Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-18-25_THURSDAY_6AM

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

News headlines, the Trump address from last night...I thought he was angry about doing it, what about you? Big talk with Trent England from Save Our States, which is pressing the Trump Admin for price transparency, bigly, for healthcare reform.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Great to have you here on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Join the conversation, 770KMED. My email at Bill at Billmeyer's show.com. I'm going to share some of the emails here just a little bit.

Interesting response yesterday to the conversation with Commissioner Ron Smith. Josephine County Commissioner Chris Barnett. We'll be joining a little bit later today. I guess we couldn't have them together on at the same time. Otherwise, we'd have to declare it a public meeting. And then, well, I guess you could do that, right? You could technically have them both on. You declared a public meeting.

All right, we have quorum. Can we pick a new Josephine County Commissioner? Can we do this now? How many days do we have to go through this? A lot of people writing me about that, and most are not real happy about that. Anyway, we'll have a little conversation on that coming up here in the next few minutes.

President Trump last night addressing the nation, the nation, and I don't know if it was just me, but I had a different response to it than many listeners, according to Facebook, you know, the conversation there. And because I ended up now, maybe this is what happened. I thought he sounded angry. I thought he was very like yelling at the nation kind of address. Although what he was talking about was fine, you know. And let's see, the basic stuff, you know, promising to defeat inflation.

By the way, it's looking a little better than they thought was going to be today in the report. So that's good. Bringing down costs. And he said 11 months later, he's made substantial promise. Inflation cut more than half. Gas prices fallen sharply, which is true. Real wages growing again. I don't know about that part.

Key household expenses headed in the right direction. Okay, you know, he was saying all the right things, but it sounded very pugilistic, almost like he was PO that he had to say it, that he had to actually go and do this address, kind of like, what? You don't believe me, El Donald, you know, El Donaldo, you know, you're going to believe your own situation in the grocery store or in the, you know, try to pay the natural gas bill or whatever it is might be, or are you going to believe me? you know that kind of thing that's what it felt like to me that's what it felt like i'm talking about tone not the actual content and then some people say well why why would you be worried about that it was a strong speech well politics is emotional and when you're trying to convince people to go along with you it's usually by persuading not yelling hey stupid it's better than you think. And I've done this and I've done this and I've done that and I've done this and I'm

going to do this and I've done that. And there's very little way it's all I, I, I, I, I, I, and to me, the tone felt very competitive. Now, it could have been just my impression. In fact, I might just go get a tape of it, listen to it again tonight. But I came home six o'clock last night. I got home late. It was a long day out in the field and got a lot done, got things working, doing some repairs and doing some changes out of one of the sites. but I got home at six, right? And so I'm home at six, and I'm getting in there, and I sit down, and right before the Donald goes on, right? Had a little bit of dinner, right before Donald goes on, I turn it on, and then it was like 18 minutes of being yelled at.

And I looked over at Linda at the end of it, when it wrapped up, and I said, is he yelling at us? And then she said, yeah, I thought he was. She said that I think he's P-Oed. And so I mentioned that, that I'd never really had a Trump speech like that with that sort of tone. And then everyone's going, oh, no, no, it was just a strong speech. And so what is? Is this just going to be the partisan, if you're a Trump supporter,

that it was brilliant. And then if you're not a Trump supporter, it was bad. No, I was just talking about, you know, just the way it was, in fact, it was almost like kind of like beating me down. It's like, okay, all right, all right, I know. I, I, I, I, I, I, I. Now, I know that's the president's style, but the question is, is that helpful? Is it helpful to have done that speech?

Because it's like, well, it's only for the, to me, I have a feeling only the supporters will believe it. And I'm not saying I didn't believe it. I'm not saying that at all. I'm talking about, you know, I have a key or highly tuned, you know, sense of some sort. I mean, I'm not a moron. I'm not, but to me it was like he was yelling at America. Not like Biden was yelling at America. Hey, pal!

It wasn't like that. But it felt very combative and pugilistic like he was PO that he didn't think he should have to go and tell us how good we have it. That's what it felt like to me last night. Now, if you think I'm wrong, go ahead and tell me, because everyone was telling me how wrong I was last night on Facebook. It was a very strong speech. Okay.

All right. Okay. But remember, it's not, politics is not about facts and figures. Politics is about emotion and persuading. Voting is a emotional response to many things, too. I'm talking about how does this actually help right now? Because you know what's going on in Washington, D.C. They're sitting around there trying to figure out what's going to happen.

Hey, are we going to get some things rolling here in time to save the midterms? that could be what's going on. And Donald probably, why should I have to do this? Can't people see the brilliance? Can't they actually just see the brilliance going on in their life? Well, according to the polling and what's going on out there, yeah, they're not feeling it to that extent. And that's just being honest about it.

I think about 57% more than half not thinking he's handling the economy right now. And so that's where I think that combative tone came from. A little bit of Reagan would have been good in that. Now, I know Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan, does not have that kind of. He's very charming like Ronald Reagan was, but it's a different kind of charm. But it felt kind of pugilistic last night. That was my opinion. But I'll just let you tell me if I'm wrong.

And you'll probably tell me I'm wrong. 7705-633-770K-M-A-D. You know, the funny thing is, though, some people wrote me the other day. I thought I was going to get in trouble because I said I don't like Candace Owen, and I don't like Erica Kirk, and people are going, yeah, there's something going on with Erica. It's something in the eyes, just not, it's not working. So, you know, I'll just say something. Now, you know what's going to happen?

All the national talk show hosts will do the standard thing. It was absolute Trump brilliance is all you're going to hear today, I would imagine. But maybe it was. Maybe you thought that too. But we can talk about that at other things on your mind, too. 770K. We'll talk with Chris Barnett next hour. He ended up sharing a.

legal memo yesterday from Wally Hicks about how this recusement or reclusement, the recusing process there works with Commissioner Ron Smith. Boy, that's just a mess, isn't it? Where do you go on that? 19 after 6, and if you have something on your mind, let me know. 770 KMED. This is the Bill Meyer show. Should you trust your drinking water on a do?

Hi, this is Mark from Jay Austin, and I'm on KMED. 22 after his 6. Hey, by the way, Donald Trump, President Trump, looked good last night, didn't he? He looked good. I just thought he sounded angry and teed off because he had to do there. It'd go and explain how great everything was. And I don't think he wanted to do that. I don't think he wanted to be there.

It wasn't like a, you know, going out there and doing a rally, you know, in front of the fans. That's what I thought. It's what Linda thought, too. We both thought the same thing to look at each other. It's like, wow, this was kind of an answer. angry guy. Not as angry and unhinged as Biden, but that was just the tone we were talking about. Tell me, tell me I'm wrong if you want. That's fine. But that was just my impression. And I wasn't expecting him to be all sweetness in life, but you know, you got to, you know, persuade a bit here too.

But let's talk with Ray. Let's see what's on Ray's persuadable mind this morning. How are you doing, Ray? Welcome to the show. Hey, good. Thank you, Bill. How are you today? I'm doing great. What's on your mind? Hey, you know, the one thing about this health care issue that they keep talking about with the stipend that's expiring that came out under Biden is it's all about, oh, if poor people can't afford their insurance. Right. Well, I can tell you a honest story about that. When I retired, I kept my company's insurance, and I pay now $2,450 a month for my insurance. Whoa.

Oh, $2,400, $2,400 a month for your insurance, for your old company insurance. You're paying the whole freight then, right? Yes. And I've never had a mortgage and a car payment combined that, you know, equals what my insurance payment is for my wife and I. Wow. That is a lot of money in anybody's budget, I would think. My goodness. Oh, yes.

And so it's, I have a number of friends. also who had that, and they gave that up, and they went on to the Obamacare, the ACA, and they had high deductibles, but specifically one guy who's going through this right now, for the last three years, he's been getting his insurance for him and his wife for $800 a month. Right. And $7,500 each deductible, and he's like, yeah, this is great. well now and he makes about $120,000 a year and now that they've taken the stipend away his ACA insurance has gone up to $2,800 a month and that's because you and I were paying $2,000

a month out of our tax dollars to supplement his ACA. That's exactly what was going on, Ray. You are so proper about that. I was bringing this up, and it's amazing, a family four, a family of four, I remember some of the research I was doing there a few weeks ago when they were talking about this, a family of four making $90,000 a year, not huge money for a family four, but still, you know, decent, you know, decent bucks, that sort of thing. They were getting pretty close to $1,800 a month in subsidies, or $1,500 a month or what it was. It was an great amount of money. So essentially, these

subsidies were just covering up for the fact that Obamacare has been a total failure, isn't it? Absolutely. And the thing is, I looked at Obamacare whenever I, probably about 2017, and whenever I looked at it, my insurance, because of my income, would have been $3,200 a month. This was before the subsidies, and that's because I would have been paying. I was paying about 17, 18. I might have already mentioned that. But I would have gone up to $3,200 a month. So I could have. I could pay for these people that are on television going on the commercials for the Oregon Health Plan. Oh, I'm an artist, and I only pay $15 a month for my health care insurance. God.

Well, we are going into uncharted territory, aren't we, Ray? It's insanity. And I remember back in 1987 when I first started at the job I retired from, and some of the old timers there were saying that, you know, how can I afford health care insurance is $280 a month? and the other guys were saying, oh, don't worry about it. It can't go up from there. Oh, boy, from their lips. I wish that were the case.

Well, you know, we have such, there is such corruption built into the system. There are such perverse incentives. And frankly, Americans haven't really been encouraged much to be healthy either. I think we also have to be honest with ourselves. a lot of what we're dealing with are the lifestyle diseases of eaten the wrong crap and not doing a whole lot of things. Not that I'm trying to blame we the victims, you know what I'm getting at. But, you know, this whole idea that you're going to the hospital, we're going to the doctor for absolutely every little thing, we're going to have to find some way to not have to go to the doctor so much.

Wouldn't you agree, Ray? I don't think there's any way we can get around that over time. That has to do with it, too, but the thing I want to mention is I've never heard one person on any of the media, you know, mainstream media, talk about anything other than, oh, these poor people can't afford to pay for their health care insurance. And you know, they're probably right. They can't afford to pay for that health care insurance because the health care insurance is out of sight. But having the taxpayers pay for that health care insurance is not going to fix that, will it? No, and the point I'm making is the fact that they, nobody is saying this, okay, how about somebody that only pays $15 a month for their health care insurance?

Is there anybody really doing that, or was that just the old Oregon health plan? I don't know, but, you know, they still talk about that, but somebody is paying $15 a month for their health care insurance, have it doubled, it's only $30 a month. Yeah. And my God, if you, if $15 a month means that much to you, then you probably, you probably I'd start a side hustle or something, but nobody's talking about the people that aren't paying anything. The Republicans just came out with a thing that said everybody will pay a minimum at at least $5 a month, but people that are paying $15, they're going to go to $30, $30's going to go to

60. And, you know, that seems pretty fair to me because they've just been bolstering this thing with tax dollars that they shouldn't have done during the pandemic. Yep. And then the costs, I would imagine, rose to match the subsidies? No. The fact that they're just giving the money to insurance companies directly is insanity. Yeah, and that was something that President Trump was talking about last night, and he wants to change that around. And I wish him luck on it because I'll tell you, you want to talk about trying to steer the SS Medicare Medicaid Titanic away from the icebergs. We're already plowing into the icebergs right now, Ray.

Oh, yeah, I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you, you know, a lot of my friends that, luckily I don't have to go, you know, have much time. Some of my friends, they've got to wait two months to go get an MRI because they've got a bad knee or something. I'm thinking, if we do that in our health care system, and I know people that have, like, Canadian health care system, how long do you have to wait up there? Months, many months. You need your cancer surgery, six, seven months. It's not uncommon.

And the plan is that they hope you die, I think, before they actually have to do it. No, I'm serious. I think that's part of the process there. Ray, good call. Thanks for making it. Looking forward to hearing more from you. is Dave on line too. Hello, Dave. How are you? Conspiracy Theory Thursday. So, Bill, what to Rob Reiner and President Donald J. Trump have in common? Actually, I think I know this.

Rob's wife ended up taking a picture of President Trump on Art of the Deal. Actually, I took a photograph of the cover, the cover shot, wasn't it? No, they're both New Yorkers, and New Yorkers always seem angry. I haven't met one yet that didn't come off as being angry. Oh, okay. Well, that's it, though. So that's just being a New Yorker than you're saying, right? Yeah, I'm saying that's just being a New Yorker.

But by the way, what I just mentioned to you, Rob Reiner's wife did actually take the picture of Donald Trump on the Art of the Deal picture. Yeah, well, yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, she was a photographer. So I thought you were trying to get me to my trivia, question, man. Man, come on, man. All right. Anyways, Rob Reiner was a good performer, and it's Hollywood that ruined his son. Good point. Thanks for that, Mark. Or a minor day. Let me go to, I think this is Francine on

Conspiracy Theory Thursday. How are you? I'm good, Bill. Good morning. Oh, you're not choking, are you? You don't need to go to the hospital, do you? No, I'm laughing. Oh, good. What's that? Well, because I laugh at everything because it's so absurd. Oh, good. Okay. Well, there's a lot of absurdity to go around. What's on your mind, huh? Well, okay. So, I mean, I could go, I got me this morning with the three names, you know, Candice Owens and Erica Kirk and, of course, Bill Clinton's talking.

I know I don't have time to go into my conspiracy theory on each of them. Yeah. I'll just say I sort of agree with you. And I'm going to pick Erica Kirk, because I've told you before what I think of Bill Clinton, I mean, Bill Clinton. and Freudian slip of Trump. But anyway, okay, Erica Kirk came from the elite. Her family is amongst the elite. And I suspect that she had a job, and her job was to reel in Charlie Kirk and run him, control him with her beauty and her looks and blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, she was a beauty queen.

What a great conspiracy, though. So the elites go out and find the hotties, right? And then... Well, she is an elite. Yeah. I mean, she is one of them, you know? So I believe that she was running him, and as soon as he started to go a little bit off the reservation,

they had this great idea to get rid of him, and she gets to take over the group, because that group, turning point, is huge, and it has a lot of influence. and being able to run that group, have control of that group of people is very important. Well, to me, I was just looking at it from a guy watching a woman on television, okay? And I would see all these things. And there were just some things that just creeped me out.

And one of them, I remember, you know, during the ceremonies, when J.D. Vance is there, and she brings him in for the hug and puts her hand on the back of his head and it's just got all the diamond rings and the gold and everything like that and bringing it in for the close and it's just like oh women don't do that or most women don't it just

and then I look at the eyes the eyes look a little crazy to me the eye not grieving the eyes look to me like they were a little crazy now maybe it's just because of all the stress it's going on And I just tossed that out there because it was just my gut, my gut reaction, and my gut reaction can be wrong, but it just struck me wrong. And the whole thing, everything about her struck me wrong. Everything she said that day, her movements, I didn't watch the entire thing, you know, I watched bits of it later on. And I, and I don't know if I want to go down to your particular conspiracy theory Thursday.

Boy, you know, sometimes things are just they are, and we have weird things and weird reactions to situations. but that's okay, you're allowed to give it because that's why it's conspiracy theory Thursday. All righty. Thank you, Francine. You've got a roll. And we're going to be talking about some people that are actually trying to work on more health care transparency, like President Trump was talking about last night or in my opinion was yelling about. Like I said, you can yell at me if you want.

To me, it just struck maybe it's just that New Yorker, that New Yorker thing. But, you know, I grew up on the East Coast, so I'm kind of used to that. But the way I was just looking at the speech is that you need to persuade, not just, bludgeon people into submission. Oh, thank you. Thank you, El Presidente, you know, for, I didn't realize how good I had it. But, you know, we'll set that aside for right now. But the president definitely is looking to make some progress on reducing health care costs. And that is a big one, big, big deal as like what Ray was talking about here just a few minutes ago. And I'll talk with Trent England about that coming

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Bill Lennon, KMED. When it comes to buying or selling a house, you don't take advice from artificial intelligence. Hey, it's Lars. A good local human real estate agent knows your neighborhood inside it out, from property values to hidden issues to schools traffic patterns and what buyers want right now. In the Medford area, that describes my friend Jared Hockinson at Hockinson, to a tea. AI can't walk your block or get the vibe of a street. Besides, selling or buying a home is emotional and it's complex. Hockinson Realty brings experience reading people, handling multiple

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Lynn Barton at 541-49-09-0958 or find me at Skyparkins.com and let me make Medicare easy. At Sky Park, we make insurance easy. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. I'll be calling Lynn because I'll be turning 65 next year and I'm already getting peppered but I know Lynn will do a great job. It's 637. Health care, of course, not everyone's mine right now, especially the cost of it. Yesterday, Congress ended up voting for, well, they didn't vote to extend the Obamacare subsidies. And President Trump ends up doing this nationwide address last night and talking about the need to bring these costs down. And he wants to work really hard on that, wants to actually switch around the way things are paid. But I wanted to talk with

the executive director of Save Our States. Interesting nonprofit, Trent England joins me. and he's all, I guess you're up to your neck this morning in health care reform. Isn't that the case with Trent? Welcome to the program. Good having you on. Hi. That's right. That's right, Bill.

It's always good to be here. Thanks so much for having me on the show. Tell me a little bit about Save Our States first. What's your main mission or goal or whatever? Yeah. So I created Save Our States back in 2009, actually originally based out of Washington State. And we have grown from defending the Electoral College and working on election policy issues in states around the country to starting to take on some of these cost of living issues and particularly

health care i mean it's such a big issue for so many people i know it has been for my family and uh and it's something that are our politicians can actually fix but i think they they get so frightened by some of the big hospital systems some of the big lobbies that are out there uh that we've we've wound up with this paralysis for for too long and americans are suffering because of it okay and what kind of Well, paralysis or analysis are you looking at here? I was just talking with a listener, listener who was talking about keeping his employer plan after he left the company. And Ray was talking about how, just for two people, he and his wife, $2,500, $2,500 a month. A lot of money. I mean, 30, most people cannot, you know, out of their income, whether it's retirement or

non-retirement income, say, all right, we're going to take $30,000 a year out of it. And for just hospitalization and medical insurance, that kind of thing. And we used to be able to do a lot better, and it looks to me as if Obamacare was just an utter failure right from the start, and now we're just kind of reaping what we sowed. What do you think? Yeah, I think that's all correct. You know, the price of insurance is particularly hard on people who don't have, you know, a job at a big company, right?

Especially small business folks, like my parents. were until they retired up in Washington State. It's, you know, it can be impossible for some people to afford those policies, and then they wind up being pushed into Obamacare, and a lot of the costs are hidden from them. Yeah, and the only way that it ends up penciling for them is that, as an example, with those ACA subsidies, what, someone making $130,000 a year with a husband and wife or whatever it is can get a couple grand a month? Yeah, and you think about it, you know, people sort of, I think that the problem we have with these ACA subsidies and what Congress is trying to navigate is people feel like they're getting some government benefit and it's hard for them to, you know, it's hard sometimes to really appreciate the fact that, no, this is all money, you know, it's not money that's going to any of our families, right, to any of our small businesses. it's flowing directly through into the pockets of big insurance companies, you know, big hospital systems.

And so it's really a subsidy for them and for their high prices. But, you know, Americans don't really have an alternative right now. Yeah, well, look at the stock price of United Health Care over the last few years, right? Yeah. That's right. I mean, these companies are, what I see when I go out to state capitals is you will see these lobbying campaigns trying to lock in the status quo, protect Obamacare, and they're typically funded by the big hospitals, the big insurance companies, but they never sort of put their face on it. They find these rural hospitals that oftentimes

really are in dire straits because they don't benefit in the same way as these giant medical industries. And they trot out these rural hospitals and say, oh, look, you know, if you don't continue the gravy train for us, these guys are going to go out of business. and it's a real challenge. We're really, we're working to educate a lot of conservative lawmakers to understand. Look, you can help rural health care without helping the bad actors in the system or just, you know, or just the folks in the system who have plenty of money, right? They don't need more subsidies.

They need more accountability and transparency. Yeah, but this requirement that you actually purchase insurance, isn't that the first problem that you're required to purchase the insurance? Well, I think there are several problems with that. I mean, one is that we benefit, we only allow people to use pre-tax dollars to purchase insurance if it's purchased through a company, right? So that puts a lot of our families and small businesses at a disadvantage, right? You can go, you know, I can go and get a job, you know, in a big business, and they will pay less for health insurance because they get to use pre-tax dollars. Whereas if I'm on my own, if I'm a small business person, it doesn't really work out that way.

That's one issue. And the other, as you say, is all these mandates on insurance, which have turned it into, it's really not health insurance anymore. There's a component of that. Oh, yeah, but it's just all prepaying. It's all just a big prepaying of medical coverage. Yeah. And then you find out then, you know, and what does something really cost? And this is, to your point, what you were going to mention what you've been working with.

and you sent a letter to President Trump the other day. What does something really cost? Because I remember needing, let's see, I think it was some kind of a scan, some kind of a scan. We'll just say it to an MRI that we needed a few years ago. I think Lyndon needed it. And the hospital system wanted $1,800. That was the cash on the barrel price for $1,800. And then the local scanning center in Grants Pass that did this, I think it was $250.

So what is the real cost for something? And something tells me that the hospital system is more than happy to charge 1850 because Medicare will pay that. And the state Medicaid will pay that. And then that ends up being a cash cow. But what does something really cost? We don't know how to, how do you shop unless you can really tell what something cost and what is the real cost? Not the insurance negotiated price or special cut for United Health Care or for Anthem or for Blue Cross. And so how do you see it there over at Save?

I mean, that's exactly, that's exactly right. I mean, I tell people, if you went into a, if you went into a restaurant and they give you a menu and you look at the menu and there's no prices on it, you know for sure this is, this is going to be an expensive place, right? Because they're trying to create this atmosphere that money should be no object, right? And that's what we get in healthcare. I mean, it's crazy. But, you know, at the same time, we're all concerned about the rising price of insurance,

the rising price of health care. We have this system where we're expected to walk in and make decisions about care without actually knowing what the prices are. And it's gotten so bad that some of these big health care systems actually hire consultants to go through the treatment notes for patients after the fact. So this is after treatment has happened, you've got all the paperwork to give it to some consultant. And the consultant is going through it looking for more codes, more things that they can come up with to charge insurance or, or Medicaid or Medicare for. I mean, what a strange, broken system. If we went to a coffee shop and the coffee menu says, you know, it's $4 for a cup of coffee,

and then they try to charge us 12, we can't call it a scam. Exactly, but we can't do that. We can't do this in the medical industrial insurance complex. Classic example of this. I've mentioned this to listeners, not that I like talking about my colonoscopy, but I will in this case. So I get the colonoscopy, and according to the insurance benefits, at that time. They're saying, well, this is just one of these things that's screening. We're making

sure that everything is okay, right? Fine. All right. So I get there, they knock you out, and I wake up 15 minutes later. You know how that goes. And they say, oh, by the way, we found a little, we found a little non-cancerous, just a little polyp there. We sniffed out of polyp. Other than that, everything is just fine. Well, because they slipped, they sniffed the polyp, it was a different code then. And then it became treatment rather than like trying to just screen or something like that. And so it went from a $250 deductible to $1,500, boom, just like that, right? And the exact same thing was done. And I said, wait a minute, you told me this is going to be $250. I was happy to pay it. Great. You know, we're fine. And then, but it's filled, the system is filled with

that kind of stuff here, isn't it Trent? And you think about that. I mean, that's very, it's not like it took them extra time, right? It's not like in the rest of the commercial world, right? We would say, well, I mean, you didn't spend any more time. You were sort of expecting to do that. It's like a little thing. I mean, yeah, it's very strange what they get away with in healthcare. And the Trump administration has been really good on this. You know, in the first term, they had an executive order on price transparency. Unfortunately, the Biden administration sideline the whole thing because the hospitals hate it. But the Trump administration's back at it. We're encouraging them. We have got to get to a point where for routine procedures like a colonoscopy, right,

MRI, that patients have a real binding price given to them up front so that we can make judgments about the value. You know, we can shop around if we want to. And we can understand when, you know, whether it's us or our insurance companies getting gouged, ultimately, all that comes back to us, right? Our insurance prices go up when hospitals charge our insurance companies outrageous amounts of money. It feels like you're going into almost like a roulette wheel of sorts when you go in. And, you know, I have very little health treatment in my life. Once again, I'm just going to use a personal example.

I go in and the cardiologist says, well, everything's kind of looking okay. Calestrials, a little high. we would like you to get a calcium screening to make sure that there's nothing being deposited in your heart. You know, even though everything looks okay and it's all right, well, what does that cost? And then nobody can tell me, right? We're going to refer you over to the hospital and, well, you know, the costs will figure that out. And I said, that doesn't really work for me. And then this brings this to your point of what Save Our States is doing because I thought that we were supposed to have these lists everywhere,

that there was legislation passed and then reaffirmed by President Trump with his executive order that we're supposed to have transparency on everything about these costs when we go in to see a doctor or go to the hospital or go to a clinic and what has happened to it and where are we right now, Trent? Yeah. So, I mean, the executive order says that this needs to be done. it, but there's an enforcement aspect of this. There's rulemaking, right?

What does this actually mean? One of the big, one of the big issues that we have is some of these medical providers come back and say, well, we'll give people estimated prices, but that's not really good enough, right? No. So we want real binding prices, just the same kind of prices you get when you go to Target or Walmart, right? I mean, again, you know, for ordinary care, it's not that complicated.

At some level, the hospitals, you know, they, they have a pricing system, they just want to be able to, you know, they don't want people to think about the decisions that way, and they want to be able to change the prices after they provide treatment, right? Which, again, in other parts of the economy, we would just call a scam. I mean, there'd be no bones about it. Yeah, you'd be able to sue for fraud is what you'd be doing. But we're just supposed, well, you know, this is health care.

That's different. And what's the price for your health after all? You can't put a price on that. I mean, the administration is, you know, they're pushing ahead. with trying to come up with the right enforcement mechanism here, make sure they're real prices. We're just encouraging them to do this as quickly as they can because we think that this is something,

if it rolls out over the course of this next year, that frankly voters will respond to, right? People are concerned about this. They need to see that somebody is taking action. And the Trump administration, as we're talking about, right, they're doing some of this, but they just need to make sure that it actually happens. people wind up being, you know, given a piece of paper when they're seeking treatment that actually

explains all this, gives them real prices, gives them this power as medical consumers. And it's really the first step to the other thing that President Trump is talking about, which is changing how these subsidies work so that the money actually goes to us, to the patients. And you have to have prices to make that system work, right? It doesn't help us very much if we get money in our pocket, but then we don't know at anything costs. We have to know what things cost. We have to get the money in our own pockets, and then we can actually make real informed decisions about health care. How do you think that that would work differently than, and this is what President Trump

has been talking about. I don't want to send money to the insurance companies. I want to send it to you. How do you believe Trent? By the way, Trent England is with me, and he is the Save Our States Executive Director, Save Our States, a interesting nonprofit working on this a particular issue. How do you think this would work then as, well, like, let's say that family of four gets $1,500 a month in the ACA subsidies right now that ends up going to United Healthcare or whoever's doing the exchange, right? That sort of thing. Yeah. How would it work differently, in your opinion, with President Trump's plan, okay, the money would go to this family and then what do they do? Do they buy a policy or are they using it for anything that they need

medically, how would you envision this? So I think what would happen is we would shift back to where all this was a little bit less expensive, where people, I mean, if you have the money yourself and, you know, if we can escape from some of these ACA mandates and have a little more diversity in the insurance marketplace, what we need is for people to have the option to buy, you know, true insurance, catastrophic care insurance, right, which is actually, it's inexpensive. In other words, the way it used to be. That's right. This is a little bit of back to the future then, right?

I mean, exactly. I grew up my family. We typically paid cash for, you know, for all the basic medical things. And frankly, when people are, you know, the more people who are paying cash, the more it pushes those prices down because people, you know, people see the prices. People see what they're paying. They write the checks at the doctor's office. And that creates some healthy accountability in that market. And then when it comes to, you know, somebody breaks a lag or something. somebody gets cancer or something, you have insurance that kicks in for that, those aren't really that expensive of an insurance product. And then you get things like health care, health savings accounts where people can build up that money over time. And I think that's really what

the administration sees is that the big opportunity is let people start developing some health health care savings, let them see that money add up, provide people with real catastrophic insurance and you know let give people the option if they want to spend their money buying you know some more lavish sort of insurance products that have a lot of prepaid medical in them like people can still do that but they'll understand what it costs right oh now see that's that's fascinating when you when you think about this because you have the money you have the money in your health care savings account right let's say okay let's say you've built it up to uh you know 10 15 20 grand let's say over time right because you can keep that you will jealously guard

that, won't you? You'll have that natural, hey, listen, I don't want to spend this unless I absolutely have to because you see that as an asset, something that could actually tied you over in the medical care thing if you end up having a real problem. So you'll finally almost be forced to shop. You'll have no choice but to be forced to shop because you're not going to want to spend it unless you absolutely have to rather than, well, here's my card, I just walk in and it's free because it's Obamacare, right? That kind of thing? Yeah. And that's, I mean, we, we have a real leader in, in that part of the medical industry here in Oklahoma. We called the Oklahoma Surgery Center. Yeah. And they, yeah, they just, you go to their website and they tell you the all in price on a knee

replacement, a hip replacement, like all these different surgeries that are, you know, typically, they're outpatient surgeries, right? So this is, this is stuff in that, in that area where, you know, it's medical care that people typically need, but it's elective. You can shop around. And they have figured out how to provide care at fixed prices that are so reasonable that sometimes it will be less than the deductible that somebody would pay to go to a big hospital. And these are the kind of things that will just spring up in every part of the country if the Trump administration can fully roll this out right you put money in people's pockets and you're going to have a lot of innovation a lot of great quality care delivered in a responsible way that uh you know like you say it doesn't

doesn't treat people like you're walking into a restaurant with no prices right like money is no object and we'll just you know we'll just charge somebody for that later and uh i mean that's that is no way to run a health care system as as i think we've all discovered so is the trump administration going along with the letter that you wrote with all of these suggestions is this part of it, or are there parts of it that still have to kind of come out? And how much of it has to be legislation, though? This is what concerns me, because if the Biden administration is able to ignore what Trump did in the first administration, the next administration, if it's not friendly to this sort of stuff, can just get rid of it, too. So how do you see this playing out?

Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, we want the Trump administration to do as much as they can, as fast as they can. And so we're really encouraging them to do what they're talking about doing it, but just just put this at the top of the administration's priority list and in what I believe is as this happens it will create pressure on Congress to lock this into the law because it does you know ultimately it needs to be done that way but I think these are popular policies I think that when you know when the money goes to people when the people can see the prices I think that we're all going to like that better than you know this this Obamacare netherworld that has you know has you know has driven up prices so much and made things so much more complicated.

Now, Trent, would you have to go back to a system in which you are rated for insurance? And also, this is like a two-prong question. The other thing is that could you, in these catastrophic plans envision, as you're talking about kind of going back to the future, could you say, hey, I don't have crazy in my family. I don't want to have to buy an Obamacare policy that covers me 100% on mental illness, you know, those kind of things. Can we make those choices then under these sort of reforms? Yeah, you know, we'll see what the administration does. I think that that's the right answer. I also think that, you know, one thing that conservatives have talked about for a long time is

creating some kind of a high-risk pool, acknowledging that there are some people out there who have chronic illnesses who are very sick. And frankly, that small group of people, And it's really a very small group of the population. They drive up a lot of the costs for everybody else. And what a lot of conservative reformers have said, let's, you know, let's take them out of the pool, provide some special subsidies for that, you know, some kind of a high risk pool where you can take care of those people. So you subsidize only truly the high risk. And that's it.

Right. Okay. And that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. I get that. And you see the subsidies there, right? and you understand what you're doing versus, you know, Obamacare really just tries to hide everything, right?

It tries to force kind of all of us at some level, either as insurance purchasers or taxpayers to be subsidizing those people, but in this complicated way where all the money is running through the government, which is inefficient, running through insurance companies, sort of, you know, it's very inefficient, it's very non-transparent. I think that, yeah, doing something, it's a little more directed toward, hey, we've got a group of people, we've got to help them and make sure they're taking care of, but we also need to make sure that we're not letting insurance companies sort of use those people as a way to drive up rates for everybody else. Yeah, I think we can get there. It's a very good point. Trent England, once again, executive director of Save Our States. I'm going to grab a call. I hope this calls for you. I haven't had a chance of screen. And hi, good morning. You want to talk with Trent? Go ahead. Hi, Bill. This is Vicki from the Applegate. Sure. You have a question, a comment on this topic? Go ahead. Well, first of all, I agree with you for the preventative. It seems like they're really pushing that and medicines. They're really pushing that.

But my son, he got an auto accident back in March, and it was in our vehicle, so we did a claim. And he is disabled. is not required to work. He does have Medicaid. Yeah, Medicare, probably Oregon Health Plan then. So what is your question about this, though? Well, my question is the insurance company, our auto insurance company, will not settle until they find out if there was any bills sent to OHP, which there wasn't. Yeah, that's Medicaid, by the way, in Oregon, Trent, just so you know. Okay.

Medicaid, sorry. That's all right. And I've seen every single bill that he got, and none of it went to Medicaid, but yet it's been nine months since this accident, and still they haven't settled. So my question is, is that, does it? that happen a lot? Like, if there's an auto accident and the person is on Medicaid, and even though Medicaid has never been charged for any of his care, it's almost like they're just like pushing it, pushing it back, pushing it back.

Yeah, okay, let me hear what maybe Trent has to say about that. This is probably not an uncommon question here in which, boy, so this is the private sector interface. with Medicaid, too. Any thoughts at what Vicki was concerned about here, how you just can't get payment? Yeah, well, and, you know, Vicki, I'm very sorry to hear about your son's accident, and I hope he's recovering well. I think it's, you see this challenge where you have multiple insurance, you know, insurance carriers, you know, in this case, Medicaid and in a private auto insurer, you know, who could both be potentially on the hook for a claim. And I, you certainly hear that from people more often than you'd like to that, you know, you kind of have a steering

contest where these companies or these plans, you know, are sort of hoping that the other will pay off the claim rather than them. I don't really know with Medicaid how that's supposed to work. I mean, obviously, you would hope that the private insurance would pay that off. That's what they're supposed to do and not, you know, try to shift that onto taxpayers simply because your son has Medicaid coverage, which is what it sounds like maybe is happening there, but I know these things are always complicated. Yeah, see, yeah, the private insurance company is going, please, please, please, please, please, Obamacare, pay that off, right?

You know, pay that off for me, okay? Yeah, that almost sounds like a need for an attorney, but boy, there's some costs involved in that, too. Yeah. All right, Trent, where do people go to find out more about what you ended up suggesting to President Trump and reading the report and reading the letter and finding out more about Save Our States, too. Where do you go? Because I want to make sure people know. That's right. Folks can go to Save OurStates.com and see what we're up to on all kinds of issues there.

Folks can also follow me on X, just at Trent, England, and I'm always pushing out updates there. But yeah, it's Save OurStates.com is definitely the best place to go. All right, very good. The main thing you're asking for, you have to be really transparent, and we really, really mean it, not just pretending that we mean it, right? That's right. Real, real health care prices up front on paper before care. Trent, appreciate the call. Thanks for being on the show today. Be well. Thanks, Bill. Save OurStates.com. This is KMED and KMEDHD1. Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG Grants Pass.

Hi, this is Lisa from Kelly Center.