The Candace Owens Show: Katy Talento | Candace Owens Show

I'm gonna do a soft pinch on I'll turn to you okay great speedy alright ladies and gentlemen we are rolling in to another episode of the Candis Owens show and I want to talk today about health care which is an industry that I hate so much I want to talk to you guys about me being an asthmatic what my experience has been here discuss all things healthcare with me is a healthcare consultant and former White House and Senate staffer Katie talento welcome to the Candice Owen show hi Candice thank you for having me okay so this is gonna be a hard episode sometimes in the comments they're mean to me they're like you have to shut up and let your guests speak and then sometimes you're like you don't speak enough you say some rebuttals but I have to talk a lot this episode because this is something that actually frustrates me so much you and everyone I mean asthmatic supposed to start here I'm an asthmatic so when you have asthma and people that are listening to this know this you have a child that has asthma it is life or death every time you have an asthma attack that's right there used to be a time and my father told me this cuz I got my asthma from him where you could just go to CVS and you can get an albuterol inhaler right now it's behind the counter and if you walk in and you are wheezing and breathing and gasping for air nobody they will not hand it to you yeah because you have to go to the doctor and you have to get a prescription and you have to now pay an extraordinary amount just to get this this little Robin has to get that will save your life this little puff that will save your life yeah there have been instances of kids and that have died at the CVS counter that have died outside of a hospital room that have died because they couldn't get one little puff how is this possible I mean how general like how are we here right now in society that they don't value a life a peanut allergy an EpiPen whatever it is life-or-death stuff cost an extreme amount of money to get and this is not a left or right issue in my opinion no our system is broken totally totally it's become so nonpartisan it used to be in health care it was Republican versus Democrat now it's really just the healthcare swamp versus the rest of us well you're talking about is everyone has to get paid the doctor he writes a prescription the manufacturer who makes the inhaler all the middlemen between them and you the insurance company the pharmaceutical benefit manager the group purchasing organization the retail pharmacy the wholesale pharmacy and everyone's taking a cut along the way that is why drug prices have increased beyond the rate of inflation every year for the past ten years hospital prices has increased if you think this is just drugs it's also hospitals it's also doctors it's totally out of control and we're sitting fighting about who's gonna fund our broken system we need to talk about who's gonna fix our broken system and I want to make this super clear because I go on all of these college campuses and I talk as somebody who's unapologetically a free-market girl right I love capitalism I love the free markets and kids will come up to me and say if the free markets work then why don't you explain the health care industry in America and I go this is the exact opposite of a free market you walk into a hospital you don't know what anything costs you're essentially blindfolded right and they say give me a blank check you're gonna be blindfolded we're gonna take care of you and weeks later we're gonna bill you something that's thousands and thousands of dollars that is on a free market system in fact right that is what I'm actually fighting for and why I wanted to have this episode and I want to do more episodes about this we need we need price transparency we need to walk in like I walk into a store when I bought this shirt and I see another shirt and maybe maybe this shirts 50 dollars maybe this one's thirty bucks I am in control I can say you know what that's too expensive I want to go somewhere else to get a shirt why is that not possible in terms of our healthcare industry because everyone has to get paid except the patients so what you're talking about is you go into the doctor's office they make you sign a form that says I agree to pay I don't know what price for I don't know what services yet but I don't know a doctor or a doctor I've never met and patients think that if they don't sign this they're not gonna get care or it's gonna turn into a drama they're gonna have to go get management and it's gonna be a big you already take off half the day just to go to that doctor's office and and they have you know bulletproof glass and surley front desk staff and it's just it's so difficult to navigate patients are scared and they're suffering they're at their most vulnerable what I tell people is listen go ahead and read through those papers but in the signature line instead of signing away all your rights by signing your name just right I did not read this oh wow later when they bill you you get a surprise bill or you see that they're gouging you beyond all recognition then you can just say hey can you please produce the contract where I agree to pay this so it's not that you're not gonna pay it's not that you won't pay a fair price but now the power is reversed and you have leverage to negotiate an honest and fair price but you should have had that right can't when you walked in the door how much is it gonna cost me to get it an inhaler if I walk through the door how much is it going to cost you me to get the nebulizer treatment that's gonna save my life you don't know already am I the first asthmatic that's what why are you or you see online in advance every price for every service when you walk into a restaurant you don't know what your final bill is gonna be it's true you don't know what you're gonna order you don't know what coupons you might have and how that might apply to your bill but they give you a menu and so you see the prices and in fact that might change what you order it might change what restaurant you go to you might have to walk out of there because that's above your pay grade it might be like McDonald's today might be McDonald's tonight nothing wrong with that so health care is the only industry where the sellers of care insurers and hospitals conspire together to cook up secret pricing contracts between each other that they hide from the buyers of care patients employers and taxpayers I just put out a report a co-authored a report with the Johns Hopkins team of researchers that shows that half of the federal budget almost half 48% of the federal budget is now spent on health care it is eating our economy premiums have gone up 55% in the past 10 years deductibles on employer-sponsored care have tripled tripled Oh wage growth that's only 26% we think that's great here at the trumpet Minister we were always talking about wages wages wages but our wage growth is being eaten by health care costs it's totally unsustainable one in five Americans is in medical collections Candice half of all collections are medical collections oh it's really funny you say that and I'm getting fired up right now okay so right now I got another note guys it's my show I'm allowed to speak you can whatever the comments are doing right now right so another anecdote I fly down to Dallas right and this is an a separate issue people that now think that they can bring any animal they want on on flights why is that because people are you're allowed to be crazy it used to be like I need this emotional snow so emotional cat if you're so unstable that you can't fly in a flight without an animal you shouldn't be flying on the lake don't don't watch it right so now we've got sheeps and goats and all this crazy stuff and I have allergies I have really allergic they forget about humans because this person's got emotional issues I've got physical lines right Oh buddy cares so I fly down and there was a giant huge dog and I instantly had like an asthma I start itching I get to soon a thing like I went straight to the hospital in Dallas I go and no one was there it was like it was a little clinic cost booking one of those 24-hour urgent care centers yeah and I go in and I'm I tell him exactly why he has my whole life I need a nebulizer treatment let's get into the door sign some paperwork going I am out within an hour and a half beautiful by the way while I'm in there we think we want to give you this pill this pill I already know H a little Tylenol like that all that should be two dollars it's gonna be at least like a hundred dollars if I take it from you so I'm like no no no no get home four weeks later I get a bill and it's $4,000 huh no I just looked at it I just love I sent my pay this no so I call and I asked them I would like to see an itemized list yes of what you're charging before that's right and you I know what they said we don't have that moment you only the doctor eyes access okay I'll call back when the doctor has access call back they say you need to call your health insurance company right now the health insurance company they say you need to call the hospital call the hospital again they say oh it you got it you gotta call your insurance company we don't do this back and forth that's really around eventually the woman threatens me she says you know I can get you a breakdown of this and and she she sends it to me she's but it's gonna take at least sixty days and by then it's gonna affect your credit score okay Lee yeah I said great let it affect my credit score I'd like you to send that to me that's right they send it to me do you want to know what it said I paid for yes please code six blr teenis mmm see see see times two did you feel better after that code a seven to two mmm what the heck are these codes oh the doc only the doctor I call again only the doctor understands the codes Katie they're healing you get the person that can read the hieroglyphics on the phone please gosh this is every American you think you're the only one every American has a story like this it is completely outrageous and it's broken and no other industry functions this way if they did our economy would collapse but instead instead of having goober and Amazon in health care we have the IRS and the DMV it's just this horrible runaround this bureaucracy nobody can get answers and that serves every single person in the system except the patient right right absolutely and and you won't know how that story ended I was so persistent they eventually sent me a bill it said zero dollars it was gone good move on their part $0 sit well you know what we can't get anyone to read the hieroglyphics cuz you made it up and and this is the power when I say the collusion yeah that's happening in a hotel it is a chronicle the pharmaceutical industry and the hospitals and the insurance agencies are making up numbers and they're all getting paid all of the stuff and now we have patients suffering fortunately for me I was ready to play the game I'm lucky my credit score it's already been hit since I default to them so that loans 10 years ago whatever I got you know I pay for everything in cash now I don't have health insurance I pay for uh every time I go I pay in cash because it would be crazy for me to pay something I mean to even reach your deductible these days it's it's crazy so I'm just paying cash no and I was willing to play the game but what about people who don't most people Kandace have less than their deductible in their savings accounts so sad 40% almost 40% of Americans have zero in their savings account and deductibles have tripled in the past ten years so how are people supposed to survive you needed that inhaler right people need healthcare in economics is what we call perfectly inelastic demand right we have to have healthcare when we have to have it so what happens when people can't afford it well they can go one of two directions either they delay care what I call dangerous deadly delay because you know they they just can't afford to go and so they put it off let me tell you a story about my own sister she's 39 year old mom of two tiny boys she has end-stage cancer right now she's at home dying in my parents house in hospice care but this has been a horrible year and she's been a ton of pain right so one time we couldn't manage her pain at home with her prescription drugs so we took her to the emergency room she had to be admitted in the hospital they had a specialist come visit her this was a specialist she had been referred to by her oncologist months prior and he asked her I see that you were referred to me months ago why didn't you call me then and she said we you were out of network and I couldn't afford it and so here we are inpatient paying for a week of inpatient hospitalization because she had delayed because of costs so this is happening all over the place that's path what you delay care if you can't afford care the other option is that you get care because you have to get it you get care that you can't afford and that's when people end up with debilitating debt and what happens is we have seen predatory collections from so-called charity hospitals nonprofit hospitals that are pursuing people to the ends of the earth they are suing their own patients some of them are their own staff who were on their health plan at their Hospital that they couldn't afford I just spent a morning in a courthouse in a small town of Virginia where the local nonprofit tax-exempt charity hospital was suing dozens of its patients these people for the most part had insurance one of them was a nurse tech who worked at the hospital she had gone to an ER with her child one time and she had thousands of dollars in debt she couldn't afford to pay on her salary it was humiliating for them they they were insured they have jobs and they were just filing in we were begging them that I was there at the Johns Hopkins research team and we were begging these people when the judge asks you do you owe what the hospital says you owe please say no because when did they see the prices in advance when did they agree to pay these prices how do we even know that their care was necessary they don't have an itemized bill some of the bills we did see showed unnecessary care always the pillows are random and here's a little one capsule hey take this it's gonna be better than fine you have a headache we're gonna put you in a brain MRI that is not the standard of care guys and you're exactly right so there was I had shared this story of a woman named Wanda on my twitter feed and she Wanda was at that court how was she yes that's one of the patient right okay so I'm gonna just kind of recap the story Wanda was a woman that was making $14.50 an hour working in a nursing a nursing home Yeah right she 16 hours a day 16 hours a day passed out no debts to her name passes out and the nursing home tells her you have to go to the hospital in order for us live and she begged them I don't want to go please it's fine I've just I'm just tired since in our days I live I was just tired give me some you know water I'll be okay and they said nope it's mandatory you have to go to the hospital she goes to the hospital and they tell her that she absolutely must get an MRI right MRI right and she does a hydration or whoever it was yes just need some water and she does it and she ends up in debt what was $89,000 I was in dollars for an ER visit she didn't want to go to and now she was being sued by a charity hospital that has a mission statement to serve people no matter their ability to pay their garnishing her wages that's right she makes fourteen fifty an hour and they are garnishing her wages because they sued her and they got a judgment and what happened so we begged these patients when the judge asked you say no then you'll get a trial date we can help you we had pro bono pro bono lawyers who could help but people there scared and so they'll say to us but I did get treatment you know people want to do the right thing nobody wants handouts most people don't want handouts but we need affordable care we need a market to function the way it does for every other business where we're sellers of a product are competing for your business on the basis of price and quality today customers have no idea about both it's a complete black box but everyone's getting paid in the healthcare swamp right so how often is this happening this occurrence of hospitals that are now suing people low low income people how often just happening it's pretty common Candice there there's just starting to be a series of expose days the press is starting to get on to this practice and it's funny because when this Hopkins team or when there's another press expose there was one in Memphis there's one in New Mexico when this starts happening that day the hospital announces they're gonna stop suing patients so that hospital in Fredericksburg Virginia announced the day the we had reporters down the day those articles came out they announced we're gonna stop suing patients well great except now they're not going to sue them publicly on a court docket that we can find out about now they're just going to chase them with predatory collections agencies in private by the way some of those collection agencies are owned by the hospital it's just it's the system is stacked against the American people but there is hope so there are some policies that are being proposed by President Trump and also by the Congress but the swamp is rising up to kill them these policies would require disclosure to patients in advance of prices disclosure to patients in advance of whether a doctor's in-network or out-of-network one of the most egregious practices that's going on is what's called surprise medical billing this is when you do the responsible thing and you say I'm gonna go to this hospital because it's in network and my insurance so you go to the hospital thinking or you're gonna get an in-network rate and then you see a doctor there who isn't in network a radiologist a pathologist an ER doc an anesthesiologist a doctor the you don't pick you go for the hospital name or you go for your surgeon or for your ob/gyn to deliver your baby and when you're there you see other providers they're not in network and they have the audacity to send you an out-of-network bill they don't send it to your insurer in network hospital and out-of-network big doctor sends you a separate bill it's called balance billing and it is outrageous there are definitely colluding on the back end there so that's right and they take a percentage it correct me if I'm wrong sometimes but I'll take a percentage from those anesthesiologist sometimes the kickbacks are being paid but that's not the only place in our system where there are totally outrageous kickbacks one of the worst is when an employer now employers pay for most health care in this country and employers they think they're hiring an insurance company to get a good deal for them and they usually use a broker or benefits advisor well if you were buying a house you wouldn't want one real estate agent representing both the buyer and the seller right or you go to court you don't want a lawyer that's playing both teams in this case your benefits of I advise what these brokers are actually taking money they get paid by the insurance company that they're trying to sell you the plans from and you don't pay they serve the people they pay they're advertising themselves to you as a buyer's agent but really they're the sales force for the seller of care so that's one there's huge bonuses huge money paid to brokers to sell you an insurance plan that actually isn't the best deal for you then you have kickbacks in the pharmaceutical industry this is outrageous and President Trump has tried desperately to fix this problem and he has been stymied at every point by sue well by the pharmaceutical industry and by middlemen lobbyists lawyers and lobbyists in the healthcare swamp so for instance you think that when you have an insurance plan you have a formulary there's Tier one there's here two if you if you picked the the lowest tier it's gonna be cheaper right that's where it's supposed to be generic drugs and cheaper drugs very clinically valuable jutt drugs you think that that formulary is set up based on clinical and financial value no it's a pay-to-play system so so a manufacturer for a drug if they want their drug on the formulary they have to pay a middleman called a pharmaceutical benefit manager it's company there's only three where there's mostly three in the country they control this market utterly and they have to pay them a massive amount of money to get their drug on the formulary just to give you access to their drug Alex a czar the Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Trump he used to be a big pharma executive and he has said I wanted to launch new diabetes drugs at a reasonable price but I couldn't get them onto any insurance plans formulary I couldn't get them to patients without paying a massive what they call rebate it's really just a kickback President Trump tried to outlaw this or pass those kickback straight through to the patients and it's been really hard the opposition's been completely outrageous and he hasn't been able to get it done right so I mean I guess how can we help so great question I didn't even know that this was going on by the way oh my god mercy I didn't know that there was this fight I haven't heard them mention that they're doing stuff oh yeah age transparency drug pricing and price transparency is a huge issue it's a huge priority for this president and he has done an executive order in June requiring hospitals to post their prices for the first time ever they are freaking out and there's another pursuant to that executive order there's another regulation proposal that's supposed to come out in the next month or so that would require the same of insurance companies so these could be game changers imagine if that price information were out there not only would the sellers and the buyers be able to see this information but innovative disruptive startups tech companies could create beautiful platforms that patients can use to shop and it would it would change everything to have our health care system be easier to use kind of like an Amazon or uber AppleCare instead of you know the train wreck and bureaucracy that it is right now so yes the president has put forward transparency proposals one in particular that I love but we're being sued the administration was being sued so and that's to make the pharmaceutical companies their prices on all those commercials that you see on TV right so they'll dealt they have to right now list all the ways that the drugs gonna kill you right it's gonna you know it's gonna cause depression and suicide it's gonna break they have to tell you all the ways it's gonna kill you right why not tell you the ways it's gonna financially ruin you too so I love that we put out a regulation that are a proposal that would require them to post their prices on those ads that would be wonderful oh yeah the administration is being sued out the wazoo for that to try to stop it so oh yes that every single thing that we actually managed to get out the door we got sued for right away the swamp is very well funded right and and they don't quit and for them for us this you know health care is one giant expense among other expenses and we don't have very much power as individuals but for them for for these industries these proposals are an existential threat and they are throwing everything at them and so how people can help they can they can go to an organization called patient rights advocate patient rights advocate org click on tape patient right or right hey tient rights patient singular rights plural patient rights advocate org and they can click on take action and you can you can file a comment to the Trump administration supporting their proposals they're required by law to respond to proposals and to the comments to their proposals so if if all we hear from are the entities that we're trying to regulate if all we hear from are the hospital and associations and the insurers and the and the pharmaceutical benefit manager we're gonna hear from them they have well-funded lobbyists and lawyers we don't hear enough from patients who support the policies we always hear from the critics I don't think anybody nobody knows how so if you go to this link there are there's a link that you can file a comment right there on that page so that's the thing to do I feel like this is such a uniting issue like for me I mean left to right I've seen that Bernie my stuff I'm not a Bernie supporter but I've seen him post up about how outrageous the healthcare industry is in the pharmacy he's 100% right totally and and now Trump's in everyone knows this is a bad issue so this should be the one thing that does nobody needs to have a side or anything issues to be American people coming together and saying we demand this this is this issue is becoming less partisan by the day where in fact there was a poll a Harvard Harris poll in May of this year this showed eighty eight percent of Americans support price transparency and well secret press eighty percent in my business of policy in politics we like to call that a consensus right that is a consent yes absolutely and I think what's what and maybe some disagreements are is most people then we have these people that are saying they're demanding that health care should be free I I don't believe health care should be free I think it should be affordable yeah I'm comfortable going to see the US and paying for things that I can afford I'm comfortable going you know tattoo Duane Reade and paying things that I can afford I'm not comfortable when something that I need that is life or death in a moment of life or death will not be given to me because there's a line of people that need to make tons of money no one should be comfortable with that and everyone should be demanding price transparency and by the way but some people criticize they say if we have price transparency then the prices are going to go up I've actually seen people say I'm like I don't even get to that oh yes many people have many people inside Washington have been saying this and it's interesting to me that the people who are saying that are the ones that would benefit if prices went up so why would they oppose it then if prices are really gonna go up I mean that would violate the laws of economics in in every other industry price competition leads to lower prices well I mean under that argument we shouldn't put prices on everything because because it's driving prices up right no price information lowers prices otherwise they wouldn't be opposing it right and they said they're just saying that because they want people to be fearful and most people don't do the digging and don't know what's going on in hell because it's all so confusing I'm a smart girl there's just they're so losing for the smartest among us it's so confusing imagine what it's like for the poorest of the poor people have dopes that's me they're the ones that are being harmed most people that can't afford it like that woman want that Wanda 14:50 and now you're getting your wages garnished right because you passed out and her video was so sad this car she said I've done everything right she lives within her means and she's you know she supports herself and she is I think she had some kids did she does right and now she's getting her wages garnished getting that my system will crush you no matter what you do I mean my little sister was screaming and pain all night at one of the the top-rated health systems in the Washington DC area and I was losing my mind and yelling and threatening the tweet and going crazy and still I couldn't fix it now what about the people who don't have me there the White House health staff are threatening to tweet right what what do you do when you're you don't have any power and and that's the thing if we had price information we would have consumer market power the way we do for every other industry it's just it's the decks are stacked against us right now we're over a barrel when we're in those moments that are most vulnerable right absolutely immoral and this is why folks like Bernie and and others are starting to actually get support for the more radical solutions but we don't need to try radical solutions we haven't tried common-sense yeah we agree we need affordable I mean I walk her I don't want everything to be free I want things to be affordable and and again I just have to hit home with this guys this is not because I know a lot of young people follow me our current healthcare industry and system and the insurance companies this is not an example of free market it couldn't be further from an example it's not a market it's not a mark at all it is right yeah and and I think we have to ever everybody has to do their part and speak out and I hope to see more from I really had no idea this administration is doing so much which means we've got to do more just to get the word out we really do any right you're right well so we wrap every episode by letting my guests leave a voice message for the world a video voice message for the world great you're going to look into that camera okay and if you could leave a message for everybody about this topic what would it be okay we're gonna put two minutes on the clock Chris's got it yeah on your mark get set world I give you katie talento hi America so when you intersect with the health care system you're at your most vulnerable and your weakest and you're in pain you're suffering you're scared and that is the exact moment when you are being gouged with secret prices that could ruin you financially and crush your future that is immoral it's unfair and it's unamerican and that is why we have to if we want to fix this broken system the first thing we have to do is end secret prices you can go to patient rights patient rights advocate org click on take action patient rights advocate org submit a comment to the Trump administration supporting their proposal to require hospitals and insurance companies to post their prices publicly in advance this is common sense the second thing we need to do is we need to end all the secret kickbacks the corrupt contracting practices the predatory collections practices especially by nonprofit charity hospitals and and all the the secrecy and corruption and the the conflicted middlemen in the system the last thing we need to do to fix our broken system is to start paying for health care differently we need to pay for what patients value not the volume that doctors produce not the inputs to you but the outcomes for you if in economics we have a rule that you get what you pay for if you pay for sickness you get more sickness we need to start paying for health for wellness for prevention for keeping patients out of the hospital that's what they value let's start doing that and we have to remember America that if we want to make America great again we're gonna have to make health care well again thank you for having me Candace that was awesome thank you so much two minutes and ten seconds she's the first person that's ever gone over I could keep going thank you guys for watching the latest episode of the Candace Owens show I hope you guys enjoyed the conversation as much as I did as many of you guys already know Prager U is a 501c3 nonprofit organization which means we need your help to keep all of our content free to the public please consider making a tax-deductible donation today I would really appreciate your support