The Eric Metaxas Show - Dr. Marty Makary

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Dr. Marty Makary, author of "The Price We Pay," worked with both the Obama and Trump administrations and shares a window into how government agencies are "harmful to your health." 

to the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey, folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. As usual, I'm interviewing somebody that I think of as a friend, but forget that for a minute. I want to give this person a proper introduction. Marty McCarrie, Dr. Marty McCarrie, is a Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor of health policy and management. He's a leading voice for physicians. He's been writing in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today.

He's a member of the National Academy of Medicine. and that's just the beginning, and here he is. Marty McCarrie, welcome the program. Great to be with you, Eric. Congratulations on the paperback version of your book, The Price We Pay, What Broke American Healthcare, and How to Fix It. You are difficult to sum up because you are one of the top surgeons in the world, no kidding, and yet you are very involved in health policy.

You work with the Obama administration, with the Trump administration. I mean, you're D.C. Bay. So you're in that world and you'll be able to bring your expertise on this stuff. So I want to talk to you about, can you guess? COVID. I say, I don't like people who make politically incorrect statements. So I said, if you're going to give it a name, it should be called. This is just what the CDC recommends.

Refer to it as the Kung flu pandedemic. I believe that's it, right, Albin? Okay. Anyway, because I don't like when people take cheap shot to China and stuff. It's just not right. So, but the last 18 months have been lunacy for most Americans, not just because we're dealing with transgender madness and Marxism, cultural Marxism, people burning buildings. I mean, it's a very bizarre time, but as if that weren't all bad enough, we've been facing

this utterly unprecedented disruption to life. I mean, in our lifetimes, we've never experienced anything like this. So from a medical point of view, just walk us through your initial thinking on what happened. I mean, you're involved in public health. I don't know how else to put it. Is that the way we would describe it? Yeah, I spend most of my time in public health research and public policy. And I studied epidemiology when I was in the School of Public Health, getting a master's.

And I've been on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health now for almost 20 years. So when this pandemic hit, we needed research teams to pivot immediately to study it. And teams were not doing it because they were already dedicated to studying Mexican hairless dogs or whatever the NIH was funding them to do. Not that there's anything wrong with that. No, that's actually we don't want to discriminate against hairless dogs. God bless them. Yeah, but pandas, we can discriminate against. So look, no team was ready to pivot out there.

There were just a couple of us, a she shaw, myself, a few others. And the second we realized what was happening in Italy, we knew it was not contained. It was already seated here and we needed to prepare. So I went on a lot of media networks, wrote a lot of articles, trying to sound the alarm. Over and over again, incidentally, I was told, well, we're not hearing any warnings from Dr. Fauci that sound this dire. But we went out there. Isn't he in jail now? I don't know, but I don't think he's going to be sending me a Christmas card this year.

I've been critical. And he's a gentleman, but I have a different medical opinion. And we put our whole faith in stock in one doctor's opinion. And I don't know whether or not to blame him because this is his job to warn us of a pandemic or meet the press and CNN and all the networks that put him on incessantly. I think blaming him is a good start. But let me just say, you somehow saw the danger before he did. So what do you mean? What did you see that, now you realize you were right? Well, we knew that centers were trying to do testing and they couldn't. Washington, University of Washington, was trying to test people that they suspected had COVID-19, but the FDA blocked them. And when the University of Washington said, hey, we got to do these tests, where is our authorization to do a test? And that's another topic.

Why does the government have to authorize a university on what DNA they can test? but they had this emergency use authorization for testing. And when the researcher called and said, hey, it's been a couple weeks, what's going on? The FDA said, well, we got your application, but you didn't fill it out properly. You have to print out a copy and mail it by snail mail in addition to the electronic application.

That is the absurdity of our federal bureaucracy, the FDA, the CDC, the NIH, and all of that nonsense that many of us had been complaining about for years got exposed. and worse, once this thing hit, they didn't pivot one dime of their money to study the most basic questions Americans were answering. How many people are asymptomatic? Who's at risk? How does it spread?

Do masks work? They couldn't pivot one dime of their $50 billion in funding. And as a result, you had a vacuum of information. Did you say $50 billion? $50 billion, $40 billion at the NIH and $10 billion. I'm so glad that's not my money. It is my money. I'm a taxpayer. That is so sick. I mean, Marty, the thing is that part of, there's a lot here,

but part of what this underscores, as you just said, is the monstrosity of the federal bureaucracy. It is so bloated. And I mean, it's like the Medici popes. It's like the most corrupt, gigantic bubble. And you would think that perhaps now, because some of this stuff has been exposed, we will begin draining the swamp and say, this has gotten, hugely out of hand. And if it worked, you know, we would say, well, keep, let it ride. But it has failed spectacularly. Yeah, it's been a huge frustration, right? Because so many steps along the way, we could have saved tens of thousands more lives or more. And watching this, you know, this wagon clunk along and the wheels fall off, it's so frustrating as a physician, knowing what we should have done. And by the way, it's still happening. We're still shutting kids out of school for

no good reason. So it's not even over. We're on the tail end and it's still absurdity. Well, look, I've seen stuff that it's really tough to make my blood boil. I can normally look the other way. The other day, I was walking down a street in the Upper East Side and there were little kids on the street having like recess because they block off the street for the school. These little kids outside were all wearing masks. And I just wanted to weep. I thought this is child abuse. This is really sick. There's no reason. I mean, if I had a kid, I would not allow them to wear a mask outside. I mean, it just was kind of a madness. But everybody goes along as if like this is some new reality. And you know, it's ironic after a summer. First of all, I agree. When you see it affecting

kids, that's when it, there's something special and different about that that really irks you. But ironically, after a summer of discussion about Black Lives Matter, here is a absurd policy that disproportionately affects the poorest kids and periods for minority communities. 60% of kids drop out of Baltimore City schools without COVID. Now you put in these absurd policies about your learning on your iPad. Good luck. Good luck. So for the wealthy people in America during the COVID pandemic, issuing their COVID policies,

they've been renovating their homes, go to some of these wealthy communities in the United States, nonstop home renovations. They can't even find nails and wood, right? That's what wealthy people have been doing. Their kids are getting private tutors and expensive high-tech suites for their education. It's a different America when you live paycheck to paycheck. And look, if people choose not to get a vaccine at this point, fine. You've had your opportunity.

Send those vaccines overseas. We don't need any more celebrities or politicians doing commercials. We're not going to convince people. we can make it more available at grocery stores and points of routine American life. That'll help. But at this point, let's stop wrestling and shaming people and respect their decision. I also don't understand, I mean, to me the idea, and you know, tell me if I'm missing something. I haven't done a lot of study on this.

But basically, Operation Warp Speed was launched by Trump because the thought is, we don't know where this is going. We want to do everything possible to cut this off. So you think, what do we do? I mean, if people are dying of cancer, you would say, listen, they're already dying. Let's come up with something. Even if it doesn't work, they will risk it. It's an experimental drug. Do you want to try it?

Most people would be like, yes, if I'm already dying. So this thing as, you know, I think what we forget, Marty, is that things progressed and changed and changed and changed. So in the beginning, there was this incredible fear. But as people got used to it and as people began to understand. more and more and more things changed. So that emergency sense kind of went away. And I think at some point, most people said, okay, so this was rushed through. It didn't get FDA approval. It's not really technically a vaccine, whatever. I don't feel the need to get that because this is for people who are, if you're really worried, go for it. But I think a lot of people said, you know, my kids are healthy.

I'm healthy. I don't think I want to get this. But there was tremendous shaming going on. Like, if you don't get this, you are, you know, your typhoid Mary, which is proposed, well, you know what? This is the tent. We're out of time. We're going to be right back. Folks, I'm talking to Dr. Marty McCarrie. The book is the price we pay. Hey there, folks.

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leave your retirement to chance friends. Contact Legacy, precious metals today. That's 866473-6204. Folks, welcome back talking to Dr. Marty McCarrie. We're talking about health, health crisis, crises, the price we pay is the book, what broke American health care and how to fix it. So, Marty, we're talking about what was a pandemic. It's no longer a pandemic. But I think that part of why it's difficult generally to deal with is it has been changing since day one.

Another words, there was a time where I felt differently about the vaccine. At first I was thinking, it's coming, it's coming, that's great, that's great. But then the more I learned about it and the more I observed people that I knew who had gotten COVID, I just thought it's like the flu. I mean, if you're healthy and whatever, getting it isn't the worst thing. So why do we, we're acting as though it's the bubonic plague? That's not okay to give people this impression that people are dying in the streets and whatever.

And isn't it true that part of the reason many people died initially is because we didn't treat it correctly? I mean, when Trump mentions hydroxychloroquine, suddenly the insane media class decides we hate hydroxychloroquine, they didn't seem to care whether it works or save lives. It was suddenly like to demonize Trump. And I thought, how can you do this when we're literally talking about human lives? And so it's been very politicized. It's, you know.

Yeah, first of all, on Operation Warp Speed, if we would have done that with HIV, we would have probably had a vaccine for HIV decades ago. In the 1990s, M RNA vaccines were developed. and they sat around in the old guard medical establishments labs with no pre-purchasing or capital from the government to really move it along like we saw now. And in terms of the risk, we have a totally distorted perception risk out there with COVID, completely distorted. And we haven't really had the data to tell us what you just said, which is accurate. If you're under 50 and healthy, case fatality rate is similar to seasonal flu.

In the past, we didn't want to compare it to seasonal flu because people at older age groups were dying at a very, high rate. But it turns out 78% of hospitalizations for COVID are among those obese or overweight. The data wasn't really there. Nobody collected it despite all the money we spent. And then we couldn't talk about it because that was fat shaming. See, this is what I'm saying is that we've come to a preposterous place in the culture where there are all these minefields. And what about truth and facts? And people can think what they like? They can get their feelings hurt or not. We can't care about that.

We're doing science. We're doing facts. So the idea, and again, to me, the example of this is when Trump would say something, out of the goodness of his heart, he's trying to figure this out. He's not a doctor. The way people reacted, it was all out of proportion to the thing. I mean, he mentioned UV light. Recently, I read a thing about UV light could be effective in treating this.

But when he said it, it was mocked. And I thought, people care more about scoring political points. against somebody they hate than about lives. And I actually believe it's hard for me to say or even to think that lives were lost because of that. It's stunning. And, you know, from, I don't, I didn't have a lot of interaction with President Trump, but in a few meetings where we worked on the price transparency, executive order to show

real prices for medical services in America, one of the amazing bipartisan accomplishments that came out of the last administration. You know, I will say that in meetings, in private meetings, he likes to just throw big stuff out there and challenge deeply held assumptions. Even if he knows it's just kind of, you know, wild and crazy. And so that's kind of his style. And the way we sort of saw this entire medical community, hopeful that hydroxychloroquine works. Many doctors were taking it. And then all of a sudden, the vilification, and we got to shut it down, in the end, I don't think the data supported it, and I wouldn't recommend it to somebody with COVID. But the way that it was a political football and not really

a scientific debate is symbolic of where we are now with transgender issues, a COVID policy, the strategy. You know, I got a message from the current White House, and they said, just so you know, we don't appreciate, this is through the surrogates, that's how they talk to you. We don't appreciate some of your criticisms. Now, I've always been civil. It's nothing's below the belt. It's always been just a different medical opinion. We used to have those all the time in medicine. But I said, okay, you know, do we live in North Korea? I mean, is that the new style of medicine? It's a totalitarian dictator hands down the strategy and you just fall in line. Well, but that's kind of, you know, that's where I get my backup because since my parents experienced communism,

if somebody would pull that on me, I would tell them to jump in a lake or much worse. The idea that you would dare tell me as an American what I might say or what you don't like or whatever. Shame on you, even for thinking of doing something like that. It's like when I think of George Washington up here on the Hudson and Newburgh, when they suggested to him, like, you know what, let's have a military coup. Congress is not paying us. He was offended at the idea because liberty was paramount, the idea of liberty for which they'd fought. Every American who knows what freedom is should be offended. If you're not offended by that kind of manhandling or that kind of bullying, you don't understand what it means to be an American.

The government of all entities should never do something like that. And you're quite right. That's what they do in countries where that's what they do in China. But people seem to be comfortable, more and more comfortable, with this kind of thing. What do you make of it? It's so strange. You've been in this world. We've definitely seen a CDC and a health establishment that has become more paternalistic

over the pandemic. Telling you to do things without giving you a reason, and even though they don't have a reason. For example, one of the greatest failures of our medical leadership that I discuss in the book is ignoring natural immunity from prior infection. By the way, it's like half of America has it. And half of the unvaccinated have it, which is basically why cases have plummeted in April night.

Say that again. From a previous, you're talking about a COVID thing. Yeah. About half of Americans have had. COVID. So have innate immunity because they've had COVID. And yes, I keep hearing about people have had COVID, but then they get the vaccine. And I thought, couldn't that even, couldn't that even be dangerous potentially? Well, the reality is we don't have information on vaccinating those natural immune. But we do have information that if you have natural immunity, it works. For as long as a

pandemic's been around, almost a year and a half, it's effective. It works. It's durable. We have more data on natural immunity than we do on vaccinated immunity. So don't tell me which is better than the other. And that's what you're hearing the establishment say. Ignoring natural immunity and just saying everyone's got to get this. When we were rationing a scarce resource when we first had a limited vaccine, thousands Americans were dying a day. And a couple of us were saying, don't be using the vaccine on those already immune. You're immunizing people already immune while people are dying. And they completely dismissed it. The old guard establishment.

Now, who is this? Who are these jugheads? I mean, it's hard to believe that people could be so ossified. Who are these people? What is this establishment of which we're speaking? Because I'm not in this world. It's Dr. Anthony Fauci. It's Dr. Rochelle Walenski, who's head of the CDC.

And it's Dr. Peter Marks at the FDA. And, you know, even more logical was, why are we giving two doses when we have such a limited supply? Give one dose. It's 92% effective at four weeks. focus on first doses until we get more supply in the market down the road in three months. We double our vaccine supply. Okay. Are you not?

So listen, this is chilling stuff. So people are dying because of decisions being made by people like Dr. Fauci. It's a chilling thing. And it's astonishing to me that someone would be aware that their word carries that much weight. And they would be even slightly cavalier about it. That you wouldn't be praying. Lord, don't let me say anything wrong. because there are lives at stake.

Well, I want to shift over to the vaccine. First of all, technically, right or wrong, it's not a vaccine. We're calling it that, but it's an experimental gene therapy. True? It's not a vaccine. I would say it's different from traditional gene therapy in that it doesn't go into the nucleus where your body's genome is. It's basically the building blocks of a spike protein, and it gets manufactured outside of the nucleus of your genome.

But since it has not been, it's gone through trials with humans, is it not a fact that we do not know five years from now, 10 years from now, if there's any downside to this? Well, it's a fact that we don't have long-term data. But in general, the reason I feel good about the vaccine safety profile is that if you look at all vaccines in the history of medicine, complications when they develop are all detected in the first few weeks. So complications don't crop up, at least with every other vaccine we've had. They don't just pop up a year later. You see them immediately. So now we've got the experience of 250 million people that have gotten the MRA vaccines and no serious adverse events.

Pretty remarkable. But you hear about blood clotting. I mean, you hear a lot of anecdotal information. And I just think why is that not, I just don't know what understand why people are taking that more seriously. It is ironic that the day the New York Times had a. piece calling for vaccine mandates was the day that the J&J complications were announced and it was basically pulled off the centers. And that complication rate is probably true of a lot of medications.

Literally yesterday, well, again, I say to people, I don't know why you would get it. In other was, unless there's some really compelling interest, I just don't understand it. But the other thing is. The vaccine, that is. The vaccine. Excuse me. If you've not had the infection. Well, if you've not had the infection, sure. I just don't get it because you think that I'm not sure what the downside is. I know getting COVID. I mean, I know many people who've gotten it. It's not like a death sentence. So it seems strange to me. We're going to a break. We'll be right back talking to Dr. Marty McCarrie. Prescription dispensing labs is a national licensed pharmacy specializing in personalized prescription and natural medicine. The pharmacists at PD Labs are credited with formulating unique nasal sprays for the dreaded brain fog and a leader in uncovering new compounds to improve your health. PD Labs is one of the first pharmacies to now offer a telemedicine group trained in prevention medicine and how to restore your health. They have developed signature professional supplements that really work rather than just promotional advertising.

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This is the Eric from Taxis show. I'm Eric, and I'm talking to Dr. Marty McCarrie. Marty, you're going to play the role of Marty, the doctor, my guest. I was just talking with you about the vaccine and the risks and different things. I think people have blanched at the sense that they're being coerced. Whenever the government is pushing, it's unseemly in America. We're used to being free. And I think even the theater with the masks, I mean, the idea that people are wearing masks outside, I think, why wouldn't a responsible doctor say, hey, it's not really healthy to wear a mask?

You need to breathe fresh air if you're outside, don't wear a mask. New York is covered with people wearing the mask outside. And I just think this is not only unnecessary. it's positively bad. Why? If you see a track and field athlete in high school pass out while running with a mask outdoors, you should be offended by that and say, this is wrong. Our public health leadership has failed us.

People should be speaking up, even if it's not in the policy. Dr. Fauci should say, hey, I saw that video. We got to stop that. That's crazy. And what you see is a medical leadership that's afraid to speak up because it'll offend one of the other agencies or interfere with that. This is, I mean, honestly, if people want to know how satanic evil is possible in history, it is when people are afraid, they don't have the courage necessary, and it sort of piles up. That's exactly what we're seeing. People are covering their

rear ends, worrying about their jobs, worrying about things. And I think you should worry about the truth. You should fear God. Fear covering up the truth. That's what you should worry about. But it seems like, look, we saw this in Germany in the 30s people are people, but it can lead to horrible things. And I expect more in American culture. And so I've been really dismayed at how people sort of are willing to go with the program, even if the program is, you know, led by a misleader. And people who are appointed in politics, you know, the members of an administration, those political appointees have a mantra that they serve at the pleasure of the president. And they will stand by whatever stuff is put out from the White House, regardless if they know that it's wrong. wrong. That's how the people function in Washington, D.C. Doctors have to be different. Doctors have

earned the respect to the public over centuries because they consider a doctor to be an honest broker. Doctors can't play politicians. How do you think this has happened? In other words, doctors, something really gross has entered all of American society, but particularly with doctors, you take the Hippocratic Oath. When you become a doctor, it seems to me it's not a job. you become a doctor. So you become part of a separate class that is charged with caring about people's health. There's something different. It used to be that way with every profession.

You become a teacher. I am a teacher. In public, I'm a teacher. I'm not a teacher on the job getting a paycheck. I am a teacher. Something happened where maybe it's just because of big medicine and all these things, big pharma. It became corporatized.

People suddenly feel like, well, I'm not really working for you. I'm working for the hospital. or something. I don't know. What do you think? I mean, you add, you know, the old days of the community physicians where every doctor was a community doctor and hospitals were a safe haven funded by churches or local philanthropists and that was a refuge for the sickness. It was beautiful. And then you add the limelight of television, fame, wealth, and all of that stuff. And guess what? You corrupt a wonderful profession. Uh-huh.

Well, it is, but it's a creepy thing. And then when we're talking about science and that sort of thing, I feel like what's been going on in the last years is that some of the things that we once took for granted, that journalists must tell the truth, that doctors must just do science, that everybody just deals with facts. That's become more and more messed with. And the idea, when I think of, I mean, I always have to think of Nazi Germany, they were sort of developing an alternative view of reality, right? And they had, you know, like Nazi science, like race-based science, where they're talking about the superiority of the Aryan race and whatever.

And it was all pseudoscience. But if you didn't go with the program, you'd lose your job, be careful what you say. And people went along with it. Now, some people didn't, but I think to myself, we want to criticize them back then. When did that change? When does science or math or reality or facts get kicked aside for what? I mean, what have we lost? I mean, this is my question is what have we lost that those rather clear boundaries have gotten blurry?

You know, I often think about the book of Isaiah. They talk about the pride of great nations, right? And when a nation perceives that they are resilient from certain forms of corruption, which include sort of this sort of group think, if you will, we just saw it in Egypt during that revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood came in. If you were a surgeon at the hospital and you were not part of the Muslim Brotherhood party, guess what?

You were going to get demoted, and they're going to put a Muslim Brotherhood guy in there. That's where we're moving now with this cancel culture in the United States with this kind of group think. And I think we've got to call on people to speak out. Well, I'm just grateful for you, Marty. I want to talk about your book, The Price We Pay, just came out in paperback, what broke American health care and how to fix it. Where do you see health care today? Yeah, I'm really excited about this book. There's section on COVID looking back. But with health care, we've got to stop believing what the politicians have been saying, that it's a matter of, a piece of legislation or a certain reform that's going to fix health care. It's not. It's not a

government solution. It's redesigning care from the ground up and it's happening right now around the country. Doctors and nurses talking about can we treat more diabetes with cooking classes instead of just throwing insulin at people? Food as medicine. Can we treat more high blood pressure by talking about sleep quality and stress management? Okay, this is huge. This is huge. When we come back, I just want you to go off on that. Folks, talking to Dr. Marty McCarrey, the price we pay is the book. Hey there, folks, this is the Yorkman Taxes Show talking to Dr. Marty McCarrie. The book is the price we pay.

Marty, you just said something that I think most people listening would say, yes, that seems right. So keep going. Well, look, we've got to start addressing the underlying things that bring people to care. The hard part about chronic disease, which is about 75% of health care spending, It's not telling people what to do. It's helping them do it. And that means we've got to help them along with giving them good advice. It takes time.

We can't do it in these 10-minute visits. And in clinics now where they're spending time, they're spending the time it takes and they've got a team, they're saying, hey, maybe we should treat more back pain with ice and physical therapy than just surgery and opioids. And they're looking at people with profound loneliness and they're asking, how can we create a community? Even if the community is the clinic here, the ChenMed Clinic in Florida, has their mission values all over the clinic, love, passion, and accountability. And they want people to come in frequently. They're not billing them every time they come in. They're their friend. It's their community.

And I think you're seeing a generation of doctors now. They're sick of the old exercise, more, eat better. Here's some meds come back in a year. You bad, bad, non-compliant patient. Who? It's doctors hate that. Patients hate it. Why are we doing it? There's a rebuilding of health care. We call it the redesign of health care. It's nothing. The government has nothing to do with it. It's funded with payment models that are unique and different, capitating, lump sum, annual subscription, employer-sponsored primary care, things that free the doctors from this billing treadmill we're on, which is an absurd hamster wheel. A pilot doesn't fly a plane and then, code and build the complexity of the flight for 20 minutes, but that's what doctors are relegated and doing. And you're seeing this generation wanting to rebuild healthcare and redesign it, and it's beautiful. You see young folks where social justice is a generational value

get excited about these issues of our COVID strategy when I work on them on our research team. They're making human rights arguments with medical arguments, not political arguments, and it's powerful when they do that. I mean, I love this. It's interesting. I started thinking about this a little bit recently. I watched a video. I can't think of the name of the doctor.

But he was talking about COVID, and he was talking about immunity and how everybody needs to take vitamin D and vitamin C and zinc and magnesium or whatever. In other words, you want to be healthy. Healthy. And I thought to myself, it's stunning to me that Fauci and Company didn't push this and say, hey, folks, if everybody's immune. system is strong. If you're healthy, the odds of you getting this go way down. We should all be, let's take this as a moment in America for all of us to learn about this, learn how to eat better and to exercise, whatever. Let's do that as a country, as a nation. Because I think a lot of people don't take it seriously. And they hear it, but they think, well, it doesn't apply to me.

But in a sense, we have to build a culture that way. Churches can do that. Churches can do that, right? But it's just not something, as you say, that we're caught in this model. Where are things right now with, you know, Obamacare and all that kind of stuff? What happened with all that? So I would say that the Affordable Care Act is basically the new health care infrastructure. There are high-risk pools and people can access health insurance through exchanges. They're not cheap. And they're going to keep going up because no one has figured out how to lower health care.

costs. And what I try to do in this book is say, it's pretty simple. We address pricing failures in the marketplace, all the gouging that's going on, and in the middleman industry. Everyone is getting rich in health care except for one person, the poor patient walking in. And that money is coming out of wages. It's coming out of U.S. American worker wages. Businesses can make better purchasing decisions on their health care benefits. People can shop more wisely. I'm involved in an effort called Sesame Care. You can look up the price. and the service and then just go to it, like a website. And we're seeing more price transparency, clean markets up. You can either throw more good money after bad at health care, or you can

cut the waste. And if we keep going down the road to throwing more money at health care, we will bankrupt this country. We're almost there already. Now, wasn't this something that Trump was working on? Did he accomplish anything with regard to lowering drug prices or transparency? Yeah, he basically signed the executive order on price transparency, bringing transparency around medical prices to Americans. Now, some hospitals are not compliant. They're paying the fine, but it went into effect. And we're going to see that move markets. I've talked to entrepreneurs that are already creating good patient navigation tools so you can use those prices. If you go to deliver a baby here in New York. I won't, but hypothetically,

go ahead. It could be $70,000 at one hospital or $6,000 at another. And when you ask, you get a runaround. Those days are over. And that's what the executive order that Trump signed did. It brought light to those prices. And it's going to move markets. Now, what you say you get the runaround, but what is the explanation? How could it be $6,000 to have a baby or $70,000?

Like, what is going on there? Monopoly pricing, price gouging, taking advantage of people when they come into a hospital vulnerable. The hospitals are taking advantage of them. But this is kind of what I was saying before. In other words, you take the Hippocratic Oath. You're a doctor. You know, we think of older movies. You have the country doctor.

That's kind of the model, right? What happened that the downside of the free market greed and not caring about human beings? How did that enter medicine? In other words, where was the inflection point? We physicians lost control of our billing procedures. We've been focused on taking care. care of patients, as we should be. But then there's game of gouging. It started with this insurance game of, hey, we're going to jack up the prices for insurance and then give them a discount. And so

each year at the negotiating table, the hospital says, guess what? We're going to increase your discount from 35% to 40%. And then we jack up the prices 10%. It's a game. It's a silly game. And who's doing this? Hospitals? Hospital. Everyone in health care is participating in the game. By the way, we have good people. in a bad system. This is not a game we designed. It's a game we inherited, and it needs to end. And the price transparency will do that. And you are working on this in many ways in D.C. Where are you now? Where are you able to affect this kind of thing? So what we're trying to do right now, since we got the price transparency executive order in place, is we're trying to create accountability

for local hospitals. And by the way, a lot of hospitals do very well. They're forgiving. They're generous. They're fair. Let the market reward those hospitals. hospitals and let competition move in. The biggest problem in health care is we have non-competitive markets. And the solution you can say is create rules. So the free market is a good thing sometimes. We're out of time. Marty McCarrie, my friend, Dr. McCarrie, thank you so much. Congratulations. The book, the price we pay. What broke American health care and how to fix it in paperback now. Thank you. Great to be with you, Eric. Alvin, guess what? It's time for the homework assignment. Every day on this program, we're going to be

given out a homework assignment. I've been doing it casually, but folks, it's going to be part of your grade. And I think it is incumbent on me to say clearly what the assignment is since this goes into your final grade in the class. Okay, so today's homework assignment. First thing, this by the way, this is for the month, SalemNow.com. If you go to SalemNow.com, there's a lot of stuff you can watch with your whole family. So visit SalemNow.com, but specifically there's a film out. It's called The Streets Were My Father. It's the Journey of Three Inner City Chicago Men, a story of fatherlessness, gang life, prison

life, and then the power of God to change lives, transform lives dramatically. It is hugely inspiring, but it also underscores the, like practically the most important issue there is. It's called fatherlessness. If you don't want crime in America, deal with fatherlessness. motherlessness because it's huge. So go to SalemNow.com. It's called The Streets Were My Father. Okay, that's assignment number one. Assignment number two. Tell your friends, please, about mypillow.com and my store.com and using the code Eric. A lot of people, maybe they're watching Fox News or something

else, and it gives you a code. And I'm thinking, do you really want to give that portion of the profit to Fox or to whomever? Or do you want it to give it to this show, which is, been banished from YouTube and is being sued by, I can't even go into that publicly. So we do need your help. Every time you use the code Eric at mypillow.com or my store.com, most of my books are at my store.com and we'll have way more coming up soon. You're helping us defray those costs on this program and we do need your help. So if you tell your friends to use the code Eric, we're grateful. And as part of that, Neutrametics is a new big sponsor on the program. We've had Tim Eaton on now twice. those videos, we posted them on Rumble, and if you get the, if you get our email newsletters,

you've seen them. They are heroes, honestly, because they're producing a spectacular product, and I'm learning a lot about different herbs and spices or whatever they call them. What do they call them? Supplements. Oh, yeah, supplements. But not only that, they give 50% of their royalties to missions. Right. You can listen to the thing.

It's amazing, yeah. But if you use the code, Eric, there, you get 20% off. And most of us use all these things, whether it's, you know, magnesium or zinc or vitamin C or vitamin D, all the basics, stevia, melatonin and on and on and on. They have more exotic stuff. But I just want to say that every time you use the code Eric, you save 20 percent, and it helps defray costs on this program. And we need your help. So that's a homework assignment.

And then finally. Finally? Okay. CSI. Yes. We are freeing slaves in the Sudan. Folks, am I making this up? No.

People in, this is like the wake-up call for us in the West. We complain about, you know, getting banned from YouTube. There are people enslaved for their faith in Sudan. And I just want to say that we can do something about it. We did something about it was a year ago or eight months ago. We did a huge number of, was a Christmas? That's right. And we freed like thousands of slaves.

And this is an amazing thing. I can't even believe I'm saying this. But that's what CSI does. You can participate. Whatever you give goes to this. But anybody who gives $250 that frees a slave. and they don't buy them out of slavery. It's more complicated. I won't go into it now. But it frees a slave and then sets them up in a new life. Now, again, it's incomprehensible to us.

We're talking about people enslaved. So CSI, their boots on the ground, they're helping. Yes. It's kind of astonishing to me that they do this. So, uh, yeah, the banner. The banner is right at the top of the, uh, Metaxistalkys talk.com. Right at the talk.com. Right at the talk.com. Have I mentioned our radio website is Metaxistok. Talk.com. Have I mentioned that? You can call 888253-3522. Say it again. 888-253-3522. Please give generously. This is incredible. People talk about slavery 150 years ago. This is happening today. And you can free a slave today. And the fact is, because of CSI, you can do something about it. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you.