We’re Being Bamboozled

Published May 18, 2021, 4:51 PM

Craig Gottwals, aka "The Healthcare Guru", joins Jack & Joe to detail the ways in which our government's embrace of providing healthcare for all is tanking our economy.

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Craig got Wallas. Craig the healthcare Guru joins us. He's an attorney, law benefit consultant, and Benefit Revolution is his website. Also a longtime friend of the show, my former mountain bike riding buddy until my joints got weak. And I don't mean I started buying substandard pop. I mean I just got old. Craig. Hey, how are you, sir? I'm well, gentlemen, how are you? Terrific? As usual, You've sent us a fair amount of very interesting information. Do you mind if we start with the big budget lie that is government medical programs. I find this so interesting? Yes, yes, this this lie has been going on in one iteration or another since the nineteen nineties, this particular lie, and it's it's the number one way that uh, big state politicians get their favorite programs through So, whether we're talking about Obamacare or the latest Cares Act, the way that politicians push these things through Congress is to say, well, this this law. You know, this law is going to help so many millions Americans, and it's only gonna cost only a get something under a trillion or maybe one point three trillion, or or or some number that they find is palatable by the general public at the time. Right. So this was done most famously with Obamacare in two thousand nine, when they said, well, Obamacare is only going to cost point nine trillion dollars. It's got nine billion dollars. And and part of the reason it was going to cost that small of an amount, I know it makes me choke to say that small of an amount was to say, written into Obamacare was a provision that they were going to cut Medicare, the reimbursements to doctors and hospitals by two percent per year for like a ten year period. So when this when the when the accountants, when the CBL gets to that, of course they're just accountants. They have to look at it and and say, well, okay, if they are going to cut what we pay Medicare by two percent per year and add all these other things to cover Obamacare, then yes, Obamacare is gonna cost n fifty billion dollars. So let me jump in here, Craig, just to make sure that everybody understands. This is if I said to Judy, honey, I'm gonna go buy a brand new loaded F one fifty. Here's the car payment. But starting next year, I'm gonna cut the car payment by twenty dollars a month. Every month, I'm going to pay less than the car payment, as if I have the power to do that, but I never intend to do that, or maybe say, starting next year, that's okay, honey, because our car budget is going to be fine because what we're gonna pay for insurance is going to be cut by fifty dollars a month, right. And then of course, when the next year comes around, insurance costs actually go up and you don't cut what you're gonna pay for insurance fifty a month, so your entire budget just explode. So has Converress ever actually cut the payments to doctors through Medicare. No. The very latest one that was just in the news in the last few weeks was um that again another another two percent cut to Medicare, this one dating back to the Budget Control Act of and this again was supposed to be two percent per year. And I remember, for your listeners, I repeat this every time, but I got to say it. Medicare pays less than half of what an employer plan pays to hospitals when you go in to have work done. So Medicare reimburses so little already that if we really were to cut Medicare, you would have a mutiny on your hands, because hospitals would just throw their hands up in the air and say we're not treating seniors anymore. And of course seniors vote and that wouldn't be good for re election. So there never really will be a cut to Medicare. But they use this trick to budget their laws. So we've had this two percent cut on the books going back ton and just last month, UH Congress voted again this is bipartisan mouth seasons three eighty four to thirty eight to say, well, we're not gonna go ahead and put that cut in now because right now we're in an national pandemic. Would it wouldn't be proper, and so we've got to pay for the carriage acted, so we're not going to do that. So once again we're bamboos all, we're lied to, we're cheated. That's incredible, it's absolutely incredible, overwhelmingly by partisan support to UH to say Nana, the cuts that that we're mandated, and now we'll skip them this year and every year. Yeah, that's amazing. Every every year, multiple laws, Obamacare, the Cares Act. I mean, just you could go to if this started in the nineties. It's it's it's ridiculous, guys and right, And the average person, including me, doesn't pay attention to those votes and doesn't even know they happened. That's amazing. Okay, I don't want to I don't want to spem it. I have to work hard. I have to work hard to find this stuff. I mean, so I guarantee you the average person doesn't follow it. Okay. I don't want to spend all our time on that because you have so much good stuff. I mean, for instance, you pointed out that the Obamacare now extends to families making as much as half a million dollars a year. Yeah, we talked about that last month when I was on your show. That one of the changes put forth because of the Cares Act was to say, well, people are having a hard time. So Obamacare has originally written said look, we're going to give taxpayer dollars to people to buy healthcare. But once you make like a hundred and six hundred and seven thousand dollars a year as a family, you don't get taxpayer dollars anymore. Well, the Biden administration and Congress has changed that, and now you can actually make up to half a million dollars a year and still get taxpayer dollars to buy your Obamacare. So we have we have something close to government medical care already, don't we. Oh oh yeah, it's it's it's again. Another repeat stat for you, folks. Seventy percent of Blue states the healthcare provided in seventy excuse me, in the Blue States, seventy percent of healthcare is taxpayer funded. Nationally, that number is sixty six percent of healthcare is taxpayer funded. So we're clinging to a third. We're clinging to thirty of of tax tax of non taxpayer funded healthcare in this country. Well, could you make the argument at this point then, like, if you're a high earner, you you might welcome just universal health care because you're the only people left that are paying out a bucket. I mean, he might as well make universal just to include you know, everyone else. Oh goodness, you know, Jack, If if one were to look at this purely cynically and entirely based upon self motive, and if one were saying over the age of fifty five or sixty, you might take that approach but the reality is we're going to tank our country and we're going to tank our health care system with that move. I'm fired up, guys. It's I see the end in sight, and I don't know what we can do to stop it. All right, let's tell me this. What is the Medicare of Trust Fund? And and how's it looking? So? The Medicare trust Fund is what we used to pay for Medicare. It's what we're all supposed to what we will what comes out of our paychecks to pay for Medicare. It is now according to the CBO. This is so, this is according to government, the encounters, not some spin machine. It will be exhausted by And this is the closest we've ever come to bankruptcy and Medicare in the fifty five year history of Medicare. And all the federal government legislators in the administration can talk about is how can we expand Medicare to more people? Right, Bernie wants to expand it to everybody. Biden's talking about dropping it down to age fifty five or even age fifty, so that we can put more people into a system that we cannot pay for. Now, are we not looking at are we not looking at like gigantic tax increases within five years well, or just borrow? Yeah, yeah, I mean it'll be a combination of tax increases plus inflation plus money printing plus borrowing to the point where we will tank what we've We've probably already tanked our economy. But I think there's hope that we could limp along and and and make this thing work in the long run. The problem is right now, gentlemen, right now today. But the people, everybody wants to talk about the fact that we're twenty eight trillion in debt, and yeah, and hard dollars, that's true. But once you add in the unfunded liabilities, once you say how much are we really in debt when we have to pay for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, that number is a hundred and forty eight trillion, meaning each US citizen owes four hundred and forty four thousand dollars today today, and we want to expand that debt with Medicare that we already can't pay for three years from today, not to mention a few trillion dollars worth of other programs that are getting pushed right now. So when you say you you see the incoming and you and you, and there's no way we can stop it. What does the end look like? I mean what what as a as a guy? What does the end look like to you? Massive economic collapse in the United States, no longer being the world empire. Me now, maybe maybe we look something like the UK or France, where we just take a much smaller role. We don't have growth, everybody just has one car, we take a lot of public transportation. But but h more like, maybe we look more like Rome because no no country has ever done what we've done here. What We've never had this level of debt escalating this quickly. And the problem is we are the reserve currency for the world, so when we collapse, the whole global economy is going to go. Well, guys, you know the thing that just made me so sick lately, gentlemen, is you can go onto YouTube and watch the most eloquent defenders of these topics from the nineteen sixties to the nineteen eighties, and that's Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman. There's speeches on why you don't let your country socialized medicine because it's it's the last straw, and then you will become socialized. They're they were the most eloquent defenders of responsible budgeting and no socialized medicine. And we had them in power in the seventies and eighties, and we're still making this mistake. And that's what that's what really kills me. Guys, as I look at this now and I think, who do we have today that can make the arguments that Reagan and Friedman made in the seventies and eighties. Nobody and just doing it. We're just blowing this up, all right. And you know it could be if Martians scholars write a book on humankind, they will say there is just a natural tendency among that species toward government control and socialism. That's just the way the beast evolves. I don't know. Craig got walls, Craig the healthcare guru. Uh what's your website again? If people want to get in touch, it's benefit dash revolution dot com. Okay, fabulous. Well let me just Mr Franklin, what have you given us a republic? If you can keep it right here here, Craig, Thanks, buddy, you've been We've been talking to Craig for years and uh, so far all his predictions have been right. Oh yeah, yeah, he was dead on everything that happened with Obamacare, for instance. They'll ever enforce this, This will slide to a different income level, this will slide to a different age group. Here's why. It's not one trillion. It's going to be two and a half trillion. And it's always true. That's something, Yeah, that's something. You can still live a happy life. You know, we're not here to to make you miserable or anything. You still have a wonderful life. It's just terrible governmental policy, terrible, unbelievable

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