The Daily Signal - #492: Rep. Paul Gosar, a Dentist Turned Lawmaker, on Health Care Reform

Episode Date: June 25, 2019

Health care reform isn’t moving in Congress, but for Americans overall, it still registers as a top issue. Rep. Paul Gosar, a former dentist whose time in the practice has given him unique insights into health care reform, joins the podcast to discuss. Plus: A US soccer player won’t visit the White House, and a waiter spits on Eric Trump. What does it all say about our politics? We also cover these stories:•House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler says he expects Robert Mueller to have “a profound impact” when he testifies before Congress on July 17. •Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, vowed to resist the U.S. in the wake of new sanctions targeting him and other senior Iranian officials.•Clint Eastwood will make a move in Georgia this summer, despite Hollywood's cries to boycott the state over its pro-life law.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, June 27th. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, health care reform isn't moving right now in Congress, but for Americans overall, it's still the number one issue. I recently sat down with Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, a former dentist whose time in the practice has given him multiple insights into health care reform. Today, we'll bring you that exclusive interview.

Plus, a U.S. soccer player won't visit the White House, and a waiter spits on Eric Trump. What does it all say about our politics? We'll discuss. By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes to help us grow. Now on to our top news.

President Donald Trump told Fox Business in an interview that he sees several top social media companies as being biased toward the right and suggested that a lawsuit might be the answer. Well, somebody at Google said they don't want what happened in 2016 to happen. in 2020. They don't want it to happen again, right? Is that what you're referring to? Let me tell you. They're trying to rig the election. That's what we should be looking at, not that the witch hunt,

the phony witch hunt, which has proven zero. You know, I mean, not even a phone call. This is the greatest political disgrace in history. And you know, I don't have to talk to you about it. You know, I'm telling you, you picked it up so early. You got it so early. And I said it so early. And I told my viewers. That's why I'm talking to you early in the morning. Thank you, Mr. President. Is what technology companies are doing? What they did to you, is that legal? Are they breaking the law, Mr. President?

Well, I don't know whether it, but I tell you what, they should be sued because what's happening with the bias, and now you see it with that executive yesterday from Google, the hatred for the Republicans. It's not even like, gee, let's lean Democrat, the hatred. And actually, you know, I heard that all during my election. It's hard that I won. They were swamping us with negative stuff. Yeah. I mean, think of it. She was spending hundreds of millions of dollars. She was spending so much money because she spent more than twice what I did. You know, I never got credit for that. I won the election and I spent half the money. You know, the old is my father taught me, if you spend less and win, that's a good thing. Well, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler says that he expects Robert Mueller to have a, quote, unquote, profound impact when he testifies before Congress on July 17th. The Judiciary and Intelligence Committees,

announced Tuesday that Mueller would be testifying in back-to-back hearings, though Mueller himself has said that he wouldn't provide any new information. President Trump reacted to the news Wednesday morning. No, look, the Mueller thing never stops. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. There was no nothing. How many times do we have to hear it?

It never ends. It just keeps going on and on. I've been going through this for two years, two and a half years. and the criminal activity was on the other side with the fake dossier, the phony fraudulent dossier, and all of the other things they've done, the Pfizer courts, all of that, with the insurance policy by Stroke and his lover page. This is a disgraceful thing, and now we keep, I heard about it last night,

and I just said, does it ever end? At what point does it end? It's a disgrace. Well, Mueller has only spoken one. publicly since embarking on his two-year investigation, which cleared President Trump of collusion with Russia and declined to say whether he ever obstructed justice. Mueller's testimony in Congress would be a key milestone in any democratic effort to impeach the president.

The House Oversight Committee has greenlit a subpoena of top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, who was accused of violating the Hatch Act according to the Office of Special Counsel. The Hatch Act bans White House employees from getting into election matters under certain circumstances. Conway did not attend a hearing Wednesday the committee had called on the matter, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the committee decided to subpoena her in a 25 to 16 largely party line vote. Representative Justin Amosch, Republican of Michigan, joined the Democrats in voting for a

subpoena. Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and chairman of the committee, said, per the journal, there are rarely issues that come before our committee that are so clear cut, but this is one of them. Nobody, not one person, is above the law. The White House has defended Conway. Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, vowed to resist the United States in the wake of new sanctions, targeting him and other senior Iranian officials. According to the Washington Post, Kamani is rejecting all negotiations with the Trump administration, saying, quote, they said, negotiate with us in order to progress. Yes, we do progress, but without you.

negotiations are their way of deceiving, end quote. He added, if you surrender to them, you're done. President Trump had expressed a desire to avoid a military showdown with Iran and to negotiate. Last week, he called off a retaliatory attack on Iranian military assets after Iran shot down an unmanned U.S. drone flying over international waters near Iran. The Jerusalem Post reports an LGBT pride parade in the city of Haifa and Israel will be preceded by a family march. The Jerusalem Post writes, according to the organizers of the event, the march is an initiative by both religious and secular citizens who wish to stress the importance of the traditional family values.

Clint Eastwood was never known for following the herd, and that's still true at the age of 89. The award-winning actor is refusing to participate in Hollywood's boycott of Georgia over its new pro-life law. Eastwood has plans to produce a film there this summer. The movie is called The Ballad of Richard Jewel. It'll recount the story of a security guard who discovered bombs at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and was falsely accused. In March, per the Washington Examiner, more than 40 celebrities signed a letter to Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, saying they would boycott the state in light of its new law, which prohibits abortion after the child's first heartbeat is detected.

Next up, we'll feature Daniel's interview with Representative Gosar on health care and immigration. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care. choices and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight for conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous, but we can't do it without you. Please join us at heritage.org. I'm joined now by Congressman Paul Gosar.

He represents Arizona's fourth congressional district in the House of Representatives. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me on, Daniel. So you've been in Congress for several years now, but before that you had a long career actually as a dentist, which I love it when members of Congress spent a whole career doing something else that really weighs in on their political life.

So I just wanted to ask you, how does being a dentist affect the way you approach health care as a major issue that you work on? Well, first of all, I think that Our framers really wanted people from different walks of life with different life experiences to get involved. And, you know, I may have a blindness in one area. Somebody may not, as an attorney. And so the very best of the best ideas come to the service.

In my case, dentistry has a very different history than medicine. And it comes back to a division in 1964. This was when Medicare was started. And so dentistry was at the table and they decided to walk away. And the results have been is that dentistry, it's got its own problems, but it's a market-based process. So the same dollar you spent in 1970s, basically the same dollar you spend today with inflation only. Medicine is more than 20 times that plus inflation. The marketplace is artificial.

It's not based on what the market absorbs. It's what the government will pay. So it's got a contradictory influence to it. And that's why we find the problems. We see cost shifting from one side to the left, and eventually you run out of time. Yeah. Well, we've had this ongoing healthcare debate in this country

going back years. And in 2017, you know, we saw the repeal and replaced effort, barely fail in the Senate. Since then, what's your read on how things are going in Congress on the health care issue? Well, the opportunity is staring us right in the face to have that conversation. I don't think we know what is possible because really we haven't liberated market forces. You know, for example, there were big winners and losers in Obamacare.

Big winners were medical insurance industry, pharmaceuticals, and big hospitals. You know, what about breaking everybody down to the lowest common denominator and put the focus on recreating our health care to a patient focus, patient-empowered, patient-centric type, of opportunity and build accordingly, empower patients instead of victimizing them. Give them the power. Everybody wants to be treated their own special way, whether it's your health care, who you want to see, whether it's my health care, who I want to see, or what I don't want done, patients need to be empowered. And I think there's some quick things that we can actually do in this Congress that are bipartisan in nature. No one would actually feign not doing them. And it would actually

facilitate having that conversation once 2020 is over to actually direct us in a pathway going forward with a better health care plan. That's something that we deserve. We're better than and anything else out there in the world doesn't compete. What are some of those things that Congress should be doing on health care? Well, the first thing is taking away the Sherman and Clayton antitrust exemption that the medical insurance industry has. You and I, if we're physicians, we don't get that exemption. And so nobody else should. Once upon a time, they needed it to maybe build the insurance marketplace, but they don't. When they're up happening now, now we truly make them compete instead of what we see today, which is

at the 60,000 foot level, really five monopolies. Incentivized where they have to compete, that's going to hold down costs for pharmaceuticals, hospital costs. It's going to incentivize them to help take care of doctors, create new opportunities, new opportunities for having patient-based solutions like you're seeing in the Rust Belt. That's key. The second one is also doing health savings account reform, where people are empowered to direct it. And we want something very simply that the government stays out of. If I don't use it, I don't lose it. It builds for a lifetime. If I die, I could give it to you and your HSA. No tax implications as long as I went to your HSA because you're facilitating life. These are all opportunities that you can reset the stage

because the marketplace will start to evolve. So as you tear down the antitrust, making more competition, You incentivize that financially for the individual. All of a sudden, you're going to get the creativity of the American entrepreneur in that space to create new things that we've never dreamed of. So when you were in Western Arizona and you talk to your constituents about this, what are their main concerns and what do they want to see? They have bought into the dream. You know, I've got a lot of veterans.

You know, we've tried to do everything we possibly can for veterans, but the Veterans Administration is such an unwielding bureaucracy that it doesn't turn. And so the real magic here is empowering our veterans. They're going to be our spearhead, breaking that trajectory and empowering them to direct their own health care. I've got veterans that live in Lake Havasu City that are forced to go all the way down to Tucson in many cases. When the services of their neighbor could be right there on Lake Havasu, and they may want to stay there. I believe in patience. I think they have a better solution than the federal government, and I think this is the opportunity.

to do it. So they've bought in. And does it, does it, does it fix everything? No. No plan is going to fix everything. We've taken so long to devolve to the problems that we have today and all the single payers, all the other health care systems around the world aren't working either. They're falling apart. So are we better than that? Shouldn't we trust the entrepreneurial, the opportunity that America so rightly has done in the past, being at bright stuff, deliver something that the American people deserve. Well, I want to shift to something that's also very relevant to your district, which is immigration and border security.

How is illegal immigration, especially the surge of it in the last year, affected your district in particular? It's overwhelming. I have a part of my district is in Yuma, and that sector was one of the most secure aspects, and now one of the least secure. You know, over 1,000 people coming almost every day. They've been overwhelmed. They're kind of an isolated community out there in southwestern Arizona. And what ends up happening, they don't have the resources to handle the onslaught of people coming back and forth.

Congress has, in its terrible wisdom, actually made it worse for them. So that if anybody's with an accompanied minor, we can't intervene, even if we know that that adult that's with that child may be a convicted criminal. We've really become, in the world, of the largest trafficking organization in the world. And it's sad. Well, and the asylum loopholes are obviously allowing lots of folks to take advantage of them. Do you think there is the will in Congress to pass something to at least close the loopholes

and make it harder to abuse those? I doubt it. And part of the reason is that you seen in the election of 2016, you saw Donald Trump take away the base from the Democratic Party. And so the Democrats want victims. Democrats want to rebuild people that are victims up on the government, that are dependent upon the government. And sadly, the most dependent person on the government is an illegal immigrant to this country. And, you know, the onslaught of health care, the onslaught of social services, that social net, they're very dependent upon the government.

And Democrats' whole mantra has been dependency on a federal government. Are you supportive of the president's national emergency declaration on the border? I am. You know, from the standpoint is, but there's also a lot more things that he can do. For example, we don't have the same problem in Canada. And the reason being is that Canada signed the addendum to the refugee international law that basically says anybody from Canada showing up at our northern borders considered a Canadian asylum. Because it's a contiguous state, it allows us to 24 hours.

hours to dictate whether they qualify or not and turn them home and they have to take them back. Mexico hasn't done that. So sometimes they won't accept people. So, you know, we have this USMCA sitting out there, the trade agreement. It would be wise for the president to conditionalize that that Mexico sign on and be part of that solution, not part of the problem, being a good neighbor. Yeah. So you represent a district in Arizona. It's a very conservative state and it's got a great booming economy, what's the outlook for the future? Well, it's bright. You know, one of the things we always say in Arizona is that whiskey's for drinking,

waters for fighting over, because we're always very conscious of water. And so we're on the forefront of water technology and water stewardship. But we're also blessed with a lot of minerals. We're also known for mining. You know, I tell listeners it was always based on the five seas, you know, copper for mining, cattle, citrus, climate, and cotton. And people don't really realize, but that really has what's made Arizona strong today. We're under assault.

We have a lot of changes in our demographics. We see a lot of people from California moving here. Sadly, they bring their failing politics with them. And we wish that if they're coming to Arizona, you want to be free, you want to have liberties and freedoms, and you want to be self-empowered. So, you know, hopefully more people will show up like that. It's a fast-growing state. We have the same issue in my home state of Texas.

A lot of Californians moving there too. We very much are. Yeah. You know, we always tell them, bring your guns, leave your politics home. That's right. Well, Congressman Gossar, I really appreciate your time here. Thanks, much. Thanks, Daniel.

Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. In the agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. Eric Trump, the president's son, is claiming he was spat on earlier this week by a restaurant employee in Chicago. Quote, for a party that preaches tolerance, this once again demonstrates they have very little civility.

When somebody is sick enough to resort to spitting on someone, it just emphasized. a sickness and desperation and the fact that we're winning, Trump told Breitbart. The restaurant, the Avery, said in a statement, per CNN, we did not witness the incident and we are just beginning to learn the details. What is certain is this, no customer should ever be spit upon. But the restaurant employee isn't the only one upset with the Trump's. U.S. women's soccer star and team co-captain, Megan Rapino, told eight by eight she didn't want to go to the White House, even if her team wins the women's World Cup. It's unclear when exactly the interview is filmed, and it may have been months ago.

Here's what she had to say. I'm not going to the White House. We're not going to be invited. You're not going to be invited? I doubt it. After the clip emerged on Twitter, President Trump tweeted, I am a big fan of the American team and women's soccer, but Megan should win first before she talks.

Finish the job. We haven't yet invited Megan or the team. but I am now inviting the team win or lose. Megan should never disrespect our country, the White House, or our flag, especially since so much has been done for her and the team. Be proud of the flag that you wear. The USA is doing great. Rapino doesn't sing or place her hand on her heart when the national anthem is sung.

She is gay and is seen as an LGBT advocate. So, Daniel, these incidents are obviously somewhat different. Spitting on the President's son is very different than not going to the White House. But I think they show a common trend, namely how intense people are about politics, especially on the left right now. Yeah, and it's a trend that we've seen earlier as well. I remember Ted Cruz last year was hounded at a restaurant with his wife, and they were going to leave, but then the restaurant, you know, got rid of the protesters. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was actually asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia by the people who ran the restaurant because of very. political activity. And we've seen other football players say that they're not going to the White

House with their team to celebrate with the president. So I think it is part of an ongoing thing. I mean, look, so I think part of it is the, you know, the political views themselves have become very sharply polarized. But I think a lot of it just has to do with the tone of the discourse, you know. I mean, certain things that, you know, President Obama even, even advocate a few years ago. I saw on Twitter, like in 2014, in an interview with ABC, he was talking about stopping migrants at the border and sending them back, saying that kids, you know, we need to send a message not to have kids sent to, you know, to the border. Well, that's the same exact policy that, you know, Trump and border security are affecting, but for some reason when Trump does

it's just beyond the pale. And I think that has to do with the issue of a bad faith, lack of trust, and general tone, which just inflames everything. Absolutely. And the other thing that I was thinking about this, and this involves several leaves the imagination because I would never play sports much less well. But if I had been invited to the White House

for winning a sports game when President Obama was in office, you know, obviously I vehemently disagreed with him on abortion. I felt that he, you know, was certainly, promoting policies that led to the death of millions of innocent children. And I was thinking, I feel like I would go because I don't think he's doing it consciously. Now, I might want to have the courage to say something about being pro-life when I was there. But, you know, I think it does sort of hit at this broader thing. And we've seen this play out a little bit in conservative circles lately. You know, how, as a country, we seem to be getting divided on very big moral issues in a way that in

different points in history we have not. What does our country look like when we don't have shared values on some really big things? And I think that is something that we're grappling with. I think in general that, you know, the left is escalating it in a way that I think is irresponsible. But at the same time, yeah, Megan Rapino and I probably do not see eye to eye on LGBT issues. Well, and this is why it's so important to have federalism, because if you can get these issues out of Washington back to local communities and states, then you can have states govern more closely according to their own values, and you don't have to have everyone on the same page. Because when Washington passes a policy, you know, it's for everyone and you're going to get lots of flack

either way it goes. But, you know, if you decentralize, that's good for the country. I think, you know, that's a lesson that I think both sides of the spectrum should take to heart. Because right now, you know, a lot of liberal states don't like what Trump's doing. You got sanctuary states, sanctuary cities, which again, immigration is a federal issue. So I think that is kind of an exception. But, yeah, I think it's a great argument for federalism. And maybe also just, you know, you wonder how many of these people have tried to talk to someone. You know, I don't know.

It would be interesting if Megan Rapino went to the White House and told President Trump what she disagreed with him on and had a dialogue or something. I don't know if, I don't know why that's always thrown out the window. You know, did the waitress who approached Eric Trump? I mean, there's never an excuse. There's never a good reason to spit on someone's face. But what if she had said, hey, I disagree with some of your dad's policies and I'd like to talk about it? Maybe he would have said, no, I'm here at this restaurant.

I'm not here to talk politics. But maybe he would have engaged. You know, Senator Bernie Sanders did a town hall in Fox News recently. And he got a lot of flack from fellow Democrats for going on Fox News because that's just beyond the pale for so many Democrats. But he actually turned it into kind of a win, I think, for him. He got a lot of applause and he actually kind of got the audience on his side against the Fox host. And that was a big win for him. So I think we need to have a bigger imagination as to like who we can engage with.

It's this faction mentality. Like if you do anything with the other side, if you cooperate with the other side on anything, then you're just one of them. Right. And it also implies that you think the other side is so inhuman and beyond the pale. They can't be argued with or discussed or learn to sympathize. I mean, to a certain extent, you know, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been in a lot of hot water for comparing the migrant camps to concentration camps. Well, if you genuinely think that Trump is the moral equivalent of a Nazi, then some of these actions make sense.

But, I mean, obviously that's absurd and we're not at that point. And it's very dangerous to promote that. And, you know, you just mentioned Sanders. I think Sanders did a town hall with Senator Cruz in 2017, I want to say, on CNN. I thought that was great. I would love to see Ocasio-Cortez do a town hall with maybe Representative Dan Crenshaw or something. That would be really interesting. I think we need to have discussions.

There are huge disagreements right now. But refusing to go to the White House spitting at people, like these are not the right ways to respond. Yeah, I would love to see Dan Crenshaw debate somebody on the Democratic side because he's just really engaging and just mixed good arguments. Him and Ocasio-Cortez. I mean, that would be great. They're both millennials. Like, it would be fascinating. That's right.

Well, good place for us to leave it. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad.

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