Chapo Trap House - BONUS: Will Talks Idaho Medicaid Expansion Documentary feat. Jim & Laura Kamoosi

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

Will discusses a new documentary on the shockingly successful grassroots effort to expand Medicaid through ballot initiative in Idaho with our friends Jim and Laura Kamoosi. Watch the film through the Santa Barbara International Film Festival at www.sbiff.org Find more information about the film here: www.reclaimidahofilm.com/

Okay, greetings, friends. It's some bonus Shapo content coming your way. And folks, do you feel like we're living in an age of overwhelming political despair and disenfranchisement? I do too. So it's good to counter that feeling with an example of something, a grassroots political campaign that improves the lives of everyday people and indeed saves lives. But there's also a movie about it. So you can feel good watching a movie and watching something about real politics that has happened and is successful and provides something of a blueprint for any campaign in the future that seeks to redress the numerous maladies plaguing the American public. So to that end, I would like to introduce the directors of the new documentary film Reclaim Idaho, currently screening

at the Santa Barbara International Film Festivals. They are my good old friends, Jim Kamusi and Laura Wing Kamusi. Welcome. Thank you. Well, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. So like I said, you have a new documentary. It's called Reclaim Idaho. And it is about a grassroots political campaign to pass a ballot measure to expand Medicaid in the state of Idaho. How did you come across this project? Yeah, it's kind of a funny story. But all roads do, in fact, lead to CHOPPO because we heard Tim Faust on CHOPPO one day and thought, who is this weirdo? And so when we had a little time, we reached out to him to see if there was some kind of documentary project that we could work on together. Do we need to define Faust? Should we define Faust or is he a known fact?

He was a guy who sold his soul to the devil, I believe, for Medicare acts, Medicaid acts in the state of Idaho. So we wanted to work with Tim on a project and we've been talking about a bunch of different things. And one day he called us up and said, there's this campaign, it's in Idaho, it's this married couple, they've got this like rickety old RV, they've painted it green, they're driving all around the state with a baby, and they're trying to get Medicaid expansion passed. And I'm going to go out there for the last week of the campaign and you guys should come. And so maybe like two weeks later, we were on a plane to Idaho to see what was up. Yeah, he was pretty, he was pretty direct. It's just wonderful, extraordinary. You have to see

this. Fans of the show will know the specific energy that Tim Faust brings to any topic, but particularly the topic of health care reform. But as far as like, Tim Faust is a character in this documentary, but how would you describe your two main characters? This young couple, a new baby, and what led these people to take it upon themselves to launch what was, they were told was a completely hopeless campaign to expand Medicaid in a very red state like Idaho. Well, these people are Idahoans. So they know the turf, they know the people there, and they had actually had with a childhood friend of theirs, Luke Mayville, a previous, they dipped their toes into politics for a local school levy for the town that they grew up in,

where people were actually given the option to vote to spend less money on schools when they already had, I believe, a four-day work week at the time. Four-day school week. School week, rather. And they thought, well, that's idiotic. We need to do something about it. And they had some success there in this one town, letting people know, hey, guys, we should probably fund the schools. So they were kind of looking around. They thought, well, that worked. Maybe we should try to do something else. And Garrett, who was in med school at the time, was aware of this Medicaid gap and brought it up to Luke. And they all got to talking about it. And they thought, the more they found out about it, the more that they talked about it,

the more they realized they needed to do something about it, because it's just savage and insane that this gap exists. And they just felt like they could do something. And they didn't have a dog in the fight. Could you explain how that Medicaid gap works and why in the first place, was there a need for a ballot measure to expand Medicaid coverage in the state of Idaho? Sure. So it really comes down to Republican animosity for the ACA and Obamacare. When all of that was going on, there was a lawsuit in 2011 by a group of Republican-led states who thought that it was unconstitutional to go forward with the expansion of Medicaid as a part of the ACA. Prior to the ACA, Medicaid was this sort of thing that hardly anybody could get. You had to be

making like $3,000 a year or have some kind of disability that might take you two or three years to prove you had to get Medicaid. So the ACA kind of set out to change that and make Medicaid available to everyone whose income was over 138% of the poverty line. So these states sued, and they said, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. And the Supreme Court ruled in their favor. The law was changed so that they would have to opt into this Medicaid expansion. So what happened was you had a situation where anyone making between what the state's current income was for Medicaid, which in the case of Idaho, for a family of four was $5,000 a year. Yeah. I mean, I think that needs to be stressed. Like to qualify for Medicaid for a family of four,

your annual household income had to be below $5,000 a year. That's correct. And I don't think that that I mean, it's that's a whole other discussion of the insanity of what the federal poverty level even is. And we can get into that. But what happened was there was this gap of people who made, quote, too much money to qualify for Medicaid, which again is over just over $5,000 a year for a family of four. That's too much money. If you're making just above being an absolute destitution, you do not qualify. If your household income is $5,500 a year for a family of four, sorry, no Medicaid for you. So if you made in between that $5,000 a year and $25,000 a year, which was the income level where the ACA subsidies begin.

Because now you're earning enough, you're paying into the system through taxes enough to warrant being helped out a little bit. Correct. Right. Like to get a little bit of subsidy action. If you were in that, that space in between that $5,000 and that $25,000 a year as a family of four, you had no access to health insurance whatsoever. I mean, you could certainly purchase it. It was available for purchase, you know, just now. Yeah, but a household family income of $25,000 a year, you know, buying health insurance from a private insurer, I mean, even through the Obamacare exchange. Impossible. I mean, we don't need to belabor how absurd that option is. Yes, exactly. And so, you know,

someone could say, well, technically they could. No, you can't. Not if you're, not if you're, it would be impossible. Impossible. So they're in this gap. So the two heroes of this movie, this young married couple, we're looking at a situation in their home state in which, you know, just purely by the choice of the, you know, Republican party and politicians in the state of Idaho who were, you know, signed onto a lawsuit to just say no to federal money. Like they would not have to raise taxes at a dime. They would just say, no, we don't want to spend this money on providing health insurance for people who need it in our state. Created a situation in which there was something like

60,000 Idahoans with simply no health insurance. And Idaho is a state of about 1.6 million people. Like that's a pretty decent chunk of that state that is just completely without any safety net whatsoever when it comes to something like getting sick. Yeah. Yeah. It is. And Emily in the film points out that because of this Medicaid gap, about 300 people a year in Idaho were dying due to lack of health insurance. And as she says so beautifully in the film, you know, that's three people per legislator. What do we do with people who kill three people? We put them in jail. But as Emily says, no, and we keep reelecting them. So it's an appalling problem to have. And it's a stupid problem to have. It's just unbelievably stupid because the funds for

Medicaid for the most part were coming from the federal government. So you can't even make an argument that not expanding Medicaid is a fiscally conservative choice. It is in no way fiscally conservative. I want to get into the campaign itself. But like, I mean, this brings up the issue of like, what to me is the central question about like health insurance in this country and the way we run our health care system in this country that like gets to the absolute brutal cruelty and sadism of all of it is because like to put people the question to people and, you know, this is this is featured in the movie. I think Emily is that her name? Yeah. Yeah. She says that she was canvassing doors at this very small town near the Canadian border and she came

across a woman who was a grandmother who had had to take over, you know, a guardianship of her grandchildren while dealing with colon cancer. And then she beat the colon cancer, but then by, you know, mortgaging literally everything, every asset that she could have and is now have just dead broke and is now told by doctors, there are complications due to the treatment that will kill you in three months unless you treat them. And the only thing she has left is her house, which is you know, like the home for the children that she's taken care of. And she has to ask herself, am I worth living? Is me having my life saved worth putting my children out on the out on the street? And like the and the answer is like, if any person in the richest country on earth

is faced with that question, is a good indication of like, do we live in a moral society? And then the corollary to that question is like, you know, if health insurance companies are able to put to people, how much money would you pay to be alive or have someone you love continue to be alive? Well, the answer is, I mean, people will pay anything. It's like, it's like a kidnapping. It's like a hostage situation. The corollary to that is how much money is a state government willing to spend or even not spend even just money that they're willing to accept to prevent something like 6% of unnecessary deaths from happening in their state? And the answer is they won't spend any money for that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you know, there's, there's,

there's a lot of layers to this. And there's certainly the savagery of a for-profit health care system is, is, I mean, you know, we could, we could go off on that for ages. Like we, we, we believe that, you know, a single payer system is the only way that, that, that anything should be, the profit shouldn't be part of it. The idea of a, of a sick person as a consumer shopping around for, you know, you know, if our daughter was sick, I'm not looking for the bargain basement doctor. You know what I mean? Like this idea of like taking a market, market rules and putting it into healthcare, putting it into, to payments and these sorts of things. It's, it's insane and it's savage. But at least within this system, if there are points of light or improvement,

you know, I would, I would say at least with the expansion of like the closing of the Medicaid gap was it within this system and unambiguously positive thing. And just ludicrous that any governors or any legislators would choose not to take those federal dollars and not to save these people's lives. And it's still, what are we, 10, 10 states, 10 or 14 states that still haven't done it? Yeah, there's a, there's a number of states that haven't expanded Medicaid yet. I think it's 12 at the moment. And there are still, as we know, the ones that we know of, approximately 2.2 million people nationwide, they're still in that Medicaid gap, mostly in the south and, and Texas. So, you know, when, when confronted with this kind of, you know,

horror about the, this type of society that you live in, you know, I mean, like normal decent people are capable of recognizing the problem and organizing a solution to it and a democratic one. And which is what we see in this movie, which is, you know, two young people, I mean, like the husband is in medical school while this is all going on, while they're organizing like a statewide door knocking campaign in a very rural state that is basically based around, like I said, this rickety, like 70s era RV. And it's funny, like the, the wheezing of this RV's engine is sort of like a Greek chorus to your movie. So like, like, how did they, like, I mean, just like, you talked about like, they were surprised to find how quickly this caught on and how many

people were willing to volunteer to knock doors for this campaign. Yeah. Yeah. They ended up with 2,000 volunteers across the state by the end of the campaign, which is incredible in a state like Idaho, you know, which is primarily made up of registered Republicans in terms of the voters. You know, I think it's about 60 or 70% registered Republican. And this was, of course, a nonpartisan campaign. This was, this was not, you know, being supported by either party. In fact, this wasn't being supported by anything. Yeah. Local Democrats told them, don't do this. You're going to get Molotov cocktails thrown at you. Of course, that didn't happen. It was tremendously popular. And it, it was tremendously popular really, really quickly. I think the, the lesson

there is that healthcare is kind of a consensus issue among actual voters, you know, if you move past like red and blue and, and party politics and all that kind of stuff, what you get are just people, right? And, and I think that obviously, there are a lot of, you know, differences of opinion of policy. You definitely get people that are extreme to the right that are, you know, racist or whatever, all of that stuff exists, of course. But for the most part, people don't want their neighbors to die for lack of healthcare. And people, people know the system sucks. They know it's stupid. They know it's wasteful. And I think that it's hard to break people's concepts of this sort of zero sum game or this like, well, if I'm going to have a successful

podcast, I have to destroy Will's podcast. If I'm going to have a successful, I mean, fact, yeah, there are no, there are going to be, there are no other podcasts. There can be not up to that. There can be only one, there can be only one, but this idea of like, in order for one person to succeed or one business to succeed, somebody else by definition has to fail. Someone else is not getting that business, right? But with healthcare, it shouldn't work like that. And, and people, people understand this, they understand the crisis. And I think that they, they want to help each other. And when, when they're given an opportunity and can be assured, look, just because this person across the street is going to get coverage and, and, and, and help,

it doesn't mean you won't. This is for everybody, for everyone who needs it. No one's getting hurt by this. I mean, you mentioned that, that, you know, this was, you know, this is a nonpartisan issue that is nonpartisan in the sense that neither political party wants anything to do with it. Particularly as far as like the Democrats in a state like Idaho, I think there's an interesting dynamic that your film captures, which is that Idaho is a one-party state. It is ruled by Republicans and like most, like you said, 60 to 70% of registered voters are Republican. So, I mean, but there's a certain learned helplessness in the state democratic party in a state like that. But it's a learned helplessness that I think is mirrored on a national level in which the dynamics

are not anywhere close to being that dominated by Republicans. And it's this thing where, when they were starting out, like the state democratic party told them, like you said, this is crazy. People are going to run you out of town on a rail. No one wants to hear about, you know, socialized medicine and all this stuff. And I think, especially for Democratic politicians, when they think about the people out there, the voters, they just assume, and in some cases correctly, that they are this undifferentiated mass of like inherently reactionary right wing, like unchangeable, like actually physically frightening, scary people out there. And I think that that conception of them is an easy way out for them because I think it allows them to justify

the end result that they were hoping for in their first place. Oh, absolutely. There's no question that, listen, I think what we see in this film, you know, is a unification of the working class, right? I mean, because I think that this is what happens when you go to someone's door and you say to them, here is a political policy, a public policy that will help you. Here is a public policy that will materially change the conditions of your life in an unambiguously good way. Do you like this? And working class people say, yes, we love that. And it's very I will vote for that. And it's super clear. It's super clear. If you vote for X, then why happens? Not if you vote for X, then well, maybe a couple months later,

why I'll happen, but we'll give you like maybe two thirds of why or I don't know, maybe bargain against ourselves and like knock that down a bit. It was like, it's very clear about the results of what would happen. And you know, I think one of the real eye openers for us was was neither party is actually listening to these people. This thing had, you know, spoiler alert, but like it had an overwhelming amount of support in this state. And the only way it could have done that was with Republican voters, right? And what did the people in charge do immediately afterwards? They attack it. They attacked it. Lawsuits try to get rid of it. They don't want it. And it's like your own, your own constituents very clearly said, we would like this to happen,

please. And they immediately went after it, which with that, I'm not sure what you do. You know, that that's like, that's a, that's a whole other mess there where it's like, nobody's being listened to it seems by either party. Right. And I think that the Democrats do use that kind of, you know, Republican behavior in the legislature as an excuse to just do nothing. No. And I find that so frustrating personally, you know, I mean, not to go after the Idaho Democrats too hard, because I think that they are kind of stuck in this position where they feel that they're stuck in this position where nothing can happen, nothing good can happen. You know,

it's the, it's the famous tweet about the, the centrist rally, better things aren't possible. You know, I think that's what they feel they're in, which is what's so amazing about this group of people. It's just not real. And again, Garrett says it's what's so, it's what's so powerful and amazing about this group of people who, again, for whom this doesn't move the needle for them, it didn't actually personally affect them, but to see, you know, they, they, they saw that it wasn't going to happen unless they did it themselves. Yeah. They're just like, you're not, it doesn't matter who we vote for, it's, it's, this, this is just not going to happen unless we get in this frigging van and start knocking on doors. Yeah. You know.

Yeah. And it's, it's, it's that knocking on doors thing that's a big part of the movie. And then this movie really is, I mean, this is kind of a practice, very, it's, it's an uplifting, but it's also like, not in like a trickly, stupid way. I mean, this is a very, this movie is like a practical guide to like how to run a grassroots, like canvassing and door knocking campaign and like how to do it with like, not that many people, like how to do it literally just starting with like you and your wife and baby, basically, and, and an RV, you're going to need one of those. You need a way to get around. I'm just like, I mean, like for, for the subjects in this movie and for you personally, I mean, like what, what, what, what, what, what

lessons did you learn and like, and as, you know, shown in the movie about like how to, how to knock on someone's door, like how, like how this, this kind of grassroots organizing really works. I mean, like, like you just said, they just started. Yeah. You know, they literally just started to do it and then figured it out from there. You know, they saw something that was horrifying to them and just decided, okay, I'll start next door. And it sounds stupid. And again, it sounds, it sounds a little bit like, oh, okay, this is like a, you know, feel good. It's like, no, really, that's it. Like there was no magic. There was no special sauce. There was no algorithm or any kind of crap like that. They just literally just started knocking on doors.

I think the special sauce though, honestly, and this is going to sound like such a, you know, pie in the sky kind of thing to say, but I really feel this way. I feel like they had so much empathy when they were talking to people. When they knocked on those doors, it was never with judgment. It was never with like a preachy kind of attitude about politics or, you know, your political party or anything like that. It was always with empathy and it was always about really listening to the people whose homes they were coming to and responding to their questions in a really real way that wasn't, you know, scripted or canned. And the other thing was they didn't care. You know, I'm sure a lot of your listeners have been, you know, on door

knocking campaigns where you're only knocking on Democrats' doors or, you know, whatever it is, they didn't do any of that. They went to every single door, even if that person wasn't a registered voter. And, you know, like, and you can do that with a ballot campaign like this that isn't about vote for Democrat or Republican. Yeah, absolutely. And another element that's in this movie is like, they talk about how, like, one of the reasons that, like, sort of inspired this is when they realized that, like, raising awareness about these political issues or organizing over Facebook or the Internet really doesn't get you very far. And it seems like, oh, like, this is a platform to, like, amplify these views and share these political issues on a broad scale and, you know,

organize like-minded people. But you run into a wall every time. Yeah. And it's just like, it's not, it only becomes real if it's in, like, I hate to, you know, be cliche, but like, in physical space. And you show one scene in which there's, there's walking around a neighborhood and someone is looking for their lost dog. Yeah. And handing out flyers about, have you seen this dog? Please help me find my dog. And as part of the canvas, they also start asking people, have you seen the dog? And then the woman whose dog was lost was like, oh, okay, I'll vote for this now. And it's just like, it's this tiny, like, little, like, yeah, like connection you make with someone's life where you show that you're like, you care about them or it's sort of like, even like a, you know,

could pro quo, like, I'll vote for the prop if you look, if you help look for the dog. Did they find the dog, by the way? We don't know. I don't think so. We hope so. We hope so. But we never, we never did get a resolution on that for a little thought. But a lot of people were keeping their eyes on it because they kept asking everybody. So they expanded the drag net for the dog exponentially with that search. But it is, there is something, you know, I think Luke has, you know, when talking to him about this, there's also, it's more durable. It's more durable than a Facebook ad campaign or, or, you know, a television ad blitz or whatever kind of, you know, consultant, whatever a consultant tells you to do, which for again,

with this, in this case, a consultant would have said, don't bother. But it's more durable. And then, then doing things like, okay, well, we already have some, some, you know, sympathetic folks in Boise. So let's focus on Boise and activate as many people in Boise. They went all over the place. And when you convince people all over the place or talk to them, and they just, they're not even convincing them, they're just putting the information from them, letting them draw what is the logical conclusion. That is more powerful, because then these people are going to defend the vote. They're going to the, you may, you're, you're shifting their, their, their perception of this thing. It's not just trying to like,

trick people into voting for something. You're, you've, you've made a real connection, right? And I think that that is a far more powerful thing. And, and I wouldn't be honestly surprised in Idaho, where, you know, actually right now, there's a perfect example. They are trying to overturn or make it basically impossible to ever do this again. They do not want ballot measures to take place again. And because I mean, you know, spoiler alert, the ballot initiative, the ballot prop two that they were campaigning for a pass and it passed easily. It passed with like, what was it? Like 60, 40, 70, 30 landslide. And like the now Medicaid expansion is, you know, is the law in Idaho. But, you know, I mean, you're crazy if you think these

people view the electorate, like any kind of hurdle for denying people healthcare. So yeah, like now they're going to make it, they're trying to make it impossible. And I literally, right before you guys got on here, I just saw that in the state of Missouri, voters chose to expand Medicaid via ballot initiative in 2020. And the Republican state legislature is simply refusing to enact it. This is insane. This is, this is, this is insane. Like first of all, just get out of the way. Like what are you doing? Like you could just keep your, keep your job and just not attack this thing. But, but when, you know, you, the, the reclaim Idaho people may very well find support now among the people who voted for prop two in the first place to also

show up and have their voices heard and go after their own legislatures and say, what do you do and turn it over this, this, this ballot measure? I voted in this. I liked being able to do this. I want to be able to do this again. Right. So they, they're, they're building support with, with, with people that you wouldn't expect would maybe necessarily be in support of the expansion in the first place or even something like this. They go, oh, well, you know, the leaders know what they're doing. I guess they should overturn this, this evil ballot measure thing. No, they engaged with it. They know it's a positive thing. So they're going to fight for it. And the, the most insane thing about all of it is that the Idaho legislature is saying,

well, we don't want any more, we want to make it harder to have these ballot initiatives because you you liberals who get these ballot initiatives started, you're not going and talking to rural people and we need you to talk to somebody in every single county before you can get something on the ballot. Isn't that literally what they did? It's literally what they did. It's literally what they did. And fun fact, there is a tiny little county in a very rural part of Idaho that has something like 398 registered voters. Okay. 300 of those 398 registered voters are Republicans and Prop 2 passed in that county by 60%. So nobody can tell me that rural voters didn't want this. Well, it's like similar to the Democrats and their belief about like the people is this like

terrifying mass of like fucking like just just greedy evil pigs. Republicans believe that too about their own people. Yes. Absolutely. And I guess like, and then they're surprised to find out that like 60% of them actually like don't want poor people to dive, not having an asthma inhaler. Right. If they need it. Yeah. And you see that that was another, I think a real big thing for us was was being on the ground out there and watching these people do what they did. And realizing like, you know, I've seen for years these sorts of like you see a poll about whatever it is. Oh, 60 to 80% of Americans support whatever it is. And yet it doesn't exist. And you just think, well, that poll must be full of shit or there's, you know, there's there's some

reason that doesn't exist. It's like, yeah, yeah, there are reasons that doesn't exist. But it's, we see it. We see it. It's like a political will. Right. But those things, but that that, but those numbers bear out like that there are on an issue by issue basis, some of these things that people genuinely agree on. And, and, you know, the politicians just won't get on board with it. Yeah. On either side. I mean, yeah, because I mean, I just we're in this moment now where like political elites post Trump are obsessed with this idea that like people in America are just too angry at each other. There's too much division. And why can't we just come together on our famous common sense solutions to help like working families, the normal regular people of

America live lives that are like, you know, where they're taking home more money in their paycheck, they can send their kids to school, like all the things that they say they want. And then anything, anytime something actually does happen that is genuinely a grassroots, non-partisan political measure, you want to talk about a radicalizing moment, it passes. The vast majority of people are like, yes, we want this. It was decided in a Democratic campaign. And then like if politicians can just say, uh, yeah, no, yeah, no, we're not doing that. We're taking it back. I mean, like, where is that? I mean, you want to talk about a radicalizing moment? Like, where does that leave people? These people are like supposedly being failed by the politicians.

I know it's all their fault. And, you know, commentators can like bemoan that fact. But like they don't, they don't want Medicaid expansion. They don't want universal healthcare either. No, this is what I'm saying that I think this is why I feel like this film is really about, you know, working class unity in a way, because it is not in the best interest of either political party to have things like this happen. This strips them of their power and they don't like that. But it seems to be literally the only way to get anything done. And also, you know, I really like burn up when people start talking about the sort of like mythical moderate that's out there that is described as, as what a person with like no beliefs at all, you know, and I just

Well, this is part of the brain damage that that that that that that goes on here where there's this just like people just cannot conceive of the idea that anything better can be done. So the best you can possibly come up with is just like hold hold things exactly where they are, because if anything changes, it's just going to get worse. Yeah. You know, and they might not be completely wrong about a lot of that stuff. But I don't think that's what voters really want. You know, and I think that there's a lot of non voters who are non voters because of this, you know, because they're not getting anything with their vote, because we're all, you know, talking about unity. But what does that what does that mean exactly? You know, I mean, this this

campaign was about unity in a very real way. That kind of unity I would love to see. I can get on board with that. So I mean, so the film is out now. I mean, like what is the state of Medicaid expansion in Idaho? I mean, they're trying to claw back this idea that like, you know, you can raise these ballot initiatives to sort of bypass traditional political political issues or channels if you want to get something done. But as far as Medicaid in the state of Idaho right now, have they clawed it back in any way? Have they have they tried to fuck with it or take it away? Or is that pretty much like locked in one of the first lawsuits? Literally, I don't know the specifics, but it was basically it was so stupid. It was something along the

lines of like, well, you didn't put a comma in the correct place in this particular. Okay, it was it was something that idiotic that was tossed out. And as far as I understand, it's in a pretty, pretty strong place right now. And more than I believe, almost twice as many people that they originally thought we're going to enroll have enrolled at this point and counting. It's about 104,000 people that now have Medicaid, thanks to this bill. And you know, like a sort of an epilogue to the movie, you say like, you know, January 1st, 2020, this all kicked in right before fucking COVID happened. I mean, right? Like, I mean, that's the thing like, I mean, about why these this matters and why, you know, the subjects of your

movie are so heroic. And what they did is because no one can really, obviously, everyone can see the problems caused by our health care system right now. But no one can anticipate the future like a global pandemic happening just as this comes in. And now 60,000 people have health coverage that wouldn't have had it otherwise during a global pandemic, especially in a very rural state. Yeah, it's 104,000. And not to mention the fact that, you know, expanding Medicaid strengthened their hospitals. We get into a little bit in the film, but not expanding Medicaid is is really punishing for rural communities in so many ways. And a lot of that has to do with funding that's lost for rural hospitals. So yeah, when you're in a pandemic situation and,

you know, the nearest hospital is a 25, 30 minute drive from you 40 minute drive. And it's in danger of closing. That's a scary, scary situation. So it's, it's really amazing that Idaho, you know, didn't necessarily have to face that. Well, we got to leave it there. But I would like to thank Jim and Laura Kamusi. Thank you so much for joining us if people I mean, what is it? So first of all, actually, what's the state of your documentary film right now? Yeah, it's at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. I mean, if people want to see this movie or learn more about it, what can they do? You can see it through the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which is sbif.org. Or you can go to our website, which is ReclaimIdahoFilm.com, and we'll have

information about future screenings there. But we're hoping to get streaming on this so that everybody can see it everywhere. And sort of early days in the festival circuit. And, you know, so we're, we're, we'll see where, where distribution goes going forward. But right now, I mean, it'll be screening, it'll be, it'll be screening at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival through the 10th. So this should be up on the 8th. I don't know, I realize that doesn't a lot of time for our listeners to hopefully check this movie out. But if you could screen it through the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, it would be a big help to you guys. Absolutely. Absolutely. Definitely. All right. So once again, the film is Reclaim Idaho,

the filmmakers Jim Camusse and Laura Wing Camusse. Thank you so much for this film and your time. Thank you. Well, always, always a joy to talk to you. We'll have all the information available about the movie in this episode description. Thanks, guys. Thanks.