The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3533 - ICE's Kabuki Invasion of LA and the Coming Medical Collapse w/ Hasan Piker and Dr. Rob Davidson

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

It's Tuesday and there is plenty of news, but it is not a news day Tuesday because we have two guests for you today. First, we are joined by Dr. Rob Davidson, West Michigan Emergency Physician and The Committee to Protect Health Care - Patients Over Profits  to real, harmful impacts the Senate Bill will have on rural hospitals. Then in the Fun Half Hasan Piker joins us in studio and it let's say you'll be valutained. The discussion moves from the failures of Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic leadership into the right's cope with AG Pam Bondi's Epstein announcement. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors TRUST AND WILL: Get 20% off trustandwill.com/MAJORITY DELETEME: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/MAJORITY and use promo code MAJORITY at checkout. SUNSET LAKE: Use coupon code “Left Is Best” (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder – https://majorityreportradio.com/  

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Tuesday, July 8, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Dr. Rob Davidson, West Michigan emergency physician and executive director of the Committee to Protect Healthcare.

On what next for Medicaid and Medicare? Also on the program today with the Texas death toll over 100, Trump administration is desperate to fight the obvious claims that cuts to the national weather system didn't hurt its response. Also on the program today, Trump and Netanyahu have a fascist off at the White House

discuss Gaza ethnic cleansing plants. And it's Taco Trump once again flippity flopping on the firmness more like folding tacos fold tacos fold they can also be limp and his firmness on his import tax deadlines i should say i like it semi-firm meanwhile in la a off-brand gastapo launches operation excalibur by attacking soccer nets, and in L.A. public park. IRS to now allow churches to endorse candidates reversing decades-old non-tax prohibition. RFK sued over the COVID vaccine banishment.

Trump reverses on Ukraine weapons ban, and real estate moguls mobilize in a panic over Zoron Mamdani. And lastly, the cute story of a Mike Lawler staffer who weirdly found herself and an anti-mic-Lawler signal chat under a fake name. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, it is. Newsday, Tuesday. And here I am.

And here is Emma. Once again, just a reminder, Brian Solo today. Day two. You're doing great. It's a whole new set of challenges. Every day we try and bring up some other problem that's new. Some last minute thing for you have to worry about right before the show. We've made it extra complicated for Brian today by welcoming an in-studio guest who will be here probably for the fun.

half. Maybe, maybe for a minute or two in the, uh, free half. Uh, but he is a host of the Twitch stream, Hassan Nabi. Hmm. What is it? Hmm. It's Hassan Piker will be here. Well, I don't know anything about him, but that sounds a little terroristy. I mean, I'm really scared automatically. Um, we've got, we had to, we had to go through our handler. at the ADL to make sure that everything was okay and also build out the studio because he's like eight feet tall is my understanding yeah so glad we raised those ceilings last night yep that took a lot of work brian has been working overtime doing both construction and now a lot of focus gummies um let's talk about today the ice

Which was, by all accounts, literally, and I'm not being facetious about this, bankrupt in June. It was being reported the first week in June. I think it was in Bloomberg that it was a billion dollars underwater, now buoyed by the passage of the Republican reconciliation tax cut benefit bill. One of the biggest expenditures. No, I should say the biggest expenditure in this bill. It was $100 billion that was given to defense. But several times that given to essentially immigrant, round up and detention. And by immigrant, I mean, just about anybody who didn't come over on the Mayflower.

I mean, just to give people a sense, that's a 265% annual budget increase for ICE's detention budget, just in that bill. It's insane. I mean, it's fascistic. It's fascistic. We're living through it. We're living through it. And almost as if they wanted to do their own parade to show off their newfound strength, they assembled a squad of. Ice guys, off-brand Gestapo.

They got to put on a costume today. And did an assault on, it's MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. And essentially, we're there to what appears to be terrorizing children and assaulting cones on the field that people use for soccer. Well, I didn't know this because I'm not from L.A. And people, I'd seen some L.A. residents say that it's a park that borders Korea town and a heavily Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles. So, and then going after the soccer nets feels also racialized. If this is a park where immigrant communities play, it seems like that's the design. Oh, yeah, it's to send a message.

It's to scare. This is a terror move. This is a terror move. And let's not, let's not, uh, kid ourselves. it's a it's a terror move if this if this happened late at night and there were books to be burned it would be crystal knocked but it's not this is there the nothing is going to come back exactly the way it was nothing is going to be exactly the same but it's the similar dynamic how do we terrorize uh local neighborhoods uh and this is the way they chose to do it

there's no sound on this one you can see them marching and it's obviously been sped up just a little bit um they they're doing this big big sweep of like just a soccer field an empty soccer field and and we're hearing reports that uh latino people in l a particular but it's all across the country are afraid to go out in public are afraid to go to the grocery store are afraid to exist in society. And this is another attempt to put folks in the shadows and make them feel afraid. And there's reason to be afraid. Like some of these other reports out of L.A. of mothers being disappeared. And then you have lawyers calling the government and saying, and they're like, oh, we have no record of this person. Well, then where is she? Keep in mind that there is probably close to

550, 600,000 DACA recipients, maybe a little bit more. And these are people who are brought to this country as little children who have spent 10, 15, 20 years, 25 years living here as Americans who are also now terribly afraid. DAPA, folks,

similarly situated. They have an American child and but they've been living here for 10, 20 years. They're not going to work. I mean, it's beginning to cut into both in L.A.'s and California's economy.

That border town in Texas now, there are reports, similar reports. People just aren't showing up to work. And we are on the cusp of a bunch of major harvesting

and I would imagine based upon what you're going to hear later in the program from the

secretary of the USDA Agriculture Secretary you're not going to see a lot of people going to

harvest stuff we got more footage of these stormtroopers invading a park in L.A.

Here we go. Good thing they have all this gear and their camo for their urban warfare. Who are they marching on? It looks like that guy, I don't know if that's a journalist

or just a photographer for the photo op. I mean, aren't they're going to try to use this to market. How embarrassed? Do you have to be to be out there marching and we're going to an assault a jungle gym?

Here's Karen Bass who and I mean, I think, you know, what is clear is when a guy like Zoron, Mamdani wins in

New York, or it seems to be on the president of winning in New York, or has captured the nation's imagination, that type of candidate ends up becoming a template for other politicians in the country. Here is Karen Bass.

This is what? Is this 13 or 14? This 13. Let's start with this. Here she is at MacArthur Park. Oh, sound. I am going to say. Mayor Bass, I need to get my phone and will. We're departing.

Okay. Okay. Any comment? Mayor Bass? Thank you. Mayor Bass, any comments? Yes, my comment is they need to leave and they need to leave right now. They need to leave because this is unacceptable. Who did you speak with?

Mayor Bass, who did you speak with on the phone just now? Who did you speak with on the phone? I had a question. Wow. of who i am going to say what i need to get my phone of customs um so apparently uh the one of the um uh off brand gestapo guys gives his phone to karen bass to speak to the head of customs and says get you people out of here and he's like uh we're going to leave can i have my phone back i mean this is just like are you kidding me

it's a understand as much as these people like the the crews you're seeing in LA the crews that we've seen videos they are the top ice guys and then it's just the drop off from there

is probably exponential and then they're going to hire 10,000 more of these essentially mall cops I mean that's basically what they're going to be doing

they already can't get they get the washouts from the police force and these are going to be wall cops I mean mall cops rather I mean mall cops that is like the almost maybe the better case scenario

because these people seem to get off on this if you're assigning up for this it's likely um but there was a i missed this over the weekend but apparently there were ice officers who went to a school in the la school district and were caught on surveillance camera like peeing on the school grounds publicly urinating outside like they're just before being asked to leave let's play this clip i mean is this by the way if uh these weren't like the gestapo protected by Donald Trump and the command the the the administration are you allowed to like whip it out in a school park I mean it on school grounds it seems a little uh like this should be a charge but it's not

going to be because these guys all cover their faces I mean we all need to watch it but like it's behind the they're both being behind the buildings it just it like what are they doing why are you on a school on school property at all it's disgusting there and some of the reports too out of the area of like waiting outside of elementary

school graduations the administration is enabling the child traffickers and sexual assaulters across the country because this is just like now a part of American society

that masked people in unmarked cars can come up and take mothers and daughters. I mean, of course, men too, but you worry even more about, like, say, sexual violence in those other situations. That's where my mind goes to. How do people know if an ICE agent doesn't identify themselves? It could be anybody that's taking a kid or a woman or a mother or a father, of course. Here's Karen Bass later at a press conference. Frankly, it is outrageous and un-American that we have federal armed vehicles in our parks when nothing is going on in the parks.

It's outrageous and un-American that the federal government seized our state's National Guard. It's outrageous and un-American that we have U.S. Marines who are trained. trained to kill foreign soldiers overseas deployed in our American city. This is going to increasingly become the story of the course of the next six to 18 months. And even if the Democrats can take control of the House, it's unclear, what kind of authority they can exercise over what ICE is doing. It's going to involve people organizing, resisting at times,

whether it's reporting on ice sightings through that Ice Block app or other apps. it's going to involve there are examples of communities that when ice comes in they have been successful in pushing ice back and out

because again these people are not trained for this something horrible is going to happen there's no doubt about it and and it's really probably just a question of when.

But people are going to have to resist this on an active way. People are going to have to make a decision at one point, you know, how much they're willing to do because things are going to get a lot worse before there's any opportunity for them to get better. We'll talk more about this and we'll play that clip. We'll play that clip later in the program of Brooke Rollins, who is the, you know, ag secretary and just i i can't i i can't get past that but we will talk about that in a bit uh in a moment we're going to be talking to uh dr rob davidson west michigan emergency

physician and executive director of the committee to protect health care and what the implications of this um billionaire benefit bill that just passed And what the potential is of helping people get health care moving forward. But we'll talk about that in a moment. First couple of words from our sponsors. Headlines right now, obviously, chock full of data breaches. And a ton of regulatory rollbacks. Do not call registries.

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And so. And so. And so. We are back, Sam Cedar We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on the majority report pleasure to welcome to the program dr rob davidson he's a west michigan emergency physician and executive director of the committee to protect health care i want to just start with this clip from abc news uh from saturday of this past week uh this was just in the wake

of the passage of this big billionaire benefit bill which um is uh going to cut nearly a trillion a dollars out of Medicaid, and because of automatic pay-go rules, very well may cut another $500 billion out of Medicaid over the course of the next 10 years. Excuse me, Medicare over the course of the next 10 years. Here's that clip. Set to enact the largest cuts to Medicaid in decades. Experts are warning that many struggling hospitals in rural communities could close their doors. On Thursday, moments before the Senate passed the bill, Curtis Medical Center, and rural Nebraska announced it would be forced to shut down, saying it was in part due to the

anticipated changes to Medicaid and cuts in federal funding. Local data shows the next closest urgent care facility that accepts Medicaid is nearly 30 miles away. Joining me now is Tyler Sherman. He's registered. And that's basically, I mean, all you need to know about that, that is a story that we're probably going to hear over and over again. And Rob Davidson, what, I mean, I can imagine what your reactions are to what we're going to see,

but give us a sense of how widespread you think this is going to be in terms, both on the provider's side, but obviously what it's going to mean to people who are going to lose their health insurance. Yeah. I mean, this is critical. I've been an emergency doctor more than half my life now for 27 years. I've been working in a rural community in Michigan for 23 of those. years. And, you know, Medicaid is about a third to upwards of 40% of our patient population coming into the ER. And so if those folks lose insurance, first, it's cruel to those individuals, right?

Because they won't have affordable health care. People still have to come in if they're having chest pain, if they're having a stroke. If they're having, you know, signs of appendicitis, they now will just be saddled with huge bills, most of which they won't be able to pay. We just got an email from the CEO of our entire system. This is not some liberal activism. out there. This is someone running a massive hospital system in Michigan who said this is going to have ripple effects throughout the entire system throughout the entire state. Because if those folks come in and have uncompensated care, hospitals have to make that up somewhere, right? So people with insurance, people with Medicare, people with employer insurance are going to be paying

more for premiums because we know insurance companies aren't going to eat that cost. So this is devastating. The biggest change in health care in, you know, 60s years since Medicaid and Medicare came on board. Can you expand on that that the care piece of the phrase just escapes me, but when they have to come in because the federal government says if you come into an emergency uncompensated care. Federal government says if you come into an emergency room, they have to treat you. What that that burden on hospitals that already ERs are just completely swamped here. This is going to make that problem worse exponentially, it appears. I mean, Even right now when we're not having, you know, flu season or any major like RSV and kids season in the winter,

we're boarding people for upwards of 24 hours. I just worked a shift the other day and I had someone finally leave having a heart attack after 23 hours in the emergency department to go to the big regional heart center because they didn't have any beds. That problem is going to explode because more people, I mean, we're talking people who can't get colonoscopies, can't get mammograms, can't get just routine diabetic care or afford insulin, they're going to come in in crisis and they're going to go to the only place they can go. I love EMTALA. MTALA is the loss since 1986 that has said,

if you have an emergency condition, you will be seen, you will be cared for. I love it. I'm a bleeding heart and I want to take care of patients and everybody deserves self-care. The problem is it still costs something. You know, it still costs to have those people seen and have them admitted and have surgery or whatever else they need.

And someone is going to pay that price. It isn't the hospital. It isn't the insurance company. It's those people who, you know, are going to be paying higher premiums. And then in the end, what's going to happen is what they're talking about in Nebraska. Hospitals are just close. You know, people having a heart attack will have to go another 30, 40 minutes up to an hour away, suffering worse consequences.

I mean, it's really devastating. And we've got to keep telling this story because the Republicans own it. They did this. And this is going to have massive effects on everyone. at this point we have really only for the most part um CBO sort of modeling as to how many people are going to lose their health care based upon this um I think there's some other outfits that have done their own versions of this CBO is saying it could be upwards like 14 15 million people I mean it could be more it's not going out you know it's not happening for another two years years, in which case, you know, you're going to see a growth of, we have population growth. I mean, who knows what the economy is going to be in that instance. Do we have a, I mean, do you, within the context of your locality or within the Michigan system,

do they have a sense of how many patients are we going to lose? I mean, this is just the Medicaid part. No one is really sort of like contemplated the Medicare part yet because that's an odd. automatic result of the deficit that they're going to run. There are PAYGO rules, and I guess it theoretically could be avoided, but I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't see how it would be, uh, with this Republican Congress. Um, has, so are you guys, like, how does, how do, how do you plan for this? I mean, you plan like they're doing in Nebraska, you know, these budgets there, they're projecting out, what, five years or so, probably around that. And projecting a loss of all of that revenue, when we're talking about

small hospitals, critical access hospitals, world, disproportionate care hospitals in big cities, these are places that depend upon, A, Medicaid patients, B, the provider tax that the final bill is reducing. That's a way that hospitals and our states raise money from hospitals, get federal matching dollars, and then bring back more money to those hospitals. When all of that is going away, the hospitals have to plan out and what they can provide. Now, maybe your hospital doesn't close down, but maybe they shut down outpatient lab for a period. Maybe they shut down x-ray. Maybe clinics will close, you know, access to care. And that's not just people with Medicaid, right? Anybody who's in that community, I mean, I work in a place that's an hour to the

big regional heart center and stroke center, right? So we see people, we can provide them with emergent care, and then we get them down the road to somewhere that can do more definitive care. But those critical early moments are like saving parts of people's brain, saving parts of their heart, helping them avoid long-term disability. And the Republicans have said, yeah, we don't care about that. And the reason we know the PAYGO piece where Medicare will likely, you know, lose funding won't be fixed by the current Congress. Most of the opposition to this bill was not from sort of vulnerable Republicans who supposedly didn't want to vote against Medicaid. I mean, Tom Tillis gave the most impassioned speech,

and he's not going to run for re-election because he knew it would sink him in the eyes of the GOP. It was the Freedom Caucus. It was these deficit guys that said, this isn't bad enough. You're not cutting enough. You're not killing enough people. So we want it to be worse.

They're not going to come to the rescue Medicare. It's very disheartening. It's a guy who's been doing this for so long, and I know my colleagues all feel the same way. But we're there now. the committee's part to health care. We've got 36,000 docs around the country. We've been speaking out as this thing's been rolling up.

We've been having press calls and press conferences in Republican districts. We're making plans to do that for the next 16 months. So people understand what they just did to them in their communities, and then they can vote them out accordingly. There's a two-part challenge here, right? I mean, one is communicate what is about to happen. I mean, not about. but you know 12 months off 16 months off so that people can can vote accordingly prior to that time

I imagine we're going to see some hospitals start to pair back over the course of the next 12 months and identifying those you know either closures or limiting of services as a function of this of the impending bill because like you say five-year plan if I know I'm going to lose 25 percent of my revenue two years from now for sure or 35 percent i'm going to make my cutbacks now so i can sort of like smooth that out a little bit um but is there also like anybody talking about the potential because these cuts are not going to be uh implemented until 27 28 of the potential in the 28 election to come back in and reverse these things?

Yeah, I mean, the hope is, right? I mean, the reality is almost nothing can get done because of the filibuster. So it all has to happen through this process, right? You get 50 plus one and you can get these. Reconciliation. Yeah, reconciliation. And so the reality is, you know, if we can reverse this trend in 26 and have a, you know, Republican House in 27, we can limit future damage, right?

Because they're not done, right? there's still more money to give to billionaires, that there's still more poor people you can take away from, that I'm sure they can find ways to do that. But then you have to keep building. I mean, this is a multi-year, multi-election process to then in 28, get the right people in. So starting in 29,

and you hate to have to think this way every time. It's how they think, right? It's how they run, how politicians go. So we all have to kind of adapt. but yeah in 29 you can get back some of that funding i suppose you can do a budget bill that is you know we'll raise taxes on billionaires which we of course should be doing and we'll get health care for people who who uh need it which is frankly in my opinion and most of our opinions everybody like everybody deserves health care um so yeah that's planned i imagine you know uh you have

colleagues at your hospital whose patients that they see on a regular are Medicaid patients. But what are they starting to hear or what are they starting to tell their patients who may not be able to see them in 12 months? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think those hard conversations are starting to happen. I think as providers, we try to avoid the kind of doomsday and doom and gloop conversations and even, I mean, talking about coverage at all. I mean, the reality is when we go in a room, we don't look at someone's insurance. You just go, you see them. But when you're making

plans for them getting a test or getting admitted or getting a prescription, you have to have the conversations. Because even people with health insurance in this country, you know, more than 50% of employer plans are high deductible plans. People making 20 bucks an hour with a $2,500 deductible, they can't afford health care either, right? They can certainly afford cancer treatment or major surgery better than if they didn't have insurance. But routine care is still tough. So I think, yeah, those are starting to happen where people, you know, maybe they have to start kind of storing up on certain meds that they won't be able to get or get some of their tests out of the way sooner rather than later, don't wait, you know, for down the road. I think those

are the tough conversations that we shouldn't have to have, but they put us all in the position of having to do that. I will say I had an OB come down just a few weeks ago, as this was all being contemplated. And, you know, Fort White, we have all heard, 47% of the deliveries in this country are people on Medicaid. She said, I don't know how we keep an L&D, a labor and delivery unit open, given that, right? So now what? I mean, is it just going to be homebursts? If you live in a rural area, I mean, okay, sometimes that works out great. I've seen catastrophic outcomes of homebirths that haven't gone well in communities, that that is, you know, a predominant mode of delivery, we don't want to kind of make that our default system in a lot of

these places. And they might force us to do that. Well, I mean, that fits in nicely to like something I would love if you could expand on is how this is going to affect preventative care. If you're somebody that feels like, hey, I'm not feeling great, I have an issue, but you're in a community where the rural hospital has closed. And in many cases, this is like the only hospital in an hour radius it also makes it much less likely one that yes if there's an emergency you could pass die in the ambulance but also if you want to seek out preventative care or see a doctor because you're having an issue it might be too much of a burden for you especially if you can't get off work like that's some of the stuff that i'm worried about seeing as well yeah i mean you know again

And it's not just the rural hospitals, it's the entire rural health system. So, you know, with the hospital or the outpatient departments, it's, you know, for ours, it's just kitty corner across the parking lot as a, is a multi-specialty clinic with family docs and pediatricians and surgeons and OBs and specialists who come from the big hospital, you know, an hour away and come up and see people for their aftercare. You know, if that all goes away, you do. You have people who aren't going to be managing their diabetes as well as they should or their blood pressure. Now you have more people having strokes, more people having heart attacks.

Again, the ripple effects, it isn't far-fetched to try to envision this dystopian reality. It will happen. Sometimes it happens slowly enough. People don't quite recognize the root causes of it. I think that's why organizations like the one I run and others shows like this. I mean, we have to keep telling people. We have to keep reminding people like all of this dysfunction of the ones. the system. The Republicans own it now, right? They hung the ACA around the necks of Democrats after they

passed that. And it wasn't until years later people realized, okay, imperfect, but man, it sure made a real difference in a lot of people's lives, particularly expanded Medicaid under the ACA. But affordable insurance, you know, tax subsidies, another thing they didn't address that's going to go away. And another 4 million people lose insurance and another 10-odd million are going to have more expensive insurance because of that. I mean, I wanted to just touch on that in particular, because I think, you know, we hear a lot about the Medicaid. The Medicare stuff is sort of like people, I think, have barely touched upon the cuts to Medicare that are going to end up coming. But there's also, like you say, a massive amount of people who are either going to be losing their health insurance through the ACA exchanges or be paying to,

three, $5,000 more annually because of it. And do we have numbers on that or what the implications of that are in terms of people? Or is that wrapped up in the CBO's $17 million figure? I think that's in the $17 million, but $4 million of that is considered that ACAPs where people will lose insurance. But another, I've seen numbers around $10 million who will just have more expensive insurance, right? The premiums will be higher. Yeah, it's almost if you, if you devise a bill to screw over the most people possible and make them the least healthy possible, this could be the perfect bill to do that because of how many aspects of the health care system that it completely unravels. Yeah, it's the CEO email we got, you know, they said

these cuts aren't waste, fraud, and abuse. This is critical compassionate care. And I almost think we have to keep saying that. I mean, it seems to me that essentially, what is being cut is it is essentially a repeal of obamacare or at very least the ACA part of it right like the expansion of Medicaid the uh exchanges as opposed to the patient protection elements remain uh in terms of private insurance but at the end of the day when we're talking about you know 10 or 12 million or 13 or 14 million people losing Medicaid that was the ACA expansion and then you know another four or five million people losing their health insurance on the exchanges. That's almost half of the people on the exchanges, maybe a third of people on the exchanges,

but the prices are going up, you know, rendering the, granted, not the best of impact. The exchanges didn't do much in terms of making it terribly affordable. It slowed the rate of increase marginally. But it, you know, but it's basically a repeal of the affordable care. and it was never really communicated that way. Yeah. No. It's an end around, right?

John McCain with a thumbs down stopped in its tracks when they tried to do it full. But that was effective. The Democrats actually were able to stop that then, and they didn't message it the same time, same way this time. Yeah. We do need to do better. But I think the reality is I think doctors, patients, hospitals, I mean, I think hospital systems need to be brave and communicate to the public what this means to their

system and their community and not worry about like getting getting called names by by trump i think doctors need to be brave and stand up and communicate effectively i i was at a shift just about three days ago and that we had done a press conference in lansing michigan and tom barrett's district michigan seven you know swing republican district about medicaid cuts and i and i was on the local tv and a guy came out to me a part of our janitorial staff who i've known for for several years he said hey I heard your speech. Thanks so much for doing that. I really appreciate it.

And so we can get to people. We can explain this to people. We all need to do it because, frankly, they're not going to trust politicians on either side. At some point, I just throw up their hands at, ah, it's all politics. They all, you know, they have a certain opinion of all the politicians. Yes, they need to do it, need to do better. But it's really on groups of advocates and as a physician, I mean, I take that responsibility

seriously and we do as an organization, you know, we're going to be there. And yeah, we need to just keep talking about it and let people know what's what happened with this bill and what this means to them in their communities. Do you have a sense of whether heads of these big hospital groups? And I have my issues, I should say, with these big hospital groups. I mean, you know, we are at a very precarious point with the level of concentration we have. of hospitals and the sort of contraction of our medical system as it exists already. And this is going to make it that much more precarious. But do you have a sense that there's a certain intimidation factor that their response to this bill was muted because, and I imagine, you know, rural Michigan, I have some awareness of what the politics are going to.

be like in a rural michigan area and they're going to be somewhere you know uh between militia and uh you know a conservative i think uh full on of militia please we're there but yeah and i live actually live in betsy davos's county right we live about a half hour from where where she where her biggest mansion is um do you think that there's a certain amount of intimidation factor as to uh how much people were able to speak up and say this is going to seriously inhibit you know, obviously they're there for a profit motive, but they're, you know, it's going to seriously inhibit their ability to just sort of like serve X amount of people. Yeah, I imagine there is, right?

I'm not in those rooms. I don't work in the C-suite in the hospital, but in the muted response, that's the only explanation, right? I'm sort of proud, a little bit surprised and proud that the CEO did send out this email to staff, right? this is all staff, letting them know the negative impacts. And, you know, and very clearly said, this isn't a political statement. This is just reality of what this is going to do. And so, you know, they were pretty brave around COVID when people were saying, you know,

something about vaccines and how they don't actually help and all that. And we knew that was all BS. They came out and defended, you know, the realities of COVID and the vaccines. I hope they are brave enough to do that. but, I mean, we've seen, right, the retribution just in public comments from the Trump administration, but who knows what else they would do, how they could weaponize the government against these big systems we've seen in the media, right? People paying out to Trump and his cronies, you know, so they can get deals through. I mean, it's a dangerous time because people may put that before, you know, just communicating reality and trying to take care of their communities. but the reality is this is going to be so devastating.

They can't just put their head in the sand and ignore it. So I guess we'll see. We'll see what they do next. One last question, and this may be a little bit, it may be too early to see. But I have to imagine that if I am contemplating the idea of going to medical school, and I'm one seeing the assault on student loan programs, And two, I'm seeing the assault on science and coming out of the HHS and the complete, like, attack on science, on medical treatments, on, you know, and then I see, and then I would imagine there's also sort of a separate pressure coming, like, that guy who sends out that memo to everybody, they're not looking to hire new doctors.

right now i would imagine um do you anticipate do you have any um uh knowledge of essentially like a a dearth of like i i would imagine we're going to see it from medical schools that their admissions uh or applications are going to go down because i i just don't know how somebody says like i'm not going to go into this job as a doctor and put myself into debt maybe i'll be an instagram influencer and you know, push B-Root or something, but I'm not going to go be a doctor. Yeah, I mean, I can speak anecdotally. So I'm in my mid-50s. Med School cost me about 70 grand, you know, 30 years ago.

But I had a colleague who's in his early 30s still paying off loans, and he brought this up to me. I didn't see the student loan, you know, piece of this because I hadn't focused on it. He said, I come from like a poor family. He said, I would not have gone to medical school if those are my loan options, right? if I was taking on that degree of debt and it was going to saddle me the way this new setup. And I don't have all the details. You've probably spoken about it and you will continue to speak about it.

But it does make it prohibitive for people who aren't rich. So you're going to see, you know, rich kids going to med school perhaps. And then the other piece I think we can look to is the impact of state abortion bans on people applying to medical schools and residencies going to residencies in those states. You know, factors outside of individual aspirations to be a doctor to care for patients impact people's decisions to do that in certain places. Abortion bans, you know, had a decrease in folks in all specialties because they said, I just don't want to be in that place when practicing medicine involves, you know, potentially going to jail. And so absolutely, I think we're going to see a chilling effect. And we already have a physician shortage in particularly these rural areas. I guess their secret is they close the hospital, close the clinic.

There's no longer a physician shortage because there's nowhere for them to work anyway. So, yeah, another thing. Just one more question really quickly, Dr. Davidson. When we're talking about how our health care system has so consolidated already, and we see these Medicaid cuts that are going to dramatically affect the margins of even the largest conglomerates in the country, does part of the silence that you're seeing play into the fact that, that the administration is going to be responsible for any future mergers and overseeing that. And they're worried about, I heard this from somebody that works in corporate America,

their biggest competitor, it's like the threat that they're going to be pitted against one another. And if they don't do what Trump says, that's going to be the one that gets selected for X contract. Like, it seems like that could be playing out right now in the medical system in terms of the Medicaid cuts and their impact. Yeah, that I'm sure that's. Part of it. The other piece is private equity, right? They're deep involvement in medical practices and hospitals. I have a good friend in Philly who just lost his job because his hospital at Crozier and Delco closed down. And he's now driving two hours, working night shifts in other parts of Pennsylvania while he's trying to find a new job. You know, that piece as well, consolidation in private equity. And yeah, those folks certainly stand to benefit from the tax piece of this bill. but obviously want to stay in the favor of the administration or anyone in that administrative state

that can kind of decide and determine what they can do next. It's sad that that's part of the calculus of these systems. You know, we'll see when these cuts start coming through and they have to make these financial decisions based on the cuts. If that's a stronger impetus for them to speak out and to try to help push for policies that benefit patients that eventually benefit them, I guess we'll have to see. Aside from folks individually talking to their neighbors and folks organizing in their localities

and, you know, looking towards organizations that are preexisting, and whether it's unions or DSA or, I don't know, even local indivisible or is there specifically any way that folks in Michigan or in general can get involved in what you folks do? Yeah, that committee to protect.org, you know, really anybody can come on and get involved in support financially, I suppose, but really physicians, health care providers, we want you all to join up, to be a part of this movement so we can, we are all advocates daily for our patients, banging our head against the wall, getting things covered by insurance companies. We have the ability to be advocates in a wider sense and help

protect our entire communities. And if you're in any number of these 40-some-od, you know, swing districts that are going to determine the fate of Congress in the next election, we need you to be involved. We need you to speak up. And we can provide the apparatus to be able to do that. Dr. Rob Davidson Director of the Committee to Protect Health Care we'll put a link to that organization Thanks so much your time today

Really appreciate it Thank you both All right folks We're going to head into the fun half Of the program in a moment But let's bring in our guest For the fun half To preview the fun half

Yeah, where is? Oh, there he is Oh, look who's come in Wow You're just going to have to Do I do? Do I just, just come right over here. Oh, come over there?

Yeah, where's his headphones? Oh, it's on the desk. There we go. Hello. Look at this. Wow. I do control this camera. So maybe go to a one shot and then we'll do the two shot.

Yeah, okay. We were going to fix us in the fun half, but. Look at this. Hello. Hello. Okay, wide now here. Slide over your chair that way. Okay.

It's going to feel a little bit closer, but, um, hold on. Okay. Oh, you want me to get, like, all the way in here? Yes, but I'm going to move. Right there you go. Right there. That's fine. Oh, my God, you guys have such...

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Logo. Wow. Look who's here. It's going to be a little difficult. Look at that. I don't need the headphones until, unless we watch like a video, right? Exactly. Exactly.

Okay, I don't normally. Do you have ear pods or anything like that or no? No, I just only have like the Apple, the big AirPods. So it's fine. This is the first time I've ever seen you in person. You have very large arms. Oh, that's, oh my God, that's crazy. What a coincidence.

I didn't even think about that. No, I didn't. I didn't get the same compliment when I walked in in my table. tank top today, but it's fine. Yeah, you got real tan. Oh, yeah. I just talking you got the same reaction. Well, so much for the arm wrestling contest that we had planned for the fun half. I think we'll probably

put that on pause. That water, incidentally, is for you. Oh, thank you. That mug is for you. Oh, wow. 20 years of pausing it. Yeah, there you go. Majority Report Radio. What an incredible what an incredible get. This is is available on the shop?

Yes. It is, but that one is for you, but we also do have some other merch that we're going to have you model in the fun half. Oh, absolutely. You don't want to do it now? No, yeah, I guess we could do it now. And then we'll go to the fun half. Wait a second.

Let me fix my camera. Fix your camera. Why are you in New York? I'm doing an interview with Mom and Kulil. I'm doing something with a somenage. And most importantly, I was like, I have to come on the majority report. I was ducking you guys for too long. We have new trucker hats in the,

in the merch store. And we'll sell a lot more if you actually put this on. Of course. Let me grab it. Let me wear that. It's a special one that we thought might be good for you. Max left. Oh my God. Are you actually? Is this one of the hats for real?

It is one of that. I love that. Yeah. There you go. Max left. This is my idea. Yeah. I like it. Yeah, exactly. He's going to pissing people off. I think it might. All right. Well, listen, we've got to take a break. could head into the fun half of the program where you can join us with our special guest today in studio uh just a reminder if you want to support the program join the majority report dot com

when you do you can only get the free show for your commercials you get the fun half as well and you can i am us uh and uh also just coffee dot co-op fair trade coffee hot chocolate use the coupon code but jordy get 10% off left reckoning uh happening tonight i think matt's on break but maybe who knows what he's doing but uh check it out it should be good he doesn't seem to be fun of breaks you know yeah you know matt doesn't really take a break it really just means more gaming i think is really what's going on um all right we'll see you in the fun half three months from now six months from now nine months from now and i don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now and i don't know if it's

necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for a second. The majority report.

Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Unpacked. Matt. Drew. Fun pack. What is up, everyone? Fun pack.

No me keen. You did it. Fun pack. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy.

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But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled folks I love it I do love that Look

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