The Dan Bongino Show - Ep 488 What You Need to Know About the Healthcare Bill

Episode Date: June 23, 2017

In this episode I discuss the problems with the GOP Senate Obamacare replacement bill.  https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/the-gops-obamacare-out-repeal-replace-in-copy-paste   I also address a criminal justice reform measure which can interest both liberals and conservatives.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dan Bongino. I owe you. Who owes who? You owe me. I owe you. There's no money. The Dan Bongino Show. Anything run by liberals will be run into the ground, burned, stepped on, gasoline poured on it, and burned again. Get ready to hear the truth about America. They're arguing about things and debating how quickly they can deconstruct the greatest country in the history of mankind and all of the ideas and norms that have gotten us here. On a show that's

not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino. Alright, I was in a really pissy mood today before Joe did his British accent to get me going. So, he's like, alright, how do you do it? Give me a countdown. There we go.

Things can't be that bad, Daniel. Cheer up now. Pit, pit. All right. Welcome to the Renegade Republic with Dan Bongino. Producer Joe, obviously doing better than I am. I really, I was in like, thank God Joe's funny because I'm ready to take this microphone, smash it through the damn TV in my office.

You know, folks, being a homeowner is a great thing this is not a commercial this is like my actual i say but man alive is it a pain in the butt gosh it's stuff i was gonna say something is breaking in my house like every day my house was built in 2003 it was not built it been post-world war okay? There's a 2003 house. Stuff is always breaking. Always. My gosh. You know, the AC guy was here yesterday. My thermostat broke. She put a new thermostat. Then the unit

went down. The sucker thing that sucks the stuff out of the system got clogged with sucky stuff in the sucker. That sucks. The sucker broke. and then i have this crap surround sound system by the way this is totally first world problems i completely get that if you're in venezuela right now under socialist maduro eating pigeons for a living you don't want to

hear it and you're hanging up on the podcast right now i totally get that but that doesn't make me any less angry right now the surround sound system i have this control four thing it's like the worst thing ever it never works the app broke the tv never works it comes on the sound stays on the picture shuts off the remote doesn't work oh man alive i said to my my wife, sometimes I think you're better off renting. Sheesh. If I didn't understand the economics of home buying versus renting, I swear I would rent. It is driving me crazy. Every day something breaks. I'm nuts. This is the part of the show where it's just a little slice of life from your host. Man, then we get this crap obamacare bill that came out

yesterday i mean i don't want to be depressing folks but really this is not like uh the the golden age of republicanism you know i mean gosh this crap obamacare bill comes out the replacement bill so we'll get to that today um all right uh today's show brought to you by friends at my patriot supply on a serious note i did get some really good feedback. There was a listener the other day that sent me a great email. He said, listen, there was a tornado down here or a big set of storms. And I said, I'm going to use your email in one of the reads. And he said, I'd never really thought about buying emergency food. Just a real email. I'm not making this up. The listener knows he didn't give me permission to share his name, so I'm not doing it. I'm not making this up. The listener knows he didn't give me permission to share his name, so I'm not doing it. But he said, I went to the grocery store and shockingly, there was no food left. Now, that's not a joke. God forbid that tornado and we had a real serious set of storms and you were out of

luck for a couple of days. It's nice to know you've got an emergency food supply. Listen, better to have it, not need it, than need it, not have it. It's crazy not to have an emergency food supply set up. My friends at My Patriot Supply send you a month's supply of emergency food for just 99 bucks. That's it. You're good for 25 years. 99 bucks for 25 years of food?

Think about that. 25 years. I'll be dead before you need to replace that stuff. Go get yourself a box of emergency foods, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Easy to prepare. You just have to add water. God forbid you need it one day. You'll be the most popular guy in town. God forbid something goes wrong and you have that supply

of emergency food. Pick up two boxes, as a matter of fact. It's available for just $99. Go to preparewithdan.com. That's preparewithdan.com and pick up your one month supply of emergency food today, 140 servings. Okay. Now for the content portion. This Obamacare bill in the Senate just really sucks. Like the sucker in my, I don't even know what the hell the thing's called, the vacuum pump or whatever, the flux capacitor. But that broke and it sucks garbage out of the system. And unfortunately, Republicans were elected to office to suck garbage out of the system and were just injecting garbage back into the system because the senate bill is really terrible and i really want to applaud senator mike lee senator ron johnson uh senator rand paul and senator ted cruz for standing up and saying listen we're willing to work with you but this thing is really terrible got my wife now it is everything that you hear a phone going off in the background

she's looking she's in the desk drawing out here you want to get something here you want to join the party hello here say hi i'm looking for a checkbook i know you here. You want to get something? Here you go. You want to join the party? Say hello. Here, say hi. I'm looking for a checkbook. I know you're looking for a checkbook. I'm trying to get you some air conditioning. Say hello. Come on. Say hello. Come on.

Say hi. You'll love me later when you have cold air. She's paying the- Hey, Paula. Yeah. Paula's paying the AC guy for the broken AC. She's so shy. She doesn't want to say hello.

The show's totally off the rails today, folks. But listen, this is real. This is Dan Bongino's life, right? So I thought of a way to sum this up for you, because there's going to be a lot of debate going on about Obamacare. And I want to leave you on a serious note with some information to take out of this so you can explain away why this thing stinks as bad as it does. But before we do that, we have got to explain what Obamacare is.

Because here's the problem I'm having, Joe, debating liberals on Twitter and, you know, people I run into in the gym and things like that who want to discuss Obamacare. They don't know what it is. So there's a terrific piece, a conservative review. And I don't just say that because I work there. This is really a great piece by Dan Horowitz, which I will put in the show notes today, which is conveniently at Conservative Review on their podcast, which describes succinctly what Obamacare is. And I'm just going to go into you. He describes the five components of Obamacare. This is what Obamacare is. So you know what you're actually talking about when you're debating your Looney Tunes liberal friends. Number one, the purchase mandates. What Obamacare did, Joe, a little

background here, is it made people buy insurance products that many of them didn't want. All right. Now, I say made people buy insurance products that many people didn't want because if it made you buy them, you didn't buy them before it made you buy them and therefore you didn't want them. buy them you didn't buy them before it made you buy them and therefore you didn't want them what's the need for an insurance mandate to buy hair plugs if people don't want to buy hair plugs it's just simply government force it's using government force to get people to buy stuff that they don't want to buy so obamacare had a bunch of purchasing mandates in there that had you know vasectomies and other things in there that people did not want to buy insurance for. Now, Joe, that does not mean they did not want to buy the procedure.

It meant people did not want to buy insurance for the procedure. Does it mean people didn't want hair transplants? The hair transplant business is doing quite well. Now, that's a problem trust me joe armacost will never in a million years have with his elvis flowing black mane even at 75 or however old he is joe will not need that so joe is not that customer joe does not want hair transplants nor does joe want insurance for hair transplants, which he will never need. Right, Joe? Hopefully. You bet. Joe has the nicest head of hair any human being I've ever met has.

It's frankly embarrassing for a man of his age. He makes us all feel bad at 42. He's got nicer hair than me. Joe doesn't want insurance for hair transplants. So that's component number one of Obamacare, these purchase mandates to buy insurance for things that people did not want to buy themselves fascinating how that works out and how it drives up costs

amazing Joe isn't it shocking to liberals you ask people to buy insurance against the product they didn't want to buy in the first place no less to buy insurance for it and insurance companies charge more for it why really that's how that works yes okay so moving and insurance companies charge more for it. Oh, what? Really?

That's how that works? Yes. Okay, so moving on. I'm moving at a glacial pace here, and I'm doing way too much in the realm of humor today. So number one component of Obamacare, purchase mandates. Buy insurance products against procedures that they didn't want. Number two was means-tested subsidies.

These were income-based in Obamacare, meaning because Obamacare made you buy insurance for a bunch of stuff you didn't want, vasectomies and hair transplants, they realized Obamacare people who designed it, who were relatively smart, I mean, it was devious what they did, but they weren't stupid, Joe.

They said, well, if we ask people to buy insurance for vasectomies, it's going to cost extra money, and people's premiums buy insurance for vasectomies, it's going to cost extra money and people's premiums are going to go up. So what are we going to do? I got an idea. Let's give them taxpayer money to pay for the stuff they didn't want to buy in the past. So let's take money from other taxpayers and give it to them to buy insurance for products they didn't want to buy in the first place. Oh, genius. And let's call it a fancy name, means-tested subsidy. So quick economic lesson, when you hear means-tested, means-tested means it's based basically on income. So you'll get a

certain amount of money based on a sliding scale of how much you made. So if you make $20,000, you'll get X amount of money. If you make 21,000, you'll make X minus X amount of money. And if you make, say, 90, $95,000, you'll get no subsidy at all. You copy, Joe? Yeah. So number one component, purchase mandates. Number two, means-tested subsidies, which is a fancy way of saying

other taxpayers are paying for your overpriced insurance. Mm-hmm. Component number three was the Medicaid expansion. Medicaid within the states was limited to people who were poor. Medicaid was designed to help the poor get medical procedures that they couldn't have done at their income level. Now, Medicaid has not done that.

Medicaid has been a disaster. The University of Virginia study on Medicaid is pretty dispositive on the matter, that people on Medicaid have worse health outcomes after surgery than people who have no insurance at all, and also have worse health outcomes than people who have private insurance. Now, think about what I just told you. People on Medicaid have worse outcomes than people who have no insurance at all. In other words, if you have Medicaid, you're better off going into surgery with no insurance.

There's a statistically better chance you'd do well. I'm not making that up. Look it up. It's a University of Virginia study. What the Medicaid expansion did within the states, Joe, is it expanded Medicaid to people who were outside of basically the poverty line up to people making, in some cases, up to $90,000 a year. And what the federal government said is they said, we got a magic deal for you.

Because again, the Democrats aren't stupid. They said, Joe, if we do this if we give basically government taxpayer-funded health care that's what medicaid is if we give this to people for nothing in return that's going to cost money because they're going to go have procedures done they're going to have to get paid how are we going to do it yeah so what they did is they said well to defray the cost to the states which would have have been absurdly high, they said, we'll pick up 90% of the tab for the first few years. Now the states are like, wow, that's a great idea. Until you figure out this little basic economic fact that this country is called the United States of America.

So if the states are not paying, who's paying? Martians? The states! So it's people from other states paying for people from other states who are paying for people from other states. You know, it reminds me of that old Milton Friedman joke about government spending. The big joke about government spending is you think your

neighbor's paying for it, and he's laughing because he thinks it's the same thing. In other words, you both think your other one's paying for you're all paying for the medicaid expansion was a joke it was never going to be economically feasible oh 90 is being paid for by the federal government which is composed of what space aliens uranus the planet mars right i i don't where did you think the money was coming from oh no no don't worry we're only paying 10 the federal government's paying the rest the federal government composed of you i again folks talking a little i give up i i completely give up to talking to liberals i it's useless i'm hoping to argue with liberals only so a third person will hear us to see how dumb

liberals are. No, no. The federal government picks up 90% of the tab. Oh, and who's the federal government? The United States. Was that slow enough for you? Joe, do you have to add a sound effect there to slow that down? You're paying for it.

I got it. Let me take a sip of this. I'm a little wired up today because I'm really PO-ed about this stupid Obamacare bill. It's been like 20 years. You think we can get this damn house together and figure things out, you know? Mm-hmm. A little more than 20 years. It's been since the Reagan era, so 30 years.

We should have been able to get this thing together. We can't figure out what we want to do with healthcare. It's unforgivable. Okay. So we're up to number three. So the five components of Obamacare, the purchase mandates for crap you don't want. Secondly, paying for crap that you can't afford with other people's money via means-tested subsidies. Third, expanding a crap program that's doing crap to help people in the Medicaid expansion. Number four, crap mandates, the individual and employer mandates. So again, the devious creators of Obamacare rapidly figured out, Joe, that people aren't going to be able to afford this stuff. If people

aren't going to be able to afford this stuff and other people are also going to have to pay for it because taxpayers are going to have to subsidize the subsidies, then what are we going to do? Well, we're going to have to make people buy Obamacare because Obamacare sucks so bad. The suck factor on this is high, if you're missing my point, which is perfect that we started with the broken sucker on my air conditioning unit. Totally unplanned, but the sucker thing fits right in today. So it was individual and employer mandates. The individual mandate was if you can pay for Obamacare or if you don't pay for Obamacare, we're going to institute a tax penalty through the IRS.

It was roughly, was it 1% of income or a couple hundred dollars and the amount goes up every year. Problem is Obamacare was so ridiculously expensive because of all the mandates and the crap subsidies that even with the tax penalty, most people flipped the government off with the middle finger and said, I'd rather just pay this crap individual tax, which wasn't enough, by the way, to offset the cost of Obamacare. 50 people or more, you had to provide insurance. Hence the term 49ers, because companies were not hiring that 50th person because they didn't want to have to pay for Obamacare insurance. There were also 29ers because if you had a workforce and someone was subjected to 30 hours a week or more of work or work 30 hours more subjected to it, it's not indentured servitude. If you work 30 hours a week or more, the employer would have to provide insurance, hence the term 29ers.

When you hear the terms 29ers and 49ers, that is a reference to companies that are trying to avoid Obamacare penalties by hiring a total of 49 people rather than 50 and having the people that work there work 29 hours a week instead of 30, 29ers and 49ers because they didn't want to pay for Obamacare. Okay, finally, Obamacare was a series of tax hikes. It was an enormous tax hike, trillions of dollars over 10 years. Those tax hikes, these crap tax hikes that really sucked, the suck factor was high on this.

There was a 0.9% payroll tax that was going to be levied against couples who make more than $250,000 a year, because that's rich by Obamacare standards. Unfortunately, if you live in a city run by Democrats, you're probably poor at $250,000 a year. 0.9% payroll tax. There was also a 3.8% investment tax levied on capital gains for people who make over a certain amount of money per year. Those were really high taxes. That is in addition, by the way, to the individual mandate tax, which affected everyone that did not choose to buy insurance. So when you see people like Senator Claire McCaskill from Missouri coming out and saying that, well, this is a handout to the rich, let's debunk that

right away. And I'll get to it in a second, but one of the components of the Senate bill that is decent is it does get rid of those taxes. But McCaskill's point, Joe, is that by getting rid of those taxes, this is a handout to the rich. She says, all of these taxes were only designed to hit the rich, the payroll tax and the investment tax. But what McCaskill's conveniently leaving out is the biggest tax of all, the individual tax. If you don't buy Obamacare, that's for everybody. So again, it's easy to debunk liberals, even PolitiFact, which is a left-leaning hack organization,

told McCaskill to basically slow a roll on that one. Slow your roll down, McCaskill. You're just making that up. This was not a tax cut for the rich. It was a tax cut for anybody who doesn't want to buy crap Obamacare. All right. tax cut for the rich. It was a tax cut for anybody who doesn't want to buy crap Obamacare. All right. Now that we have that out of the way, what Obamacare is, and I'm sorry I had to lay that groundwork, but based on some of the traffic I get, there are some, not all, but some people

who really have no idea what this is. It's all summed up nicely in the Dan Hurts' piece, which I'll put at the show notes there. Okay. What are the downs and the ups of the bill? Very few upsides, but here are the downsides for the replacement bill that Mitch McConnell launched yesterday, for those of you who are coming in late here. All right. Number one, well, we're in trouble right away, by the way, because we have 52 Senate seats. You need 51 to pass. So you can have two senators defect because the vice president would break the tie if it was 50-50. And you now have

four GOP senators saying, we're not interested. You have Paul, Cruz, Lee, and Johnson. So the bill's already in trouble. But here are the downsides. It does not repeal the regulations, Joe. I don't know any other sound or basic economic way to say this, but when you ask people, check, rewind the tape. When you demand by government fiat that people buy a product, whether they have the money or not, you are going to drive up the price of the product. This should not be mysterious to people. In other words, Joe, if you demand that people buy cars with Bluetooth surround, Apple CarPlay, Droid CarPlay, sunroofs and moonroofs, in other words, products some people want and some people don't because they can't afford,

why would it surprise you that the car is more expensive? Now, this surprises liberals all the time. I'm talking to reasonable people now. When Obamacare regulations demanded people buy vasectomies and buy hair transplants, well, they want to pay for them. Somebody had to pay for them. The insurance companies had to pay for them. And insurance companies had to get the money from somewhere.

So they were getting the money from the taxpayers who subsidized the more expensive plants. So just to be clear. from somewhere. So they were getting the money from the taxpayers who subsidized the more expensive plants. So just to be clear, excuse me. Sorry. I had some, I had my, I like this. There's a really good protein product I enjoy. I got to get Miles and them to develop a really good protein product out there. Maybe a casein product. Totally off topic.

Okay. Shows off the rails a little bit today, folks. Sorry. It's K-Scene product. Totally off topic. Okay. Show's off the rails a little bit today, folks. Sorry. It's not that I'm distracted. I'm just a little annoyed, so I'm trying not to do an overly emotional show here. So it doesn't repeal any of these regulations to buy

sunroofs, to buy Bluetooth, to buy Apple CarPlay. It doesn't do any of that. It doesn't repeal any of that. So how are you? I don't understand. Now, let me tell you how they're framing this, because this is what you're going to hear from your liberal friends and a lot of the rhino Republicans out there. They're framing this as a series of patient protections. Now, this is fascinating. I've always told you about how liberals manipulate the language, because once you control the language, you control the argument,

even when the argument hasn't yet begun. You control it. Once you frame something as a patient protection, the argument's over. Is it not? Joe, how are you going to argue against patient protections? You're not. Joe wants to repeal patient protection. Joe's not repealing patient protections. Joe's repealing a series of Obamacare regulations, which have made the cost curve dramatically grow to the point where people can't afford it. These are not patient protections. These are government red tape regulatory rules, which make you buy crap you don't want. But it's being framed as a patient protection bill. protection bill. The Democrats, of course, go right to the media with it. The media parrots this talking point. And outside of a few Republicans in the Senate with major league nerve, with cojones like steel, like Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Cruz, and we'll see him, Johnson too, who seems to be opposing this, they're afraid to tell people the truth, that these are not patient protections. These are patient mandates. These are things you're being ordered by the government to buy that you could buy yourself

tomorrow freely, but you don't want to. All right. Because if you did, you would not have to be ordered by the government to do it. I don't have to be told to buy a car. I don't have to be told to buy a television. I want to do it. The only reason the government would need to do it is because you don't want it. The GOP bill does not get rid of the regulations to buy this stuff, folks. The price is not going to go down. And the problem, Joe, if we pass this thing with these, quote, patient protections, which is a bunch of red tape built in, the cost is not going to come down. And Joe, who do you think is going to own this damn thing in the next election?

Yeah, I know. We are. Republicans. Yeah, of course we are. We're going to come down and joe who do you think is going to own this damn thing in the next election yeah i know we are republicans yeah yeah of course we are we're gonna own this thing it doesn't matter folks listen the media sucks okay they're they're a bunch of liars a bunch of hacks they don't ever tell the story the right way okay they are not going to say oh obamacare built in this red tape and republicans just didn get rid of it. And henceforth, the Republicans aren't fully responsible. That's not what's going to happen. Your prices are going to continue to go up and the media is going to go, oh, all the failures of Obamacare are blamed on Republicans. Just like I told you the other day, if you listen to my show, if you're binge listening right now, you're probably familiar with this about an hour ago when I talked about the

how they're blaming Obamacare uncertainty for a lawsuit that happened before Trump even got in office. You remember Joe, that show where I was talking about how there's this lawsuit against Obamacare that started way before Trump got in office. And now the leftists are blaming Obamacare price hikes on uncertainty caused by Trump. But the lawsuit has nothing to do with Trump.

The lawsuit started before Trump even got in office. You're just making that up, but don't ever count on liberals to tell the truth so it does not so just to rewind a little bit the downside to this the major downside it does not repeal the regulations for you to buy stuff that is going to cost a lot of money i don't know any easier way to tell you this there's your costs are not going to go down as the bill stands now. Number two, it allows the Medicaid expansion, Joe, again. The Medicaid expansion is a bottomless pit. Why are we telling people who make up to $80,000 and $90,000 a year that that's an acceptable

income to take other people's money and spend it on your healthcare. Can't we be responsible for a minute? And even if we have to lose an election, just be honest with people and say, folks, here's the thing. Doctors and hospitals cost money, okay? These people work for a living, they have to get paid. If you make 60, 70, $80,000 a year, I'm sorry, but there is not a reason for another taxpayer to fund your healthcare. They have to pay for their own health care. I mean, the taxpayer and the person demanding it. Why is this a hard argument to make? Do you really believe you're going to lose the American electorate by telling the truth about this? So it allows this Medicaid expansion to people making absurd amounts of money who are not poor by any measure, who are getting taxpayer money now to buy health care. And the idea is, oh, well, we got to keep the Medicaid expansion.

What are we going to we're going to take it away from people we've given it to? Yes. Because we haven't given them anything. Taxpayers are paying for them. What do you mean we? It's not the government. Oh, the government's going to be heartless and take away their health care. The government's not paying for their health care.

Other people are paying for their health care. Folks, we're not talking about taking Medicaid away from the poor. That's not what the expansion was. The Medicaid expansion expanded Medicaid, government-paid, taxpayer-paid health care, to people who are not poor by any reasonable or fair measure. And nobody wants to say the truth. Oh, we can't come off as uncaring. Uncaring?

What's caring about having a person making $50,000 a year who's not eligible for Medicaid pay for someone's health insurance who's making $90,000 a year who is eligible? What is that? I don't understand. How did you... Whatever. I can steal a line from Alicia Silverstone and Clueless. Whatevs, man, you know?

Whatever. I don't know. I don't know. I just don't get it. Sometimes, you know, I'm never running for office ever again in human history, in the history of humankind. But gosh, I swear if I did, I would like run a scorched earth campaign and be like, I am never, ever going to BS you ever. Here's it.

This is the deal. The Medicaid expansion is Joey Bag of Donuts paying for Bobby Bag of Donuts insurance. And Joey Bag of Donuts is making 50K a year and Bobby's making 80. That's fair. Tell me how that's fair, please. Please explain. I'm going to turn the question on you how's that fair i'm sorry if i'm a little frustrated today really i am but i really since the reagan era we've had years to get our act together on this and it's like we can't get out of our own

freaking way man just disappointing you think the republicans are dumb you think they know not repealing the regulations that you buy vasectomies you think they don't understand that by not getting rid of that the costs are they of course the costs are going to go up of course they know the costs are going to go up they know course they know the costs are going to go up. They know. And you say, well, why are they doing it? Because they're afraid. They're afraid. They're afraid of the lobbyists, the vasectomy lobbyists who want their vasectomies covered by taxpayers.

And they're afraid of the Democrats in the media. Oh, oh my gosh, you're going to repeal patient protections? Who's protected? You turn the question to them. Who's protected? So basically what you're saying is you want the government to order people to buy stuff they don't want to buy and that is protection again how explain to me no no serious question or because how the hell is that a patient protection well i'll tell you dan i mean it's a good thing that it'll pay for me as a guy it'll pay for my

ob gyn yeah you you you know hey listen if you go that sex change you may need that yes and that's exactly it to use you know my ob gyn i can get the sex change so they you know what you just figured it out this is i knew i had you on the show for a reason you know let's just stop the show joe nailed it that's it but you know as crazy as all this sounds you start to wonder like yeah like, you have to almost use humor to understand the depravity of the situation, how dumb this is. It just pisses me off. All right.

Let me give you an upside. My plants are dying. I got to water my plants today. Remember those Eureka palms I had to rip out? They had the deadly fungus from another planet that kills everything it touches gamma derma yeah so i had them ripped out and um i had them replaced with some clusia bushes and you know it's florida in the summer so it's 67 000 degrees of course and you know i work so i can't sit home and water these plants all day but like these clusia bushes

i gotta get on the i gotta get cracking with the water these things are gonna die I can't sit home and water these plants all day. But like these Clusia bushes, I got to get cracking with the water. These things are going to die. You can't water them in the middle of the day because the water is like a magnifying glass. And the sun, it's like 97 during the day. Cook those darn things. So I got to go out and water a little bit today on these things before it gets too hot. And if you catch the gamma derma yourself yourself you can use your obamacare to take care of you can use my i wonder if it covers a human gamma derma infection from eureka

trees that may be joe we should look into that may be part of the portfolio of crap you have to buy in obamacare in addition to hey listen nothing wrong with vasectomies bro if you want to get have at it man remember the don't tase me bro don't cut me bro people don't like vasectomies bro if you want to get have at it man remember the don't tase me bro don't cut me bro people don't like vasectomies that's cool people some people like cut me i gotta you know i'm not no more little kiddos for me whatever do your own thing just pay for it i mean is this really crazy hair transplants we're playing for you know hair plugs for dudes just hey listen i i get a lot of people get that that's cool. Like do your thing with the hair too. I had no beef.

I didn't lose my hair. So I shouldn't speak with forked tongue, but to my personal advice, if you care, just shave the melon, brother. It looks good. Shave them.

Bald is in man. Just shave the melon. Make it easy. Not everybody has a main, like gravy, sweat and Joe Armacost, like the old Elvis dude. Not everybody has that.

Everybody knows Joe looks like Elvis too. When they see him at CPAC, they recognize, remember that lady? Oh, you must be Joe. You look like Elvis. Oh, look, it's Elvis. You must be producer Joe. You must be producer Joe. She recognized you right away.

Yeah. It's funny. I had like five, six stories today and I'm like, oh, I'm all over the place. All right. The upside of Obamacare, because there is, to give you kind of a fair analysis, there are some upsides to the Obamacare replacement bill. All right. The upside of Obamacare, because there is, to give you a kind of a fair analysis, there are some upsides to the Obamacare replacement bill. All right. It does repeal the individual mandate and the employer mandate. So those are going to go away. So in other words, the mandate that you purchase Obamacare insurance, let's say you don't have a job. In other words, you're in the individual market, you do not have what you would call job-sponsored insurance, you will no longer be obligated to purchase

insurance or have to pay a penalty. The employers will not be obligated to do it for 50 employees or employees that work 30 hours a week either. So that's kind of good. You won't have those taxes. Now, again, it's hard not to view this holistically because when you cut those taxes, the individual penalty tax, and you take that out, but you still keep the Medicaid expansion and the regulations, it's kind of good that they cut the mandate. But again, Joe,

costs aren't going anywhere. So now you're going to have to rob from Peter to pay Paul. But it does repeal the taxes as well, the payroll tax and the investment tax, which I think will be good for the economy. But let me tie this up because I just want to cover a couple more things and move on. And folks, I mean it. I love that you listen in. And the show is very real. We do very little editing.

And I do want to apologize for being a little scatterbrained today, but I am just unusually excited about the topic in a bad way because I'm fascinated by healthcare economics, by economics in general. And I just find it utterly repulsive that forever we've been dealing with this and we cannot find a way to market market-based solutions, despite the fact that it's worked almost everywhere it's been tried. Why do you think LASIK eye procedures cost like 25 cents now? Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but LASIK eye surgery was unbelievably expensive when it first started. It's generally not covered by insurance, so people pay it out of pocket. And now LASIK eye surgery is one of the most affordable medical procedures out there because the government largely didn't intervene with LASIK eye procedure, which will probably be part of the Obamacare expansion portfolio of new things you have to

buy, which will then drive up the price and people will blame it on Republicans, which is just unreal. So it does repeal the taxes. That's a good thing. All right. So we sum that up. Let's move the Obamacare thing aside. A couple more things I wanted to cover here. A little bit of a sensitive topic to me being a former law enforcement guy. There was an article yesterday about prison education. And I don't know, maybe it surprised you a little bit, my stance on this. It may not. But there's an article in the Wall Street Journal about basically GED-type programs in prisons.

And folks, I totally get that this is a highly sensitive topic. There are people out there, conservatives and Democrats, and maybe even some liberals alike who are like, hey, prison should be prison. Get the damn weight room out of the prison, get the books out of there, and prisons should really suck. I agree. It's not a deterrent if it doesn't suck, right? I mean, you certainly don't want it to be Club Med. But that argument is transferred over to the GED and education services as well, where I don't want to say it's been an overwhelming push to pull education out of the prisons, but a lot of conservatives seem to support some of them that I spoke to, the idea that, no, no, prison should just be prison and we shouldn't be doing anything for these men

and women in there. The idea that, no, no, prison should just be prison and we shouldn't be doing anything for these men and women in there. And just for a second, I'd like to propose an alternate perspective. It changed me a little bit. When I was a cop, when you're a rookie, you work the cells a lot. It's a crap job. Every precinct has jail cells in the precinct. And the reason is you arrest the guy, you don't bring him right to central booking. Central booking in New York City with the NYPD, each borough had one.

So I worked in Brooklyn North. So that's where they processed all the prisoners from Brooklyn North. And then you would go to Central Booking. So it's called Central. And then they'd go to Rikers Island. But while you process them at the precinct, you had to need a place to store criminals. They had to put it securely. So there were jail cells.

Turn the key. Turn the key. So when you were a rookie, you would do the cells, which was a terrible job. I mean, when it was a busy Friday night and those cells were packed in the 75 precinct, you could not even get your head. You would be fingerprinting 100, 150 guys a night. They're all complaining. They just got arrested. They're all pissed off. And I remember this. I'd have nightmares about this. You'd try to sit down for a second and they'd be like, yo, CO, CO. One, I'm not a CO. I'm not a correction officer. I'm a cop. There's a difference. Yo, CO. I'd hear it all night. And once one guy says it, they'd all say it.

It's like a cacophony, like in the peanut show. Yo, CO, yo, CO, yo, CO. It was like a song because then they would realize like, oh, if this guy's calling for the CO, who's not even a CO, he's a PO, then I better get him first. So it was this cacophonous sound of yo, CO, it would drive you absolutely nuts. And it was always something like the guy next to me smells, the toilet bowl doesn't work. I need my phone call. They think like a phone call, by the way, is a constitutional right, which it's not. You try to give it to them as a courtesy. But there's no constitutional right to a phone call. You know, the phone would be broken, whatever.

It would drive you crazy. So where was I going with this? Oh, was it? Oh, but one of the cells. So sometimes, though, when it was a little bit of a slower night. See, sometimes I get too immersed in the humor and i forget like i'm trying to tell a story when it was a slower night i like to talk to the guys because i i was a psychology student at the time and i was genuinely fascinated by how some people seem to find a life of crime rewarding joe even though the chances of them

getting caught and living a sucky life like the sucker from my air conditioner it's broken we're pretty darn high right and i would just you know like why i would just quit like i don't get it like there's a 99 chance your life is gonna suck even the richest criminals of all time that quote thought they got away with it always get caught pablo escobar that jordan belfort dude from the wolf of wall street, you know, a Bernie Madoff. They all think they're going to get away with it and very few of them, John Gotti, they just don't.

The movie always ends bad, so why do you continue to try to act in that movie? The movie always ends bad. And, you know, a lot of these, what I found out, listen, it was not an exhaustive psychoanalysis, I don't want to be ridiculous, but one of the things i found out is these guys almost universally joe had childhoods that were horrifying i mean by any measure i don't mean horrifying by first world standards like i'm

whining about my thermostat and my pool pump i mean horrifying by like third world standards i mean like sexual abuse grotesque physical abuse complete lack of parenting at all um no discipline and you know some of these guys would if you were nice to them they'd freely share with you you know the deepest darkest secrets I mean yeah it's the sexual and criminal and physical abuse to them but they have sexual and physical abuse to them, sexual and physical abuse, which is criminal, I should say, was almost universal. And what I'm getting at is not that, I'm not a liberal. I'm not saying, well, you know,

listen, I had a rough childhood too. If you read my first book, you'll get some insight into some of the stuff we went through. It wasn't pretty either with regards to physical abuse. It was pretty ugly, actually. And I took responsibility.

I was the victim of it. I wasn't on the other end of it, so was my brother. But I didn't use that as an excuse then to keep the circle of violence going, but some people do. But remember, I had the advantage of a great education and a parent who cared at the time. They didn't have that so i guess what i'm trying to get at is that maybe i made it a little bit longer than i needed to but when it comes to things like a simple basic education in prison that's you know a lot of it's funded by charity work and and frankly if it's a taxpayer argument i get it i'm okay with that i'm not going to demand i'm not going to be a hypocrite i'm not demanding you pay for a service make it a a charity thing. But even the charities are having problems sometimes getting in there. I think this is a thing we could all kind of universally get behind. What's the worst that could happen, folks? Really, what's the worst that could happen? You get a guy in education who learns to read for the, I mean, really, some of them for the first time. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? He goes out and maybe gets a job. If one out of a hundred of those men and women in prison that are lifetime recidivists becomes a productive citizen, do you realize the societal costs, not just in money, but in those crimes he doesn't commit will have saved? Maybe a woman who doesn't get raped, a house that doesn't get broken into, a guy who then starts being productive and stops paying taxpayer money and starts paying taxes.

Now, the reason I bring that up because I believe in data and statistics is in this Wall Street Journal piece, there was a fascinating number about these education programs in prison. They reduce recidivism by as much as 43%. Wow. I wanted to throw that in at the end and not in the beginning so that when I gave the example of one out of 100, it would be salient in your head to show you the real example, that it's closer to 43 out of 100. It's reducing that recidivism rate by a dramatic amount. And I know it's not a top issue for people. I know you tune in for Obamacare,

the big stories of the day, and I get that. But I think when we say to liberals, and we're trying to find some common ground, there is very little, I agree there. This is probably an issue where we could all agree that the worst of us are probably the worst of us for a reason. And if we can do a little thing, take a little step to make them semi, even semi-productive members of society, this is something everybody can get on board with. All right, folks, I appreciate you tuning in and I hope you enjoyed the show today. If you didn't, please email me. I mean it, danielatbongino.com. I know sometimes I get a little emotional and

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