Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 10-28-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

10-28-25_TUESDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. I'd like to keep you informed on what's going on in the world of medicine, especially from the medical freedom side of the aisle. And I always go to Dr. Jane Orient MD, who's the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

You can find out more at aapsonline.org. It is a pleasure having you back on. Good morning. Good morning, Bill. Doctor, I am not on Medicare yet. I'm 64. Next year, though, I'm looking at that big stack of Medicare paperwork that Linda had to go through. My mother is already thoroughly ensconced in this at the age of 85. And so I'm starting to see more and more cracks in the surface when it comes to Medicare. In fact, I'm told that Medicare is actually in more trouble than Social Security.

and you bring up something on your health watch. You end up doing these posts on AAPS online that people can read here. And the question you're posing is, what will happen to Medicare doctors? What specifically were you referencing, I mean happening to the doctors themselves? What's going on? Well, the doctors pay under Medicare. It's been cut and cut and cut and cut. And it's going to be cut even more this year.

and when they are the government is imposing limits on the fees you have to understand that that fee has to cover everything it covers the army of clerks in the doctor's office it covers utilities it covers malpractice insurance it covers everything and those prices are going up up up so the doctor's share of of the Medicare fee is really a small proportion of it and as doctors are finding that as their costs go up and their revenue goes down and they're increasingly costly administrative requirements in Medicare, they're saying, I cannot keep my private office open any longer. They used to make up some of it on private insurance, but those fees are often being tied to Medicare. And I'm just saying, look, I either quit medicine or I get a job with a big health system, and then they're on a production line, and they have to turn over, they have to turn over a large number of patients. Is this why you...

Yeah, is this why then you see so many doctors have sold out of their private practice and would join either big doctor groups or actually become part of a hospital system? Is that why you see more of that going on? Oh, yes, that's exactly why the doctors cannot afford. to keep their independent practice open, so they become employees. But you were talking about how when you were in medical school back in the 1970s, doctors were generally believed to be rich. And people thought that once their kids made it in, once they got the, you know,

the MD degree and all the rest of it, and everything was going, was going just fine. I mean, is Medicare the cause of this, or is it just a general medical trend, I guess? not just Medicare. Well, people still think that doctors are rich, and so if they cut their pace, so what? But when Medicare came, at first doctors did get even richer because everything was being paid for, they didn't have to do so much charity care, and so they were really making money from the government. But the government noticed that, and they started introducing all these ways of restricting the payments, I mean, at first one, the Medicare law passed, they promised we're never, never, never going to tell doctors what they can charge.

But a few years later, they were putting people in HMOs and having more and more restrictions on the doctor's fees. I mean, when you go to the doctor, he will put a code on your visit. The codes are made up by the AMA. There may be five codes for office visits. you may make a few dollars more for a level five which is supposed to take more time and be more complex but if you up code you could find yourself looking at a prison sentence

and more and more auditors are saying well we have to cut down the coding for these visits so the doctors may be making a really paltry fee especially if they take very much time to see the patient So is this why I mean, I was joke only half a ha-haying about that my primary care, my primary physician is the imaginary friend, right?

This is what has driven a lot of that because the fees have been cut back both on private insurance and on Medicare to the point where you just got to get run through like a conveyor belt, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I'm 10 minutes per patients, and a lot of that is spent on the electronic medical record, and then you may be spending half of your time on that record. You may be putting in overtime that's not paid for to keep your charts up to date, and the main purpose of the chart, it's a billing record to justify paying you. I mean, most people, when they go to work, they expect they're going to get a paycheck. Yeah.

They don't expect to have to fight with somebody. to get the paycheck that they have earned but this is the way that uh... doctors in the medicare system have to go to work they go to work and essentially have to fight to be paid right and a lot of times the pay the fees are delayed there they're cut sometimes they're even clawed back and sometimes they are faced with very expensive audits

and even prosecution could you explain there's a graph you have to destroy their whole career yeah there's a uh... there's a uh... there's a there's a graph that you have placed in here called the conversion factor is actually decreased in non-adjusted dollars. This is non-inflation-adjusted dollars. Could you explain what a conversion factor means in Medicare and why this is putting the medical system under strain, at least for the physician's side of things?

Well, all these codes are connected to a relative value unit, and some genius figured out, you know, what a colistectomy versus an ingrown toenail was worked, and they gave it a relative value unit. And then they multiply that by what's called a conversion factor to give you the actual fee. So supposedly, if your expenses are higher in a certain region, you'll get paid a little more. But they keep reducing the conversion factor, which means that reduces your fees. And they don't index it to inflation either, so it's going down. much, the decrease is much worse.

So the ingrown toe is worth so much, according to this conversion factor, and the conversion factor continues to go down in real value year after year after year, right? Is that how it's, how it plays? That's how it plays. So the doctor office is bringing in less revenue, and the costs are increasing, so the doctor's income is decreasing even more than it looks like. on the surface. You bring up something else, which I thought was very interesting, that there are now more

women going into medical school than men. Isn't that right? Yes, some of the incoming classes are majority women. Okay, more women than men. Is this a goal? Is there a possibility that the physician, the role of a physician, has been assigned the duty to lower status? I mean, could it be something...

I mean, I know that sounds really cynical for me to say something like that. But, you know, you get women physicians to accept less money than maybe male physicians were willing to take back in the day. What do you think? Well, they do, and also they work fewer years. They're more likely to work part-time than more likely to get into another career. I mean, they have family obligations. They have things that are more important to do, and oftentimes they have a husband to

rely on to help bring in money, whereas the really ambitious men want to go into a career where they can get a reliable income, and not only are they being discriminated against an admission to medical school with this DEI stuff, I mean, white men really have a really high hurdle to get accepted in medical school, but a lot of them are just deciding from the onset and they're going to go into business or aren't going to go into law because I'll be able to make a decent living. And I won't have all of these years of huge debt for my student loans. And years when I can't, I'm making a resident salary. Yeah, but what you're seeing, the picture you're painting here seems to be that Medicare and private insurance today are in essence

destroying the prestige of being a physician. Fair enough? They're destroying the prestige and they're also making the work much more onerous. The doctor doesn't feel like he's practice. medicine. He feels like he's on a treadmill. He's checking boxes on the medical record. He cannot use his abilities and his judgment to do the best he can for his patients. So where you see this going over the long term? Because we know that Medicare is fighting itself in financial straits. And they're trying to find every way they can to save a buck. At the same time that we have more and more people like myself, I'll be considered on it next year. you know, a year from now, and that's why I'm kind of looking at this, you know, a little

scans. And I can't help but wonder if we're, maybe we're going to see some revolution in which doctors won't take Medicare. Could you see that happening? Or is there a talk about just impressing them? When I say impressing them, forcing doctors to do it. What? We already see that a lot of doctors do not take Medicare or they don't take new Medicare patients, they restrict the practice that's devoted to that. But the demographics are there. I mean, Medicare is bankrupt already. It's not bringing in enough revenue to cover its outgo. It's going into the trust fund, which is an imaginary thing because the trust fund was spent on other things a long time ago. Yeah, it's the government owing itself money, and still that

means that it would have to come out of current tax revenue to pay back the debt, right? There's no magic money. Or just if money is being borrowed, that can't be repaid really, or monetizing the debt with inflation. So financially, we find ourselves up against a, you know, a rock in a hard place, the proverbial rock in a hard place right now, at the same time that the nation is getting older. And would it be wise if you are approaching Medicare age and you are relatively, you are relatively healthy at this point to come up with an alternative or make alternative plans?

How do you see it? Absolutely. You should be thinking ahead, and I think that joining a practice that's a, what is a direct primary care practice, which is a subscription fee per month so that you get access to the doctor, you can get a cell phone number, you can get your lab tests at a discount, oftentimes medications at a discount, a prompt appointments, a visit that's not rushed. And the fee for it, and they're concierge practices that are really, really expensive, but there are others that maybe $100 or so a month, and that much less than you're paying

to your HMO for care that you may or may not ever be able to get. so yeah and it keeps doctors in business it keeps them keeps them from you know just going away entirely or for restricting their practice or for signing up for employment can you still get catastrophic insurance only i remember you used to be able to do this uh back prior to obamacare and that's what a lot of people did you know they had a high deductible type of uh type of care that only covered the really massive stuff, but other than that, they would pay their own medical bills. Can you still get that?

It's very rare. I hadn't been able to find it for years and years. I think that Obamacare virtually outlawed it. Millions of people lost the coverage that they liked, and there are so many mandates loaded onto the insurance that are just very costly that you may not need or want. you can't get credit for living for being healthy and plus you have to pay for a treatment and you have to pay for maybe you have to pay for transgender treatment or what abortions

or whatever the insurance company is mandated to cover. Yeah. There's something else that you put in this I thought that was interesting because I saw a story about this that kind of spoke to it in which some people are starting to complain about that it's unfair that certain doctors try to escape the Medicare system and going into concierge or direct primary care. It almost seems like they're trying to get up a system in which the doctors are forced to perform Medicare service. Do you see that coming? The Canadian system is like that.

You can't really escape. You're all or nothing. In the British system, you can't have a private practice on the side. and there are people in like in our medical society oh, how unfair it is these doctors they get a very nice practice, they get paid well. And they actually treat their patients well? How dare those patients get treated well by a doctor

paying attention to them, right? Well, that's right. These doctors should be on the treadmill like everybody else providing lousy care for lousy pay because, you know, if some of them are escaped, that means more, there are fewer of us to see this onslaught of Medicare patients. So I guess the conclusion, though, is it better for a physician to just burn out and leave medicine entirely, or should they be forced to work, right?

That kind of thing. Yeah, maybe that's what some of these people think. I hope that's not. They don't think anybody should be allowed to live well. Yeah. Or, gosh, we're going to have to develop an all. alternative to Obamacare. Obama care is failing miserably, doctor. We know that. We know that even when you hear all the whining, I shouldn't say whining, but the complaining about the tax credits

expiring at the end of this year. What do you think about that? I mean, it's like, wait a minute, in some ways it's telling everybody that it's not affordable like we were promised. Right. Well, they had to give the tax subsidies because otherwise people could not afford it. But they had to put a cliff on it, the tax subsidy had to expire, because otherwise the cost would be honestly conveyed to Congress, and it would be obviously unaffordable. Well, maybe what it has to do is that these tax credits have to expire, we find out what Obamacare really cost. We know that, A, it's not the Affordable Care Act, it's the Unaffordable Care Act, and that

we can try something different, like maybe a little bit of freedom? Maybe that's the goal we should be looking for it. Or maybe if we had to extend the subsidies for a year or two, but we need to remove all of the mandates and the federal requirements to make it impossible to have an insurance market for affordable, catastrophic-only insurance. Yeah, you can't have insurance cover absolutely every possibility of medical need out there and then call it affordable. It's just impossible financially.

Or the only things that they think you should have even if you don't want them. Mm-hmm. Like mental health coverage, as an example. That'd be one. Yeah. Okay. All right. Although in Oregon, we're told that after spending millions of dollars on mental care health were crazier than ever. Seriously, there was an article came out the other day. I believe it. Yeah, I believe it indeed. All right. Dr. Orient, it is a great health watch. What will happen to Medicare doctors. I'm going to share that today. And I appreciate you coming on. and AAPSonline.org, a new newsletter coming out this month. Didn't that just come out the other day? Some good news stuff?

It just got posted the other day. All right, very good. Great site to keep up on the medical world, and we appreciate your take. Take care now. Bye-bye. Thank you so much, Bill. Always a pleasure to talk to you. You betcha.

732 at KMED. Even in an alternative universe in a completely different space-time. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Hey, coming up in a few minutes. to talk about the price of beef with Herman, who, of course, understands cattle, fire, a whole bunch of other things. Former State Senator Herman Verchiger,

we'll have that coming up. And a quick email of the day. And that's sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry.com, great people. And you want to talk about an in-house lab there, which makes it so easy. You can get a crown in about an hour, hour, 15, maybe depends on how long it takes to get your mouth prepared.

It's amazing. I watched my crown being done in the lab, and then they pop it in, and the great thing about it is like it's practically perfect fit every time, unlike the days in which you had to, you know, send it out to the lab and wait for it to come back and then send it back out again and et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, central point family dentistry.com, okay? Bob Hayworth, we're going to give him an email of the day. Bob and Mary Hayworth write me and say, Bill, thank you for helping ease of pebble that we've had for months. when Liam McPartland was killed just blocks from our house,

a huge memorial appeared at the school there. And we talked to friends of his and heard of the circumstances of his death, but we could find no information about the motorcycle rider who hit him. Your revelation that this case has just been reopened. Actually, it's going to be reopened. I don't know if it's been reopened yet, Bob and Mary. But this has answered the question of why we could find no information about the scumbag at the time. I hope he gets some punishment.

We'll see about this because, according to witnesses and the other story, Buffy Pollack on Rogue Valley Times has this Jackson County DA to reopen this case, into the teens' e-bike death. And some of the key moments of this story, one of the witnesses who attempted CPR on my son, this is McPartland, estimated the motorcycle of speed in excess of 60 to 65 miles per hour when he hit Liam. and witnesses said the motorcyclist was just kind of throwing a fit, a senseless tragedy. It was like an adult tantrum that caused my son's death.

This is the father making this claim. And there was no blood drawn for blood alcohol, and nor was there a breathalyzer applied. Now, I have to say, the motorcyclist, though, had severe head injuries. And so I have a feeling there is a bit of this where, you know, you have the police officers, where the sheriffs, everybody's in there, and they're kind of going, well, what can we do about this? Hey, you know, the guys hurt. We got to get them all. We got to get everybody to the hospital. And that kind of fell between the cracks. And the DA, I think after the initial thing, maybe there wasn't enough to go on. And there seems to be enough smoke that they're going

to dig into this case again. And I think that would be why. So that is the story. And Buffy, thanks for doing that in Roan Valley Times. 738 at KMED. And we'll catch up on the rest of news, too. We've heard it all. That power pole wasn't there yesterday. Drilling, and I'm on KMED. 742. Jay Austin, a company, gold and silver buyers are here, whether you're looking to buy or sell, protect some wealth here. Now, gold and silver kind of went parabolic over the last 10 days. It has settled back to, instead of nose bleed, just nose, maybe not bleeding, you know, okay?

But I'm actually quite happy about this in many ways because the way, it was going parabolic. You had a lot of weak hands that were in there, maybe just doing some training him. But gold, just a touch under 4,000 right now, and silver still at 4688. It's kind of funny, you know, silver at 4688 a couple of weeks

ago was kind of like, wow, this is incredible. Then now 4688, oh, it's down from the 51 or whatever it is. But I just look at this as, hey, it makes it more affordable to pick up some precious metals because does anybody really think that the debt and the

dollar problems, even with temporary strength or good news and happy trade deals. Does anybody really think does everybody really think that this is all solved and politics is taking care of it and we have no pitfalls coming up in the real world?

Yeah, I don't either. That's why I continue to want to stack, okay? So this makes it cheaper for me. I like that. Jay Austenbrokers.com, fortunereserve.com. They are so busy right now. Call for your appointment. 4827.15. The recognized experts, Austin. All right. Now, we have former state senator Herman Berchiger back on the program. Herman, welcome back. We're going to talk cows, cows, cattle, and beef this morning. How are you doing, sir?

Well, I hope to steer it in the right direction. Okay. There we go. Hey, good pun, okay? We like that. When puns are outlawed, Herman will still have them. All right. So there's been a lot of complaint about the price of beef right now, and there has been talk that President Trump has been, especially since we're getting of putting together deals with Argentina and Brazil and talk about maybe opening things up a little bit, allowing some foreign beef to come in, because domestic beef has just gone insane. And then you have the domestic ranchers that are saying, hey, wait a minute, this is the first time we've been making money in decades. Now you want to kill us here, but, you know, explain it as you see it. But that's kind of the short of it that I saw, but maybe you see it differently.

well yeah you know being involved in that business for a long time and then also recently I spent some time in Harney County and attended their their Stockman's dinner and I got some you know real good friends over there and lots of discussion over this yes the cattlemen are making some money but yes they are worried about the importing Argentine beef I'm not so worried about the importing Argentine beef, I don't think that'll liquid, I don't think that'll flood the market. Except my concern is, if we let Argentina bring in some box beef, does that open the door for a whole bunch of other countries? So, you know, we got some countries, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa. There's a lot of countries that are really Botswana's starting to produce a lot

of beef. Botswana? Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I never think about it. When beef comes to mine, Botswana is not top of my mind, for some reason. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, all those, all those, you know, sub-equedorial countries in Africa, you know, those planes, they call it the belt, have served the antelope very well forever, and it makes great grazing land for cattle, and they're discovering that. and they're starting to really pump those numbers up.

So back to the question is, does this Argentine deal open the door for a lot of other countries? That could be devastating for the American cattle rancher. Here's the challenge that I see for American cattle ranchers. Putting a tariff or keeping other beef providers out doesn't solve the main issues of domestic cattle. cattle producers, and that is essentially an anti-cow attitude out there and high regulatory costs, and also, frankly, the cartels of the packing houses. Isn't that really what we're talking about? Because the cartels are the ones that are really setting the price from what I've been told.

Yeah, so let's look at, let's kind of dig into this a little bit. So you go back to 1776. About 86% of the people in the United States at that time, well, it was pre-United States, was engaged in agriculture. By 1900, that has shrunk down to 41% of the population. And now, as of 2025, we're at 1.4 to 2% of the people in this country produce the food. Yeah, one out of 50 people, so it's huge. It's very mechanized right now. Well, and those are some of the problem is we only have a small group of people that are engaged in this.

one. The average age of a farmer rancher is 65 years old. That's my age. That's average. That means half of them are older than I am. The entry level, there's so many barriers for young people to get involved with agriculture because it's so capital intense between the land and equipment and everything. It's almost impossible. And it's low margin, right? Low profit margin. A lot of capital. It's kind of like running a grocery store. where lots of money goes through it, but you're only making two or three percent on it, that kind of thing? Absolutely.

So all of those things, and now, so those are all problems, so we're identifying the problem. Next problem is the packing houses. So we got really only four major packing houses. Two of them are foreignly owned, one by China and one by Brazil. We have a Chinese-owned packing house here. Which one is that, do you know?

I'll let you look at it. up okay i'll look it up later okay another time yeah but um anyways so so we we let's go back to the 60s because that's where the cattle numbers are today is what they were in the early 60s but in the early 60s everything still was on the rail so what i mean by on the rail is your beef was delivered to your grocery stores or your or your butcher shop and everywhere is quarters okay they've come in as quarters. So they were slaughtered at the slaughterhouse. We used slaughterhouses in, okay? And they came on, and they came on the hook, went on the rail, they slid them into the facility, and then the butcher's cut them up. Yeah, yeah. And that almost doesn't happen now. Most stores don't have

butchers, really. No, rails and hooks are gone. Everything comes in a box. And so then the the butcher's now just break down whatever's in the box. But most of the work is all done. So because of that, we've gotten rid of local packing houses. I mean, great example is Crater Lake Meat there right there in Medford. You know, it's been closed down for years and years and years. And I know that people for food security have been wanting to get that or something like it reopened. You know, the, gosh, what is it? The Joel, who's the farmer guy that came in here?

But Joel Salton. Joel Salton was pushing for things like that. Right. Right. And so what has happened is the big boy has lobbied Congress and the change of rules for USDA and some of those are administrative rules. It makes it so restrictive to have a kill floor anymore in a county. We used to have one here in Josephine County. Cartwright meat used to have a USDA kill floor. And so you could take your animal there and it would be processed. It would be USDA inspected meat. And it be local. to the public. And it'd be local. Right.

You see there, and there was an encouragement, I would guess, at that point, because you knew you had a place where you could take your meat to get the USDA stamp of approval. But what changed? What happened to make that go away? It's all lobbying by the big boy. Oh. They got rid of all of that. Now, even when I was in the legislature, we were working towards accommodating that type of mentality in Oregon as far as we could,

but we're stuck with USDA inspection. Couldn't we avoid USDA inspection if we went with beef or we made our own beef, but it's only within the state, in other words, intrastate instead of interstate commerce? They would have to change some of the USDA laws because the law supersedes states. And I mean, some of this stuff is ridiculous. You've got to have, you know, the facility's got to be built correctly, you've got to have certain size drinks. You've got to have a bathroom.

its own bathroom for the USDA inspector. These kind of things. Why would you have to have a bathroom for the inspector only? It makes no sense. Yeah. So anyways. But that's what... But still, because of these kind of rules, though, the big meatpacking cartels,

they can afford to do that. But let's say a cart rights or someone down here, like the butcher shop, there are other places, they can't do that. You can't do it. No. No, no. And then if you process game, you know, if you're a... facility also processed wild game.

It's got to be in a separate room and a wall between it and blah, blah, bye, and all these stuff. So it's just, it's made it impossible for these small slaughterhouses to exist. It's just, you know, there's one in Roseburg, but, you know, in Roseburg, you got to, you know, you better call them and say, hey, I'm going to have some cattle in six months. Can I have a date? Well, yeah, because, and even then, shipping and shipping your cattle back and forth. That's a cost, too. You know, it's not like, it's not like Roseburg is in the backyard there.

You've got to put them on the truck, truck it over there. If it's in the wintertime, maybe sometimes the transportation is kind of dicey at times. Yeah, so why, I guess my thing, though, is that President Trump wanting to put tariffs on beef in order to protect domestic. If we really want to protect domestic, we have to break up the cartel of the four major meat packers. That seems to be a root of the problem here, is it not? It is definitely a part of the problem. Also, we have to, you know, as I reminded my friends in the cattle business, and some are pretty big cattle ranchers, some of real big cattle ranchers.

But I said, you know, you also have to be conscious that if you drive the price of beef up too much, people are going to start buying different types of protein. And so then your demand will go down. So you've got to be, you know, this is all a balancing act. We've got to be careful and we've got to be conscious of, you know, the different outcomes that may arise out of these high. I mean, there's a point where people, you know, they can't pay $50 a pound for a prime rip. They just can't do it. Yeah.

You're just not going to do it. So there's some of those problems, like everything else, it's not simplistic, Bill. It's very complicated. Yeah, but every time, though, you can look at it is the government. interference in this, you know, supposedly that, you know, and that anytime we deviate from the free market system, this, these kind of problems arise every time. Because, you know, a cattle rancher has a right and do right, a need to be able to make a decent return in order to keep a very key part of our food supply going. Of course, I got to tell you, though, I would imagine those

gang green types. They would love to see beef expensive and then no doing that and then forcing everybody into the vegan or soilant green thing what you would you think you know I remind I remind my friends in the industry and let me tell you after six hours of conversations and but I always remind them you know a lot of the people I was talking to have cattle out on the open range and BLM lands and stuff like that and now they've got these collaborative and they're they're trying to work with the cattlemen and I always remind them I said Boys, always remember the environmentalist at the 30,000-foot view want every single cow off the range.

That's right. When you enter into these collaboratives and everything, I would be on the lookout. Are we slowly, you know, as you work with collaboratives and stuff, are we slowly working towards their goal of getting the cattle off the range? And I'm right. I mean, in like the Heart Mountain Refuge, there's no more cattle up. there. Okay, they finally got them out of there pretty much. Just remember, collaborators, they used to shoot collaborators back in World War II. That's all I would say, even the name. It tells you everything you need to know, okay? But it is. And so all these

environmental things, you know, fencing or repairing areas, doing this, doing that, some of those, you know, some of those have benefits. Some of those are smart to do, but they all cost money. And it is, it's pretty expensive. It's let me tell you something. Yeah, I would hope, though, that if they really want to help the cattle ranchers is that there is a job for the federal government and that would be in the regulatory taking the boot off the cattleman or cattlewoman's neck, so to speak, it's like everything else because their cost, their labor costs are too high, everything is too high, but yet we're told that the way to protect them is just to make the beef extra high too. So I just don't, it's not the root of the problem. I want to them

going after the root of the problem here, Herman. That's what I'm thinking. Oh, yeah, it is. It's to get back to the free market system. You brought up labor. I was amazed how many conversations of these ranchers. They just can't simply find labor. They just can't.

They cannot do it. You know, I've had guys say, hey, I could put another 500 head of cows on this place, but I don't have, I can't get the labor to manage it. Well, just wait until you have the Amazon, you buy, you buy, or Amazon Robot Vaccaro, or whatever it is. Well, you know, listen, in agriculture, whether it's mine or my friends in eastern Oregon and my friends in Wyoming, whatever, these labor costs are big. And in Oregon, now you have to pay time and a half on agriculture labor.

And, you know, those guys are working 12, 14 hours a day. And you only have a limited time to get that harvest in or to get the cattle in. or whatever it is, you know, the overtime loss, yet it's not working for them all bad. I tell people, if you don't like work and stay out of agriculture, because there's, you know, I've always said you put 40 hours in by Tuesday. Yeah. So, you know, that's just, that's just how it is. And so it's gotten so expensive.

You're also buying $70,000 pickups anymore. Yeah. Well, and the thing is, though, $100,000 track. Yeah, and you look at this talk about wanting to put high tariffs on American beef. The other thing is that. Americans need an a and and and also like beef though and I want to be careful that that doesn't get too expensive either we have to feed the people you know people need to be able to uh to eat at a reasonable rate too and uh you know ground beef at 15 dollars a pound that that's not going to cut

it these days no it's not but it's a it's a realism that the average person has to realize and this this moves all even into the row crops you know and the Midwest, they raised about 94 million acres of corn, about 92 million acres of soybeans. And that's my family's from Southwest Minnesota. And those farms have been in my family for generations when my great-grandparents and his brothers came over from Norway. All right. They told me they lost $200 an acre last year.

Oh, boy. Yeah, that's a, that's not good. Okay. And that's a farm that everything's paid for. The land's been paid for for 100 years, you know what I mean? And if you were someone that was trying to be a young farmer and go purchase the land and then make it work, it doesn't pencil. There's no way. Well, it's worse than that because now, you know, dad's out there.

He's losing money on this generational farm and everything, and his son's coming up or his daughter's coming up. And they're looking, they're like, why am I going to stick around and take over this place? Yeah, I've learned from my father and mother. They're losing their shirt. I'm going to have to do something different. Yeah, they get it. Exactly. So we've got some major problems.

When you sum it all up, Bill, what somebody like Trump or at those higher offices, you have to remember about food security. Yes. You don't have the people to produce the food, and you wind up with a food shortage. History tells us that every society that has high, hungry bellies fail, period. That's also why I don't think this government shutdown is serving anyone right now. And I've got to tell you, you don't even want to get to the point where EBT, where the Oregon Trail Card, food stamps, you don't want to go to where that's not working, Herman.

Would you agree with me on that? You don't want to go there. Absolutely. I think the Democrats have, they are so fixated on Trump, that they forget about all the other consequences. what I see going on right now. Herman, before we take off, I wanted to ask you a question. Kevin Sterer, who I talked to last hour from Oregon Firearms Federation, made it very clear that one of the biggest challenges for Republicans in the state of Oregon is to actually

have Republicans in the state of Oregon, because so many Republicans have seemed to weasel their way into the system, not being all that different from the Democrats, one of the names that was brought up with Sherry Health. who is now part of this group, including Governor Ted Kulengoski, former Kulongoski, wanting to have open primaries, which means that people who are not party members would be choosing party candidates, which doesn't seem to make sense to me. And anytime I see anybody trying to change Oregon voting rules of some sort, you have to figure it's ultimately the Democrats trying to do this. Is that a fair assessment?

And what about the compromised Republican problem that we have here? You are a former ORP chair. Maybe you can comment on this. Well, the Democrats in Oregon, since they've had such a stronghold in town for over 30 years, now they call it lock it up. They just, they want to lock it up like California where conservatism has never, does not have a chance. And one of the tools they're using that I, I worried about it years ago, but I really worry about it now, is that they're having long-time registered Democrats

all of a sudden changed the Republican. And at first you say, hey, that's great. They woke up. But that's not what's going on, Bill. They change the Republicans so they can get in there, get into the Republican parties at the county level, and use the precinct system to take over the party at the county level. Oh, so this is hollowing out the party from the inside out.

it's what they're doing. Exactly. And I'll give me an example here a few years ago. There was a individual here in Josephine County, long-term Democrats. Actually, there was a whole bunch of Democrats that switched the Republican Party-Wiles County Commissioner. And I spoke to one of them in the parking lot, and I said to that individual, congratulations for joining a Republican Party, welcome to the party and everything, and the individuals spun around and very sarcastically looked at me and says, I'm not a Republican, I'm a rhino. Oh. Yes.

So actually proud of the rhino name. Right. And so what it is, you know, instead of using the ballot box to try to win over the county, they're going to try to, I guess, the word infiltrate. And is, do you think, in your opinion, that's happening with this recall push? Yes But those individuals that changed from Democrat for Republican You know

I mean I think this all started way back with Representative Morgan I mean she was a long-term Democrat And then you know Before she ran for county commissioners Shortly before she ran for county commissioners She changed a Republican So And then when you look at her voting record

In the state legislature I would tend She's not the most In my opinion Not the most conservative individual That I've ever bumped into in the legislature In other words There's only a modicum of difference

Between statewide Republicans and statewide Democrats Really In the actual party structure When you dig deeper When you scratch beneath the surface Except for a handful of What you would say pure conservatives

Really good conservative types Exactly And then you know You confront them they'll say things like you'll say, well, why do you vote for that? Well, you know, it's the bigger picture, you know, we've got to work with them and give them a little and they give us some and stuff like that. Yeah, well, isn't it easy to look at, you know, Christine Drazen's not running for governor? I mean, she's made to really compromised votes. Is that an example of that or do you even want to not go there? I don't know. Oh, well, you know, I think she's going to have to defend those votes and it'll be interesting to see how she defends them. Okay, we'll do. Herman, I appreciate the take.

Always good talking. We'll have you back and see you next Tuesday, okay? Take care. All right. You take care. Former State Senator Herman Berchiger on KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass. Happy to take your calls here in just a moment. If you are in Medicare, that enrollment, that open enrollment is on right now, it started October 15th is going to end on the 7th. And the Medicare advantage in prescription drug plans, boy, are they confusing.

You may not know that having an agent doing the heavy lifting and going through all the various plans, looking at your type of situation, and then coming up with a better plan, it doesn't cost any more to have an agent than to not have an agent. So why would you not want to have an agent? Because if you don't have an agent, that means you're doing the work, and you're the one that's all confused.

Let the agent do this for you. Call up Lynn Barton at Sky Park Insurance. Good person. Her numbers 499-095-8. She helped Linda when she ended up applying for Medicare the other year. And there's a lot of details. She'll take you through it all. She'll help you navigate the confusing era of options.

And you'll be very happy, okay? Lynn Barton, 499-958. You can also find out more about Lynn at Skypark.ins.com. She will help you make Medicare easy. Are you buying or selling a...