good larry great to be with you appreciate the chance to have this conversation my pleasure tell me about this letter you and 16 other help they actually want the government to do a letter the letter went out last monday and went to the president of the united states and to the united states congress and it basically has 3 parts all of which center on the really critical failure that this country has had in the last month but also the opportunity that it's all built around testing we have this enemy the us but right now a lot less you have it a city you have don't but who has it and who doesn't but it does infect people even if they sometimes there's a what this letter does it basically says testing testing testing at the federal government through our midst and. it should step or i get the number one priority and it puts or takes a contact trace things if you test positive if you get in touch with 8 or 9 or 10

other people somebody needs to pick up the phone or identify them through technology to keep them isolated just stop the spread that this. isn't too soon to reopen the economy now. i don't think so and i spend a lot of time i'm with there in nashville but are not going or in tennessee states it is on track to open in back next week and i think there's a balance we're moving today from this global mitigation where you shut everything down and we're making that transition in to that individual containment that local containment and it's not a matter of looking at public health in lives saved versus opening the economy that's the false choice the real choice is how do we open this account of me with what we call affordable containment and that is to like an accord begin to go out

open it up if the virus is unleashed at all to close it back then now and the time is right to do it now because people now are about 6 weeks into hunkering down without jobs people pressed into poverty people losing their mortgages and there's a very real cost in terms of debt in terms of quality of life in terms of morbidity of having people without jobs with unemployment going to at highs 30 percent higher than in any time since the great depression so now is the time to begin based on science careful attention to analytics and data because of the virus raises its head we are like a settlement according to slow things back now but now is the time to begin now not for everywhere so in some places the virus is still increasing it needs to be measured the virus is increasing they should not open if you stay shelter then if you see this coming. yes sadly you know you and i have

talks really for 30 years and before coming to the senate i was in medicine and did heart transplants every week and the enemy there was the virus the virus is smarter than us it moves faster than this and the enemy there because i do a transplant i would give my patients medicines to push your mutant system down and the barrister's would attack so for the last really 35 years i've been biting viruses i went to the senate and we took on the hiv aids virus in a bipartisan way with 3000000 people dying every year we went after it aggressively again bipartisan addressed it and now 20000000 people are alive so we can beat these viruses after we did that in 2003 and i worked with at that time with president bush i worked with the leadership on the other side of the aisle to work with tony felt like we are today we started looking at pandemics and in 2005 when

in your opening you mentioned it i gave about 30 speeches around the country predicting a pandemic coming out of asia some time in 10 to 15 years and i did that and put a plan on the table at that point in time because it's inevitable in even today 15 years from now we're going to have another pandemic equal to the size of this one a less we act and the things that we can do so i'm very hopeful we didn't act last time the last 15 years now is the time to act and have our federal government come together with the very best science so we can preempt these pandemics of the future and frankly bill how how are we doing how's the federal government doing. well it. really encouraged in certain ways in the discouraged we were late of the starting blocks and that we could have if we'd had our global surveillance intact if we had listened 15 years ago to the proposals that i and others put on

the table we would have been able to identify this virus earlier the doubling time of this virus is just 3 days and so if you have 100 cases out there today in 3 days it'll be 200 and it just grows exponentially over time so number one i think the president has done very well the 1st point i always mention in my original plan from the from 2005 was communication and they president every day has been out there talking air and now we're come to the negatives but i think that's very positive number 2 i think having the experts up there people like tony who has been adequate 30 years he's been head of the allergy is to to the national institute of allergy since 1984 and he's done a great job dr burk's so i applaud the president having them up on the stage that the negative side of it i think is we've seen it recently with these hypotheticals

are put out the other conference has gone way to all people people are suffering and they are there and they are anxious and their lives are at stake and they don't need anybody on that stage putting hypothetical things out there that have not been proven and sometimes dangerous things and also the communications is minimal to a lot of our biggest failure that's the president our biggest failure has been this lack of testing the lack of impulses on testing the enemy is out there we know it grows exponentially if we don't slow it down we know what slows it down we know we can't tolerate a total shutdown of this country for a year until we have a back same. and so what we need to do is test test test test it who has it who does not the people who have it do this contact tracing quine team them and then we will beat this basques mitch mcconnell who now holds the posts you once held some

majority of you here publicly stated his reluctance for economically packages going directly to the states you agree with that. well i've heard him say and i heard the press present it but i haven't talked to him about it i didn't think the states are going to need direct shell unlike the federal government then we've spent 2 trillion dollars in the initial bill 3 weeks ago another half a trillion dollars last week and will probably think spend another trillion dollars i think as we do this is not stimulus money because the experiment can't be stimulated god is not open today widely why did you leave the same. area if you recall when i came into the senate i spent 20 years in medicine and health and healing and doing the heart transplants and i came to serve 12 years as an legislate or so coming in i basically said i'm going to take for 12 years i'm going to do my best to represent the people of tennessee i didn't know and end up

at majority leader at the time but represent the people of this country and after that 12 years go back home and live under the laws that that i pastor helped to past and then work as a private citizen and do the sort of things we're doing now in trying to help policy makers of the future of love love the opportunity to serve and appreciate that and it's such a great noble profession but i didn't want to do it forever do you miss it. you know i miss it but i've been able to do some extraordinary things because. when i was there as majority leader it was a lot of politics it was a lot of taking care of and working with 99 other united states senators and since i left i've been able to help start companies that address things like hospice and end of life and palliative health care companies built around telemedicine and tele

health and something that still state in the united states senate would have loved it i'm sure but it would have the opportunity to contribute in ways that regular citizens and business people and philanthropist. as an aside and you share with joe biden did you not at dead udev we were on the foreign relations committee as majority leader during the time that he chaired that committee. what do you think of him and what do you think of his chance. joe had given an a plus to. do you know him very well i know his wife very well for. travel with his wife to africa and she wanted to learn more about africa when when he was vice president. respects for his intellect i owned by great respect i'm from the opposite party as you well know but joe would do well as president it will be interesting to see the election and as we all know elections in large part are

determined by the economy and if you look over the last 110 years of 10 times that we have not had a recession the president who is up for reelection would be reelected and of the times in the last 110 years if there's been a recession 4 of those 5 times that president has lost reelection so it looks like we're going to be in a recession we are going to be in a recession during this period of time and unemployment is going to higher than it's been since the great depression because of this and demi so i think it will be . at least based on history or for president to be reelected and there's a good candidate across the aisle so you know i would say 5050 at this point but give me shit if you look back in history you would say the president has an uphill battle. we'll take

a break and come right back with former senator bill frist we'll talk about his fired cast right after this. the a. seems wrong well we just don't. get to shape our disdain. and indeed from it because the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground the. this is like a horse race horse like the morris on there are 200 horses. more than 200 participants in this marathon and the question is which take me place to save most lives and companies because it's

a matter of saving. somebody . yes let's see yes. i was on the floor some things in my basket you know crying saying. yes it's time for us to figure out what i was having something fever i didn't have any sense of. being the most you can get with the world with you. recently she was under the heel of this you. know. i have heard and. push myself to do this for me in the face i'm going to.

go. well go right to the problem checking we're talking with bill 1st former u.s. senate majority leader host of the park care so 2nd opinion rethinking american health tell me about your part cash on where you are now does it work. the pod cast is really interesting it larry and it's really in the feel that you're in but it was clear to me after i left the united states senate people are getting their information in different ways i've been on the speaking circuit talking health care and hope in the healing and transplants and the washington and then a year ago started about a cast which is on every week it's called

a 2nd opinion with bill frist you can get away every people get their pod cast and we spend 30 to 45 minutes once a week for the last year and we will over the next year talking to people with a very specific interest and the interest is at the intersection of health and healing and medicine all the things that we talked about today in terms of health and that intersection with policy issues and how policy can address them and the 3rd big component is innovation so we look at innovative thought creative thought of people starting businesses and so something like the pandemic which we're talking a lot of bell will bring policymakers and like lamar alexander will bring in tom friedman former head of the c.d.c. or jeff copeland former head of state he said he and it will be talking to health specialists in the scientists like marty berry from johns hopkins who you see a lot on the code virus or toby cause were oh who ran the cleveland clinic and then

we bring in elevators to sort of people who are like making back scenes and look looking to make those any sense so it's on every week a 2nd opinion podcast dot com you can go there and look at it as well what do you think few more questions what do you think of obama's affordable care act. well i thought it was really interesting because when he was campaigning he was campaigning on the cost of health care because that's what really people care about and cared about time and then once he got into office he switched to the access if you will get you a huge issue in this country that 20 percent of people don't have care maybe 30000000 people 1215 percent only care today they don't they get the care but they don't have the insurance but people care about cost the horrible care act is an access bill cover more people did not address cost some people say it a little bit it really didn't so it did a pretty good job out there and the uninsured went from 30000000 down to about

15000000 people but it cost as you know a lot of money and everybody's prices that they had a prick health care went up to get the 1st 1000000 people a horrible access to insurance it's good in that part the fact it did not direct did not address cost at all couple but the fact that it was passed in a partisan way and there was no piece of legislation social legislation during my time as majority leader or when i was in the united states senate was passed in a participant way without any democrat but you put those 2 things together is why it is in the big picture his but there are some really good things in that there are vulnerable populations who have access to day that they did not have before. you miss doing medicine. now you're getting close to my heart. the 1st time he. approached him it was a 19 about 87 and at that time i never thought about going into politics and the

show that you did was on the heart transplant patient and the the shortage of organ donors and that little 2 year old boy we talked about is now 32 years old and doing well through this miracle of transplantation so yes i miss the opportunity to be able to be a vehicle to bring in life very directly to the individuals. i can't go back to and i continue to a medical mission work for now 20 years after that and i'm not operating now but have huge respect for those people on the frontline today who are doing lifesaving work so that you and i can sit here and have this conversation you're such a great guest and you come back soon i mean you are about to let it. go are you innocent but. now your great quote of my all time favorites one thing i want to ask there are people who are sinking that a lot of people may have heart problems and other things are afraid of or

a hospital course in a pandemic what do you say that the. 1st of all there you're right remember for the last 5 weeks the hospitals of essentially been closed down except for emergencies no elective procedures doctors' appointments not not cancel or canceled not people not even seeing their doctors except to tell a medicine which has been very you know what that means is that people because they don't want to get sick and part are staying home with chest pain and they're having little minutes or to call and not being treated and having heart disease maybe even heart attacks at home so what i do want to say is that hospitals are back on line in tennessee elective surgery yan's this week and people can come to hospitals they are safe places to come to now unlike 2 or 3 weeks ago there's enough of that protective equipment you'll go to isolated wards you go to isolated doors so you'll be very safe in going back to these hospitals today and i encourage you to do so

because the doctors are there to get the preventive care and the nurses and the ancillary personnel and just because we have this virus it doesn't mean people stop having heart attacks and asthma and respiratory disease and so they do need to get treated very important thank you bill a see again real soon thank you larry president trunk continues to say that he inherited a broken response system to pandemics from the obama administration dr bob kojo who served in that administration a special assistant to the president for health care and economic policy on the national economic council joins me for reaction oh what do you make of trump's taken on. the world health organization. i think there are various nation is doing its best to help the world endemic and every country america is trying to figure out how to respond to temper 19 out of 5 nerves and how we can work together to make a vaccine does the w.h.o.

have a bias toward china. i don't think they have mastered that trade what do you make of the president's claim those previous administrations lead up to this i think you are out to lunch on that idea. our administration. respond to the h one n one outbreak skillfully and created a vaccine that protected millions of people around the world we set up a paradise council in the white house that was working on pandemic preparation with the shutdown. and so i'm not sure what is referred to what one of we don't write. i think we've done a good job in america having to break their lead and aggressively move faster than other government to go shutdown hygroscopic to be used at all the repair and also to develop testing capacity california where i'm sitting several

her hospitals actually have created really effective tests for her the 19 were manufacturing testing supplies reagents the sample collection camps we have built our own distribution systems to ramp up these efforts and many states are now in much better positions what we fail that. and testing we should have been doing really a graph of testing earlier and the c.d.c. should have used the past we're already validated from around the world to make sure it can bring this test america get going if we contain the in fact and more skillfully we wouldn't have as much of the country that's shut down as much as it is we know that there was really. this here in america well before the initial reports and that we now know that after the act because people.

can't you test negative one day and positive the next. like anything in life the way you catch it is the victim to be able to fact it. what's great about coping n.t.'s think is that p.c.r. test that we use actually term positive really quickly and so they're quite good and sensitive it figuring out who's in fact it and give us good information about we wish that people say oh. how can the united states open safely sometime soon i think so i think we have already a lot about how we can take precautions to be safer in a world with this virus that's. the way i think about it is your risk of in fact it is proportional to the number of people pretty that you come into contact with so workers you know have more contacts we have think about how to protect them and how we should test them to make sure that they're also not spreading the disease but i think we've learned a lot now about how we can more safely reopen the economy based on the history of

viruses should some our help. we don't really know or viruses are different and some barristers are seasonal we don't know yet and this virus will behave differently in the summer we can say in a lot of hot humid because there's lots of outbreaks of. but i'm not very confident that summer is going to make it better not to fall schieffer dick so written in the fall do you. i think it's unlikely that they'll be more infections in the fall. or merely because the main thing we know is that this virus is a very in action and if you're around people with it you'll probably catch it and the more we make the economy more like it was before with more people interacting with more other people the odds aren't that it will begin to salary and when you do things to continue to suppress it was a worse case scenario for the summer. that stayed for a while x.

there are guidelines to soon and not have great testing in place and so you have breaks up in a bunch of places where we haven't seen covered before as people travel more widely if they're infected they can bring that problem to wherever they're going and in the summer we travel a lot in america and so i'm worried that it will spread this disease and in a place that will really take hold in a bunch of communities the foreign minister affected so i gotta say we should keep stan all in the summer. i think we should give advice to people about how far to travel. it would be better for people to be closer to their homes and in the regions they live in taman of the virus perspective i think it's not possible to stay home to the degree we are today and so we should make some accommodations so people can enjoy more freedom and have the economy. going again will we attend sporting events this summer i don't think so i think it be very hard to

create safe conditions in graphic spaces so you break my heart here no baseball. they might play baseball and idioms they're doing that in taiwan and so i hope that there is baseball in that there's other activities entertain ourselves but if we watching them remotely. that's sad bob thanks so much great having you with us thank you for having me and wish you good health. you too and thank you audience for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at kings things and don't forget to use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking.

we go to work so you straight home. use to do most of their sort of a movie before sneakers have supreme believe with google who are legal birth. mama she said i. just thought it was going to go to. your carefully walking into the word all in we not her know what we're working until i can't see march. was what she needs to break she what about that that. needs. to change possible sensible stuff.

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thousands of american men and women choose to serve in their country's military decision a little sheltered lives every thing came to a complete. the day that i was raised to be instructed. you know told to shut up or they'd kill me and i see how it destroyed my life any screamed at me and he made me come in and he grabbed my arm and he write me with his birthing curia if you take into account that women don't report because of the extreme retaliation and it's probably somewhere near about half a 1000000 women have now been sexually assaulted in the us military rape is a very very traumatizing thing tat happen but i've never seen trauma like i've seen women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma reporting rape is more likely to get the victim punished don't be offended and almost 10 year career or chose very invested in and i gave a sex offender who was not even put to justice or put on the registry this is simply an issue of tower and violence male sexual predators for the large part of

target whoever is there to prey upon whether that's a man or when. it's seemed wrong. just don't call. me. yet to shape out these days to come to advocate and in again try to equal the trail. when something is find themselves worlds apart. she still look for common ground. i. i.

i . the russian prime minister tests positive for corona virus the announcement was made during a video call with president vladimir putin. also nearly all people around the world will lose their jobs on the back of code 19 that's the warning coming from u.n. experts look at whether the pandemic is the sole reason for a wave of global unemployment. and the head of traditional may day protests germany rules on allowing public demonstrations despite the threats of growing a virus as out on the streets not social distancing though will face arrest.