Tuesday, Jul 21: Amy DiSibio

Good morning, good morning hope you're having a great day, I am. I appreciate all the Facebook birthday wishes and text messages and it means a lot to me. I really, I mean, I don't take any credit for my own birth, right? I credit my parents and the 70s and all that. So I'm happy to have another birthday, quite frankly. Those of you who've been with me for a while know that that wasn't always the anticipated plan. So I'm happy to be 55 years old and really happy about it. So hopefully I'll enjoy the day. I know I'll enjoy the day because I generally enjoy every moment I have on the planet. Because if I don't, I go out, it'll get better, it'll get better. So have a great day, right? We're going to have a great show today. A lot of interesting stuff coming up. We'll be joined by Amy DeCibio from Act for Wales. Amy's the best, I really like Amy quite a bit. She's here on Nantucket this time of year. We'll check in with Amy. It's always a good opportunity for us. The fact that I'm alive today is divine intervention, but also all the great medical doctors and nurses and technicians from phlebotomists to surgeons, right? That's one of the reasons I'm alive. And we've talked about this here on the program intermittently. Usually when somebody is at the wit's end, they call the talk radio station looking for some help on finding a primary care doctor, right? There is such a shortage of primary care doctors for a variety of reasons. And if you don't know this, you soon will. The entry into specialists and all aspects of healthcare is through your primary care doctor. So if you don't have one, it makes it very difficult to get into the system. I can tell you, and I did not talk about it here on the air, but I did get phone, it was interesting. I got phone calls from people who couldn't get a primary care while I was going through a search for a new primary care. And it can be frustrating. And of course, you know, I have ongoing medical situations. So the doctors who take care of me for my kidney disease were very helpful in getting me around some of the blockades until I was able to secure another primary care. But what had happened to me is that my primary care had retired. He'd retired. And so anyway, I have a primary care now. Thanks, Tim. Thank you very much. But I had to use, how I got it was a friend of mine happened to be friends with a primary care that he met through his wife, who's in the medical field. And they hit it off and he became his primary care. And they had like a friendship. They could text back and forth. So he texted like a heads up, my friend's looking for a primary care. That's how I got in. It's just crazy. So the reason I bring that up is that there's an article in the New Bedford Light, our state Senate is looking at trying to tackle this. So that includes the very knowledgeable and determined Senator Mark Montigny, who was chairman of health care in the Senate, in addition to being the chair of the Senate Ways and Means. So he understands the money. He's a numbers guy. And also Mike Roderickson, Kelly Dooner, a mix of really interesting people who are in the state Senate for the region. And there are other people in there as well. And look, just because I don't agree with somebody on immigration doesn't mean I can't agree with them on health care or their solution for certain roadblocks in the health care system. In fact, this goes back a couple of years now, probably predates my medical problems, having a conversation with a knowledgeable member of the business community. And I said, I don't understand why there's any sort of shortage of health care doctors, primary care guys. Because it's a matter of money. You just give them bonuses to come to Massachusetts. At the end of the day, Massachusetts has some of the best hospitals in the world that people would love to either work in or in proximity to. So if it's a matter of just attracting them, what's a better way to attract somebody than professional respect, working with really bright, dedicated people around you? And the kicker, some more money, some more money. So 508-996-0500 is how you can get on the program. I'm going to play a little clip from this article in the New Bedford Light. We're going to watch this, guys, because we've had problems with the government allowing the medical fields to be infiltrated by private equity, squeezing out all kinds of money. And look what happened at Stewart Hospital, right? And all the hospitals they had control of. And that was allowed to go on by the regulators. There were a number of people who were squawking about it. Actually, squawking is not the right term. That's a derivative, dummy M, right? So they were loudly voicing their concerns. It fell on deaf ear. Martha Coakley and the other attorney generals went along with all that stuff, signed off on it. So we got to be very careful, and we'll have to watch this, because literally it's life or death for you and I. So this is the New Bedford Light. I'm not going to play the whole thing. The robot's going to read it to you. It'll give me an opportunity to dig into my morning birthday cake, while the robot reads you this very important story about work being done at the state senate level to try to increase the supply of primary care doctors for me and you. Massachusetts Senate Wants to Address Primary Care Doctor Shortage. By Jamie Perkins. Out of medication and without a doctor, her former physician had left Hawthorne Medical Associates three months earlier. Fairhaven resident Noelle Aubin was given a 60-day prescription and sent on her way. If she couldn't find a new doctor before it ran out, she says the practice told her she could get refills at urgent care or the emergency department. Finding a new primary care doctor has been easier said than done. Aubin has been trying to do so since November 2025, to no avail. None of the providers Hawthorne suggested are near Aubin, and even if she were willing to make the trip, they couldn't get her in until August. When she called South Coast Health, she said she was told that no doctors were available and was placed on a waitlist. I've been calling around and practically begging my friends and family to ask their doctors to take me in, Aubin told The Light in an email. These large corporations are not focusing on primary care, they are focusing on finding doctors who can make the corporation more and more money. Aubin is among 30% of Massachusetts residents who have had difficulty accessing primary care, according to a 2025 report from the Center for Health Information and Analysis. A bill the Senate passed in June is trying to change this. It now awaits action in the House, with a deadline of July 31. House leadership hasn't said whether it will take up the bill, but three House members from New Bedford said they support it. The bill could benefit New Bedford. Only 36 primary care clinicians are practicing in the city, and between 20,000 and 25,000 New Bedford residents have no primary care provider, a report said last year. In recent years, investment in specialty healthcare has skyrocketed, because it is generally more profitable than primary healthcare, according to a Senate fact sheet. Medicare and commercial insurers reimburse specialty services at higher rates. A common procedure, such as a colonoscopy, can generate more revenue in a couple of hours than a primary care physician earns in a full day of work. Meanwhile, only 6.6% of commercial healthcare spending in Massachusetts was directed to primary care in 2024, according to a report from the Center for Health Information and Analysis. What the bill would do. The bill seeks to require hospitals and other healthcare entities to incrementally increase primary care spending. It would require them to invest 15% of their total expenditures in primary care by 2030, without increasing overall spending or insurance premiums. After 2030, the state's health policy commission would set the target based on the ever-changing healthcare cost landscape, the bill says. The commission would also enforce this mandate, including issuing fines starting at $500,000 or prohibiting the provider from accepting new patients. Insurance reimbursement gaps are especially tough on community health centers, which provide essential primary care services in medically underserved areas, including New Bedford. Commercial insurers pay physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants who work in offices more than those who work in community health centers. In response, the bill would require commercial insurance companies to reimburse community health centers at least the same rates that MassHealth does for the same services. New Bedford Community Health wouldn't see much benefit from this proposal, since over 80% of its revenue comes through Medicaid, according to the practice's president and CEO, Cheryl Bartlett. Still, Bartlett said, it's a great thing. The Senate's proposal also aims to address the shortage of primary care providers. It would reestablish the state's Medicaid graduate medical. Okay, that is the New Bedford Light article. I suggest you let the robot read the whole thing to you or go online and read the article. It's newbedfordlight.org. Have you had trouble? Have you heard about trouble trying to get a primary care doctor? Is the solution more government intervention? And I have questions about that. It's clear people who get into medicine, get into medicine to help people, to solve medical problems. And people have to make a living, and they wanna make a good living. And there's nothing wrong with that. We should not force some of the brightest people in our community to live below the standard by which they expected to live. And it is a clear priority. You need to attract more medical doctors. But I also think that, and I believe that, for instance, Senator Montagny, Senator Roderick and Senator Duna, they're all very capable. In two of those cases, really experienced senators. Duna will be a very experienced senator if she decides to stay in that role. The doctors need to tell the politicians what they need. They need to be honest about it. I'm gonna imagine, cuz I've heard this complaint from doctors. They went into medicine to practice medicine, not to practice dealing with the government, not to be a lobbyist story, bureaucrat, not to fill out paperwork. They wanted to treat sick people, find things that are wrong with people, and provide a solution, right? And the politicians, if possible, need to make that a reality. And the thing I heard from that article from New Bedford Light that worried me was more restrictions, more regulations in an effort to get something done. In my experience, I think most people's experience, when the government gets involved in layers, restrictions, rules, regulations, mandates, it makes things much harder for the professional to deliver a service, whatever that service is, right? So I'm a little skeptical that the priorities of some of these legislators to enact a social agenda is going to once again interfere with the ability to deliver services. I know a lot of doctors. As you know, I know a lot of doctors. That's why I'm here on my 55th birthday, cuz of all the great medical care I've gotten and divine intervention. And I have a lot of conversations with them. And most people did not go into medicine to fill out paperwork and to be audited and all of that. So 508-996. I see you folks on hold. I do wanna get to you. Gotta take a quick break, and then we'll be right back. Stick around. Call 508-996-0500. Welcome back to the program. At 11 o'clock, we'll be joined by Tim Dunn, the political reporter for the Boston Herald, who's been breaking all kinds of stories. So Tim will be here at 11 o'clock in the studio. We got a bunch of people on hold. Let's go. Good morning. Thanks for holding. All right, they hung on all that time. Good morning. Thanks for holding. Good morning, Chris. Hey, what's up? And I'm going to give you the best birthday present of all. I am not going to sing happy birthday to you either on the air or in private. And you're welcome. What's up? What am I from? I wanna talk about this doctor thing. I have been, let's just say, interacting with the medical system quite intensely over the last year or so, including even as we speak. Details in another time. But I wanna get back to why this is. All right. There's a city councilman named Jack Postelli. He didn't run for re-election, but everything came before him. He said he would listen to discussions. He said, let's figure out how we got here. That's how he opened each one of his analysis of any issue before the city council. Because he said, if we don't do that, we're just gonna be back here. Right. So I said, well, the Affordable Care Act, let's start right there, for all the ballyhoo that it created. And all of the bluster that was put out forth in its arms behalf or against it, it didn't create more medical care givers. And by the way, I use the term medical care, not healthcare. Come on, knock it off. I'm not talking about Pilates and Zumba. We're talking about doctors and operations and saving lives. So the Affordable Care Act created much more demand for medical care, because all of a sudden there were all these people who essentially led the You just go to the hospital and it's all set. But that didn't create more caregivers, and you're a supply and demand guy. As a result of that, the cost of healthcare went up. We won't debate that dynamic right now. But the point is, I found myself unable to access medical care. And I had good insurance. I had equity. And basically, I was given wait times of six for certain therapies that I needed in connection with an ongoing problem. So I think the first issue that this Commonwealth and you're kind of putting them together, I'm gonna do for you right now. This current Senate move says, how do we get more doctors and all the associated people they're under? You're gonna get to that next. How do we get more doctors here so people won't have to wait so long, number one. And number two, they don't have to pay so much. And I think what needs to happen, and I'm a less government guy as are you, but that doesn't mean no government. What does it mean? Only government. So I looked at this in context, and I said, well, I think if I were a member of the state Senate, and I tried to be, but I would say, what's the problem? The problem is you don't have enough medical caregivers. You don't have enough x-ray checks. You don't have enough people sitting at the desk there taking in your information. You don't have a system that enables access, cuz it's a log check. It's like a funnel. You're at the top of the funnel. You can't get through. So I said, the way to get, it isn't just losing the best and the brightest, which we are doing because of our cost of living, which is largely due to property taxes, and we'll go there another day. If you're not attracting new talent, and by that I mean whether they finish 50th in their class of 100 or second from medical school, if those people don't want to come to Massachusetts or stay in Massachusetts once they finish medical school here, cuz we also have the best medical schools, you're going to have to give them some sort of an incentive. And I think if they were to build something into the tax code that said, and I'm not sure, this is just off the cuff now, this might be food for thought. This is, what if we had a program that said, okay, you just graduated from medical school and you're trying to figure out where to locate your practice. How about if you come to Massachusetts, we'll give you x percent off your income taxes or some sort of tax incentive. Now you understand, Chris, and I'll leave you with this, thank you for being patient with the time. If you do that, you're fine, right in the face of the tax the rich. Those doctors ain't making $20 an hour. No, Jim, and thanks for the call, that's my point, which is that some of these priorities stand in the way of increasing the supply of doctors. That when you hear that a doctor, who by the way has spent most of their adult life gaining education to help people, is making good living. And you aren't making that kind of money, but of course you don't have that kind of education. You don't solve the kind of problems they solve. But you're angry that your legislator might cut their taxes. And so what Jim is saying is that there are supply and demand solutions here, easy ones, relatively, but not easy to accomplish in this political environment where other people are counting other people's money. And they have real jealousy. Real jealousy is a sad thing to have in life, but it impacts people and the way they vote. It's encouraged, quite frankly, and we talked about that yesterday. All right, 508-996-0500. I work with mostly women, but there are some men on my care team, from technicians and nurses to doctors and specialists. And I develop relationships with people, and I learn about them because I care, and I'm very interested in other people. And it always comes out, the amount of student loans they have, and the way they can't do other things because they had to borrow money to get this education. And I think there's a lot to that, that the Massachusetts State Senate could maybe remedy. But again, it is not with programs. It is literally with a direct cash subsidy, right? Do you meet these qualifications? Do you have the education for these qualifications? Here's a lump sum with a contract to stay in this zip code or that zip code, right? That is the way you solve stuff, direct subsidy to try to draw the talent in. All right, I gotta take a break, then we'll be back. If you're on hold, stay there, and we'll be right back. Stick around. South Coast Now with Chris McCarthy, weekdays on 1420 AM and 99.5 FM, WBSM. Welcome back to the program. I'm Chris McCarthy, you're the audience. Probably one of the biggest purchases you've made in your life is your automobile behind you, beside your home or your second home. You gotta take good care of it, and you don't know what you're doing. So bring it to family-owned Mac Auto Sales. Mac Auto Sales, family-owned business, right in the city of New Bedford, repairs all, makes and models of automobiles. They'll help you beat inflation by not having to replace that car and keep it in solid working order. Call and make an appointment today at Mac Auto Sales and repair 508-565-6221. They're open weekdays, nine to five for your convenience. You drive a foreign car, perfect. Mac Auto Sales specialize in servicing foreign-made automobiles. They do a great job with American-made as well. They service both fleets of vehicles, Fun 107 and WBSM here, so I know they can take care of your vehicle. Mention WBSM, they'll give you a nice break on the repair bill, ask about their aftermarket accessories and the quality used cars for sale at Mac Auto Sales. So we've been talking about a lot of stuff. We're now joined by Amy DeCibio, Act for Whales. Amy DeCibio has been in the battle against offshore wind and the building of power plants in the ocean, which when you say it out loud, sounds really ridiculous, actually. Not only off our coast, but also down off the coast of New Jersey. Good morning, Amy, how are you? Good morning, Chris. I'm doing okay. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How is Nantucket? Nantucket, it's a beautiful day today. It's been great. In terms of the weather, we've had a couple of big rainstorms, but otherwise good. We're still looking out at that power plant off of our south shore beaches. So I drive out there to check that out every now and then. Don't see a lot of turbines moving as per usual, but otherwise we're good over here. Amy DeCibio, of course, is fighting on behalf of the views and the environment and the whales and dolphins. And they've been really, I think, very successful, the group Act for Whales. And Amy, we talked about this in the past, but it's always worth revisiting. Here in the Northeast, we have blizzards and we have heat waves. At both times, I always check ISO New England, which shows you where the power that keeps us alive, either in heat waves or in blizzards, is coming from. What's the mix, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar? In both major times, what happens with offshore wind? Yeah, it's so interesting that you're saying that I'm reading the lawsuits that the well, the stories about the lawsuits, I haven't actually sat down and looked at it. But the attorney general from Massachusetts and several of the other states around that are very, very pro wind. One of the things they keep talking about is that they're really looking for reliable, clean, green energy. That's one of the things they're suing on, the federal government making this, the Trump administration putting up real issues like national security issues, for example, of putting a big power plant out there that makes it very difficult to read radar. They're coming back and saying that we really need this because the federal government is now denying us reliable, clean, green energy. And every one of those adjectives is horse hockey, okay? Reliable and wind are just never to be in the same sentence. That is not a thing. Wind comes and goes at the whim of mother nature, and we don't know when this will be, and it's unreliable. And as I've talked to you and your audience many times, offshore wind energy is available about 38% of the time, and we don't know when that is. So when you have a blizzard or you have a heat wave, you can't depend on offshore wind. And we're speaking with Amy DeCibio from Act for Wales. What is amazing to me is that in this case, the Democrats persisting in politics with falsehoods. The average person can simply look online today at ISO New England during any time of the any weather event, and you can literally see where your electricity is coming from. Yet, they basically treat the people that elected them as morons by telling we want reliable when anybody looking can see they are not reliable. No, it's not. And you're actually touching on something that I was thinking about this morning before I came on. And that is that there's a big disconnect between what we are hearing from our elected officials, let's say Governor Healey. There is a monster difference between what she says she wants and what is happening and reality. Okay, this in all senses, right, we want is clean, green, reliable energy. It isn't it isn't those things. It is certainly not clean and green. And we've gone over that. You know, on the surface, people think it is because it's not emitting carbon dioxide, which is something every animal on this planet exhales. Okay, so it is it is not it is not doing that. It is not necessarily at inaction emitting what we're considering greenhouse gases. But the whole process of the survey work, the construction work, the operations work, the decommissioning work is heavy carbon intensive. Just making a turbine is heavy and heavy carbon intensive. So if you look at the whole supply chain on what has to happen, this is just not clean, green energy. And as we've just said, it is certainly not reliable. So, you know, and I don't know if you're noticing this, Chris, but it also seems to me like for, you know, finally, we are hearing a challenge to what has been written in stone so far as what what exactly is causing climate change? What is that? And it's reminding me of the COVID-19 situation where you were shunned if you challenged that, geez, maybe this came from the Wuhan lab that the Wuhan virus started in the Wuhan lab of biology. Okay, so, you know, it's sort of feel, you know, people get canceled for challenging it. But it doesn't mean that the challengers are right. And it doesn't mean that the people that are are insisting on certain things are wrong. It just means we should be able to have this discussion because we are making very expensive, both environmentally and economically expensive decisions based on something that we haven't been allowed to challenge. And then we have politicians who frankly are not energy experts, they are not environmental experts, you know, ramming things down our throat and insisting to us that this is the way we should go when we have a federal administration who is actually taking a real a better look, I think, at this point than we've seen in a long time. And actually, what are the downsides of this project that you know, this massive offshore wind project that we've designed to go off the East Coast, and in the Great Lakes and in the Gulf and in the West Coast, by the way, you know, what are the downsides, we're finally looking at them and gee, when national security is an issue, and being able to take drones is an issue. I think we should probably pause and take a hard look at that. We're speaking with Amy DeSibio. We're speaking with Amy DeSibio from Act for Wales. Amy, the thing is that some of these concepts are really esoteric and hard for people to grasp or to pay much attention to, everybody's got busy lives and their own things they have to pay attention to. But for me, it's like, when I want electricity, I want to throw the switch and there's the electricity. And when you tell me that sometimes there won't be electricity, if we rely on solar and wind, often there won't be, right? And you can literally see the evidence right in front of you, except that you have a governor and an attorney general here in Massachusetts, telling me that what they believe to be reliable is clearly not. The average person can see that it's not reliable. And if you don't have reliable power and electricity, people will die. It's like a third world country. Yeah, I mean, it just makes me, it bums me out, Chris, cuz you're exactly right. And I wondered, more hilly is not stupid, okay? So what's driving this? Is this just this anti-Trump thing that just never can go away? So now we make decisions, Trump says right, we all say left, Trump says black, we all say white. I think at this point, we need to kind of make better decisions and the rhetoric kind of needs to stop. Because again, these are expensive decisions, expensive with lives, right? To think that we are going to run Massachusetts on solar and wind alone without the technology around storage, it's laughable, okay? And we're in an age where the demand on the grid is climbing exponentially. We are building more and more houses. There are more and more people on the road. We are in an age where we're pushing AI, it's all you hear about. You turn on CNBC, it's the only conversation these days everywhere, because it'll impact everybody's business and everybody's lives. So that is a huge energy suck. So we should be, this whole thing that they've put out there that we're really going for the all of the above energy thing, it's also garbage, okay? This state has declined on a natural gas pipeline from the Marcellus Shale. It is one state to our west, maybe the most prolific natural gas shale in the world or natural gas supply in the world. We have decommissioned a lot of our nukes. So what are we doing, right? We are importing liquid natural gas on the open market and importing power from other states. I mean, we are not doing anything that even remotely looks like all of the above. And just as a side note, the whole all of the above thing was a, I think, was nothing but a concoction in Washington DC for the two different lobbying groups, the green energy people and the fossil fuel people to not step on each other's toes. Cause frankly, they're all the same people anyway. I agree with you. Okay. So the all of the above is like, let's not, let's not, you know, let's not throw up on our own, our own business model here because all of these get oil and gas companies are also providing offshore wind or they used to, there's a huge, it's all the same people. So, um, you know, the, the, all of the above thing is, is a, has a really nice ring to it. Um, I'm just, you know, I think some of the above is a better one. All of the above we is a mistake. I think. We speak with Amy DeCivio. Amy, if people want to learn more about the work you've been doing at act for Wales and it's going to have to continue, uh, tell people how they get in touch with, uh, with act for Wales. Sure. They can, uh, check us out online at act for Wales.org ACK number four Wales.org. Um, if you want to send us a message there, send us a message, but we're always happy to have people take a look on our website. You know, we've got a bunch of, uh, you know, we're still kind of waiting on some of our lawsuits and stuff like that. So we've been sort of in a holding pattern, uh, a little bit, but, uh, always, you know, very interested in getting the message out. And frankly, more and more people are getting behind us every day. So, um, happy to have you take a look and always a pleasure to be on your show, Chris. Thank you so much. Amy. Um, the thing that's interesting is the, all of the above crowd is just very disingenuous because quite frankly, as Maura Healy was bragging and now is trying to change the subject. She literally stopped two gas pipelines from coming in, which is really how we get most of our electricities from natural gas. So they weren't all of the above. They were trying to limit it down to just solar wind and some of the other foreign invested companies. I agree. And that, yeah, these are mostly owned by foreign foreign energy companies and you're right. And I think what's happened is now suddenly these guys are talking about all of the above because they realize that we've got exactly one wind farm out there and it's doing almost nothing. Okay. If it's even doing half of what it said it was supposed to do, I'd be surprised that they're in a bind here in Massachusetts. You know, they, we are, you know, we pay really, really heavy rates in this state. And, uh, it's not by accident, you know, look at your bill, take a look at the fine print 30% of what you pay is all climate policy charges. It's not, it has nothing to do with producing and delivering energy to your home. So they've invested heavily in this and maybe they're looking to invest more as the federal government is trying to shut down some of these projects. Who knows what's going to happen with this vineyard wind project. I mean, they have proved to be a very poor neighbor. You know, they don't pay the rent in Boston. They, you know, they own all kinds of money up there. Um, you know, they're suing their supplier, GE for Nova. They did not return calls or, or messages to anybody on Nantucket barely after that blade break. They've, they've been AWOL. And, um, you know, I think they're probably, look, I don't know what's how their financials are, but I would assume they're, that they're, um, the people that finance that project are probably getting pretty tired of this. It's dragged on and on forever. Uh, and it's still not really delivering. So we shall see. We shall see. Amy, thank you so much. We'll get you over here. One of these days for the summer's over. That's Amy DeCibio from Act for Wales. We're gonna take a break. Welcome back to the program again. I want to thank Amy DeCibio from Act for.