Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-23-26_THURSDAY_7AM

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Dr. John Lott Jr. gives some strong reasononing why the SAVE AMERICA ACT needs to pass, and discusses how voting rules are much stricter everywhere else. Brian Mayo, Execuive Director of the Oregon Pharmacy Foundation - increasing pharma access big time.

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausurdrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. We continue the conversation with Dr. John Lott, Jr. And of course, he's the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, crime research.org. He's an economist and a world-recognized expert on guns and crime.

and I don't know, some people here. First off, welcome to the show, Dr. Lott. Always great to have you back on morning. It's great to talk to you again. Thanks for having me on. All righty. Well, my pleasure. One of the biggest crimes that a lot of people are thinking right now

is that all this talk about the need to tighten up on elections, and it just seems to be a crime that we haven't been able to get anything done with the Safe America Act. And the way I've been looking at this recently is that I'm still not convinced that there are enough votes to make this all happen. But you wrote a piece on Town Hall about why we need the Save America Act. And I don't know if it necessarily addresses some of the problems that are in it or not. But give me your, as they would say in the media world, hot take on this particular issue.

Well, I mean, I think there was in one vote of getting it through reconciliation in the Senate. But, you know, obviously a lot of stuff to come out in the news recently last week, Department of Homeland Security indicated that in four states, there were about 270,000 non-citizens who were registered to vote. That's probably an underestimate for those four states because none of those Democratic-controlled states are willing to let Department of Homeland Security go and look at it. at their actual voter registration list that are there. And by the way, Oregon is one of those democratically controlled states that has filed suit

and has refused to cooperate on most of this stuff too. Right. I mean, you know, the bizarre thing there is that it's part of the Civil Rights Act that the federal government has the responsibility and ability to go and look at voter rolls. This was something that was passed by Democrats and Republicans, you know, jointly there, that they're fighting against. My guess is they know they're going to lose in the courts, but it's just a question of trying to delay it

as long as they possibly can so that they can get an election or two before they have to turn it over. So Stalin for a time, in other words, is really what you're saying, is going on. Okay. Right. And anyway, so what I tried to look at in the piece because it was just

how other countries run their voter systems in order to prevent vote fraud, You know, there's a lot of discussions about how requiring things like photo IDs and proof citizenship would somehow disenfranchise Hispanics and blacks. So, you know, if you look at Mexico or any of all of the South American countries or Spain and Portugal, all those countries, Hispanic countries, require government issued photo IDs to be able to go and vote. all of them require proof of citizenship. You have in Mexico and all the South American countries, you have rules that are the same as what's proposed for the SAVE Act

in terms of proving citizenship, such as having to have a birth certificate. If you look at Africa, all 54 countries in Africa require government issued photo IDs for people to be able to go and vote. 51 of the 54 countries require that you have to provide proof of citizenship, such as with a birth certificate, when you register to vote. So somehow Hispanics and blacks in the rest of the world are able to go and do, navigate essentially the same rules that are being proposed

in the Save Act here without apparent problems. In fact, if you look at countries like Mexico, they have much stricter rules to prevent vote fraud than is going to be in the Save Act. Not only do you have to have a government-issued photo ID, but they also have a thumbprint there. They use Indelible Inc. They ban absentee ballots in the country. You know, you look at Europe, for example, all 47 countries in Europe require government issued photo IDs for somebody to go and vote.

You basically, one way or the other, they have different rules, but they have proof of citizenship. So are any of these countries doing like what Oregon and many other states do with motive voter agreement? With mail and bail? Nobody. Nobody in the world has mail. in ballot. Nobody. In fact, and in fact, most of the world bans absentee ballots, you know, let alone just sending it out automatically to everybody based on, you know, just that they're registered to vote. You look at Europe, of the 47 countries in Europe, 39 of them completely ban absentee ballots.

Again, not even the type of mail-in ballots where they automatically send it out. The other eight countries, none of them will send the absentee ballot in the mail to you. You have to go in person and show your government-issue photo ID to be able to go and obtain the absentee ballot. And in six of the eight countries, it's further limited to only people. who will be in the hospital or in the military and in those cases they require third-party verification from either the hospital or the military with a sworn statements from them saying that you will not be available otherwise to go and vote it sounds like practically everybody else in the entire world is much

tighter and oh yeah and much more demanding of the right to vote in other words, you know, proving that you actually have that right to vote rather than just kind of assuming, oh, you have a pulse and you're signed up for a driver's license. You know, that's what, it's practically the way it is here in, in Oregon, Dr. Lott, and you have to, well, I mean, you affirm that you are a citizen, you know, if you're registering to vote. But, you know, I don't think anybody really checks up on that. And that, of course, got Oregon sideways of the rules a little while to go, too. Hmm. Interesting.

All right. Well, I mean, you have a lot of people who, unfortunately, lie about whether they're citizens in the country or not. You know, it just came out. Even the governor of New Jersey said that they had made a mistake where 6,600 people who said that they weren't U.S. citizens have been registered to vote. But then the Department of Homeland Security came out and said, well, actually, the total is over 35,000. if you also include those who didn't admit that they were non-citizens.

And that's an underestimate of the total because, again, New Jersey is not helping Department of Homeland Security go through and identify these individuals. But, you know, the amazing thing when you look at these other countries is the agreement across the political spectrum that they need to have these types of rules. The United States is unique in terms of having one major political party fighting tooth and nail against these types of rules. You know, and the other thing is people don't realize kind of the history of vote fraud and why we've had a lot of the rules in the United States that we have. So, you know, we didn't have secret ballots until relatively recently in this country. The first state to have secret ballots was Kentucky in 18. The last day to adopt secret ballots was South Carolina in 1950. And the reason why they adopted secret ballots was because of vote buy that was occurring.

What used to happen is you'd have a ballot box up in the front of the room and people would drop in colored pieces of paper based on what party they were voting for. And you'd have the political parties would stand on either side of the ballot box and they would monitor and monitor and mark. what party you voted for and then they would pay people. And in fact, one of the astounding things is that when a state moved to a secret ballot, different states moved in different years, there was an average a 10 percentage point drop in voter turnout that immediately occurred as soon as they moved to secret ballots. And the problem was when some people, when people weren't getting paid, some people wouldn't vote at that. point if they weren't getting paid. And at the same time, because of the concerns about buying votes, we had a lot of other voting rules that were put in place. So, for example, a number of

states banned absentee ballots at the time. The states that allowed absentee ballots had restrictions on who could get it. They also banned things like ballot harvesting. And the reason why they did all those was because the concern was with absentee ballots, I could show you how I voted and you could make sure that it got turned in if I could give it to you and you could turn it in for me. And so that made it so people would be willing to pay them for the votes. When you move to secret ballots, otherwise, I could tell you how I voted, but people who were paying you wouldn't know. And the big problem, that people don't seem to appreciate is how difficult it is to catch vote buying.

Because both parties, both the buyer and the seller, are benefiting from the exchange that's there. And they have an incentive to hide that that's going on. Yeah, Harry, help me fill out your ballot, right? That kind of thing. Right. Yeah. And then give it to the person to go and turn it in. And, you know, a number of countries used to have absentee ballot rules similar to what we have in the United States.

France, for example, had it up until 1975 when they discovered literally several hundred thousand votes were being bought each election. There were a few people who were connected with the mob there in France who got guilty consciences. and went to the prosecutors and provided the evidence. But if it wasn't for those individuals who just kind of voluntarily came forward and admitted what was going on, it wouldn't have been discovered. You have places like England and other places, which also went through similar discovery processes where you had literally, you know, like 40,000 votes in the city of Birmingham that were being purchased using absentee ballots.

And so, I mean, we've had a number of cases in the United States. I mean, just look at, you may have seen some of the videos from the mayor's election in Los Angeles, where people were saying that they had been paid, homeless people. Well, yeah, they were buying the bum vote. That's what they were doing. They bought the bum vote there. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Also earlier this year, you may have noticed that when they had the initiative drives, in California, they were paying $15 per signature that they could get to put an initiative on the ballot. You know, so, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people will sell their votes or their signatures for $15. Yeah, I'll agree with you there. Dr. John R. Lott Jr. once again. He's written a piece on townhall.com, why we need the Save America Act. Doctor, if I'm assuming that you have looked more deeply into this, one of the concerns I've had of the Save America Act, other than the fact I don't know if there are enough votes to make it pass, I would like to see it happen. I'm very much in favor of tightening up the franchise here. One of the questions that I have not really been able to answer to the satisfaction of some of the critics, like even my wife says, hey, you know, the way this is, it's rough enough that, you know, just, you know, getting a driver's license here.

but now, you know, if you're married and your name ended up changing, you would have to go up and dig out marriage certificates, and not everybody has official marriage certificates. You know, we're not sitting around with this stuff around. So we're talking birth certificates, marriage certificates, and that a lot of people would end up falling in the cracks on something like this. Now, I'll just preface this with, I had to have a, to get the real ID. I had to get my drive, I did have to get a birth certificate.

So I got the birth certificate, but a lot of people don't have those. And second of all, even in Oregon, real ID doesn't mean that you're a citizen. So, gosh, which government ID are we going to start flashing to people? Yeah, well, for most states, real ID does indicate whether you're a citizen or not. And, you know, the irony is the Democrats are accusing Republicans of trying to start married women from voting. Married women tend to vote heavily for Republicans. You know, Republicans actually believe that that was the case.

Oh, yeah, and I know that. I appreciate that, but I actually think the criticism, though, could be in practice correct, or would I be wrong on this, that it could make it much more difficult for women? Yeah, well, look, being able to go and get your birth certificate or a marriage license is essentially, the same. You know, you can go online. I recently went online to do it to get my birth certificate. It's a pretty simple process to go and do it. I have to say, you know, there's still gradations there. I mean, do you want to, even if you don't want to have that, do you want to have mail and voting? It's just the amount of fraud that will occur just in terms of having

ballot sent everybody. One of the things that came out this last year was, our last week was in 10 states, there were over 400,000 dead people that were still registered to vote in just those 10 states. But look, all these other countries that I went through have the exact same claims that could be made. You know, Mexico, you have to have a birth certificate, for example, or passport or other things. The exact same list of the items to go improve citizenship as you have in the United States, in the SAVAC there. You know, apparently women in Mexico are able to go and navigate this. Women in all South American countries are able to navigate this.

Women in African countries are able to go and navigate this process. But American women are incapable of this. Okay. I guess so. Just like, you know, apparently Hispanics and blacks are also different than Hispanics and the rest of the world are blacks in the rest of the world. So it just, and the thing is, the process of going through and getting these is much easier in the United States than, you know, a number of African countries. But look, one of the bottom lines is that when Mexico, for example, which has. out of much stricter rules than what we're talking about for the SAVE Act, the actual rate that

people voted increased after they had these restrictions put in there. In the three presidential elections prior to 1991, the average voter turnout was 59%. In the three presidential elections afterwards, it was 68%. When people thought there would be less fraud, when they thought that their votes would matter, they were more likely to register to vote and to vote. You know, that's a very interesting stat there, Dr. Lott. That's kind of indicative of once people think that the vote is more fair and more on the up and up, then it's worth actually taking part in.

Interesting. Right. Yeah. And there's evidence from other countries, too, that you see that type of increase. I mean, there's a reason why they put these types of rules in place. I mean, as I say, Mexico bans absentee ballots. In order to register to vote in Mexico, you have to go in person to the registrar's office. And in virtually all the states in Mexico, there's only one registrar's office inside the state.

In some states, you have to travel up to 100 miles to go there. You have to travel there, you know, 100 miles each way to register to vote. and then they will not send you the voter ID in the mail. You have to go back again to go and pick it up. So, I mean, they don't charge you for it, but, you know, you have... Well, you got to put some effort into it. You have to put effort into it, and yet they had this huge increase in voter turnout that was there. And, you know, as I say, you go and look at these other countries.

many of them used to have rules similar to what we have here in parts of the United States. And yet, you know, when they move to these new rules because they discovered massive fraud, you know, like in Northern Ireland, you had both the original Margaret Thatcher, conservative, put in ID requirements. And then Tony Blair, who is liberal, a labor party, was concerned that the documents were being forged. So he put in tamper-proof government-issued IDs. About 10 years afterwards, it came out after the statute of limitations for criminal offenses had passed. The head of the IRA basically bragged about how they had had whole armies of cab drivers to take people from one voting place to another. that's there, that they had printing shops in order to put together the fake IDs that were for people to use. You know, I used to live in Philadelphia when I taught at the Wharton Business School,

and I used to write a monthly column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I was brought into kind of the editorial board meetings. And the editors there at the newspaper thought it was a big joke about how the Democratic Party would take buses of people from one polling precinct to another to go and vote. You know, it reminds me of the type of discussion that they had in Northern Ireland with the cab driver airing people from one polling place to another. So the bottom line really when it comes right down to it, if the rules are Lucy Goosey and Oregon is arguably Lucy. Goosey with this under the guise of convenience, there is going to be abuse of this whether or not the states wish to admit it or not. Is that a fair assessment, kind of a takeaway from this?

Really? I think so. Look, I mean, in 2020, I lived in a state that had mail-in voting, and I was in an apartment, and I got mail-in ballots from the previous four tenants that were there. If you walk through the mailroom, you'd literally see hundreds of mail-in ballots on the floor because lots of other people were getting mail-in ballots for people who no longer lived in those apartments. I could have picked up the ballots and mailed them in. Who would have known that I'd done that?

So, you know, you could have massive fraud, and nobody would have been able to catch the person who engaged in a fraud. Dr. John Lott, Jr., and his piece here, it's worth reading why we need the Save America Act, in spite of the criticism of some of the way these rules would end up, you know, you'd have to go out and do a little bit of work, I guess, to, in some cases, to vote. You're thinking this is obviously the way we have to go. If you are a betting man, what do you say are the odds that this gets through reconciliation and then Congress finds a way to make this happen? Oh, it's surely possible, but it's basically for it to get through.

reconciliation, they need to pick up one more vote in Senate. And, you know, so you have Murkowski and Alaska, you have Mitch McConnell. Yeah, now Markowski is a big no on that because she talks about, you know, the huge distances that voters would have to travel to take care of all this stuff because of the, you know, the way Alaska is laid out. I wonder if there's a way to fix that somehow. Yeah, sure. There's lots of ways of fixing the state. Look, first of all, you have voter registration offices in every town in Alaska.

Do you have people that live out in the wilderness in different places? Yeah, you do. But, you know, it's possible that you can go and have, you know, the state can go and put out registers to go and visit some of the more rural areas that are there to go and do it. That's a question that the state. Now, the Democrats in the state won't do that. But, you know, it's possible that if they want to do that, if that's a real concern, that they can go and do that. So, you know, I don't know.

It's just, and there's one senator from Louisiana, but they have to pick up one of those votes to get this through. and if Mitch McConnell is unable to show up in the Senate and resigns and he gets replaced, you know, it's possible that they could get it through. Yeah, well, maybe find wherever Mitch is resting comfortably and bring him in on a stretcher like they did with Senator Bob Packwood. He's a no vote. Oh, he's a no vote. Oh, pardon me. Right.

I'm saying if he, because he's in the hospital. Uh-huh. And if he decides to quit and get replaced, then maybe his replacement would have a different view on it. Gee, I wonder why Senator McConnell would be. I think he's just, he's been a no vote on a number of things because he's just kind of pushing back against Trump. Oh, fair enough. Dr. John Lod Jr. once again, and he is the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Foundation, Crime Research. Foundation, crimeresearch.org. And this piece that we're talking about is on townhall.com,

townhall.com, why we need the Save America Act, very thought-provoking. Dr. Lott is a pleasure having you on, and we'll definitely have you back. Okay? Thank you. Thanks. Dr. John Lott, Jr. It is 736 at KMED. One of each Seltos VIN, 917324, MSRP, 27,085, Telyaride, VIN, 0274-7-8-MSRP, 6-275, 39-51, and 69, do it signing 10K miles per year, zero security deposit, all incentives and discounts to dealer, plus tax, title, license, 150 registration, processing fee, trading in a vehicle will not eliminate your debt, negative equity applied to new loan balance ends 8-226.

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Yeah, and it may not have been 103. It was actually 104 yesterday, that's for sure. Ron's here. Ron, you were wondering about that Save America Act. Dr. Lott and I were talking about it. And something on your mind, and what were you thinking? So I was thinking, how come a married woman who would be struggling to find her maiden surname, not be able to use her federal tax ID forms of the year before? Yeah, I don't know. I would always have to dig into. the nuts and bolts of the act, because, you know, there's always a lot of rules that are connected with this one, Ron. I can't answer that at the moment and would have to do a little investigation.

I think part of it, though, is that federal tax form is not necessarily a form of identification. Does that make sense? No, but it establishes her identity. She would obviously not be filing under a different name for her own taxes. Yeah, it could be. It could be right. I'll think about that. And my second, and I have a second point. Sure. You mean to say that just because a handful of people living in the wilderness of Alaska

are going to hold up for them to pass the Save Act in Alaska and their representative not signing up, that is absolutely ridiculous where the national security of the country is concerned. I know that Lisa Murkowski has disagreed with that, and apparently her constituents have been. been in her face about it. And yeah, I agree with you. I think in the, in the greater scheme of things, it would be much wiser to go with this. But it would certainly, it would certainly cause some struggles for some. I think we've been so used to things being convenient, and we'd have to

work at it for sure. Ron, I appreciate the call. And thank you for checking in, okay? 20 before 8, and we'll catch up with the rest of the news here in just a moment. And there is a push to help that Oregon does not have pharmacy deserts in which people having to go like 100 miles or more to get a refill. And there's a lot of that starting to go on as pharmacies have been getting shut down. But I'm going to talk with Brian Mayo about this and they're working up some grants and we'll talk about that coming up. You know the moment. Food shows up. Everyone gathers around and within minutes.

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KMED News. Here's what's going on. A structure fire Wednesday afternoon completely destroys one mobile home and seriously damages another. This happening at the Pines trailer park near the intersection of Walker and Ashland Street in Ashland. All occupants escaped safely. The latest from the East Evans Creek fire, holding steady at over 15,000 acres, now up to 33% containment. A road rage over parking lands a man in the Jackson County Jail Tuesday. Metford Police responded to his store on Stevens Street. A victim involved in the fight claimed 41-year-old David Summers threatened him, then pointing the gun at the victim, fired a number of shots, then fled. Cops found Summers' vehicle on campus drive in Medford. He was taken into custody, faces a boatload of serious charges.

No one hurt in that shooting. Even more gunplay trouble as an Ashland man was arrested Wednesday in connection with an attempted armed robbery from Sunday that blew up into gunfire and a parking lot fight. This happened outside of business on Clover Lane. An investigation led police to arrest 43-year-old Diagenis Peña Javier. Police recovered a couple of firearms from the crime scene, allegedly belonging to Javier. One of them had a homemade suppressor attached to it. No one was hurt, but the victim's van took a bullet.

And Secretary of State Tobias Reid Wednesday released an audit of the state prison system, which says the Oregon prison system is in really bad shape. A lot of crumbling buildings and deferred maintenance. The state penitentiary is singled out for extra concern. the audit saying the prison built in the 1860s is functionally obsolete and has reached the end of its useful life. Bill Meyer, KMED News. Who'll Stop the Rain? It's a classic 1970 hit from Credence Clearwater that reached number two on the U.S. Billboard Pop Singles chart.

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days a week or location near you visit groverelectric.com. News Talk 1063 KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show. Great having you here. Brian Mayo rejoins the show. I spoke with him a few months ago about a different issue when it comes to pharmacies in Oregon. Interesting that Oregon has the second fewest pharmacies per capita in the nation. Is that a problem? They're working to maybe fix us a bit.

here, Brian Moe, Mayo once again, executive director of the Pharmacy Foundation of Oregon. Brian, welcome back. Good to have you on. Thanks, Bill, for inviting me back. Brian, last time I was speaking with you, I just wanted to touch on something we spoke about last time. And it was, you were working hard to get some reform on pharmacy benefit managers. Did anything ever really come of that battle in the state legislature? Because apparently a lot of locally owned smaller pharmacies are kind of getting screwed over by the PBMs here, kind of the racket within the medical, industrial, pharmaceutical complex, I guess, for lack of a better term.

Unfortunately, no, the state legislators have not taken action on PBM reform that's meaningful for Oregon. So that's why we are second worst in the nation for pharmacy access, and the only state that we trail is Alaska. You probably, you know, this started several years ago. We've tried multiple, like, I won't say like 13 years for PBM reform. I haven't gotten anything that's going to help keep the pharmacies in business, which obviously impacts the patients directly because if you don't have a local pharmacy, then you're missing that access to a health care provider that, you know, you can just walk in and have a consultation with and be able to talk about your medications

and how they're interacting and the problems you're having. Yeah, the one thing we've noticed is that there just seems to be continuing closures of small-town pharmacies and things. I mean, it's more than just By-Mart when they exited, you know, a few years ago. Goes a lot deeper than that, doesn't it? Absolutely, yeah. The independent pharmacies are struggling, but also the chains are struggling. By-Mart was the first one that kind of quit a light for legislators at that point.

to take some action, but we haven't been able to pass meaningful PBM reform. But also, like last year, right aid went out of business nationally and closed several locations in Oregon. So independence are the ones that seem to be going out of business the most. But then if you take a look at like a national chain like Walgreens, the reason that they have such limited hours and reduced staff is because their reimbursement structure with the PBMs. and why sometimes you'll show up to the pharmacy and they're closed for the day because they don't have a pharmacist to be able to staff it. Okay. In other words, what's driving that, though? What do you think is it just the PBMs that are making it difficult to, you know, keep a pharmacy open and make it pay or something deeper than that?

I would say that the large majority, you know, up to, I don't know, I'll just figure 90% is due to the PBM reimbursement to ask. So that's why there are pharmacy closures and there's the staffing issues with pharmacies. In other words, the reimbursement, what the pharmacist and what the firm, what your independent pharmacy would get paid, is less than it would take to actually keep the business open. Exactly. Yeah, a lot of times the PBMs actually reimburse the pharmacy for less than what they paid for the medication. And then they're also not biving a dispensing fee that's adequate to cover the overhead cost and keep the lights on and the doors open. Okay. Wow. What role does the rise of the Amazons of the world play in this?

Because there's a part of me that wonders if, you know, kind of like just how Walmart always loved it if their minimum wage got raised. Because, you know, Walmart had the scale that, okay, minimum wage goes up. them, the mom and pop store that may have been competing with Walmart closes, right? So that's usually the way that tend to work. And I'm wondering if with like the Amazon pharmacy and various other bigger boxes and online deals, if this is maybe part of the strategy as they see it, how they're going to work it. Maybe they like it this way. Independent pharmacies are struggling.

And, you know, when you have your pharmacy go out of business, you have to look for other locations to get your medications, just because a pharmacy goes out of business doesn't mean that you don't need to stay healthy. So with the Amazon, they serve a purpose, and they're a good resource. You know, there's a variety of people that can use them. Usually they're younger and have a high deductible insurance plan and are able to not need medications on a regular basis or quickly. but those people that are going to need an antibiotic for their child who's sick or just got this discharged from a hospital, they're going to need their medications that day. They can't wait for three to five days to have it shipped to them.

And then definitely you're not going to want that medication sitting in a mailbox that's going to be in a hundred-degree heat. Oh, yeah, you sure don't want the insulin there, do you, right? Definitely not. So they do serve their purpose, and they have some benefits, but, you know, it doesn't replace the in-person interaction with the local pharmacy. Plus, the local pharmacy that you're able to go into, you're going to be able to have all your medications on file there, and know the pharmacist is going to be able to check and see if you're going to have any issues with that medication interacting with other things in your entire health history. Yeah, and you don't get that a lot of times with that other delivery method. Brian McExecutive Director of the Pharmacy Foundation of Oregon.

I wanted to bring it up to what's going on right now. And there was a grant. There's been a $5 million grant awarded by the Oregon Health Authority to try to expand pharmacy access here, especially to a lot of the rural areas of Oregon that have found themselves pretty much under pressure. What happened with that? What's going on? We are thrilled to receive this grant. It's part of HR1 where CMS is providing up to the...

billion dollars to the states over the next five years and so for this first first two years of funding we received five million dollars to help out rural communities and we're going to be working with critical access pharmacies around the state some of the programs that we're going to do are placing pharmacy lockers in different communities and having the critical access pharmacies manage them we also are going to purchase some delivery vehicles that can be staffed by community health workers so that they can deliver medications to those people that need delivery mechanisms and can't necessarily go to the pharmacy

themselves. And with that, those community health workers are going to be able to provide additional resources to those people who can help with aging in place or with different resources that the community health workers can provide. And then the other one is there's only one telepharmacy in Oregon currently. So we're partnering with that pharmacy to open another telepharmacy location and see how those malls work. And the best thing about it is we've got three different things that we know can help rural

pharmacies and rural patients. And we're going to be able to take a look and see which ones are most effective for certain situations and be able to hopefully in years three, four, and five expand on the program and be able to help out more patients. So this is a building program then, Brian. Okay. Now, I know that this first project is building the secure prescription pickup lockers. And I think a lot of us are familiar with how those work in some cases.

Now, is this something where the prescription lockers are like out in the open someplace in some rural community and then, you know, kind of like an election drop box of some sort? Or is it inside a store? How do they end up working this? Or is it inside a pharmacy or an existence? you know, maybe the postoff or something. I'm just wondering how that would actually look as they get built out. So we're going to work with the local pharmacy and the local community

to determine what the best location is for each locker. They will be located indoors just to make sure that they are safe and also, you know, don't have any damage from weather conditions. Sure. They could be, like, if it's in an Albertsons or a Safeway, the pharmacy hours are, you know, nine to five, but the actual hours of the Safeway is like 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. So that would expand their hours. But in other locations, you know, it might be like the one that we started with in Condon. That's where the pharmacy is located, but they put the locker in Fossil, which is about. about 20 to 30 minutes away and able to fill the locker at that location and then work with the local community health clinic there to provide the resources to the people in fossil. So the other option is the lockers can go into a fire department who obviously is open 24 hours

a day and can have people go in and be able to access their medications. Brian, what, you know, this is about fighting the pharmacy desert here. I mean, are there any areas in Southern Oregon that you would say qualify as the pharmacy desert or, you know, how far away from a pharmacy do you have to be before you kind of come under this OHA plan and this grant that you're working to get these prescription lockers out there and rural prescription delivery, et cetera, all the parts of the project? Yeah, unfortunately, Southern Oregon has several locations that are pharmacy deserts. The Oregon Health Authority designates the critical access pharmacy is one that's, I think, 10 miles or so away from the nearest other pharmacy, plus there's a population element that goes into the equation. So, yes, there's a lot of locations.

We have plans to go ahead and put lockers in southern Oregon locations along with some of the delivery vehicles are going down there. with the community health workers. So we're going to be all part of that. All right. What is the time frame for a lot of this buildout? So we're going to do part of it immediately. As soon as we get the funding deposited into our bank account from OHA,

there's a meeting on the 28th with all the people that are recipients of the grant. So I'm hoping to get some more information. But the way that they have the funding process, it looks like there's payments that come, essentially quarterly. So we'll be able to do like six of them immediately. And then another six coming up in November and then February, I think we can even do more. So, you know, we've been in contact with the pharmacies and they have their plans in place where they want to put them. I've been in contact with the vendor that's going to provide the lockers and he's the CEO there knows about this grants and how the funding

is going to work so they can deploy them as soon as we get the money and can roll them out as quickly as possible. Okay. I'm intrigued with this because I know that once you get out of the city of Medford or the city of Grants Pass, city of Ashland, it gets pretty spotty, you know, on where you're going to find, you know, a lot of this, of this pharmaceutical activity. I would imagine there are probably some restrictions, though. If you're prescribed opioids, they're probably not sitting in a locker. Would that be fair to say? Or would that still be something you'd have to say? signed for in person.

So we're working with the Oregon Border Pharmacy, make sure that everything is compliant, and they have strict rules, obviously, to protect the patients. So I will need to double check on what prescriptions are allowed to go in. I don't think that opioids are allowed to be in the locker, but, you know, for the majority of the medications, they'll be able to put in there. Yeah, you get your heart medication, your diabetic medication, whatever the case might be. or here's your OZem-ZMPIC shot, right? You know, go ahead and put it in the locker and things are fine.

You know what's really going to help ultimately, though, is getting the reimbursement for the pharmacies back to something which actually pays the bills and, you know, the PBMs, the pharmacy benefit managers that have been part of this controversy, like you talked about last time you were on the show. Is there any effort in either the federal government or the state government to bring this back and get this pushed through in,

legislative action. Are you aware of anything? Yeah, Congress was able to pass a bill recently that's going to be helpful, but it doesn't go into effect until 2029. From the Oregon State Pharmacy Association standpoint, we'll be coming up with a bill in 2027 that's going to work on PBM reform. And, you know, we've had our challenges in the past, but we're hoping to do a different game plan and get this across the finish line so that we can keep these pharmacies open and be able to to help the patients. Plus, once we get PBM reform in place, pharmacies can start opening again because they're going to be reimbursed at a amount that's going to allow for expansion.

I hope that happens. Brian Mayo is the executive director of the Pharmacy Foundation of Oregon. It's Oregon Pharmacy.org. I'm going to share the information on the press release that you gave me the other day. I think it's, you know, really interesting is a lot of work. And you think that Grant's going to do a lot of good here. And I'm glad to have you on. in the room here, okay? Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you, Bill. Brian Mayo. 8 o'clock, KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants, Pass, K-294A-Schland, and K-290AF Rogue

River. It's where you are. We've heard it all. That electric gate has a mind of its own. This is the Bill Myers Show. John O'Connor joins me in a few minutes. He's an attorney from the Bay Area. I always love talking with John, great legal mind. And it has to do with chat GPT being sued for handing out lousy medical

advice. All right. Nothing like going to an artificial intelligent bot and saying, hey, you know, what should I do? I'm bleeding. Cliff's here. Cliff, you're calling in about my talk with Brian Mayo about this award on trying to get drug delivery and pharmacy lockers out. It's Oregon Health Authority putting out a $5 million grant. And the pharmacy foundation is saying, okay, we're going to go to work. Okay. Okay. Let me start off with this. I'm a Buy Mart pharmacy refugee. Yep. I went to Bymart.

I knew my father. What happened is that he didn't mention this, is that the cat tax in the state of works went in, and I went back and did some research on this. There was, after the cat tax was passed, there was to try to get the pharmacies exempt from the cat tax happened because bill proposals were coming from the Republicans, which is coming out of it, right? Yes. Okay.

You know, I mean, there needs to be regulation, but they need to get out of this, this band-aid, dressing the real problem to let business survive in the state of Oregon. Corporate activity tax, once again, is 1% roughly the way I was looking at here. I think it's 0.56% of anything over a million dollars. gross. Yeah, it can apply to pharmacy gross sales. And now, as I seen to recall, there was a cat tax exemption for critical access pharmacies. Maybe that expired. I would always have to look a little bit more into this. But the whole issue, though, is that you look at Buy Mark. Buy Mark got out of it because obviously they weren't making money. And the way they described it was that

lots of money would go through the pharmacy, but very little profit would come out of the pharmacy. And so that ends up then going into Buy Mart's overall, you know, the amount of money that's coming in. And then the corporate activity tax, the cat tax just only, they just tax the gross. It's not a matter how much money you made is how much money goes through your company, really. Right. And if you're in a losing business, you know, and the margins are slim, you're not going to be making any money. It's a net loss, and you can't have a lost leader when you're selling prescriptions out of Buymart. I mean, that's just, it's financial sense. You know, it's the same thing.

Okay, the grocery businesses, they got... They got carved out. They got a carve out. It's, you know, because I knew a guy who had a cookie distributing business, and he finally, he retired and sold it. And that was high-priced, low-profit. And, you know, he got exempted out of it. So, you know, it needs to be some reform in the tax structure in Oregon. Well, I'll tell you what the reform for the cat tax is repeal.

That's the reform. That's it. Right. You know, because I remember the state of Washington did something similar to that a number of years ago, way back when I was living in Seattle, in which they would just bill you a certain amount just based on the, gross revenue going through your small business. I had a small service business I was running on the sideline.

And it just astounded me that they would tax me not on what I made, but just all the money I took in. It just astounded me, you know, the way they do it. I'm going to give you one more plug here. As along with what I said, and with some of the recommendations coming out of the Kotech's prosperity council, is, you know, reforming taxes and stuff like that. It was, it's kind of a proposal that's light. But, you know, because all the people were handpicked by Kotech on that, is I'm trying to appeal to the Republicans out there and moderate Democrats or whoever to vote for Christine Drazen. We have a chance on right now.

And maybe the school system could work on something other than, diversity, equity, and transgenderism. Okay? Yeah, I know. Yeah, all right. I know. Hey, a fella or a couple of fellows can dream, right? Right, Cliff?

All right. Thanks for the call. We'll catch up with news here in just a moment. John O'Connor joins me. Sue and Chat GPD. What will the trial lawyers think of next?