Grocery shopping. I'm at Wegener's and my wife wants some vegetables for Crudité. Right. So here's a broccoli. That's two bucks. Not a ton of broccoli. There. Here's some asparagus. That's $4. Yep. Carrots. [00:00:15] That's four more dollars. That's $10 of vegetables there. And then we need some guacamole. That's $4 or more. And she loves salsa. Yeah. Salsa there. $6. Must be a shortage of salsa. Guys, that's $20 for crudité. And this doesn't include the tequila. [00:00:33] I mean, it's outrageous. We got Joe Biden to thank for this. That Crudité loving Turk has been tapped by Donald Trump to serve as the administrator of the centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That was Doctor Oz. He happened to lose after running for Senate [00:00:53] against John Fetterman in 2022. John Fetterman won as he was campaigning as a progressive, something that he's actually not at all. So he misidentified himself. But nonetheless, Doctor Oz will be the person who the Senate will very likely confirm. [00:01:10] If you ask me for this role. And it's a little bit disastrous because he's a huge fan of privatizing Medicare, essentially pushing the system toward the Medicare Advantage system, where it's publicly funded but privately run. [00:01:26] Now, let's talk a little more about who he is. So it's going to have a huge impact on a lot of people. So about a quarter of all federal spending runs through the centers. Oz will work under RFK Jr. Should both of them end up getting confirmed by the Senate and Republicans will have control of the Senate, [00:01:44] 53 of the senators will be Republicans. And all you need is a simple majority in order to confirm Donald Trump's appointments. And in a statement announcing Doctor Oz as his choice to lead the agency, Trump said that Doctor Oz would work closely with RFK Jr to take on the illness [00:02:03] industrial complex and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake. Trump noted that Doctor Oz had won nine Daytime Emmy Awards, hosting the Doctor Oz Show, where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier lifestyle choices. [00:02:19] There was some kooky stuff in that show as well, but I'll be fair and honest, I didn't watch it every day, so I don't know everything that he talked about on there. Trump added he'll also cut waste and fraud within our country's most expensive government agency, which is a third of our nation's health care spend and a quarter [00:02:37] of our entire national budget. Yeah. All right, so proof's in the pudding, if you will, because, let's see what they're going to do. The first signs are terrible, which I'll get to in a second. So first, a little bit of, I don't want to say a mea culpa [00:02:56] because based on the facts that we had, you know, Fetterman looked to be way better than Doctor Oz in that election. Not even close. Not within miles of each other. Right. But it turns out Fetterman was a giant liar. So, you know, Doctor Oz's positions weren't any better. [00:03:13] Aren't any better today than they were when he was running. So I've got no regret about everything that I said about him and why he shouldn't be the senator from Pennsylvania. I just didn't know that Fetterman was going to be, you know, basically a war criminal. And thought that, oh, my God, war crimes are so great, [00:03:30] we should send tens of billions of dollars to Israel to commit more of them. And I have to say, if you know, in in that one issue, Doctor Oz probably would have been better than Fetterman in the Senate, even though he's a Republican. I don't know that anybody could be worse than just absolutely demanding [00:03:49] that we kill as many Palestinians as humanly possible without any ceasefire And the brutality that he cheerleads for is disgusting. So that turned out to be one of the worst Senate races of our lifetimes because of what a giant liar Fetterman was. [00:04:04] And obviously, we were not interested in the crudity of of Doctor Oz. So now, in this new role, does the fact that Fetterman sucked and now we know about it affect this at all? No. Those two things are totally disconnected. We're not in that race anymore. This is not vis a vis Fetterman. He's just on his own. [00:04:22] Which then leads him with, does he have healthcare expertise? Absolutely. He's a great doctor. We said that at the time. He even operated on my uncle and arguably saved his life. And so tip of the hat, as much as I could possibly do to Doctor Oz on the medical field. [00:04:37] And I appreciate him for that. Did he do some kooky stuff? Yes, we covered it. And so in daytime TV there was a lot of oh my God, miracle this and miracle that. Right. So so he has some excellent credentials and he did some stuff that I do not agree with at all on his show. [00:04:53] So okay, now the most important part is yes, but what are they going to do in Medicare and Medicaid? Privatize it. And what Trump is basically hinting at, and what Anna is probably going to cover in a longer, segment tomorrow, is they're looking to cut. [00:05:10] Don't be don't be putting segments together for me, okay? Don't put that pressure on me. What the hell. So it's going to be good. Make sure you check it out. You know, the show is live at 6 to 8 p.m. Eastern every single day, so. And it's going to do that tomorrow. It's going to be the best segment you've ever seen. Okay. All right. [00:05:26] Seriously. So they're going to look to cut why tax cuts are coming. So since tax cuts are coming they're going to need to get the money from somewhere. Elon Musk promised to cut $2 trillion. There isn't 2 trillion to cut. Right. So we're going to talk about the Pentagon later and how you could do cuts there. [00:05:43] But when you this is not serving the working man. No. Guys, I would like to dispel the notion that Medicare Advantage, which is the privately run but publicly funded part of the, you know, Medicare program, does not save money. It does quite the opposite. [00:06:02] It does quite the opposite because it's privately run. They're looking to rip off the taxpayer. So they overcharge for services that is not going to save money. Please don't privatize the Medicare system. No, no to privatizing Medicare would be disastrous. Medicare polls at 77%. It's a program that the American people love. [00:06:19] That's why you had those ironic signs back in the Tea Party day. Get your government hands off my Social Security and Medicare. Those are government programs, okay? The enormously successful government programs, if they gut those or they privatize them, which is much worse, because then it makes you feel like you got something, but in reality, [00:06:38] your prices are going to go way up. You're not going to have anything guaranteed anymore, and you're going to go back to being intensely insecure about health care. And you basically want to do for Medicare what they did. It appears, based on the initial read of it. What they did for our healthcare at large, we have. [00:06:56] We're one of the only developed nation that does not have universal health care. And what has been the result of that? Our healthcare costs twice what healthcare costs in every other developed nation on average. So we pay trillions more, trillions more so that private corporations [00:07:15] can act as middlemen and rob us blind. And we have worse results, worse results in so many of the categories, including life expectancy. So if that's what they're promising for senior Americans, then we were right all along. If you elect Republicans, they're going to gut Medicare and Medicaid and then go, [00:07:34] oh, we are the Populist Party. We are helping the average man so much. No, no, we're we're we're tracking that in every way. And then we're going to have to see, does the right wing populist cared or do they not care if they go, oh, yay! [00:07:49] We'd love daddy to come make sure that you take money away from my mom or my grandmom and give it to a giant corporation and a tax cut. Okay, well, then we're all screwed. So one of the things that Republicans, certainly Republicans [00:08:06] in the MAGA era, complain about is the administrative state. And what they're referring to is the unelected officials within the federal government who can unilaterally make decisions and decide on regulations without any congressional input. [00:08:24] And so I actually, to some extent, agree with them about the undemocratic nature of that. I mean, obviously, we live in a representative democracy, but sometimes I feel that these government agencies have a little too much power to unilaterally act and make decisions policy wise, that I [00:08:39] would rather have Congress decide on. But with that in mind, when you look at this government agency and the kind of responsibilities that Doctor Oz would have, or the type of power he would have. Keep in mind, he would be able to set policies in some instances, so he would oversee both the Medicare and Medicaid system. [00:08:57] Obviously it's in the name of of this title. He would regulate the health care system. He'd have some say over regulations, inspects and reports on nursing homes, sets quality standards for laboratories, and implements the policies that decide how much doctors, hospitals and drug [00:09:15] companies get paid for their services. Now, Oz has previously chimed in on Medicare policy. Oz, for instance, coauthored back in 2020 an opinion column in Forbes arguing for a universal health coverage system in [00:09:31] which every American not covered by Medicaid would be enrolled in a private Medicare Advantage plan. The coverage expansion. The column said, would be financed by an affordable 20% payroll tax. [00:09:47] So that would be a tax that the employer pays. Right. That's what the payroll tax is presumably. But sometimes the payroll tax is split between the employer and the employee. - It depends on the category. - Yeah. So real curious to see if this is something that he would pursue should he get confirmed for this role. [00:10:02] An archived version of a 2022 Oz Senate campaign website also suggested that Oz still strongly supported Medicare Advantage, promising he would expand access to private sector plans expanded by President Trump and beloved by seniors for their low cost and high quality that could be [00:10:21] available to all Americans who want them. That's not a factual statement. That is a quote from Doctor Oz on his campaign website. Now, back in 2022, The Lever, the organization run by David Sirota, [00:10:37] a wonderful journalist, dug into Oz's personal finances and they found some interesting tidbits there. Oz and his wife own up to $550,000 worth of stock in UnitedHealth Group and up to $50,000 in CVS health, which owns Aetna. [00:10:52] Both UnitedHealth and Aetna have reported big revenues from Medicare Advantage plans, the privatized Medicare plans operated by corporate health insurers. But remember, funded by you, the American taxpayer? No. If they're funding, like if they're going to transfer, let me put it this way. [00:11:12] If they say to you guys, hey, you know what? You're allowed to get private health insurance on top of Medicare. Great. No problem. Of course, if you want more than what Medicare is covering and you want to pay for that, terrific. Nobody's going to argue with that. It's a free country, right? But if they say, let's take money out of the Medicare budget and move it into private health [00:11:30] insurance plans so that you have to get the private health insurance and pay more and oftentimes get denied and denied because it's not guaranteed anymore. Well, what the hell are we doing here? Right. Well, why Why would that help? There's just a lot of waste with the Medicare Advantage system, too. [00:11:49] Because, again, since it's privately run, we're talking about any private company. Obviously, you want to maximize your profits because you have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders. You should not introduce that system into [00:12:04] a program that is funded by taxpayers. Right. Like, to me, it just sets up a system in which, you know, private interests are going to rip off the taxpayers because they want to maximize their profits. Yeah. So look, this is going to be one of many, many tests for the Trump team, [00:12:23] both the Trump administration and Trump's followers. Are you going to be even 1% populist or is this just a, you know, a highway robbery where you're just going to funnel more money into your private interests that are your either your donors or things you personally invested in? [00:12:39] Right. And and then while pretending to be for the average man and let it blow up on the American people if you do that. I think, I hope there will be hell to pay. But in terms of eventually when people figure out you robbed them, right? Yeah. [00:12:54] And by the way, I mean, Elon is looking to cut spending, right? First place I would look is, our Medicare system and the fact that Medicare isn't allowed to negotiate drug prices for all drugs. Why are we allowing pharma to rip off the American government? [00:13:16] Okay. Like that's literally what's happening right now. Yeah. So I'm going to quadruple down on that. So what are we talking about cutting Medicare for? Are you crazy? Do you know how much money we could save if all we did was negotiate drug prices? And so what happened? Donald Trump, are you a populist or are you not a populist? [00:13:31] Are you a capitalist or are you not a capitalist? Because not negotiating drug prices is not capitalism. It's the exact opposite of free markets. There's no question about that. It is crony capitalism to the extreme, and right wing populists hate big Pharma. They hate Big Pharma. Right. [00:13:48] So you're going to go along with Big pharma and say, no, guys, we should pay whatever prices big drug companies want. So there's tons of savings right there by taking on corporate power. Are Trump and Elon and and Bobby Kennedy junior and Doctor Oz. Are they going [00:14:06] to do that or are they liars? And they're just going to privatize things so that they and all their friends get paid off, and they don't actually reduce any costs? Well, we're going to find out because we're not in charge. They are. But the minute they take action in either direction, you know, [00:14:22] the one show that will be honest with you, either give them credit or the overwhelming discredit that they deserve if they go in the wrong direction, we're right here and we're going to hold them accountable. Whether anyone in mainstream media or right wing media does, we're going to be honest about it and let's see what they do. [00:14:37] So far, the beginning does not look good.