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Jan. 20, 2025 - Dr. Oz Podcast
41:22
Medical Scams Exposed + Cory Booker on Health Inequality! | Dr. Oz | S7 | Ep 133 | Full Episode
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Time Text
Her doctor told her she had cancer, but she didn't.
I thought I was gonna die.
You're going through all kinds of grueling treatments that you don't even need, but you don't know that.
It was horrible.
I picked out my son to be played at my funeral.
Is your doctor scamming you?
Did you have any idea that he was a fraud?
Montel Williams investigates.
The thing that's so crazy about this, though, could this have been stopped?
coming up next.
You've seen the news stories.
Stories like this one.
An 18-year-old kid opens a fake medical practice and gets away with treating patients even though he never spent one day in med school.
And how about this doctor who spent years giving his patients rounds and rounds of chemotherapy when some didn't even have cancer?
It was all part of an elaborate scheme to build Medicaid out of millions of dollars.
Today, Montel Williams is here to expose fake doctors trying to rip you off and the medical scams you need to watch out for so it doesn't happen to you.
And that's not all.
We're exposing other areas of health inequality faced by millions of Americans simply because of their zip code or the color of their skin.
My friend Senator Cory Booker is here to reveal the number one thing standing between millions of you and good health care.
But first, the fake doctor that could be treating you.
It's not a question most of us would even think to ask.
Is my doctor really a doctor?
But in an alarming string of cases across the country, imposter doctors have found ways to breach security at medical facilities, set up clinics, and fool unsuspecting patients.
It's no surprise these criminal con artists prey on those most vulnerable.
The weak, the poor, and the sick.
Montel Williams joins me now.
He's been working with my producers on getting to the bottom of that very question.
Thank you so much, my brother.
I know this took time.
We actually contacted Malachi to find out his side of the story.
And he agreed to come here and answer the tough questions.
But just two days before this taping, Malachi Love Robinson was arrested.
So, Montel, give us some insight into Malachi's state of mind leading up to that arrest.
Well, what's so crazy about this amendment, first of all, I'm glad you guys called me and asked me to help you with this, because this kid has been making all kinds of allegations against the medical community, against the police, saying that this is racially motivated, that we're doing this because we just won't want to cut a young man who's an African American a break.
Well, give me a break, because this is a young man who knew that he was going to prey on people from his own community when he set up this organization.
So, what's the bottom line?
What's his mindset?
When you listen to him, he sounds like such a brilliant and intelligent young man.
But when you understand it, this intelligence has been used for one thing.
That's to scam people.
He did this deliberately understanding he was going to scam people.
And unfortunately, the majority of us here in this room and people at home would not be able to tell the difference because he's claiming to be a homeopath.
He's claiming that he's got training in vitamins.
Well, you know, I've written eight books, six of which are New York Times bestsellers.
Two of them are called Living Well with Montel.
I can hang a shingle tomorrow and say, I'm a doctor and I can help you homeopathically.
But what does that mean?
That's what he did.
So what scares you the most when you see how easy it is for folks like Malachi to go out there, hang a shingle up, and start...
Practicing medicine.
What scares me is when you say hang a shingle.
Where does he get the shingle from?
This is the part that just cracks me up.
I literally, I went online.
And you know me, dude.
I'm like a computer idiot.
I can't do it.
I have to have somebody else kind of type in me.
But I went online thinking, this is going to take me two hours to get myself a degree.
Really?
Five minutes later, put my first name in, last name in, a little bit of information about who I am.
Then I said, who do I want to be?
I'd like a doctorate in divinity.
Dr. Montel Williams.
Oh, my goodness.
Kabang.
Five minutes later, we were able to produce a diploma for myself, and this website that I got it from told me that this is a diploma that I can use the title doctor with.
What did it cost you?
This was $29.95.
Oh, and let me tell you.
My school was so expensive for me.
You had to do a dissertation, did you not?
Yeah, you had to write thesis.
You did a thesis, right?
You had to submit that?
Oh, all I had to do was steal one.
Put copy a thesis off the internet.
Paste my name.
Send it to them.
They send me this.
And that's what was such a shame about this.
Number one, you know, you're pointing it out today.
That it's not just Malachi.
Now, you know this, Mimit.
I can sign up for a class this Saturday.
This Saturday's class may tell me how to stick anything from Botox in you to anything else I want to inject in you.
Now, I run out of Botox in my office.
I can go down to the hardware store and get me a little silicone, which doctors have been doing!
Absolutely have been doing, over and over.
And how do we get to figure this out?
How do I, I mean, because again, you guys are supposed to take this oath, you know, not hurt me.
How do I trust you?
As a man who's had a chronic illness, MS, and who knows what it's like to desperately seek out solutions, give me an insight, not into the malachows of the world, but the patients with problems who are looking for help.
How desperate does that get?
I have been on your show.
Three times with what I consider earth-changing issues with my family.
I brought my daughter here who had lymphoma.
I took my daughter to one of the top doctors in this country.
Now, I had to trust that this thing that was hanging on his wall was real.
And it scared the devil out of me, thinking that she wasn't going to make it.
Remember, she didn't make it through the first treatment the right way, and she had to have a second treatment.
But my daughter finally made it.
Guys, when I was 19 years old, I was in the U.S. military stationed at 29 Palms, California, and I had a ripped muscle in my chest that caused some fluid buildup under my left nipple.
I went to see this doctor.
This clown, sorry, this guy, looked at my chest and said, oh my God, I have the first case of male breast cancer.
He went on to mutilate me, double mastectomy.
Guys, I had a double mastectomy at age 19. You know, disfigured my chest to the point that I've had to work out my whole life to reshape it to look like this.
It was all wrong.
He didn't even bother to do a pathology on what he took out.
It was never cancer.
So I can't imagine going to a doctor and thinking that I have somebody I can trust, and this guy is doing nothing but sitting there scheming on how I can steal, how I can abuse, and at the end of the day, It's tantamount to killing me.
So, yeah, I feel for patients like this that I've had to go through things like this.
Well, as you know, sometimes it's not tantamount.
It's more than tantamount.
It's actually killing people.
Yes, sir.
So when we come back, the most heinous story of medical fraud that I've ever heard, a doctor giving chemo treatments to patients who are never even sick.
And why did he do it?
just to make a profit.
Next, a doctor who exploited hundreds of patients, exposing them to dangerous cancer treatments they never even needed.
Who is this cancer fraud doctor?
How could this happen?
The medical scams you need to know about now before it happens to you.
Next. Dr. Oz, nominated for six Daytime Emmys, including Best Talk Show Host.
Sexually Transmitted Cancer.
That most sexually active men and women will get at least one type of HPV in their lives.
Can a kiss put you at risk?
So a virus infection from 20 years ago could come back to haunt the relationship now.
Absolutely.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Millions of doctors all across the country take their oath to do no harm very seriously.
But not this doctor.
Not in this case.
He exploited over 550 patients for profit, exposing them to dangerous cancer treatments they never needed in the first place.
For most cancer patients, the enemy is the disease.
In this case, the doctor was the enemy.
July 2015, in one of the most shocking cases of medical fraud and patient betrayal on record, Dr. Fareed Fata, former Detroit area cancer specialist, is sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Among his crimes?
Administering poisonous chemotherapy treatments to patients who didn't need them.
Shockingly, some of them didn't even have cancer.
Fada carried out his scam, raking in more than $17 million in fraudulent billing and allegedly prescribing more than 9,000 unnecessary injections and infusions to at least 553 unsuspecting patients.
Dr. Fada pounced on every opportunity to use a patient's body as a profit center.
Patty received years of debilitating treatments, though she was never even sick to begin with.
I believed him when he said I had cancer.
I thought I was going to die.
Liz from White Lake, Michigan, became another victim of Fada's scheme.
Her mother, Marianne, died while under his care.
If I questioned what he was doing, he would say, I'm the doctor, and he would get angry.
He would threaten if my mother had stopped the chemo, she would die.
Fada eventually pled guilty to Medicare fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.
But to his victims, his 45-year sentence is not nearly enough to mend the shattered lives he left behind.
Montel Williams is back and joining us now is one of Dr. Fata's victims, Patty.
His life was turned upside down when Dr. Fata told her she was permanently ill even though she was never sick in the first place.
So you work in the medical field.
Yes.
I'm pointing that out because as a knowledgeable individual, you go on there to meet Dr. Feiler.
Did anything in that first visit strike you as out of order?
Any warnings?
No.
Actually, he was very soft-spoken.
Other than he had a very long wait in the lobby before you were seen by him.
Because a lot of patients?
A lot of patients.
And they all looked extremely ill.
I mean, it was like walking dead.
They looked bad.
How did you hear about him?
My primary doctor had him down on the list.
So I researched him.
And he was...
Taught that.
Sloan Kettering grad.
Nothing negative.
So it's not a fly-by-life fella.
Oh, no.
Good pedigree, referred by your doctors.
Well, my doctor, she said, here's one of them.
It's okay, but it didn't say, don't go to that doctor.
Absolutely not.
So, Dr. Fata told Patty she has something called MDS. That's a precursor to leukemia.
But it's a precursor.
It doesn't mean you've got cancer.
A standard treatment for someone without symptoms, which you didn't have any symptoms.
Right.
Would be to just take a watch-and-see approach.
Just conservative.
Don't do anything because you don't want to hurt the patient.
But that is not what Dr. Fata told you.
No, he told me that I had MDS and that I was in my 50s and that my cell life, you know, it was rapidly producing and that I would die.
And I needed to start chemo right away.
I needed to have a port put in and start administering chemo.
And I flipped out.
And I said, I can't do it.
So I refused to do the chemo, and so he started me on iron infusions, which progressed to IVIG. So he's giving you infusions knowing you don't actually have a disease that requires it.
Right.
And how many of these grueling treatments did you take?
I had iron infusions for a few months, and I didn't need those either, and then I progressed to IVIG until the day of his arrest.
I was due that week to go in for a treatment.
And you had been going for two years at this point, right?
Two and a half.
Two and a half years.
Yeah.
Five hours of treatments, that's what it takes to do some of these things.
Yes.
You're told you just have a couple years to live.
You may die sooner than you should even because you're not doing the chemo.
Right.
So what toll did that take on you being told that you're going to die, you're not doing enough to keep yourself alive.
Right.
You're going through all kinds of grueling treatments that you don't even need, although you don't know that.
Well, I... Sold every, not sold.
I gave everything away that I thought that people wanted because I figured it'd be easier to give them those things while I was still alive.
It was horrible.
I was saying goodbye.
I picked out my song to be played at my funeral.
I just had so many goodbyes.
I didn't want my family to see me sick.
You know, just hearing this, what Patty's not saying.
And, Patty, please, this devastation on your family, your husband, your son.
I mean, you think about this.
If tomorrow your mother called you and said, I'm going to die, and I don't know if it's the next couple months.
Her husband ended up, you know, succumbing to an addiction issue.
Yes, he did.
And her son, who was just seeing someone, a girlfriend, you know, they get pregnant, this girlfriend says, look, you better marry me because your mom's going to want to have a legitimate granddaughter or grandson.
Yep, that's right.
So you better do it before your mother dies.
So their entire family's life is turned upside down, you know?
So what do you feel now?
Anger, frustration, joy because you're going to live?
Well, you know, it's a mixed bag of tricks, you know?
It's like, at first you're like, when you find out.
You do not have it.
You're like, wow.
And the doctor says, I don't know what to tell you.
I've never ran across this.
Live your life.
But then this rage sits in.
This anger.
How could this happen?
And if it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody.
Because there were doctors.
There were attorneys.
He crossed all borders.
It wasn't like, you know, I'll just pick on this segment of people.
It was money.
We were a cash cow.
That's right there.
That's it.
All about the dollar.
He can care less about her life, her family, the other 16,000 people.
All about a dollar, man.
And you started the segment with do no harm?
You know?
Yeah.
It's the opposite.
All right, there's lots more to be heard in this case.
Next, a woman whose mother died in the care of Dr. Fata.
The tactics he used to fool everybody.
Stay with us.
Next, he scammed millions out of Medicaid at the expense of innocent patients.
Now, Montel Williams and I meet some of the victims who trusted him with their lives.
If she was only supposed to get one bag of chemo, he was putting three in her that time and doing it three times in a week.
Dr. Fareed Fata, convicted of medical fraud, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for giving patients chemotherapy treatments they didn't need.
One of those patients, Marianne, died while under his care.
Her daughter Liz says Fata used fear to keep them coming back.
If I questioned what he was doing, he would say, I'm the doctor, and he would get angry.
He was saying, if you don't do this, you're going to basically kill your mother.
I'm here with Montel Williams.
Joining us now is Liz.
You just heard that Liz's mom did have cancer, but it was terminal.
And Dr. Fata continued excessive treatments in an effort to extort money, which ruined the final years of her life.
So what happened to your mom after she started seeing Dr. Fata?
She was 60, and immediately upon treatment, she went downhill and looked like she was in her 90s.
He told her that if you follow my treatment plan, you have a 70% chance of surviving.
And she continually got sicker and sicker.
She didn't look like she was getting better.
But he lied to us and said, your tumors are shrinking.
You're doing great.
And she was continually in the local hospital, in the ICU unit, on her death.
And when she'd pull through, he'd say, you immediately need to start chemo again.
And another doctor told her, the chemo is killing you.
You need to stop chemo.
And Dr. Fata would say, if you stop chemo, you're going to die.
If you stop taking your mother for treatment, you're going to kill her.
That's terrible.
That would turn me off immediately.
But obviously, your mom wants to live.
My mom wanted to live so badly.
She was more worried about me than herself.
Did you have any idea that he was a fraud?
No, absolutely not.
He had a positive demeanor, so he always told you something positive versus a negative.
But I questioned that if he was telling us the truth, but I never thought he was a fraud or...
Man, factually, what was happening, though, and we've seen this now, each patient's a little different.
In her mother's case, he was giving her additional chemo than what she needed.
But that's what he was doing.
Every opportunity he had to actually...
Guys, you've got to understand this.
If she was only supposed to get, let's say, one bag of chemo, he was putting three in her that time and doing it three times in a week so he could charge nine times.
The real part of the story that hurts me is he was willing to sacrifice your mom to make money.
Absolutely.
Yes, he was willing to sacrifice everyone.
You know, it was all about money.
He knew he was unintentionally harming my mom.
He didn't only overtreat her, but he gave her things such as iron treatments.
And if you get iron when you don't need it, it harms your organs.
So he knew he was killing my mother and didn't care.
All right, up next, the whistleblower nurse who attempted to expose Dr. Fata.
Actually, this happened.
People figured this out.
They try to expose Dr. Fara and how you can protect yourself from becoming a victim of medical fraud Next meet the woman who tried to stop him How she discovered something wasn't right.
But no one listened.
These patients have no idea.
What finally brought Dr. Fata to justice.
Plus, her advice to everyone on what you can do to be your own health advocate.
Next.
Sexually transmitted cancer.
Most sexually active men and women will get at least one type of HPV at some point in their lives.
And a simple kiss puts you at risk.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
We believed that nothing short of a life sentence was appropriate in this case because the harm was so egregious.
This we believe to be the most serious fraud case in the history of the country.
The prosecutor you just saw was talking about the case against Dr. Fareed Farah, a medical doctor sentenced to prison after scamming Medicaid out of millions.
But more importantly, he gave dangerous care that resulted in sickness and death.
The question here is, how did he get away with this?
How did no one turn him in?
Does that strike you a little weird?
Yeah.
Well, in fact, someone did turn him in.
There is actually a woman who tried, and she is here today.
Please meet Angela.
She's an oncology nurse.
We tried to stop Dr. Clark.
How did you discover that there was an issue in his office?
I went for an interview and I job shadowed with one of the nurses for a position as an infusion nurse in his office.
Then what happened?
I walked in, I saw many violations.
The first one was how the chemotherapy was being handled and disposed of, which is an OSHA violation.
I saw medical assistants giving chemotherapy, which is they're not licensed to be able to even do any kind of medication administration.
And I did not see one thing that was being given appropriately.
This upset her so much.
When you walked to your car, what almost happened?
I got in my car and I started crying because I thought, oh my gosh, these patients have no idea.
That they're getting shoddy, inappropriate care.
So I went home and I printed off an allegation.
I had to Google how to turn in a physician.
I had to...
Is that the form right there?
Yeah, that is my allegation form.
I filled it out and I put in there twice that he was harming his patients because I wanted somebody to take it very seriously.
Thank goodness you dealt with the problem.
Right.
I thought so.
We need to put a little...
Pause it here.
You would think you had dealt with the problem.
You filed that document June 11, 2010. Oh, no, no, no.
That's not when I filed it.
I filed it in April.
They stamped it received in June.
So I know that the mail is, you know, not fast, but two months.
So two months later they get the document.
This is still years before the FBI broke in and took this guy away in handcuffs.
So what happened after that?
It took a year before I got a response back from the state.
And the response was, they're taking his license, they're going to pull him aside.
What was the response?
Well, the response was very upsetting because the first thing is I noticed my name was spelled incorrectly.
And it said, some time ago, you filed an allegation against the above-named physician.
That they found no violation of the Michigan Public Health Code and that the case was closed.
They did apologize.
Sorry that we couldn't be of any help to you.
They told you that they actually researched him and he was fine.
This is a guy who a couple years later...
He's going to jail for harming countless number of people.
Correct.
And he pled guilty.
When he pled guilty, he pled guilty to three of the medications that I listed in my allegations.
I'm sure you've called him out and said, what happened?
I told you all this.
You cost people lives by not acting on what I said.
Not only that, you specifically said that you checked and it was all compliant.
You did everything you're supposed to do.
So what's their defense?
They...
They refused to give me.
I FOIA'd after Dr. Fata was arrested.
I FOIA'd...
Freedom of Information Act.
Yeah, Freedom of Information Act.
You know, it's great if it works.
They denied the investigation.
I asked for a copy of the investigation.
They denied it.
I rebuttaled it.
They denied it again.
So when Dr. Fata pled guilty and they took his license away, I'm like, okay, he's a convicted felon.
He no longer is a practicing physician.
There's no reason to protect his privacy.
They denied it again.
Twice.
Twice.
So I've been denied four times what the actual investigation...
This is biblical in nature.
What goes down here?
How angry can you get about something like this?
Let's talk about it.
How about this?
You saw the prosecutor saying, we want to make sure this guy gets a life sentence.
So they give him 45 years.
And in America today, folks, 45 years, especially for a person who's a professional, could end up being 12 and out.
So let's start that in one.
Two, if you really wanted to give him a life sentence, they should have thrown the book at this guy.
He should have got 45 times 553 patients he treated.
Then we know he dies in jail.
That's what's going to happen.
Again, I would hope that this show right here sends a ripple effect in that, District Attorney's Office because the Freedom of Information Act is going to probably find out that there were probably hundreds of people who could have been saved from being, you know, administered bad medicine had they acted when she put this in.
And we've got to start demanding that our elected officials hold people responsible.
Look at what's going on in Michigan.
Two doctors in Flint said two years before they found the lead poisoning, that there was lead poisoning, and they turned their back.
When is America going to stop turning the backs on your brothers, your sisters, your mothers and fathers?
Because if you don't say anything, that's exactly what you're doing.
I'm so angry right now.
I'm having trouble forming a question.
Angela, you're a professional.
Yes.
You blew the whistle.
You were ignored.
Yes.
Give everyone some advice.
What were the things you wish people would have known if you could have gotten him out of his office that may have prevented him from going first?
What should Patty have known as a health professional herself?
That could have helped her out.
Definitely get a copy of your scans, your labs, and especially your pathology reports because you don't have to be a licensed healthcare professional to know that if it says no evidence of a malignancy, that means there's no cancer there.
So you don't even have to get a second, get a third opinion.
We have no problem with asking, hey, do you like that restaurant down the street?
Do you like that hotel that you stayed at?
Why don't we do that about our physicians?
Let's turn this to a positive because it's infuriating.
It's not supposed to happen, but it is happening right now all over America.
There is nobody, my friends, nobody that can protect you better than you.
So here's some red flags I want you to look for.
First off, if there's high turnover in the office staff, it's a big deal.
It's a major problem in this case, right?
The nurses are turning over all the time.
In fact, go in there and ask the staff how they like the doctor and the clinic.
Would they go there?
They said their family member's there.
They'll be remarkably honest with you, especially if they're not happy with what's going on.
They want to help.
They don't even know how to tell you that it's dangerous there.
Next, the doctor that you're talking to, if they feel offended by your questions, that's not your problem.
It's their problem.
They should never use threatening language to you.
Threaten that you're going to die if you don't get the treatment.
And if they get upset that you're asking questions, you go find one of those second and third opinions we're talking about.
Jump one, Leonard.
You're paying them.
It's your money.
If he won't answer you, homeboy, you're not getting a check.
He will answer you.
That's it.
I love it.
And finally, I want to highlight something that Mattel said because it's so powerful.
Dr. Fata did go to jail.
Maybe not for long enough, but he went to prison.
But he did not go to jail for hurting people.
He went to jail for stealing money from the government.
That is very sad to me.
Because the 45 years he got is nothing compared to the life sentence he gave these wonderful women in our audience today who suffered from him.
So I want to thank Montel for being here as always.
Patty and Liz for being so honest.
And I always pay for both of your stories.
And Angela for doing your best to make it happen in your first place.
We'll be right back.
Next, as mayor of one of America's toughest cities, Cory Booker had seen his share of inequality.
Now, as U.S. Senator, he voices concerns for one of the biggest inequalities in this country.
Why he says the color of your skin and your zip code can determine the fate of your health.
That's next.
So we spend $3 trillion a year on healthcare.
Let me put that in perspective.
It's roughly $10,000 per person every year.
That's more than any other nation.
But more and more of the quality of that care may depend on the color of your skin or what zip code you live in.
Inequality in health care prevents people from even competing for the lives they desire and deserve.
And no one has seen the impact of this inequality more than the former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, who's now a U.S. senator.
Please welcome my friend, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.
Looking good, Cory.
Feeling good, man.
Feeling good.
Thank you, Cory.
I love you for a lot of reasons, but in particular because you're very honest about the challenges that we're facing.
So we're going to try to do it raw and authentic today.
So if we're going to be raw and authentic, I have to say something at the start.
People know you from your public side, but I've seen you in your private side.
And my father, who got very ill from Parkinson's disease.
You were one of those little angelical lights, checking in on my dad, giving him great health advice.
And he died six days before I was elected to the United States Senate.
But the love my parents had for you and my mom still has for you, I'm grateful.
You are the real deal.
You really are.
Thank you very much.
Let's talk about, we're both passionate about, who suffers the most?
From inequality in health care.
Clearly, unequivocally, the greatest natural resource our country has, not oil, gas, or coal.
It is our children that suffer the worst.
And they're so precious, if you think about it from an economic hat, they're so precious because they will drive this economy or will be paying more for our failures to invest in them, to take care of them, to nurture them.
And just in the span of human achievement, the future geniuses, which are equally distributed.
There's many geniuses being born in Camden, New Jersey, as there are in Beverly Hills.
And we need to make sure that we're taking care of the genius that's going to advance humanity in the future.
Let me put some numbers on this for everybody.
I beautifully stated.
This is CDC information.
Infant mortality rate twice as high for black children compared to whites.
The uninsured rate is two and a half times higher for Hispanic kids.
So what is the reason for this inequality?
Why can't we balance it out?
Well, again, it's poverty.
It's as simple as that.
It is poverty.
And we have children that are born in poverty have a lot of different realities than children that are not born in poverty.
The air quality in poor neighborhoods is more difficult.
In my city, we had three times the asthma rates than other places.
And most people don't realize the number one reason why children miss school in America is asthma, just because of air quality.
Right now, there's a lot of talk about Flint, Michigan.
What people don't know is that Flint, Michigan is not an anomaly.
We have about half a million children every year being diagnosed with lead poisoning or elevated blood lead levels.
And so our inability to create a nurturing, healthy environment for kids is really problematic.
We're wasting, we're spoiling our greatest natural resource.
So does our government, and I'm asking you as a U.S. senator, Does our government have a responsibility to guarantee us access to healthcare?
Is that something that's part of our innate right as Americans?
Well, the way I like to tell it to people is, let's just think about this for a second, about what the cost of inaction on healthcare is.
You know, we seem to be a society that's much more comfortable with paying exorbitant costs.
To deal with a problem after it's occurred as opposed to a lot less of an investment on the front end.
So forget about government or not government that creates these false dichotomies in our country.
I hate government.
I'm for more government intervention.
Let's just think common sense wise.
Fiscally prudent.
If we were running this like America Inc., what would we do?
Now one of the best dollars you can invest and Pew and other studies have shown is something called nurse family partnerships.
You take an at-risk mother and instead of waiting for a problem you send a nurse to their home to talk to them about it.
About nutrition.
About language.
Kids hearing more words.
And that actually saves.
About five government dollars later, you see the visits to the emergency room going down.
A five-to-one benefit.
A five-to-one benefit for us as taxpayers.
And so sometimes just common sense advice, a caring, nurturing, nurse-family partnership, a low-cost intervention, can not only say, forget the money part of it, but the productivity of that child, the long-term productivity of that child goes up.
And so what I'm really frustrated about our society is that we don't understand that, you know, Frederick Douglass said this so powerfully, it's easier to build strong children than to heal broken men.
And we are so much, so much, so much like, and then what we do on the back end is just horrifying.
We end up, Poor kids, right now we have only 9 out of 100 kids born in poverty in America will go to college.
Think about what that means for their long-term economic well-being.
Poor kids are more likely to be disciplined in school or to drop out of school, which means a lot when it comes to going to prison.
If you go to prisons in America right now, they're overwhelmingly, we imprison the poor and the uneducated.
And really, it's a sign not just of their failure, but our failure.
And so many people, when it comes to talking about issues like this, they want to point blame at a mother or point blame at a child.
Blame is okay, but I'm about collective responsibility because people need to understand that we are in a nation that is interdependent, where the welfare of your children is going to benefit me.
And by the way, if your children fail, it costs me more.
By the way, if your children benefit, I'm the recipient.
We all benefit.
So Corey's written a great new book.
It's called United.
Thoughts on finding common ground and advancing the common good.
You can tell from why he's speaking how beautifully he does it.
You read a lot about the fact that there's greater health risks for the underprivileged, for the poor, for the minorities.
Is there a mechanism you can imagine where we can balance our system?
Is it really doable?
You know, it absolutely is.
I'm a senator now, but before this, I was a mayor, and I had to deal with all of these challenges, but try to get people to understand the win-wins that are involved in when we start to recognize that we need each other, that we have an interwoven destiny.
There's a wonderful activist in South Central Los Angeles.
He calls himself the Gorilla Gardener.
And he says, you know, Corey, and he said this in actually a very famous TED Talk, where he says, in South Central, we have drive-bys.
Drive-thrus.
And he said the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys.
And he really talks about these preventative things that we could be doing, common sense things as a larger community that make economic sense, that make moral sense, and then for a strong democracy that has to compete in a competitive global environment, it makes sense for our patriotism as well.
All right, when we come back, the number one thing standing between you and good health.
Is it happening in your community?
Find out when we return.
Next, Senator Booker discusses one of this country's biggest obstacles, neighborhoods with no access to quality food.
Walk into a bodega and suddenly a Twinkie is cheaper than an apple.
What's creating these food deserts and what we all need to do to fix it?
Coming up next.
Sexually transmitted cancer.
Most sexually active men and women will get at least one type of HPV at some point in their lives.
And a simple kiss puts you at risk.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
We are back with Senator Cory Booker, one of the biggest obstacles to addressing inequality in health.
It has to do with access to quality food.
Food deserts are an area where there's little to no access to fresh and healthy food.
They're all over the country in every state.
But they are disproportionately affecting low-income and minority populations and poor communities.
And these are the hardest hit ones, guys.
Look at this map.
If you're in one of these little red states, you're in trouble.
But frankly, all the states have these.
I'll give you some examples.
Let's go to Chicago here, right?
In a typical black neighborhood in Chicago, right?
The nearest grocery store, right?
It's about twice as far away as the nearest fast food restaurant.
So guess what?
You're going to go to a fast food restaurant because it's only half the distance.
Sort of a no-brainer.
All right, let's go to the other side of the country.
Let's go to San Francisco.
Over here, you've got 70 corner stores in neighborhoods with zero supermarkets.
So you can go to a small little bodega and buy chips, but you can't actually buy fresh produce because it's not sold there.
And let me go to your state, Corey, if I can.
And my state because I live there too.
Camden, New Jersey.
There's one supermarket in the whole city.
Just one in a major city.
You've lived through this.
No, and so this was the problem we had in Newark.
And so we decided to do a full-court press with farmers markets.
We took entire city blocks, in one case, and made urban gardens with creating thousands of pounds of fresh food.
And then I went out and battled to get supermarkets to come to our city.
Some of them, Whole Foods, what an amazing company.
We finally got them after seven years of trying.
In the early days, supermarkets would laugh at me, but we made the point that if you bring great, healthy, fresh foods, there's a market for that.
And so we've got to start figuring out ways all of us can do more.
But Corey, these big chains, they say they're scared.
There's only one there because they say they're scared of going into some of these areas.
You know, that is thinking to me from a decade ago, especially I know what's happening in Camden with a great mayor and a great team there.
They're creating such environments.
But often you see supermarkets as the last ones to come, even as cities are reversing trends like Newark did, where the city's now growing.
People want to live there, but you're still having a hard time bringing in the supermarkets.
But there's other ways, too.
The urban gardening movement, we've got to get that bigger in our country, where people are taking over lots, taking over neighborhoods, introducing kids to food.
What I found out is when seniors and children, the community comes together for a community garden, not only are they growing fresh and healthy food, but they're learning to cook it.
And they're eating healthier.
And what you said about bodegas, I mean, that's the challenge.
There's an old saying that it's very expensive to be poor.
Well, it actually really is.
And one way is, is often you have more expensive food at the corner of groceries, less quality.
And then we as taxpayers, people don't understand this.
One of the reasons I voted against the farm bill is because we were cutting urban nutrition programs and we were still subsidizing things like sugar and other things.
So my kids could walk into a bodega and suddenly a Twinkie or a Twinkie-like product is cheaper than an apple because of Come on over here.
Let's talk about this, because you just hit the nail on the head when it comes to our individual responsibilities.
We are judged, I feel, by how we take care of the weakest among us.
I sometimes feel very frustrated when I hear the kind of things you're saying.
Do you get angry?
As a sitting U.S. Senator, when you realize that we're allowing things to happen that lead to more of these discrepancies and disparities between care?
Well, anger is a constructive emotion, and I hope it triggers courageous empathy and a fearsome love where we say, wait a minute, by us supporting, by us being disengaged...
And not knowledgeable about food systems in America and how we're contributing to the very expense of our health care system.
What I hope it does is it drives consciousness.
Because, you know, again, King said it so eloquently that the problem today is not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but the appalling silence and indifference of the good people.
If we're going to be great as a country, we need everybody.
As the old African parable says, if you want to go fast, go alone.
But if you want to go far, go together.
Well, the gaps right now...
In our country, the kind of impact on poverty, a lot of our challenges are actually getting worse.
Social mobility, the ability to climb out of poverty compared to our economic competitors is getting worse.
And so if we're going to be a great country, we've got to start understanding that my destiny is invested in and my tax dollars are even more expensive unless I start doing something more active and courageous.
The real poverty I worry about in America is a poverty of empathy, a poverty of compassion, and a poverty of love.
This is good policy and it's good politics.
And you can see now why I asked the next question, because there's lots of rumors out there that you're going to be the running mate, possibly nominated to run with Hillary Clinton.
What do you think?
Would you accept if that was in case thrown at you?
Well, you and I talk about food a lot.
Tweeted at me, you should be the VP for Hillary.
And I said, I'm already Hillary's vegan pal.
So look, life is about purpose, not position.
And I want to stay very authentic.
And so when I criticize things like the Farm Bill and things like, I want to be able to speak the truth for my position that I have now.
I feel blessed to be a United States senator to represent New Jersey.
And I will let the future take care of itself.
Senator Cory Booker's new book is called United.
It's in stores now.
We'll be right back.
And so, um...
The truth about zero-calorie foods.
We break it all down.
Plus, Leah Remini.
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If Tom Cruise watches this interview, what would you say to him?
That's coming up Friday on Dr. Oz.
This entire show has been about balancing the scales.
From investigating medical scams aimed at taking advantage of you, to addressing the real solutions needed to bring healthy, quality foods to even the poorest neighborhoods.
It's important because we live in a time of inequality.
Rich people are living longer than poor people, and the divide widens every year.
So I want good doctors to be able to give the same good advice that they're giving to privileged patients to the underserved as well.
It's why we do this show, and it's the right thing to do.
Now, our country is built on the value that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And that means access to information for anyone watching, whether you are rich or poor.
You can hear it, you can learn about it, and you can use your health.
It makes us all equally able to achieve our dreams.
Now, today, I want to leave you with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., who said, Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
Think about that.
He said that over 50 years ago, and that message is just as important today.
So I'm going to put it on my Facebook page.
Please share it with friends.
Remind us all why we matter to each other.
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