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GLENN: Let me go to Joe who is our, who is our attorney and my chief researcher. Joe?
JOE: Yes, sir.
GLENN: Explain, explain why this is so bad with the deal that they've made with the attorneys, healthcare.
JOE: Wow. You know, the one question that, you know, Glenn, you've always asked me which was, you know, where are the trial lawyers? Why aren't they either coming out supporting this bill or why aren't they coming out against the bill. And you know they're not shy in that regard. If they're for something, they come out and say it. And if they are against it, they spend a lot of money in D.C. on lobbyists and they make their voices known. Well, in healthcare that wasn't the case. So I started looking into that based on our conversation, and the long and short of it is that this bill would provide a windfall to the trial lawyers, and in legal parlance there's something known as an ERISA based plan which most plans are that are provided through your employer, meaning that they meet certain qualifications that the government sets forward and in return for meeting those requirements, they're provided immunity from certain lawsuits. So if I go to my doctor and my doctor says, wow, Joe, you have brain cancer, you need
GLENN: Which quite honestly I'm praying for now because this is really an agonizingly boring don't you think? I mean, it is just
PAT: Joe, it's Joe Kerry, attorney.
GLENN: For the love of Pete, get to the end, will you?
JOE: The end is if you go in to your doctor and you have a particular disease like brain cancer and your doctor says you need surgery and your HMO or PPO won't pay for it I'm going to hang up.
GLENN: Don't hang up. No, go ahead. So anyway, they won't pay for it?
JOE: They won't pay for it and you die as a result of that, the only damages you're entitled to, the only money you get is the cost of the medical
GLENN: The surgery, the brain cancer?
JOE: That was denied, right.
GLENN: Got it.
PAT: Please make him get off the phone.
GLENN: No, no, wait, this is where it's starting to get interesting. Jeez, I mean
JOE: Under the new, under the new legislation, that immunity would be waived for private insurers. So if that surgery was denied, now instead of just getting the cost of the surgery that was denied, you would be entitled to pain and suffering
GLENN: Okay, now listen. So this is what happens. So now the government has said we're going to compete, which, they're not competing. The government can't the government's not competing. They can set any price they want. They're controlling
PAT: They are only doing that.
GLENN: They are controlling everything. So what they've done is they've said now to the trial attorneys, "By the way, just to make it a little tougher for the insurance companies, we're going to let you go after pain and suffering and everything else on anything that those guys deny." So if they deny something, you go ahead and you can get them for all kinds of damages. So in other words, private insurance is going to have to pay a lot more in attorney fees and settlements and everything else.
JOE: And that's going to translate directly into higher premiums.
GLENN: Now, here's the really interesting part of this. Joe, if you have a, say, my policy right now, you are working for me and you're under this policy. If we change anything in this policy, if anything is changed, what happens?
JOE: Yeah. For five years everybody says your plan, you know, you're protected, your employer can keep providing it for five years, you're safe, it's grandfathered in. Well, the fine print says that if your employer makes any changes at all, increases a benefit or decreases a benefit within that five year window
GLENN: Okay, stop.
PAT: They always do. They always do.
GLENN: Hang on just a second. Of course they do.
PAT: You have to.
GLENN: Every year my the health insurance coverage goes up to the company.
PAT: Sure.
GLENN: So we do it now as long I mean, our agreement with the employees is we'll do it as long as we can, guys, but I don't know how much longer we can do it. If they start going after these insurance companies, the insurance companies are going to have to raise their rates. They're going to have to pass it on. So, of course, your company is going to change it. What happens, Joe, when they do?
JOE: You lose you're kicked out of the grandfather clause and right then and there your plan becomes susceptible to increased government regulation. You basically are flipped over into the public option.
PAT: This thing could happen so quickly. It could go, it could go single payer within, I think five years.
JOE: Now Glenn, you know we talked about this over the weekend. You know, I had a frank discussion with a member of congress that I believe that you respect, and he came out and his quote was, anybody with any part of a brain knows that this healthcare bill, whether you're Democrat or Republican, knows that this is going to collapse healthcare. Now, that was his language. That was a quote from him. It will collapse the healthcare system and it is designed to do that. The progressives want a single payer system, and this is the only way to get it. They know the American people will not take single payer today. So if they can pass this, it is going to screw up, and there was profanity involved which I'll avoid, but it will screw up the system so badly that people will beg for single payer and government control.
STU: I want to know more about this profanity, Joe. Which word was it?
PAT: This was a frank discussion. So what word are we talking about?
JOE: So
GLENN: Joe has absolutely no
PAT: Just dabnabbit?
GLENN: He has absolutely no sense of humor. Joe?
JOE: I'm hanging up now.
GLENN: All right, thank you very much.
STU: Did you guys know that up to 10% of the savings that they're talking about on the healthcare bill has to do with the treatment of insomnia that they're saving? They are just going to use personal phone calls from Joe Kerry which
PAT: (Laughing).
GLENN: (Laughing). All right.
PAT: That will save trillions.
STU: A lot of money, much.