to
Speaker 1: order more transparency. The problem is we've got very poor
Speaker 1: compliance and the fines are relatively small. So when you
Speaker 1: have a multi billion dollar health hospital system and they're
Speaker 1: not posting their prices even though they've been ordered to,
Speaker 1: and the fine is you know, a maximum million dollars,
Speaker 1: well they're a multi billion dollar sistm them, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily move them. And so I would like to
Speaker 1: see more legislation on this, and there now have been
Speaker 1: pretty good bills passed in the committee level. I'm both
Speaker 1: the House and Senate, but you know, four times at
Speaker 1: a premium, and then there's the question of you know,
Speaker 1: what vehicle is there. But this is the one aspect
Speaker 1: transparency where maybe it could be bipartisan. You know, Schumer
Speaker 1: had been blocking anything related to hospital transparency, in particular
Speaker 1: because the New York hospitals where he sort of gave
Speaker 1: them a veto, but he was sort of I learned
Speaker 1: he's capable of shame Steve because it got reported in
Speaker 1: political that he's no abossles, I'll never do anything you
Speaker 1: don't agree to. And then he changed his mind and said,
Speaker 1: oh no, actually we may do some things the hospitals
Speaker 1: don't like, and so maybe something bipartisan could be done.
Speaker 1: But I'm not super optimistic about anything legislative at this
Speaker 1: point in the calendar.
Speaker 2: So what do you think of my idea of you know,
Speaker 2: no price, no pay. In other words, if you know,
Speaker 2: let's just play hardball with these people, because you're right,
Speaker 2: they're not complying with they're not They say that there's
Speaker 2: price transparency, but I don't know. I don't see price
Speaker 2: transparency when I go to the doctor or a physician's office,
Speaker 2: So you know, why not force them, like if the
Speaker 2: patient can attest to the fact that they were never
Speaker 2: told what it was going to cost, they don't have
Speaker 2: to pay for And I think if you did that,
Speaker 2: they would start posting every price everywhere.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. I know. I think
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz has picked up your idea and it's running
Speaker 1: with you know, to me, that makes much more sense
Speaker 1: than trying to figure out how much you're going to
Speaker 1: find them after the fact. And you know, if we
Speaker 1: could do that, if we could really put something in
Speaker 1: with piece that requires prices to be posted, that could
Speaker 1: be one of the key ingredients to getting a real
Speaker 1: market system. Along with I think a couple of us,
Speaker 1: we need to fix the payment policies and the tax
Speaker 1: policies that have caused so much consolidation, so we can
Speaker 1: have more independent doctors in imaging centers and clinics and
Speaker 1: surgical centers. And we've got to make people control the
Speaker 1: healthcare dollars, whether they're in a government program or an employer.
Speaker 1: And you know, if we could do those things, don't
Speaker 1: have the money disappear into insurance companies, have transparency, and
Speaker 1: have more competition and choice. I think we would bring
Speaker 1: down costs in a way where we would get more
Speaker 1: and better health there instead of you know less and worse.
Speaker 2: I always tell the story that, you know, a few
Speaker 2: years ago, I jolted my shoulder, so, you know, I
Speaker 2: went to the doctor and he said, you have a
Speaker 2: small rotator cuff you know issue, and you're on the
Speaker 2: you know, he said, you may certain need surgery or
Speaker 2: may decide to just use physical therapy. And I asked
Speaker 2: the doctor how much it would cost if I had
Speaker 2: the you know, the surgery. He said he didn't know
Speaker 2: what would cost. The doctor didn't know what would cost
Speaker 2: and and you know, I don't know what it costs.
Speaker 2: He doesn't know what it costs. He said. I was
Speaker 2: the first time he'd ever had a patient ask him
Speaker 2: how much it was going to cost. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is just not the way to run a free enterprise country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy. You know. The other thing that I've
Speaker 1: done a few times now, which you know, people should
Speaker 1: try this. It's amazing. Sometimes you go to the pharmacy
Speaker 1: counter and then you know, they ring up a drug
Speaker 1: for you and they say, oh, it's seventy dollars or something,
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, what would it cost if you
Speaker 1: ran it as cash? And then I say, oh, twenty
Speaker 1: dollars and say, Okay, do it that way. I really yeah,
Speaker 1: because sometimes the insurance company they have a contract with
Speaker 1: make some charge of higher kick the money up to them.
Speaker 2: Incredible. All right, we got just two months left, phil Kerpen,
Speaker 2: I've been asking every guest, so I'm going to put
Speaker 2: you on the hook for this. I want your two
Speaker 2: best ideas for how we start to bring down this
Speaker 2: forty trillion dollar debt.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the key is that we've got to
Speaker 1: reduce government spending. And I would do this in a
Speaker 1: few ways. One in the healthcare forms we were just
Speaker 1: talking about, I think would help a lot. But we
Speaker 1: really need to have a major, major anti fraud push.
Speaker 1: And I think that in particular, we've got to cut
Speaker 1: off the flow of welfare federal welfare, welfare dollars to
Speaker 1: the states that have massive fraud rates, and like California,
Speaker 1: we're food stamps and Medicaid and every other welfare program,
Speaker 1: housing VAT. They all get massively abused, they get massively abused,
Speaker 1: and we need to move in the direction of shifting
Speaker 1: these programs to the states, so at least the state
Speaker 1: that allows massive fraud, it's only their state stax payers. Yes,
Speaker 1: would and people can leave the state as opposed to
Speaker 1: all these things being run out of Washington. So I
Speaker 1: would say that, and I would say bring back, bring
Speaker 1: back caps on discribtiontionary spending. They're not perfect, and they
Speaker 1: do get waived from time to time, but at least
Speaker 1: when we have them on, they seem to exert some
Speaker 1: downward pressure. So I would say those are the two
Speaker 1: biggest things that come to mind.
Speaker 2: You know, one thing we used to have, you know,
Speaker 2: for a while in Washington that worked for a while
Speaker 2: was pay as you go budgeting. So if you wanted
Speaker 2: to have a new let's say, supplemental spending bills because
Speaker 2: you need money for an emergency farmers or for the military,
Speaker 2: you would actually have to offset that by cutting other programs.
Speaker 2: But we don't have anything like that. In fact, we
Speaker 2: don't even have a freaking budget.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. See, if you know, we always used to
Speaker 1: complain that they would use different gimmicks and timing tricks
Speaker 1: and different things. Now we don't even bother. Now we
Speaker 1: don't even try. Now we don't even pretend to pay
Speaker 1: for things. Incredible.
Speaker 2: Well, Phil Kirpin, thank you so much for your wisdom.
Speaker 2: That is Phil corpet look him up at the American
Speaker 2: commitment