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Nov. 19, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza
59:07
REMAKING OBAMACARE Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1215
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Is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians the revival of an ancient conflict recorded in the Bible?
The nation of Israel is a resurrected nation.
What if there was going to be a resurrection of another people, an enemy people of Israel?
The dragon's prophecy.
Watch it now or buy the DVD at thedragonsprophecyfilm.com.
Coming up, I'll go into the strange politics behind the Jeffrey Epstein saga with some interesting twists.
I'll explain why I don't really believe Tucker's account of being attacked by a demon.
And Professor G. Bay of Johns Hopkins University joins me in studio.
We're going to talk about how Obamacare can be tossed or remade for something a lot better.
If you're watching on YouTube, X or Rumble, listening on Apple or Spotify, please subscribe to the channel, hit the subscribe, the follow, the notifications button.
I'd appreciate it.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
I'm going to talk about a couple of topics in my opening segment.
The first one is Jeffrey Epstein.
And the second one is Tucker and the Demon.
Now, I'll start with Epstein.
The U.S. Congress, both the House and the Senate, have voted to release whatever files they have on Epstein.
The vote in the House was overwhelming.
I think it was basically something like 400 and something to one.
So everyone was like, let's do it.
And I think you're going to find pretty much the same deal in the Senate.
No one's really going to want to be on record voting against this, even though Trump has repeatedly warned and warned to the dismay of some MAGA types, like, there's nothing here.
This is a scam.
And Trump hasn't really quite explained himself.
At one point, he implied that there might be some alterations of the files by the Democrats.
I mean, let's remember the suspicious element here.
The Democrats have had the Epstein files throughout the Biden years.
They chose not to release it, not to release them, the files.
Now, suddenly, they're agitating for it.
They're demanding the files be released.
And it seems to be a kind of a effort to kind of get Trump.
And they're being supported in this by a couple of key Republicans, notably Thomas Massey and also Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Now, both Massey and Greene do not claim that Trump is implicated in the files, that Trump has somehow did anything wrong.
And in fact, Virginia Juffray, who was one of the key witnesses in all of this, she was the one seen in that infamous photo with Prince Andrew.
She has basically said, no, Trump didn't do anything inappropriate.
And apparently, this was corroborated in recent interviews with Gillen Maxwell.
So it doesn't look like Trump has any kind of liability here or vulnerability here.
But Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene both are kind of implying that maybe Trump is protecting other people, maybe some other people who are in the files and who, I don't know, maybe associates of Trump or donors to the Republican Party.
Now, one person that we know is in the files, and it's just come out in a very embarrassing way, is the former Harvard president and also former Clinton cabinet official.
And this is Larry Summers.
So Larry Summers evidently was asking, believe it or not, for romantic advice from Jeffrey Epstein.
Romantic advice to what end?
Well, he apparently was trying to make the moves on somebody who was, as he put it, a mentee.
So somebody in his own orbit who, and by the way, Larry Summers is married at the time, but he's trying to have apparently an affair with some woman, and Epstein is egging him on.
And the two are going back and forth about what to do.
And so this has been a, well, let's just say a fairly humiliating public revelation, the effect of which is that Larry Summers is now stepping out of public life.
He claims I'm still going to continue to teach because I have a responsibility to keep my students.
But what a disgrace and how embarrassing.
And so there we go.
That's one name in the files.
I had sort of seen that name off and on over the years, but now we know that there is this traffic, this email traffic going back and forth between Epstein and Summers.
Now, I want to talk for a moment about Representative Stacey Plaskett.
You might remember her name from the Trump impeachment proceedings.
She was one of the House impeachment managers.
And she too has a very interesting relationship with Epstein.
Now, not a romantic or sexual relationship, but rather, Epstein is coaching Representative Plaskett while a hearing is going on about Trump.
Epstein is trying to help Plaskett, quote, get Trump.
And it's all very interesting.
Here's Epstein texting, the texts have come out.
That's how we know what's going on.
Epstein is texting to Plaskett, ask about the Moscow project.
And then Plaskett replies, quick, I'm up.
What else?
So, meaning her turn is coming up to ask questions.
So she is in a kind of loop with Epstein.
He's like essentially advising her, almost like he's her chief of staff, about what to ask.
A little bit later, Epstein, push stormy payoff.
And then after the hearing, quote, good work.
This is Epstein.
So let's think about this.
You have a U.S. congresswoman collaborating with a sex trafficking predator.
Now, Epstein had not yet been formally charged with the sex trafficking.
That came a little bit later.
But guess what?
He was already a convicted sex offender.
So Plaskett knew that.
And when she was recently asked about this, this is actually very interesting.
Plaskett acts like it's no big deal.
And other Democrats who are asked about it kind of say the same thing.
A couple of the Democrats I've seen quoted basically go, well, she was merely communicating with one of her constituents, which right away raises a couple of questions.
First of all, do most of Stacey Plaskett's constituents have her cell phone number?
Are they able to text her as a congresswoman like moments before she's up in a hearing?
No, this is not an ordinary constituent.
This is somebody who Stacy Plaskett was close to.
And close to how?
Well, we also know that Stacey Plaskett was trying to raise money from Epstein.
She met privately with Epstein at his New York apartment to solicit campaign donations.
And all of this, by the way, again, after he was already a convicted sex offender.
So if anything, what's happening here is we're beginning to realize that the Epstein ties are cutting into the Democratic side.
Stacy Plaskett, I also mentioned Larry Summers, was, of course, a Democratic cabinet official.
And so I'm eagerly awaiting to see what new information comes out on all this, because so far, I think this is all good stuff.
And hopefully there's a lot more to come.
How this stuff all got hushed up in the first place, I have no idea.
It seems that they're still claiming that there are some, quote, national security implications.
And so just the fact that they're voting to release the files doesn't mean we're going to see everything because one of the common tactics of the government is to give you files in which important pieces of information are blacked out.
They're redacted.
And there is typically no reason given.
It's implied that there's some security interest here, but you could see entire pages blacked out in this way.
So if you're skeptical that we'll get the full story, I think so am I.
But what I am looking forward to is we're going to get more of the story.
Now, I have never agreed with the MAGA people who essentially say, you know, that they're done with Trump because of this issue.
Even when this first came out, my point is: listen, this is something we all want to get to the bottom of, but we should not let it derail our important agenda of like saving the country.
It's almost like you're in a ship.
It's got a big hole in the side of it.
It's blown by the Biden regime before they left office.
You got to repair the ship from going down.
And that becomes the overwhelming priority.
Now, let me turn to the issue of Tucker and the demon.
And this is a very strange business because there are only three ways to think about this.
I'm describing, by the way, the rather elaborate account that Tucker first gave in a long interview where he was talking about the fact that he was attacked by a demon.
And what is the relevance of all this, by the way?
I normally wouldn't even be talking about it, but I talk about it because many times in public and in private now, I'm asked, what is the deal?
Like, what's the deal with Candace?
What's the deal with Tucker?
Sometimes, what's the deal with Bannon?
A deal with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And the truth of it is, I have a lot of kind of inside information on these people.
And I can tell you what the deal is with many of them.
I mean, if I can give you a word on Bannon, when I was making the film 2016 Obama's America, Steve Bannon offered to produce that movie.
He's like, I'll do it.
I'll produce it for you.
And I knew nothing about film, so I was kind of very excited.
I'm like, how does it all work?
And Bannon was like, well, basically, Dinesh, you go out and raise all the money and then you, you know, make the film.
And then you basically sign it over to me.
And I was like, what?
He's like, oh, yeah, basically, you know, I'll take care of the business side of it.
And I will, you know, we will pay you a fee for narrating the film, but the ownership rights would go to my company.
Basically, I was like, no.
And considering that the film ended up, you know, making tens of millions of dollars, I'm sure Bannon was like, ooh, shoot.
I mean, I almost had him.
You know, I almost pulled a fast one on Dinesh, but he didn't really fall for it.
So Bannon is, you know, is an operator and someone whom I've been cordial with over the years, but I'm also a little careful because this was my actual first experience with Bannon.
But back to Tucker, the question of what is driving Tucker.
And when I say driving Tucker, I don't mean, oh, Tucker did a very slobbering interview of Nick Fuentes.
I'm talking about a whole pattern of views that are so startling in their departures from what MAGA thinks or what conservatives think, praising Sharia, minimizing the crimes of Hamas, praising Maduro, and, you know, we should have allied with Hitler.
We won the wrong side of World War II.
Churchill is the real villain.
Netanyahu is the real villain.
And on and on it goes.
It's a pattern.
So what is driving that?
Now, one possible explanation, which I've always rejected, is the explanation that basically Tucker's being paid by Qatar.
I don't know if he is or not, but I don't think that's his motive.
I don't think it's Tucker needs Qatar to pay his electric bill.
And Tucker could easily, with his large audience, monetize it and find other ways to make money.
I don't think that's the primary motive.
But the other motive is supplied by Tucker himself.
I was attacked by a demon.
So the possibility arises, and as Christians, I don't think we can dismiss it.
He's under some sort of demonic possession or demonic control.
And sometimes I've seen people say, well, demonic spiritual warfare is real.
And of course, I believe it's real.
In fact, my question is, where's the demon?
Is the demon, did the demon run away?
Is the demon still in him?
At no point did Tucker, by the way, ever say, you know, I rebuke the demon in the name of Jesus, nothing like that.
It's just that there was a physical attack.
He was mauled.
It left all these marks on him, on his shoulders, apparently also on his torso.
By the way, marks that no one has ever seen.
Not at any point as Tucker said, oh, let me show you.
Because, I mean, think about it.
If a demon leaves marks on you, it would be rather interesting to see photos of those marks, a video of those marks.
The marks have never been exhibited.
They've never appeared in public at all.
And so we have to sort of take his word for it.
But as Tucker recently, I think was on Megan Kelly and was talking more about the demon.
So this is a big deal for Tucker.
It's not like I'm grabbing onto one thing.
It's that this is like a big issue for him.
I think he wants to present himself as like he's engaged in spiritual warfare.
You know, he took on the demon and so on.
But the more I listen to this, and by the way, Tucker's story has changed in the sense that it's always updated, new details appear.
So you kind of have to go with the latest version that supposedly incorporates all the details.
And when I look at it, it's like hard to believe.
It's a little hard to take at face value.
And here's why.
Basically, as the story goes, Tucker was attacked in his sleep.
And he was attacked so badly that he was bloodied.
Later, we'll see he finds blood on the sheets.
But he's attacked and bloodied, and he wakes up.
And now, it'd be one thing if Tucker like went back to sleep right away and then woke up later and wondered, hey, was it all a dream?
But according to Tucker, according to his own account, now given multiple times, he got up.
His dogs were sleeping with him.
He went outside.
So he turned on the light.
He went outside.
And his wife, who's apparently a light sleeper, she woke up.
They discuss the incident.
They discuss what happened.
And then, according to Tucker, he read his Bible and went back to sleep.
So, first of all, wait a minute.
You didn't attend to your wounds.
You're bleeding, but nobody thought to like clean your wounds or put on a band-aid or a bandage.
No, Tucker apparently goes right back to sleep after reading the Bible.
And then he says, I woke up and then I saw blood on the sheets and I wondered if it was all a dream.
Now, again, if something had happened, you wake up, you're startled, you fall back to sleep.
Later, you wonder it's a dream.
I get it.
But if you have an incident where you get out of bed, you turn out the light, turn on the light, you take your dogs outside, you come back, your wife has woken up, you have a conversation about the matter, you then go back to sleep.
I don't think any reasonable person is going to say, I woke up and I wondered if it was a dream.
The whole thing doesn't even add up.
So I'm left with three possibilities.
Number one, the demonic attack was real, in which case my question persists, like, where's the demon?
The second possibility is this was all made up.
It's just a lie.
It's just an effort of self-dramatization.
Basically, you have somebody who is capable of creating this kind of scenario to make it sound like he's living in some higher realm where he's battling evil spirits.
That's the second possibility, the made-up possibility.
And the third possibility is some sort of like psychotic episode where, and this is probably what most people who are responding to this demon story have suggested.
They're like, Tucker is sleeping with a bunch of dogs.
The dogs mauled him.
That's the most obvious.
That's the most, that's Occam's razor.
That's the shortest explanation that makes the most sense.
And so Tucker is sort of reading into it something that goes way beyond what actually happened.
It was nothing more than the dog scratching his shoulders and his torso.
I think, I don't know which of these three possibilities ultimately is the right one, but it's certainly one of the three.
Since 1971, the year the U.S. completely abandoned the gold standard, inflation has averaged 3.98% per year.
That's the official figure, but it may be far too low.
In reality, the government can manipulate the figure to make inflation seem lower than it actually is.
But let's go with the official number.
It means that if you start out with $1 in 1971, that money keeps dropping in value in purchasing power.
In fact, $1 in 1971 is now worth about 12 cents.
Sounds crazy, but it's true.
And how does this happen?
It happens because the U.S. government continually prints money.
When more money chases the same amount of goods and services, money goes down in value.
And because the money printing is not stopping, we can anticipate that our dollars are going to continue to lose value.
Scary though it sounds, the dollar goes down to zero or towards zero every single time.
But the government can't print gold, and gold has been money for thousands of years.
Today, gold is a valuable protection against the ongoing depreciation of the dollar.
Is it any surprise that an ounce of gold, which was worth around $44.40 in 1971, is today worth around $4,000?
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Thanksgiving holds so many memories.
I'm sure it's the same for you.
And right now, there's a girl finding out she's pregnant, and in the next couple of weeks, she's going to make a decision.
Whatever decision she makes will become her memory of this Thanksgiving season for the rest of her life.
What will she be thankful for a year from now?
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Guys, a really important topic that I don't cover enough on this podcast is healthcare.
And the healthcare policy of this country has been defined in the last several years by Obamacare.
I think you can imagine what Obamacare has done to the subject of healthcare.
But the question is: what do we do now?
We're in it.
Can we get out of it?
Can we fix it?
Obama talked about remaking America.
Can we remake Obamacare?
I have the perfect person to talk about all this, and it's Professor G. Bai, and she is a professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University.
I'm in great luck because we had actually talked about doing this interview remotely from Washington, D.C. or from Johns Hopkins, but she happens to be here in studio.
So, Professor Jibai, thank you for joining me.
It's really a pleasure.
You are a new guest on the podcast, and you have a very interesting story.
So, I thought let's just begin there.
Where did you grow up?
And tell us a little bit about your childhood.
Thank you, Dinesh.
This is such an honor and a blessing to be in this studio with your audience.
I am one of many, many immigrants pursuing an American dream.
I came to States 25 years ago, almost 25 years ago, from China.
My family had some political persecution, especially my dad's side, previous generation.
So, I knew what tyranny, what communism can bring to society, what kind of tragedy it can entail.
After I came to the States, I got my CPA and PhD in accounting.
My first job placement was at Washington University in Virginia.
And at the WL, we call it WLL, Washington University.
It's really an eye-opening experience.
So, you were, well, let me slow you down a little bit because let's start with China.
What is remarkable about China is that they have achieved a measure of prosperity, but at the same time, while maintaining a political stranglehold over the society.
And are you saying that was one of your main motives in wanting to get out?
Exactly.
In that kind of system, you are not afraid.
No matter how successful you are, your property, your freedom can be taken away overnight by people you don't even know.
That's how formidable and scary the state power is.
And I think that's something most Americans don't really understand.
You know, I remember many years ago at one point, Obama of all people, we're going to talk later about Obamacare, but Obama said something like, I envy the leadership of China.
And I think what he meant was that, you know, they can just get things done without political obstructions and impediments.
But I think that this impulse to tyranny is a universal temptation.
And to some degree, we feel those dangers even in this country with increasing censorship.
Do you agree that you agree?
Yeah.
We're only one generation away.
Yeah, I mean, we're not China, and I don't mean to overstate where we are, but some of the same, well, look, for example, at using facial recognition technology, using social credit systems, using digital censorship.
I mean, China, in a way, has perfected all those techniques, haven't they?
Absolutely.
And once you pass a tipping point, like in China, there's no freedom of speech, it's extremely difficult for society to change.
And I think we're losing that.
We are seeing more and more threat of the freedom of speech, right, especially in previous administration.
Gee, you find yourself in America and you are, but you're not in typical America because Washington and Lee is, well, in fact, was at one point almost the epitome of like a southern university.
I remember maybe 20 years ago speaking there in the Robert E. Lee Chapel.
It's a very solemn and beautiful setting, pretty much speaking to the entire faculty and the student body.
You made a comment a moment ago before we started talking here that you think that Washington and Lee has lost some of its kind of ancestral conservatism.
Talk a little bit about that.
Absolutely.
We are the southern dharmas, right?
We have a very unique identity.
But then somehow I believe some people in the administration felt that Washington Lee should be more mainstream, should bring more DEI or similar ideology to campus.
Maybe, and maybe get away a little bit from the southern heritage, like Robert E. Lee.
See, Robert E. Lee, for most of American history, has been considered a hero.
He might have been on the wrong side of the Civil War, but he was a great man.
He was a great warrior.
He was actually offered by Lincoln to be the head of the Union Army.
He opposed secession.
So for all these reasons, I've always had a kind of a, not even grudging, admiration for Lee.
And yet, there was a real effort, particularly around the George Floyd protest, to really villainize the South and make Robert E. Lee into, in fact, I think some of his statues were pulled down.
Absolutely.
And I think there had been some talk regarding changing the school name.
I don't think it's going anywhere, but it's already alarming to see people talking about that.
I don't know about the current situation, but I hope it's getting maybe to the reverse a little bit.
You said, G, that you were on this campus and for the first time, because you're, you know, when you're an immigrant, you come from the outside, your initial interest is not political.
You just want to be successful, you want to be a professional, you want to climb up the ladder.
But you said you sort of discovered the political differences while you were at Washington and Lee.
How did that happen?
Before Washington Lee, I loved the free market, free people, but I never paid attention to the political party alignment.
I really did not read newspaper etcher.
It was at WL I realized free market, free people more aligned with the Republican Party and the other way around, right, with Democrat Party.
So that is a reckoning for me.
That the Republican Party is the party of not just, you're saying, economic freedom, but also political and civic freedom.
And the Democratic Party is the party of state control.
That was actually a surprise to me.
I came from China.
When I got here, I thought this is heaven, right?
It's a free land, amazing world.
And then I realized there are people who actually want to bring U.S. like China.
I got that kind of idea when I was in WL.
Yes.
And you're saying you were a little shocked that anybody would want to do that.
Yes.
And let's, why do you think they want to do that?
In other words, as you've thought about it, as someone who has lived through it, when you see somebody else wanting to move in that direction, do you think it's because, I mean, one of the benefits in any tyrannical society is that the people at the top have a lot of power.
Do you think that may be the motive?
100%.
I believe a huge hunger toward power and the desire to control people.
People's behavior, what people can do, cannot do.
Before I came here, I thought that is only unique in China or in Soviet, right?
In those communist countries.
But after I came here, I realized it was universal.
There's a tendency to control people, to deprive people of the freedom everywhere.
Yeah, I remember years ago when I read, this was Alexander Soljanitson's great work called The Gulag Archipelago about the prison camps in the Soviet Union.
And in the introduction, he goes, This is a warning to the West, and it's a warning to everyone.
And we were in the Reagan years at that time, and I was thinking, How could it be a warning to the West?
We're not headed in that direction.
But his point is that this tyrannical temptation is very universal.
And I think he's proving to be completely correct.
And it can lead to blood.
I think that's something Americans, especially young Americans, don't understand, don't haven't realized.
So, my father's side during the communists coming to power, they owned some property, and the whole family is killed, more than 50 people.
And then there were a young man bringing a child, a three-year-old.
In winter, they escaped through snow, but then he was bleeding.
And then those communists follow them, found them through the blood, so killed them, and then put them, you know, get the rock tied to them, and then put them just in the river, open up the ice, crack the ice, and put them in the river.
That's how violence can be.
And purely, you know, what's the reason?
Sorry, if I sound emotional, I'm sorry.
But what was the reason to kill the three-year-old and the whole family?
Because they own the property through their hard work.
And through several generations, they did not steal anyone, right?
They did not tyrannize anyone.
And everything's really through a mutual agreement, mutual labor agreements, mutual transaction, voluntary transactions.
But then they accumulated property.
That's the reason they got killed.
So that is really a cautionary tale for all the people here who want to move U.S. to socialism.
I mean, I think what you're saying, which is sobering for young people, because they don't think of it this way.
They think of it, you know, Mom Donnie in New York, it's all going to be, we're just going to equalize, our rent is going to be cheaper, the subway is going to be free, we're going to have some grocery stores that are free.
I think what you're saying is these socialist and communist regimes are run by gangsters.
And those people have full power over your life and they will smash you if they see you as a threat to their regime in any way.
Correct.
And I also want to add, if let's say in a free market, these people have no market ability because for many reasons, like they cannot climb the ladder easily.
So I think for them, it makes economic sense to go through this back door to terrorize violence, use power control to achieve a level of wealth and status that they could have never obtained in a free market.
It's almost like saying that they cannot compete in the race.
Yes.
And so they devise a new race and put themselves at the front of it, a rigged race.
Let's come back to now, all right, here you are at Washington and Lee.
And then you said that you applied for a job at Johns Hopkins.
So talk about that next stage of your career.
Fortunately, Johns Hopkins started a business school and then they were looking for multidisciplinary researcher, doing both healthcare and the specific discipline, right?
Because Hopkins had this healthcare brand.
Luckily, I did not have much competition because my research has always been healthcare accounting.
So I got the job.
I moved to Hopkins about 10 years ago.
And what's interesting about Johns Hopkins now is perhaps even much more than Washington Lee.
You have a campus that is in Baltimore and that shares with many other elite campuses.
It is politically like on the left.
So how does a professor like you, who is also, at least over time, pretty outspoken, how do you as a fish survive in that water?
Actually, I want to applaud Johns Hopkins.
Relatively speaking, we are quite open-minded.
For example, I heard some elite universities as a faculty member, you cannot accept, you cannot do an interview without a third person from the communication department sitting in.
Oh, right.
But in Hopkins, we have total freedom.
We can say anything and align with any ideology.
The school's totally open to this.
And remember, Martin McCurry, the FDA commissioner, is also a faculty member at Johns Hopkins.
That's true.
That's right.
So, but that's good.
That means that you have not been tormented for expressing your views.
And of course, you express your views in your field of knowledge.
And last year, we had a conference, very much market-oriented conference in our DC campus.
We have senators, we have congressmen from the Republican Party came to join us.
And the school is very supportive.
Very supportive.
All right.
Let's talk about Obamacare.
And I want to begin with an article that you recently wrote about it.
And I want you to go through the main theme of it.
But as I understand it, what you're basically saying is this: that under COVID, a whole bunch of people who were not previously eligible for Obamacare subsidies for their premiums were allowed in, were given these subsidies.
And now that they're talking about getting rid of those subsidies, not for everybody, but for all these higher-income people who had been added to the list, you're saying that there is a controversy about it.
But I think what you're saying is: look, these people have other options and they should be taken off the program.
They should not be given these Obamacare subsidies.
Explain a little further why you think it's a good idea to take all these COVID additions to the program and get them out.
First of all, this is for COVID and COVID is over.
Right.
Second, these are higher income Americans, over 400% poverty line.
So we are talking about a feminine level two over $62,000 or family level four more than $128,000.
So these are not poor Americans.
Why should they receive subsidies from taxpayers?
And many of them are actually early retirees.
And as you said, Danish, they have access to employer-sponsored plans.
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Not only did they not need it, but one of the things I got out of your article is that, and you can see here why the Biden administration would have encouraged adding a lot of these people on because what happens is Obamacare, by swelling the ranks of it, they make it a bigger program.
Because to me, one of the kind of schemes of Obamacare was how do we take an industry, healthcare, that is largely in the private sector and move as many of its functions over to the government sector, but do it in a sneaky way.
Right?
Is that a correct understanding?
Yeah.
These Obamacare plans are so unpopular.
Therefore, you have to either lure people to join Obamacare by giving them subsidies or force them, compel them to join through mandate.
If you don't do either of the two, nobody likes it.
Oh, wow.
Yes.
And am I right that if in the history of Obamacare, you know, the way it was portrayed, Obama portrayed it like, I'm fighting the insurance companies.
I'm taking them on.
But in reality, it looks like this was a backdoor deal made between Obama and the insurance companies because think about it.
In what market would business people not like the idea, I'm going to force tens of millions of Americans to buy this product?
I mean, if I was growing broccoli and the government came to me and said, I'm going to force every American to eat broccoli, I would cheer because I'd be like, that's great profits for me.
Isn't this why the insurance companies really were enthusiastic about Obamacare?
Because it supplied them with customers via the government.
Exactly.
So we know the word poverty pimp, right?
This is a healthcare pimp.
Healthcare pimps.
Basically, government is prostituting, sleeping with the industry to form this healthcare industry complex.
We have a huge crony capitalism here.
That's the core of this.
But then, on the surface, it is to create an illusion that American people really need a government.
Without government, they cannot access healthcare.
So they can worship government, right?
They no longer worship free market-free people.
Instead, they love government.
They cannot imagine losing government, help them buy healthcare.
I think this is the deception and defrauding.
So, gee, if you were, you know, sitting right alongside President Trump, and or even if you had complete authority to redesign, remake, change this healthcare system.
I mean, obviously, knocking out some COVID, you know, newcomers to the system is a step in the right direction, right?
But what would a fundamental reform look like?
Don't even worry about the political possibilities of it.
Like, how would you design it like as an academic?
Great.
So, status call consists of four things.
So, defraud taxpayers, deceive patients, prostitute free industries.
So, then we, so let's see, deceive.
Sorry, I forgot this, the last thing.
That's okay.
We want to change into a four-dimensional new world.
That would be free patients, free physicians, and the free insurance companies, and then be regulated to unburden.
Yeah, so that is what I envision for U.S. healthcare.
Sorry, the first one is to enslave physicians.
Oh, the physicians, of course, right, right.
So, it's not just the industry, it's not just the consumer, it's the physicians.
And so, let's explore how that would be.
How do you set up a system that frees the physicians?
First of all, so physicians are right now really being enslaved.
All the health policies are creating an uneven playing field in federal hospitals.
So, physicians are victims.
So, for example, if I want to, I'm a physician, I want to start a hospital compete with a non-profit medical center.
I cannot.
Obamacare bans physician hospitals.
Also, we have 340 B program, all these government subsidies, property tax, exemption, et cetera, all giving, this literally channel money to hospitals.
I would say undermining physicians.
So, that's why we're seeing fewer and fewer independent physicians to compete.
That's why we're seeing a higher and higher price and lower and lower efficiency.
Would it make sense, just thinking of things in a kind of fundamental or even radical way?
This is kind of how I look at it.
You know, we have, people say, I have a right to healthcare.
But that's wrong.
You don't have a right to healthcare.
Healthcare is a commodity.
You have to pay for it.
If you don't pay, someone has to pay for it.
Right.
Which actually what you're getting at here is something very profound, which is this.
There's no such thing as a right that involves reaching into somebody else's back pocket.
Right?
So, if you have a free speech right, it doesn't cost me anything, right?
You're not making me pay to enable you to speak, and therefore you have a right to do it.
But you're saying, on the other hand, if you want to spend money and go to a doctor and receive services, that can't be in the same sense a right.
It's got to be something where we have to decide as a society, like how do we allocate resources?
Is that what you're saying?
Yes.
And that's the success of the past 56 years of health policy to make people believe healthcare is a right, I'll be entitled to health care, which is wrong.
Because let's show why it's wrong.
Because let me put it this way.
Let's say I now say I have a right to food.
Nobody would disagree.
They'd be like, Of course you have a right to food.
So then I go, all right, well, why don't I just go to the grocery store and fill up my cart and then just walk right by the cashier and don't pay because I have a right to food, right?
Now, I think as an economist, as an accountant, you know completely that if you allow that to happen, first of all, it's not that nobody's paying.
It's just that you have a cashier, you have a consumer, and the guy who's really paying is not present in the transaction, right?
Because that's a taxpayer who's at work in a machine factory or as a plumber.
That's the guy who's really paying, right?
And so what's really happening here is that the consumer is ripping off the system.
The grocery store goes, great, because you can just walk out with whatever you want.
We're going to be billing that guy.
And I say all this because to me, that's our healthcare system.
You touched the key point, like the third-party payment system.
Right.
The patients, not consumers, the third party are either insurance companies or the government.
So for the past six years, the government-centered policies have been detaching patients from their either earned or subsidized healthcare dollars.
That creates a loss of price sensitivity.
And I would say that's a root cause of the mess we're in.
That's why President Trump said, let's fund the patients, which I think is such a profound and insightful idea.
We all know that when we go to a doctor, I mean, the system is all so odd, right?
Because you go to a doctor, let's say, and you say, I don't know, I have a pain in my right side.
And the doctor will say, all right, well, let's run a series of tests.
Or there's a hospital will say, let's run a series of tests.
Now, the patient will never think of saying, what tests are you going to run?
And can you explain to me why each of these tests are necessary?
And the reason that the patient never dreams of saying that is typically the patient is not paying.
Exactly.
Right?
But in any other thing, if I go in, let's just say to Home Depot and I say, I want to fix my kitchen.
And they go, okay, we'll give you 45 items that you should buy right now.
You'd be like, wait a minute, slow down.
Let's go down the list to see what I need and what I don't need.
So this normal system of kind of accountability, I think what you're saying disappears in the healthcare process.
How do we put it back?
Yeah.
So providers right now focus on compliance.
How do I get the money from the insurance companies or from the government instead of persuading the patients, look, my service is valuable, so pay me, right?
So complete upside down.
So in order to change that, we must let patients control their healthcare dollars.
Now, one of the objections to that is going to be, you're going to have some people say, I'm just kind of imagining an objection, which would be, okay, if you're fixing your kitchen or picking up food, you, the patient, are knowledgeable enough to know what to eat, and you may be knowledgeable enough to know how to fix your kitchen, but you are not knowledgeable when it comes to healthcare.
The doctor knows better, the hospital knows better.
So we cannot let you be the decision maker because you don't actually know.
I disagree.
First of all, let's look at the cash pay markets.
If I go to a cash pay-only surgical center, before I go there, I go to their website.
They have very clear description of the price and the service.
So they even put the pictures, like, are you doing a show there?
What do you need?
So they really tried hard to convey what they're doing, how they bundle the price.
You mean like these urgent care centers, right?
Surgical centers, Obama surgical centers.
So once we have a free market, patients control their money, the providers will compete to communicate to patients why the patient should get that service.
That is the origin of all the transformative change.
I mean, I think what we're realizing, you know, as we talk is it occurs to me that we are outlining a set of principles that's actually not unique to healthcare.
Because think about it.
Wouldn't schools work better if they were operating on the same principle?
Because right now, you're born into a certain community, and unless you're wealthy enough to go to a private school, you're going to go to the public school that's like down the street or five streets down.
And you don't have much of a choice.
You just have to go there, whatever slop they're feeding you.
You know, academically, you have to have, but on the other hand, if you put the dollars in the hands of the parents or the families, then they're going to go on the website.
Hey, what am I going to learn over here?
What am I going to learn over there?
And the schools then start competing.
We are going to provide this.
We're going to provide that.
We have sports.
We have these extracurricular activities.
We have the best faculty, here are all their degrees.
So, aren't we actually laying out principles that are applying to healthcare but apply much more broadly?
100%.
Healthcare is just one of many personal labor services.
There's nothing special about healthcare.
The Democrats and many left-leaning scholars have been using this foundational idea that the healthcare is different based on Kennis Arrow's 1965 article saying healthcare is different, we have information symmetry, etc.
Then we start the Soviet-style government-centered healthcare policy.
Then, in order to change, we have to go back to the foundation saying that is totally wrong.
Healthcare is just like any other services: school, lawyer, restaurant, personal service, follow all the economic principles and will follow whatever incentives dictate.
Interesting.
So, just to clarify, because I think you said a bunch of things.
So, Kenneth Arrow was a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and you're saying in the 70s, I think it was the 1970s when he was in his heyday of 60s or 70s, he made the claim, very much in line with expanding the size of government, that we cannot apply the normal free market principles to healthcare.
It's a unique product.
That's the origin, yeah.
Right, and you're saying, no, it isn't.
That's wrong, yeah.
And if you look at John Cochrane, other prominent economists, they have long recognized there should be no difference between healthcare and other personal services.
Of course, the level of information symmetry will be different, but the core, the nature is the same.
So, what is one thing?
You know, we're a year away from the midterms, a couple of years away from the 28 election.
What can Republicans put out there in the area of healthcare?
Something that's kind of visionary, even if it involves some fairly fundamental change.
How would you put a proposal out to the American people to take this Obamacare kind of monster and like redo it?
Technology has been collapsing price everywhere.
American people should ask why technology hasn't made healthcare cheaper, more affordable.
So, the root cause is really government.
The solution is not a government.
The solution is free market, free people.
So, let people control their money.
That's free patients, right?
And then, let physicians compete fairly.
That's free physicians.
And then, let insurance companies design and offer plans people like and want.
That's free insurance.
And finally, deregulate, unburdened.
Think about the electronic health records, all the quality environment.
These are strongholds on physicians' neck.
So, those things have to be gone.
So, once our you know, our voters realize that the government is the root cause, and they will really follow what the free market dictates.
And I want to add, if you look at the cash pay market, we have a very vibrant market thriving, and the price is declining.
Think about classic surgery, right?
The price has been declining, quality has been improving.
So, that'd be a great example.
You know, I think our members and our leaders should be more forthcoming in communicating to American people that we should pursue healthcare freedom.
In fact, if we don't push healthcare freedom, we'll lose our global leadership, in my opinion.
Our businesses, our entrepreneurs cannot live their full life because of healthcare.
Now, people are paying almost half of their take-home pay to healthcare.
And that is not a system, and we're going to be surpassed by China if we keep doing that.
So, to put it slightly differently, and tell me if this is right.
Right now, you have the US government over here, and they identify all these people need healthcare subsidies.
So they funnel the subsidies through the government to the hospitals.
And what you're saying is, don't do that.
Here are the consumers.
And there might be some people who do need subsidies from the government, but instead funnel the money in this direction to the consumer.
Let the consumer be the deciding force and let the businesses and the hospitals and the doctors all compete for those services.
Right?
So, really, a change of direction.
100%.
Then, once patients can benefit financially from lower price and better health, then that's the starting point of every change in this market.
I think we have to recognize we're at a crossroad.
Either serve them through healthcare or freedom through healthcare.
There's no third way.
And healthcare is such a big part of our economy that I think what you're saying is this one thing, you know, normally we deal with so many different aspects of life, but this one thing is such a big part of where people's money goes that it alone determines whether the car is going to go on this fork of the road or that fork of the road, right?
Right.
And don't forget that for the low-income American, most vulnerable Americans, the current system really fills them, really fills them.
If I'm a Medicaid patient, in Medicaid, if I work hard, I go to gym, I eat healthy, what kind of financial benefit can I get?
Little.
I cannot personally directly benefit anything from the Medicaid program.
In addition to that, I'm confined in this very restricted network of providers.
Let's say I want to see a doctor in MD Anderson.
I cannot do that, right?
Because my network restriction dictates that I cannot go.
But if I have money in my hand, I can go there as any other consumer to get the service, right?
Dignified away.
So I think that is where we should go.
We should give the money to the mean-tested, more money to the mean-tested population, and have a state-funded reinsurance program.
Reinsurance means it's a secondary insurance to make sure everybody's premium is affordable.
So even if, let's say, I'm higher risk than you, my premium will not be too high, too high, but too much higher than you, because there's a state-funded reinsurance program.
But that's really taking away this third-party issue.
I believe funding patients directly and the sponsor state reinsurance program would be the right way to do.
Guys, I hope that this conversation has given you just a glimpse into some of the policy complexities here, but also that there's such a clear pathway.
And I think the reason I think it was so cool to talk about you coming from China and discovering freedom is really your work is a continuation of the same thing.
It's an application of this broad principle to the particular issue of healthcare.
I think you've been really enlightening.
Gbai, thank you so much for joining me.
Guys, you can follow her on X at GE.
Very simple, just G-E-B-A-I-D-C.
So Gibai DC at Geebai DC.
And it's been really wonderful having you in the studio.
Such an honor and a blessing.
I just want to say one last thing.
In a freedom, in a free healthcare system, everybody can save, thrive, invest, and live a full life.
That's really American Ghanism, an American dream coming true for everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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