welcome to front running 2020 coming to you from brooklyn as we take a look at all the economic policies of the democratic candidates today saying it was bernie sanders the man from brooklyn who 1st introduced medicare for all in 2016 hillary clinton called it a shiny pony for the people well it looks like the united states might actually get universal health care for the 1st time and i want to introduce our guest here dr michael hudson james howard kunstler and randy kohler dr michael hudson why does the united states not have universal health care and do we need it because of the

united states is an arena over what kind of central planning are we going to have is it going to be centralized planning by wall street that's out to squeeze as much monopoly pricing is can or are we going to have the more decentralized planning by government where you're obviously going to have the same doctors as before there are only so many doctors in america but are the doctors going to be working for the patients and for the government that people vote for or are they going to be working for wall street and the financial firms that are trying to squeeze more and more money out for pharmaceutical profit and for operating profit and to make it a money game how did health care become a wedge issue in other words you would think it would be something that everyone for decades would agree is a basic necessity and a functioning economy and a functioning society and yet it's used like guns or like abortion as a wedge issue which they can tell its message. so when you look at what dr drew

westen said in this study when they say we want to family doctor for everyone 80 percent of the people are on board with the family doctor for everyone but when they rolled it out with obamacare and universal health care and public option people didn't understand what that was and they started you know taking sides but if you tell someone i'm going to give you a plan and there's going to be a family doctor for your community people can get on board with that for me when i look at what's going on in america 2016 was the beginning of the generation. millennium goals the largest voting bloc now basically making their voice heard against neoliberalism what we have in america today with our health care system seems to me the epitome of neo liberalism there's so much paperwork it's unbelievable and none of it makes sense at all in terms of the cost structure so if you look at obamacare it costs $6300.00 for the taxpayer to cover your premiums but use up to pay 7000 dollars to visit the doctor medicaid only costs us

4234 a non disabled person so why not just put them on medicaid like every if you like the numbers don't add up it doesn't add up and i don't know why people can't see this i don't think we'll be able to even support medicaid at that level going into the future one way this is you ation right now is so insane i go to my doctor's office which is one of those corporate practices you know highly rationalized and the intake area is like the soviet motor vehicle bureau they have to hire a live in people to have a little booth you know to intake all of the paperwork that they're doing and that's just you know the beginning of the story dr michael hudson you were working with dennis q senate who was an early proponent of some our system to medicare for all why do you think obamacare happened why do you think we have this over the top kafkaesque this whole ever. a politician has

a choice to make are you going to work for your campaign donors or are you going to work for the voters who you deliver to your campaign donors obama and the other people in congress are working for the donors not for the people who elect them their job is to have a patter talk that will get them elected and dennis the senate was told that he could not even introduce medicare for all under the floor nancy pelosi and the house leadership and obama absolutely blocked them and said that's radical we're going to we're going to privatized we're going to. do to america what margaret thatcher did to england because that's where the money is there is an enormous amount of money of 18 percent of the g.d.p. is the next highest is the military industrial complex so the reason that we're privatizing it is that is the biggest grab for the insurance companies to say we would like well straight to replace the government we'd like people dependent on

wall street companies instead of the government because then you have no choice except to do what we say your money or your life now the government is not going to save your money or your life the government is going to say your life because we're the government and that's what here we're here to protect wall street says your money or your life how can they increase the layer after layer after layer taking a cut off each little bit so of course public health care is cheaper without having a profit and the bureaucracy and it turns out that if they're talking about some troll planning the central planning this by wall street now wall street central planning far out any kind of bureaucracy of the government to do as anybody who's had to go to a doctor knows from the insurance the people that are working in the doctor's office as you pointed out and what they have to go through trying to collect after the they're turned down for this expense and that expense. by the company do you

think this is a direct result of the graying of america meaning that wall street knew that there's going to be an aging boomer population and knew that they could extract value out of them as we kept them alive longer and we supplied them with pharmaceuticals and made money in the process as you describe it mean we have this enormous population that's graying right now in every county and in our country i think they're going after the retirement homes and the nursing homes for that i think the nursing home issue in the growing is different from controlling the the healing of disease and of course if you're on wall street and you're supporting coca-cola in the food companies on the one hand one part of wall street will give you does that his give you bad health and the other part will. and so it's a no lose game but see the thing about these health care plans is that dental has to be a part of it as well as on its side because it's proven that if you're not taking care of your teeth you can actually dental caries can infection you can have are

issues so what i've always found weird is they put these plans out but they don't cover dental that's very important now let me ask you a question about american health care which is interesting it's not like other countries you know so much tied to employers so corporations offer health care and my understanding and i'm curious if this is true from what you gentlemen now is that this was something or just by corporations 50 or 60 years ago to get people to work for them they said they'd come work for us and give you health care and then they became the health care provider and took it out of the hands of the government and as a result now if you don't have health care with a corporation that's you're at a huge disadvantage you're also disadvantaged it with other companies and industries around the world that don't have this burden of providing health care for their employees etc how did this all happen dr michael has a very important point if you're dependent on the employers for the health care you're afraid to go on strike because if you are you're afraid of being fired because if you're fired. you lose that if you go on strike you lose that so having

private health care by your corporations instead of the government gives your employer a hold over you and so instead of bargaining for higher wages and better working conditions your universe 1st thing is pay him i gotta live we saw this this past year with the united auto workers when they went on strike g.m. pulled their health care but one of the things that always keeps democrats from backing medicare for all our universal health care let's call it that is the union workers because the union workers they say like their health care and they have a you know these cadillac plans and that they don't want to lose that right that they've worked so hard and when i many strikes over the generations to get and they don't want to lose that but as we saw with g.m. and united auto workers jim doesn't seem like you're a victim of it anyway the cruelty of the situation is really out of this world you

know you get it you get you know bob sixpack who takes a little skippy into the emergency room for 3 stitches and you know 60 days later he gets a bill in its mail box for $23000.00 there's no chance that he's going to be able to pay that ariel have to declare bankruptcy and just the ruin of american households and families is this astronomical and unbelievably cruel to them we don't pay any attention to it in amazing kind of juxtaposition where we live because we live in an area the country what does turkey vultures that are always picking off road kill and you see them swarming and you also see these ambulances roaming up and down the highway looking for unconscious victims to tell for you know to steal from it's really remarkable that the newer thing is they're going to put lawyers in the ambulances to make it even more efficient we're going to get to that predatory. behavior in the 2nd half but before we wrap up this 1st half i want

to ask you about the bankruptcy because even under obamacare bankruptcy went out 67 percent of all bankruptcies are due to medical costs and it went up under obama because why because people had to pay those premiums they were forced to. making their own financial situation quite precarious i think it was the federal reserve the did this study but a majority of americans are basically a 400 dollar bird to see away from not having any money in the bank so when jim was saying is true you know little skippy is playing baseball and gets hit has to go to merchants from suddenly his father is hit with a whopping bill with no explanation how about that in terms of the overall economy if you have a huge population of bad credit worthy population who have bad credit due to bankruptcy they can't form their own companies because they can't get credit they can't even get a mortgage on an apartment and you add the student loans to that and you're having

a real squeeze especially on the on the younger people and the centrists are trying to confuse the issue by saying why can't we have just a public option and put all of the sick people that are expensive on the government account and let the insurance companies make a killing by handling on people who don't get sick let's give a big giveaway to my constituency my donors the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry and that's the club or. the other that sounds like a money making i.p.o. we take all the risk and put it here and we socialize the risk and we privatized the problem that's what the centrists are all about you know the other thing that really disturbs me is that we hear about these cases of the people being wildly overcharged for fairly simple services but there is absolutely no discussion of how did that church come to be you know i went in for rick. hip replacement 5 years ago

and i got a line item bill you know 60 days later from the insurance company. and it said room in board st peters hospital 36 hours 27000 dollars no explanation for that and so it takes me back to the idea that what we're witnessing is really a form of simple rackets here racketeering let's stay on that topic for the 2nd half don't go away. the russian state television propaganda machine propaganda outlet propaganda tools we are getting information for. we can change the world tomorrow. and you tube videos the.

rest much of a missile launches network. pushing brushes russia russia russia. but i want to believe that they will actually use russia today and i'm really happy to join to see you then on our team. who are so proud and still. are just getting the numbers. why have you not shut down our t.v. on you tube it's a propaganda machine mr walker. in

this community there are people who believe that it's ok. it's really hard there are no jobs and you see the kids ask and as a parent. i can come up with arguments and there's a lot of conflict within the games and between the teams most of the conflict i would say overall is around money and most of their money is made. close one on the children's cosimo each other is good business the state of california alone makes $6000000000.00 a year of the prison complex system you get some 20 alive where. you don't care anymore nobody cares about you so your care might anything. come to.

welcome back from running 2020 stacy where we left off was with a very key word there tearing racketeering we're going to start with this notion of private equity groups owning not only the ambulances but the air ambulances and the emergency room doctor groups and their role and the escalating costs all these private equity groups have basically bought the air ambulance service from the hospitals which used to own it and they'll send the air ambulance out to collect somebody from a car wreck or somebody out in a remote rural area who's having a heart attack and it used to be kind of a public good now it's a private equity owned group and they're charging up to $100000.00 for this service and there's one story that is told where 8 of these says showed up to some poor

schmuck having a heart attack out in the middle of nowhere and this is part of a racket so how what do you think about these rackets in terms of adding the cost to the health care industry what you call a record is what we economists call a free market the idea of a free market is not to give the customer any choice because then he has to pay whatever you're doing so obviously that the way that to make money off health care is to mix some of the charge and that's called wealth creation of added to g.d.p. if you need an air ambulance if you need an ambulance if you need an emergency room likely you're either in a state where you might die you might be in a coma you're in the worst position to be a member of an a free market in health care you're not really in any a negotiating position you're a hostage you have used the word need i know people who've ahead air ambulances who didn't need them but they were there. the hospitals made side deals with these guys

to say to use them and to say it's ok instead of having the guy take a cab use an air ambulance when there was no need whatsoever for that nevertheless the argument presented here in america and by the likes of nancy pelosi is we are capitalists free market everybody you know gets to shop around perhaps when the 8 air ambulances showed up they were all presenting their prospectus and how much they might charge to bring it to the hospital but it doesn't seem like you have much choice when you're in a coma you show up at the emergency room and they do this what they called surprise billing is they send a drive by doctor and who is not part of any network other than the private equity but that's not a free market is your they're free to charge whatever they want without any government regulation without any control so the idea of free market today means the opposite of what it used to be a free market presidential a competition today the free market is you are able to keep the competition out and

control the market right to your point where it's not the free market suggest competition but this is an environment no competition in the hostage taking is jim constant says and you know i just imagine if all these air ambulances collided over the victim in cause more problems and more ambulances an air ambulance would show you he would go up the right and g.d.p. would skyrocket he had a resolution a contagion of air ambulances all crashing into one another that particular location would have a g.d.p. boost and measurable absolutely got hurricane but it was on another interesting question you know obviously these helicopters when they're dispatched to the emergency so they're not vetting the financial condition of the person they're picking up and exactly how many people can can pay $97000.00 for her helicopter ride so you know. some point is it is sort of a chinese fire drill a waste of time to be even doing this because it's. huge percentage of the people

are picking up picking up had no chance whatsoever of ever paying anything close to the fees that they're charging so what's going on with that all you need is one guy who owns a host you can foreclose on you don't have to win from oh it averages out this gets back to your point earlier about decentralizing work to centralisation they're building these house with those that are able to provide these area and balances to increase the reach of them to bring in customers and if you're bringing in people in horrific accidents and keep them alive they'll be in the hospital for months of the time so that you can build so they're making money on both ends if you have small clinics or rural hospitals which we used to have you have no need for air ambulances because you're dealing with your local population none of the candidates mike elizabeth warren or even bernie sanders are mentioning this they don't say anything about these predatory behavior they're saying like single payer will help everything but we still have the problem of these predatory ambulances these

predatory emergency rooms that this sort of predatory behavior is in the system and it seems like it's remarkable that the democrats haven't done anything about this earlier he was mentioning how value is structured from an asset class so if they're going after services that are provided by local government or state or federal government because generally these are services that are needed we need clean water we want to have health care there are a lot of competitors in here so if it gets privatized you can raise that price as high as you want and extract as much value from the river from the asset this is the real structural question in our society do we want to be a society that by policy pushes forth these predatory relationships between the people in every county and every municipality and these private equity firms that

you know are allowed to operate by. federal state law will use the word value and we economists say economic rent value means there's actually a value for the service and when you're charging 252500004 helicopter that's pure economic rent this under and income that's fat in the economy and this shouldn't even be coded as g.d.p. but it is so that we've lost the whole distinction between value and rent between earned and then and income between what's necessary and what do we actually pay we're paying 18 percent is much more than any economy needs to pay so why are we paying that does that really add value to the economy or is it all right well it raises the question why we don't even try this simple experiment of requiring health care providers to actually post the costs of their services we haven't even tried to do that to eliminate this nonsensical negotiation racket that goes on between the providers the health insurers and everybody else obvious things

like this the fact that we always have to come up with the huge contractual legal all sorts of paperwork answer to everything when we could just do simple things like. publish the prices stop defrauding your customers don't shake them down when they're in a coma right you can't write that seems like the obvious and maybe it would shrink from 18 percent of g.d.p. when we take a side of the argument to the one that you hear often is that the system is horrible but it. ends up giving us these new drugs and new new medical all innovations and we are told leads in this area and we accept all these shortcomings because we are coming up with all kinds of new drugs and and procedures etc ok what is that it jim comey or is that is that a worse that argument is that good argument i think at the heart of that argument is the question of diminishing returns you know you're creating a lot of supposed value but at the same time you're extracting so much value from

society and from the happiness and well being of society that you have to ask yourself you know is that worth it and that reflects on you know the adding layers and layers of new complexity on the system that is already suffering from hyper complexity also if i'm not mistaken a basic metric of life expectancy is actually going down yes so here you have a system that we're told is more efficient and is generating all this plethora of wonder drugs and yet life expectancy is heading down and let's not forget that many of these wonder drugs cost like 100 $1000.00 a year to take so how is it going to benefit a normal person with you know a normal job in a normal life most of these wonder drugs have actually been developed by the government and given to the pharmaceutical companies say all you have to do is say how many doses you take and it's a giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies but not really a give away because the pharmaceutical companies do give campaign contributions to

the politicians to get these well there are no the low end of that that's the wreckage of the wreckage is the pharmaceutical companies running the congress that gives them the free drugs that they can say we develop. and all they did was package it now there's pushing a business model on universities so that they can monetize their research that used to be given away for precisely what you're talking about here somebody about to get hit with a 30000 dollar bills are you there and the and some poor schmuck speaking of pharmaceuticals however i want to talk about pharmaceutical reimportation because both right and left republicans and democrats have suggested canada has great prices on the same pharmaceuticals that we have to pay so much for let's reimport the drugs from there you're like wait is that because canada has universal health care and the government negotiates these prices so we're outsourcing our socialism

. ok no i can see it better than you that's it we've outsourced the socialism so should we tell we don't know and we don't really need bernie and elizabeth warren so michael what do you think about this drug reimportation remember when george w. bush said we're not going to negotiate with the companies if we negotiate that that's socialism we have good old fashion program and solo record tearing that's the alternative to socialism what are you going to have either going to have an up or a going to have the government running negotiating and which is what they do for the armed forces the armed forces to negotiate but not not for the people so the politicians have basically stuck the american public with inability to negotiate for drugs and both parties who are financed very heavily by the pharmaceutical industry have done this so when your own people vote they should

look at how much does this politician get from the part pharmaceutical industry well that's by is the pharmaceutical industry if you look at his campaign donors cards you can yes you can just look right down the line. and you can see who's bought is basically a well you mentioned george bush's quote there i thought you were going to say we never negotiate with the terrorists when they say no the corporation brings up an interesting idea here that the corporations are acting and they're terrifying the population they're holding the population hostage they're torturing the population who are overdosing and you know 70000 from opiate overdose they lost more last year from opiate overdose than we lost in soldiers in vietnam war ok that's that's that's more it does goes beyond just predator predation that's terrorism i do kind of think there is a 3rd way and it's the way of emergence and you know the the science of emergence which in this case kind of states that societies or organisms

which. self organize according to the circumstances that reality presents at the time and i think the circumstances that we're facing. are sowed difficult if not impossible to overcome that this system will emerge at least self organize at a smaller scale and then we'll have a whole other set of problems to deal with other than pricing and racketeering it will be more a problem a problem of the scarcity of medical services ok flash round will medicare happen this election or next or ever michael hudson i think they'll elect people who promised medicare for all but congress will block it jim counsellor i think it's even possible that we'll try a system of some kind of it will fail spectacularly randiv all or i agree with our 1st commentator that i think someone will actually get elected on the platform but without control of both houses of congress it will stall right well thanks guys and

that's going to do it for this edition front running 2020 all the way from downtown brooklyn stay tuned for many more episodes as me dig into the economic policies and candidates and. next time but you know. and i mean i'm on the flip side is to my fellow waiter both the food. bank itself movie theater i. was in this way got to dog so hard not to think of the mother disappeared to see the look of it i was an optimist thought that if. this is

the only thing that we do is music because everybody fights aim is to lose weight. on. the floor and you can move off the 50 pound visible facility that you have all believe in a box of that came out on the. what i think is this is the found that is a compliment. i know our 1st in california and i'm excited. thank you so much thank you. all goldeneye says hey you don't you feel. you think you believe all the future you introduce one of the future leaders. 'd

from election confusion and i want to donald trump's impeachment acquital way a look at a week of frustrations for the us democratic party. the arrest of an alleged war criminal who lived in hungary and then france on a student visa for real serious and was in the emu which could allow terrorists. and in thailand a soldier goes on a shooting rampage killing 26 people and injuring more than 50 others authorities killed him after a lengthy standoff.