The MeidasTouch Podcast - Meidas Health EMERGENCY Episode: Mass Chaos as Trump Panel Blows Up

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas and Meidas Health leader Dr. Vin Gupta break down the disastrous ACIP meeting and what its decisions mean for your life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. This is an emergency edition of Midas Health. Dr. Vin Gupta is the leader of the Midas Health Initiative that we do here to counter all of the disinformation, all of the quackery, all of the dangerous conspiracies coming out of the Trump regime. And we had to do this emergency addition to conclude this week based on all of the lies coming

out of this regime, the current health department, which might as well be named, the anti-health department at this point. And you probably have been hearing about these hearings or these committee meetings being held by something called the ASIP, ACIP, the advisory committee on immunization practice. And they've basically replaced the committee members who have scientific backgrounds, who required peer review information, who used rigorous scientific testing, and who were there for the greater interests of public health, and they replaced it with RFK Jr. Stooges in the depths and the bowels of conspiracy of anti-vax world, a far right-wing extreme podcast world, again, of spreading this dangerous quackery. And look, when it's just

right-wing podcast world, and it's not totally informing public health decisions that impact all Americans. It's one thing, as dangerous as that is. But now this is actually impacting the type of vaccine recommendations that are being made, that are reaching the physician level, that are reaching the level of, hey, when I'm bringing my 11-month-year-old daughter to the doctor, what types of medication, what types of vaccines are the doctors prescribing? My brother Brett, as you all know, just had a baby as well in the past two weeks. What types of vaccines and medications are going to be encouraged, discouraged, the chilling effect on physicians to prescribe certain types of medications as a result of CDC, HHS, NIH being co-opted. So Dr. Gupta, I want to break this

all down with you. I mean, you know, of course there's this headline this week that RFK juniors HHS voted to no longer recommend this critical vaccine for measles, mumps, Rubella, and other things. I want you to get into it. The question is, is there seemed to be even confusion among the medical community what was actually being recommended or not. It actually seemed that at the ASIP committee, the Trump, RFK-backed people had no clue what, they didn't even know the process as you were listening to the committee. They didn't even understand what their role was in this. And they were laundering in non-peer-reviewed stuff the entire time. The question was also, what else were they going to take away from recommendations and were they responding to public?

pressure or not. There just seemed to be mass confusion out there. I'll tell you, the American Academy of Pediatrics. This isn't like the Democratic American Academy of Pediat. I mean, we're seeing just medical groups across the country issuing statements like this. Today's ASIP meeting promoted false claims and misguided information about vaccines. AAP will continue stepping up and working with local, state, and federal partners to make sure every child in every community continues to have access to immunizations. You had Ed Markey post measles, mumps, Rubella. The vaccine is safe. It's effective and it protects us all. RFK Jr.'s leading our country into dangerous, uncertain territory. He must resign. And it talks about the

advisory panel recommending restrictions on MMRV vaccines. You and I also talked about restrictions on COVID vaccines. There's a lot to follow, Doc. So what should our audience take out of what's been happening this week in general. Where are we? Well, Ben, I mean, that was quite the T-Up and completely on point. You know, what I would say to everybody listening is there is no new medical information that the United States Health and Human Services Administration has that no other country somehow has. And no other country is having these types of discussion. So I think, number one, we're inventing some sort of problem here that doesn't, that isn't, that is really a problem, number one. And two, then they're coming up with these so-called solutions

in this effort, Ben, and we talked about this, to portray that there's some sort of white night pushing forward radical transparency in health care. This is what they're claiming. And they're claiming that those of us actually caring for patients, pediatricians across the country, I'm a pulmonologist, that somehow we're duping our patients and holding critical information. So that's their game. That's the agenda and the narrative arc. But what do you need to know? You know, first of all, nothing that they've done in the last 36 hours in any way is helpful to any American family, number one.

They have not made a one consequential decision that's going to improve the lives of everybody. What it's going to do is it's going to confuse everybody. And I've gotten a ton of questions from patients, from peers. What is going on? How is this impacting coverage? What can and can we not do when it comes to the COVID vaccine? They're worried about hepatitis B vaccine being on the chopping block for reasons that would make absolutely no sense. And so this has caused a bunch of confusion without actually materially helping anybody because that's not the point.

They're not in this to actually help anybody. But let's take a few examples. Today, they're saying that we should now, for those under 65 years of age, engage in shared clinical decision making to use their words, between patient and providers. on whether or not to get the COVID vaccine, which sounds like a good thing. Sounds like a happy phrase. Talk to your medical provider about the COVID vaccine. Here's the problem then.

For the last five years, people are norm to go to their pharmacists, get the shot. It's part of a routine. Yes, we're not back in the throes of the pandemic. Yes, the urgency is different. But there are still important groups that need this vaccine without needing to have a long conversation

with their medical provider. That's the whole point of these organizations, give firm recommendations based on the evidence so that you can make the life of your frontline clinicians easier because we can't talk about everything. It's an incredible burden that you're putting on medical providers, primary care doctors, pharmacists across the country to say, hey, add this to your workload, we litigate things that we don't need to re-litigate. So what does the American Academy of Pediatrics say?

Kids between six and months and 23 months of age, regardless of their underlying history, Ben should get the shot. Pregnant women should get the shot. No shared clinical decision making. This is nuts that we have to now add this additional barrier, which is what every medical society is saying. Why are you introducing this barrier of effectively needing a prescription? What they really want to do is say, if you're between six months and 64 years of age,

talk to your medical provider first to get their approval and blessings, which is in effect a form of a prescription. Why? Why do we need to do that? this is part of their agenda. Number two, you know, we talked about this earlier. The combination measles, mumps, Rubella, Veracella vaccine, they eliminated that as an option for kids yesterday for those kids under four years of age. Again, no medical reason why. We have no new information. What I should tell you is that the CDC prior to this yesterday, the American Academy of Pediatrics,

have already said, for kids under four years of age, there's a very small risk of something called febrile seizures. If you give this as a first dose to protect against measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, four infectious diseases, one shot. The advice to parents is, you know what, because there's this very small risk, let's split the shots, give measles, mumps, rubella, and derisela separately to eliminate that very, very small risk. Some parents, though, have a difficult time accessing health care. Some parents have kids that are very needlephobic and who likes needles, but some are very needlephobic. So there's a purpose to that combination shot where after a discussion about risks and benefits specifically in this case, we provide it

in very select cases. Eliminating this combination shot in the absence of any new data makes no sense. Again, it's a barrier that didn't need to exist, but it aligns with their narrative that somehow they're doing something that wasn't, this should have been done for many, many decades. No, this was all transparent. We talked about it. And sometimes medicine, it's the art of medicine. There's nuance here. Lastly, I'll just say, today they did something interesting, just to give your audience a sense of how unqualified the people on this panel that RFK installed are.

They yesterday voted to remove this combination shot for kids under four. What do they also do yesterday, Ben? They voted to then say the vaccine for children's program that funds the provision of these vaccines across the country for kids should continue to fund access for kids under four completely. So they're saying medically speaking, they're going to remove eligibility for kids under four, but when it comes to the financials, keep funding it. How does that make any sense? So somebody pointed out to them overnight, hey, by the way, you might want to change your vote because it's contradictory. You're saying fund vaccines, that combination shot for kids under four, but you also told the American public you're going to remove the indication for kids under four, help us understand

that. Overnight, it was revealed that they didn't know what they were voting for, so they reversed the decision today. That should be chilling to all of us, regardless of political ideology, Ben, that our top, now top leaders, quote unquote, guiding vaccine policy for the country, do not even understand what votes they are taking. And here they are, potentially, they're delaying this vote, but they're going to take a vote soon on hepatitis B vaccine for kids and the birth dose.

That's shocking to me that we're even having that debate, but especially with an unqualified panel that doesn't even know what they're voting for, they're going to make these consequential decisions. That's why you're seeing states really take the lead here, like the West Coast Health Alliance, California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, say, you know what, enough's enough for not paying attention to these Yahoo's. We're going to take matters into our own hands. And you're going to see more models like that.

Right. We're seeing a kind of northeast model. We're seeing a West Coast model. And then we're seeing a Florida model, which is going deeper down the rabbit hole. So it's interesting to see the state coalitions form, West Coast, blue states. Hey, we got to follow the science. We got to protect people. We got to just do what the scientists are saying.

Same thing, the Northeast model, like the West Coast, the line. They announced their formation in the past week as well. And then it seems that Florida wants to almost lead the way in the anti-vax, anti-science stuff. And it's going to result in, you know, horrific outcomes. You know, I think about authoritarian regimes in the past and dictatorships and countries that were not developed democracies, you know, in periods where major viruses, you know, I mean, I remember, you know, all of the lies that would come out about HIV and how America had to combat all of this, all of that disinformation there. And especially because a lot of the lies about it at a leadership level by by strong men leaders in certain countries across the world by putting out, and it's a similar mindset as a Trump that. I can, I'm the source of info, not the scientists.

I alone can fix everything. And it resulted in horrific outcomes that we're still dealing with today. But the ultimate irony there, Doc, is that RFK Jr. is reversing all of the progress America made in helping the international community fight things like HIV and, and, and, and other diseases, when those could eventually spread here. I mean, people travel to locations. There's no such thing as borders when it comes to, when it comes to viruses. So, you know, so I guess speak to that aspect of it.

But then I want to talk about another thing that happened today that I think is going to have profound consequences on the medical profession. It's Trump entirely changing the H-1B process where we get a lot. lot of residents from foreign countries. And Trump did something today that may gut about 30% of residents who come from international communities, who aren't going to be able to afford to come here anymore. We'll talk about that, but maybe talk about the broader assault that you see taking place and the attack on an international perspective as well. You know, well, I'll note for the audience is RFK's top advisor, Kaylee Means, actually responded and engaged on Twitter with some of the content we've been doing on in the last 24 hours.

And, you know, what's clear is they don't like being called out on clinical terms because they don't have anybody been on their team that is credible in the clinical community. Not a single person, much less Kaylee means RFK's top advisor. everybody to read something by Catherine Evans, who was actually on Midas Health, earlier this season talking about our investigative reporting on Kaylee Means. This guy is a lobbyist. He has no health care background whatsoever, but now is really fashioning himself into this maha person as though he has sort of fly-by-night expertise. But you can tell based on his response, they don't have a response. And they're trying to dupe the public by thinking,

that some activity is meaningful activity. To your point, I alone can fix it. Just engaging in activity doesn't mean it's high value or that it's doing anything materially for the American public. And that's what we're seeing here. We're seeing marginal sort of ruminations and activity on the edges that isn't actually doing anything for pediatricians, for medical providers to bring clarity,

much less for patients to understand what the heck to do. They are confusing people across the board, which is why we're in this unprecedented place where coalitions of states are having to bandy together to say, hey, what do we do? The AAP here is under the crosshairs of RFK. They're putting out tweet after tweet trying to keep up. This is not normal. I do want to get to your point on residence because I think that's really important to talk about. But this is where we're at. And I just as a plug for Midas Health, we're going to keep bringing the nation's best health care leaders to come to Midas Health, to engage in these conversations, to make sure that your time

is used valuably so that people can use Midas Health, frankly, Ben, as a place to get the information that they need. But to plug it real quick, for parents that are confused, and I don't blame you, go to Healthychildren.org. This is a website that's completely non-profit, produced by the American Academy of Pediatrics, also nonprofit that is aiming to cut through the noise, apolitical, calm, no-nonsense, information on childhood vaccines, Healthychildren.org. So let's take a look at the issue as it impacts residents. So the Trump administration, I call regime, they put a, they raised H-1B visa fees and then also created an expedited path. If you pay $1 million for an H-1B fee, as Dr. Nick Mark posted online, he goes, this is going to be absolutely devastating in the medical field.

30% of residents are international medical graduates, and 10,000 of the 43,000 residency spots are filled by docs with H-1B visas. Previously, the H-1B fee was $5,000. No hospital will pay a $100,000 fee for a $55,000 resident salary, or if they do, it's going to mean more of our health care costs going up because the money has to come from somewhere and it's always passed down. So as someone who's gone through these steps and someone who utilizes residents

in your day-to-day practice and is part of this whole world, just explain what a big deal this is to our audience, what happens if we lose residents from foreign countries and what's your experience interacting with those types of residents? First of all, in my mom was, foreign medical grab and became a successful neonatologist in Ohio. I have seen that model,

power, health systems in places that American medical grads, just to say it, don't want to live. And we need foreign medical graduates across the spectrum, wherever they're coming from, to care for an aging society. I mean, Ben, let's just look at the numbers here. We're going to have the oldest society on record by 2027. More people will be over 65 years of as a proportion of society than those that are working in the working age demographic. That is shocking. We're looking to look a lot more like South Korea and Japan than we've ever looked like before. They're that most graying societies in the world.

We're not far behind them. And what do we need? It's not going to be artificial intelligence. We are overrelying on this amazing technology AI. Don't get me wrong. It has its place. It's going to do its thing. But at the end of the day, we need surgeons.

We need ICU docs. We need pediatricians because I'll tell you this. I can't tell you how many patients I've interacted with in families who say, you know what? I'm sick and tired of working with an online medical chat bot to tell me what's wrong with me. I'm going to speak to a human being that I trust. And that's where human capital matters. And that's where we need more human capital because we're having an Asian population. Demand for medical services is going to skyrocket.

So like everything that this administration has done, The impacts of what we're talking about right now, H-1B visas and fees going up, supply going down ultimately, it's going to show impacts once Trump's out of office, just like NIH cuts. We're not going to see those immediate impacts to research and therapeutic development happen tomorrow. No, it's going to be the research project that we should have started yesterday bearing fruit and say 18 to 24 to maybe five years. We're going to see impacts in the medium term.

And here, you know, it takes anywhere for four to six years for a resident to graduate, get skilled, get credentialed. So these impacts, they go into effect today are going to rear their head as we're entering the next election. People that want to get in or need to be seen by a health system, suddenly where's the human capital to do it? And here's why this matters for everybody out there. You know, once you're a full-fledged doctor like myself, I mean, I'll say it. It costs more for a hospital to employ me than a resident. A resident, you know, we often joked about it when I was a resident with my peers. In some ways, it's, you know, as a form of indentured servitude is how we would sometimes describe it. We

were joking, half-joking, but you work long hours, you barely get paid. Who benefits from that? Hospitals. And there's a rhyme to the reason. Hospitals train us. What they give us is an ability to get skills. In turn, we give them heavily discounted medical services. if you have less people populating and being willing and able to take those jobs, what's going to happen? Same thing that's happening with immigration more broadly in our farms and other places. Physically, we're just not going to have enough people to care for the demand and medical services that every American is going to need at some point.

But this is going to rear its head in about four to six years, Ben, mark my words, that this actually gets passed. And it's going to impact Republicans and Democrats. And the irony here is it's probably going to impact red states or than blue states. States. Because red states are places where there's more community hospitals, more rural hospitals, frankly, more places where American medical grads tend not to gravitate towards. Instead, who fills the gap, it's the foreign medical grad who Trump just made a lot more difficult. He made their path a lot more difficult to actually get educated here. So where are they going to go? They're

going to go somewhere else. They'll go to China. They'll go to Cuba. They'll go to Latin America. where they'll get paid, where they will be more welcome, and their path will be a lot easier. And so this is going to have significant impacts, not just in the short term, but very much in the medium term here. And that's the irony of a lot of these policies. They'll impact red states, and it's not going to be felt immediately. That's why what we're doing at Midas Health, what we're doing at Midas Touch, it has to be viewed really as a generational project. Yes, there is a rapid response the way we do an emergency episode today and say, here's what happened, here's what you need to know.

But the enduring mission of Midas Health, which you do every week when we don't have emergency episodes, just bringing in people, yes, the top experts to talk about what's happening now, but also to provide a broader perspective of the past, the present, and the future, because there really needs to be an accountability structure in the future. to make sure that when future administrations are handed this bag of S-H-I, you know what, and people are suffering, that it's not, again, viewed as the firefighters who are creating the fire when they're trying to put out the fire created by the arsonists. And it's not going to be easy to put out.

So it's going to be very easy to blame a future administration, to use a medical term, or my own view, a medical term, to pull the bandage off. You're going to see some of the injuries. This current regime just lies. We brought in $17 trillion. Everything's great. We're perfectly efficient. Things are amazing.

But when you have an actually transparent administration that, you know, unrelated to medical, you know, today we learned that the Trump administration was blocking inflation reporting. So we don't get to even know what the data is right now from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So in the future, when we find out here's what really went down, it's going to hurt. We're going to see it, and we're going to have to address it. And we're going to have to do it intelligently. So it's not just, oh, you're there, you inherited it, you're to blame.

Otherwise, we're going to be back in this cycle where people who are causing the problems are going to get back in there and keep causing the problems. Before we go, Doc, anything else you want to say in this emergency edition. To an endomatis health, Ben, thank you for giving us a platform to elevate truth, especially in this moment, and we're in keeping you the nation's best. Thank you. Dr. Vin Gupta, leader of the Midas Health Initiative. Thanks everybody for watching. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. And please do me a favor. Share Midas Health with as many people as you can. They need to hear this. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time.

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