INTRO: How much of the deficit is really being caused by the health insurance monopolies that are sucking us dry for all of our money? Jon Walker from FireDogLake with the answer, right now.

DYLAN: Welcome to Episode 50 of Radio Free Dylan. Can you believe we’ve done 50 of these things? I’m excited for today’s, though. The deficit, obviously, is the big to-do in the world these days, and the question is, “What do we do about the deficit?” but the actual question should be, “Why do we have a deficit and what can be done to solve the underlying problems that are creating the deficit?” instead of watching both political parties either utilize the deficit as a way to cut the things that they don’t like or use it as an excuse to raise taxes when the succubus that is healthcare, the banking system, the energy complex, and the rigged trade is the reason we actually have the deficit, and peculiarly those succubus industries that fund our politicians are oddly off-limits for any sort of structural reform. And yet food for poor children and increased taxes on overburdened Americans is where the two-party pro-wrestling political system takes us. Jon Walker writes for FireDogLake.com has been specifically looking at the deficit and the links in our deficit to the cost of American healthcare. Before we get, Jon, to your solutions, let’s just define a little bit as to how much of our deficit is being driven by what America spends on healthcare.

JON: Well, if you look at the long-term projections of what our deficit will be, the CBO chalks it up almost exclusively to the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid, mainly because the entire healthcare sector is rising at such an unbelievable rate.

DYLAN: And so that leads us to the question, “Why is our healthcare so darn expensive?” Now, my reporting showed that when you do an employer-based system where everybody’s really detached from the cost, you have a fee for service doctoring system and effective oligopoly monopolies in the insurance industry, it’s very easy for something like that to become expensive. What are the variables that you see as truly driving the absurd cost of American healthcare whether it’s in the public or the private sector right now?

JON: Well, a big part of the problem is the monopolies in the system. There’s the sort of government created monopoly, like what you get toward the patent protected drugs, and then there’s the sort of – the fact the monopolies you get in a lot of places like rural hospitals. It’s the only hospital around; it can get away with whatever it wants.

DYLAN: Not only that, but other than baseball, healthcare and health insurance companies are the only ones with an anti-trust exemption.

JON: Yeah, and when you look at the amount we pay for drugs in this country, because, you know, I’m a drug maker, I come up with a drug that saves people’s lives, and I can charge whatever I want because I’m given monopoly, well I’m going to charge an outrageous amount. The reason kids with that drug for prenatal children – I don’t know if you saw that instance, but the government granted monopoly to this company, the drug had been available for a long time at about 10 bucks, they upped the price to 1,500 bucks for a single shot.

DYLAN: Nice. Nice. That’s a good way to gouge them. So you and I are in agreement that monopoly or oligopoly markets whether it’s the hospitals, the health insurance companies, the drugs, are a massive contributing factor to the cost of healthcare in this country. How much more expensive is our healthcare by your measure compared to other western nations?

JON: Well, if you look at other countries, most of Europe, for example, it’s about 50% to 60% more expensive, depending on which measurement you use.

DYLAN: Ours is more expensive or theirs is?

JON: Ours is, about 60% more than what you would pay in Germany or France –

DYLAN: – or Switzerland, or whatever. So let’s just back this up a little bit. We’ve got this big-assed deficit; they want to say we’ve solved the deficit by raising taxes or killing poor people, right? That’s pretty much the debate, right? No one wants to talk about why we have the deficit, which obviously you’re arguing that a massive contributing factor, if not the only factor, is the obscene cost of healthcare in America. We then ask, “Well, why is healthcare in America so expensive?” and we get to a total betrayal of any sort of capitalist principles, which would have transparency, choice, and all these other things, and there’s a strong argument, I don’t mean to diminish it, that those sorts of principles shouldn’t even apply to human life, by the way. But even if you don’t want to go that far, we don’t even use our basic American standards for selling ice cream cones or pizza when it comes to healthcare in this country.

JON: Yeah.

DYLAN: If you were to look at the solutions, are there other ways to provide healthcare to people that aren’t this expensive that actually are effective? Does that exist? Or do we have to do this because it’s impossible; this is the only way to provide healthcare. Man, you can’t do it any other way. True or false?

JON: Well, it’s pretty absurd when people talk about, “Oh, we can’t do more to control healthcare costs.” You know, you look at a country, you know, Japan, you look at a country, France, they all pay so much less, and they often have much better outcomes. There’s something to the solutions; we can copy almost any other country out there, whether it be single payer or Japanese style all payer system, any one out there is better than the one we currently have.

DYLAN: And so we have a massive deficit, we have a pro-wrestling league of Democrats and Republicans with their argument, the deficit isn’t even the problem, it’s symptomatic of the underlying costs, which are driven by what we were just describing, and there are alternatives to what we’re doing with healthcare. All of things are true?

JON: Yes.

DYLAN: So it begs the question, if we’ve got a massive deficit, if our healthcare costs 50% to 60% more than anybody else with lousier outcomes, if there are clear alternative structures that we could debate ranging from single payer to a national exchange
to direct tax benefits to the – there’s a million things, right?

JON: Yes, yes.

DYLAN: The only question becomes why are we not doing that?

JON: You know, a perfect example is Obama’s going to be trying to raise. What is it, $1 billion to run for office this time around?

DYLAN: Oh yeah, baby.

JON: You know, you’ve got to get a lot of checks from a lot of people of a lot of money. And you know the drug companies, because they’re the most profitable sector out there, because they’ve got monopolies that they can charge anything they want for it, and they’ll also be some of the largest campaign donors.

DYLAN: The beautiful thing about being a succubus, whether it’s defense, healthcare, energy, or the banking system, is that you can then take some of your succubus money to pay off the politicians to let you keep sucking. That’s a pretty good setup, right dude?

JON: Oh yeah, it’s fantastic. You know, the amount of money that you need to invest in lobbying and donations, you know, Pharma only spent maybe I think about $100 billion on the healthcare bill –

DYLAN: Who spent $100 billion?

JON: I mean $100 million in lobbying on the healthcare bill.

DYLAN: That’s Pharma you say?

JON: Yeah, Pharma, the drug company.

DYLAN: I gotcha.

JON: And they got as part of that deal, no drug re-importation, which would have cost them about $20 billion in profits over the next 10 years –

DYLAN: So that’s pretty good.

JON: – and no direct drug price negotiation for Medicare, which probably would have reduced their profits by another $100
billion.

DYLAN: So that will be – well, you say $20 billion on a $100 million, so that would be a 200 times return on the 100, that’s pretty good money. I could – it’s tough to make that on Wall Street buying Google stock, I’ll tell you that. And then you say what it’s $100 billion on the other side in terms of preventing competition?

JON: Yeah, and preventing Medicare from negotiating for prices. Currently, the government has written that we’re going to buy drugs for seniors, but we’re not going to negotiate with the large pool to actually get the lowest price we can.

DYLAN: Because we’re drunk, because our politicians are drunk and smoking crack. That’s not it, is it? It’s because of the money, right?

JON: Money, money, money, the three most important things in politics.

DYLAN: Yes indeed. Well listen, I appreciate your clarity on this issue, and again, I actually think, Jon, there are very few succubus industries that exist in this country; I name them all the time, energy, and I tie the war to energy. I consider that a singular issue because I consider the Pentagon budget at least half of it to be the bill for the gasoline that we burn in our cars; the banking system; the healthcare system; and then, obviously, the trading systems. The irony is that with a very short list of these massive succubus industries, no one seems to be interested in having a debate about reforming any of them. Have you noticed that, Jon?

JON: I have noticed that.

DYLAN: Well, I appreciate your journalism in emphasizing the correlation between the deficit and the cost of our healthcare, and I encourage you to do more of it more often as I encourage myself to do the same thing, because quite honestly, it’s only the voice of any American in public addressing the absurdity of these conversations. And the fact that we just had that conversation and it wasn’t an S&L skit is disturbing. Jon Walker, a pleasure. Thank you. Jon work, of course, at FireDogLake.com.

JON: Thanks for having me.

DYLAN: Thank you, Jon.

DYLAN: Welcome back to Radio Free Dylan. At the end of Episode 50, we find ourselves, well, with a little more clarity, at least I find myself with a little more clarity. I hope that you find yourself with a little more clarity. Where we break out of the political dialogue, which we recognize as a distraction and an absurdity and an insult, pro-wrestling is the best metaphor. You can think of Obama as the Hulkster, and you can pick your favorite pro-wrestlers among the politicians and those, of course, that you love to hate. It’s an incredibly effective way to prevent any direct engagement on the four major succubus industries: energy and defense, as a single complex; healthcare, we just discussed; banking, if you’re familiar with my work, we have discussed ad nauseam; and then, of course, the trading relationships with the rest of the world, which are allowing the likes of Caterpillar and the rest suck all the money out of us. We have to talk about this because the pro-wrestlers are running a campaign to prevent us from talking about this. Both the Democrats and the Republicans get their money from the succubus industries, and it is high time the American people called bullshit. I hope you’ll help me do that, and I hope you have a lovely afternoon. My name is Dylan Ratigan, and we’ll talk to you next time.