 It's Wednesday. It's 11 o'clock. It's August the 4th, 2021. Welcome to What Now America. I'm Tim Appachal, your host. Today's title is unvaccinated to pay 50% of hospital bills. You know, as the Delta variant explodes in this country, especially in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Wyoming. By the way, those states are less than 35% vaccinated as the Delta variant threatens to once again, close down this nation as we are now going to be forced potentially with shutdowns and things we can't do. I think the nation is starting to get to a point where we have a population of the vaccinated versus the non-vaccinated. And I think the patients of the vaccinated is starting to wear thin. They're starting to grow weary. I'm one of them. When it comes of that, we look at a few things. And that is, for those who are not vaccinated, they threaten those who have immune compromise systems, because the CDC says if you have immune compromise system, the Pfizer or the Moderna or the Johnson and Johnson vaccine may not be as effective as they once thought. And so the the vaccine may not hold as strong for those folks than that was hopeful. Secondly, we may see a reduction in travel again and in businesses. We may see, which is the title of the show is, what about our medical costs? Someone's going to have to pay for all these hospital stays that could have been avoided by those who are not vaccinated that are finding themselves in the hospital for days, weeks, potentially months in very expensive ICUs. And I doubt very much the federal government is going to pay for the bills of all those hospital stays. So that means only one thing, the health insurance companies that those people are insured under. And if you happen to be part of that health insurance company, guess what? Watch your bills, watch your premium increases come in because they're going to. So before we tackle the subject, I'd like to introduce our guests. Today we have Jay Fidel and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning, you guys. Good morning, Tim. Good morning, Cynthia. Good morning, Jay. Good morning, Cynthia. Good morning, Jay. Hey, you guys, before I run into this topic, I want to throw some some numbers at you, Jay. The Kaiser Foundation did a poll, and it's not a big poll. It's about a little over 1500 response. For those who are vaccinated, they're saying that they hold the 75 79% of unvaccinated responsible for our troubles. They hold 36% for against Trump because they think he started this whole thing in motion. And last but not least, they hold 33% of conservative media responsible for where we are today regarding COVID and the Delta variant. Now, conversely, the unvaccinated feel it's not their fault they're not vaccinated. They think 37% of the problems are coming from people coming into the country, specifically a lot of that the Southern Mexico United States border. They believe that 20% of the problem is associated to liberal media. And then last but not least, 23% is Americans who are traveling to foreign countries and then coming back with infection. So bottom line is, though the good news is, we had at 1.20% of those who were unvaccinated that swore they would not get a vaccination. Fortunately, that number has dropped down to 15 14%. So there's some, there's a, you know, there's some good news on the horizon here. But I want to get to your question, do the main question is, what are the costs, what are the effects, the adverse effects of the Delta variant and the spread of the Delta variant on our society and the costs associated with that. And thanks to the unvaccinated is allowed to to grow and expand your thoughts. Well, you know, kudos to you for addressing that question, Tim, because it's one of those things under our feet that's going to bite us. And people haven't covered it yet. Press hasn't covered it. But it's eating away at the, you know, financial structure of the country at the healthcare systems and ultimately at the people and the people who buy health insurance, their premiums cannot stay the same. You know, you and I talked before the show and we had a discussion about what it costs for a person to be in a hospital ICU situation per day. And it's many thousands, it's like $10,000 per day to be intubated. So who's going to pay that? A lot of these people don't even have insurance and the hospital treats them as a humanitarian matter. And if they do have insurance and the insurance pays for it, it's eating away at, you know, the insurance reserves. In either case, it's not sustainable, either by the hospitals or by the insurance companies that cover it anyway. Something has got to be done. Just a footnote on the people who wind up dying and saying to the doctor, okay, okay, okay, I need to take the vaccine now. You know, I mean, really, in, you know, in French, the word is moron. I don't understand why, you know, this country is so ignorant. People do not watch the legitimate news. They don't read the newspaper. They listen to Trump. In fact, they listen inartifully to Trump. They're listening to things that Trump said a year ago. They haven't even kept current with Trump. But he has had this enormous Jim Jones kind of influence on them. Were they ready to do suicide, ready to have their friends and family and neighbors and community do suicide so that they can follow Trump's instructions? It is madness. You know, we have to get back to rationality and rationality would be, wait a minute, if you don't want to take the vaccine and you don't want to pay healthcare insurance, we're not going to take care of you. I'm sorry. We have other people we have to take care of. You are not a priority. The other people with an inflamed zorch that threatens their life and they coming in here, you're throwing them off the priority list. You're killing other people for other reasons. We're not going to treat you first. Sorry. And if you want to come in here, let's see the money. So, you know, what we have is it's out of sorts. It's irrational and it's unsustainable. And the healthcare system in the country has to do something. And people may say that's draconian, but sorry, we have to survive as survival of individuals and survival of the country. And it's not survival of people who would kill themselves out of stupidity. Thank you, Jay. I'm going to make two points before I ask you my next question. And point number one is remember last week, we talked about why the big lie is still being believed, why people are still listening to the original statements of Donald Trump. And again, it goes back to propaganda. And it's usually the first lie is the only lie that they want to believe. And information contrary to the big lie or any lie is not to be believed. It's a suspect. And so that's why I think there's a lot of resistance of why people are not getting their vaccinations because you're right. They listen to the original statements of Donald Trump and not the evidence and what's really happening around them. They're ignoring that. And the second point I like to make it's not only in France that the term moron is used, but Bugs Bunny said it perfectly, maroon. There are a lot of maroons out there. And they abound. And I hate to say it, but with this Delta variant, there's no grace period. There's no mulligans, if you will. Once you have it, you're in for a rough ride. And I personally know a Navy SEAL in excellent, excellent shape, a younger guy, Navy SEAL, the specimen of health and perfect body condition. He literally said, and by the way, SEALs are trained to block out pain mentally. That's how they become a Navy SEAL. And he literally said for four or five days, there wasn't any medication. There wasn't one drug that would take away his pain. He couldn't block it mentally. And he said every cell in his body was screaming and pain, and he had to just lay there and take it. He said he wanted to commit suicide. He just didn't want to live anymore. That's a Navy SEAL. So if he's having that kind of problems, God knows what someone who isn't a Navy SEAL is going to feel. An ordinary person would have died somewhere in there. I want to add one other thing, though, to track on this discussion before Cynthia does her licks. When I say that the healthcare system can't handle this economically, financially, it doesn't live in a silo. The healthcare system is a big part of our national economy. And it has an effect on our national economy. Furthermore, people stay home. And I think when, as and when, this is getting worse. It is getting worse right now, daily. And regardless of all the happy talk. Well, that was the prime reason why President Obama wanted the Affordable Care Act. It was a drain on the economy. And all the visits to the ERs was a drain on our national output. But there's another part of it. And that is that people are going to be scared. They're not going to go back to work. They're going to shrink down again. They're going to stay home. They're going to withdraw from the economy. So if you thought the economy took a bad low last summer, it's going to be worse now because they're determined to stay alive. So the good guys are pulling out of the economy. The bad guys are wrecking the healthcare system. This is not a good time. We thought only a few weeks ago, we thought we were coming out of it. Only a few weeks ago, the happy talk was somehow justified. But it is not justified now. I got to compliment Joe Biden. He's doing what he can. But the way Trump set this up, it is really lethal. It is lethal to the country. We haven't seen all the suffering and the economic loss and the depression that will follow this surge. True. Thank you, Jay. Hey, Cynthia. Is it unreasonable for an insurance company to say we're going to cover your hospital stay as a direct result of the variant, Delta variant, COVID, even though you chose, you took a conscientious decision not to get vaccinated. Therefore, that's probably why you've wound up in the hospital, either in the ICU or some other department of the hospital. But we're going to cover that. But is it unreasonable for them to say we're going to cover it at 50% because you had a decision to make and you didn't make it. And now we are spending thousands of dollars on your behalf and we'll pass that on to premium holders in the future. Unreasonable? Reasonable? Not reasonable. Well, the perfect example of how that is not unreasonable is they do that for smokers, right? If they're in the hospital for something that is related to smoking, then their insurance will not pay more than 50%. And I don't see why it's unreasonable to do that now. Is it harsh? Is it callous of those who have been vaccinated to say, you know, that's not a bad idea. Is it callous on our part to think that way? I don't think so, no. Because, okay, just my own personal example, I'm fully vaccinated, but I am extremely immunocompromised. That means I could get the Delta. It may not kill me, but then it might. And if it wasn't for the Delta, I'd be doing just fine. So yes, I think I have a right. And then this is another place that's not just the vaccinated coming after the unvaccinated kind of that struggle, okay? I was listening to a town hall meeting that I'm pretty sure it was Governor DeWine in Ohio, right? Isn't he in Ohio? And all these people were saying, you're gobbless. He's trying to promote the vaccine. And all these anti-vaxxers are show us the data sheets. And we don't even know what's in it. All these just ignorant things that they could look up online to find the data sheet of what's in it. But there was this one gal who stood up and she really struck me because she was talking about her brother who is very immunocompromised, has all kinds of physical issues that he deals with. I didn't get the specifics of what, but he's in a wheelchair. He got sick, okay? They called the EMTs to come. EMTs said, sorry, there's no place to take you. So they were like, what? So the nearest hospital had no beds. The next hospital down had no beds. The four hospitals they had to go to before they finally got to someone where they would at least admit them to the ER, okay, took 14 hours to get this child what he needed. And that, and it have anything to do with COVID, right? So we got to remember that these unvaccinated people aren't just endangering people like me or angering the rest of us that are vaccinated, but they are endangering kids like this little girl's brother. And that is what I think people need to really remember and think about because they're endangering a lot more than they're thinking about, I think. Yeah, that's a great point because sometimes we look at the cost of society and we look at it in dollars and cents. But you're right, there's a human cost and it's not fair for those who are immune compromised or it's not fair for someone who's had a stroke and there's no hospital beds for them. And I can tell you right now, here in this state, our beds are filling up. Three weeks ago, maybe at Queens, you would have had 11 beds and now it's over 50. So they're not a capacity, but that's not to say they can't be or won't be, depending on how much this variant spreads. Every day, we have more than 300 new cases, sometimes four or 500. Last week we had one day with 622. We are going north. We're in the red zone here. I don't know why that is and we should explore why that might be right here in Hawaii. Five times on the average of what we were. Because the Delta variant, which is most of the cases here in this state, unfortunately, remember the original COVID was an old person's problem. If you're 65 and older, it's going to affect the older folks and the immune compromised. The young and strong and healthy, it's going to be like a minor, minor flu for them. But this time, that's not the case. The young and healthy and strong are the ones who are ending up in the hospital, in the ER, in the ICU, and that's a whole different story. I have a statistic for that. It's rather startling and very troubling. It's from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Last week, we had 71,726 new cases, wait a minute, for children and teens. Two weeks ago, it was only 39,000. What's the new number? I'm sorry. Say it again. Almost 72, 71,726. It's doubled. Go back to your question for a minute, Tim. What do we do about this? I mean, we could wait till it doubles again and again. It will be multiples or logarithmic going forward and it will have a multiple or logarithmic effect on our society and our economy and our children. It's really going to town now. So what do we do to stop it? We want you to make damn sure that everybody gets a vaccine and masks. I was just before the show began. Buddy of mine sent me a photograph of some kids in a pool. I mean, college-aged kids in a pool somewhere in the south over the weekend. There were virtually hundreds, thousands of them in the pool, all breathing on each other, no masks. It was a super, super, super spreader. He'd say, my God, don't they read the paper? Don't they know what's going on? Don't they know that in 10 days time, half of them will be in the hospital or trying to find one? It's extraordinary how stupid they are. We have raised a large generation, mostly in the south, of people who do not know what ends up. So bottom line is we really have to change behavior, begging them, giving them money, holding raffles. That's not it. Okay. Well, that goes to my question for both of you. Cynthia, I was going to direct it to you, but both of you, I'd like to tackle it. Every state has been given federal dollars to come up with creative, innovative ways of encouraging vaccination. And you're right. It's been a form of bribery. If you want to call it dangling carrots, fine. I don't care what we call it. $100 here or enter a lottery for $500,000 or get your free ice cream bar at Ben and Jerry's. There's all sorts of crazy incentives. But I've learned over the years that incentives don't always work. Sometimes it's a combination of disincentives. The hanging sword and the dangling carrot are maybe sometimes the most effective way of getting someone's attention and or persuasion. So Cynthia, to you, what kind of disincentives should we start thinking about to encourage the unvaccinated to get the shot? Well, I mean, that's easy. Just say you can't come in this business if you're not vaccinated. You can't come to work if you're not vaccinated. Those sorts of things would just really close down their world and make it so that in order to have a life, they have to be vaccinated. Now, and my point is you can't go to public school. You can't even go to private school if you aren't vaccinated. Now, when I went back to college 40 years later, I don't know where my vaccination thing is, but I had to have a vaccination card for Windward and for UH before I could go there. You have to get a doctor to sign up on it if you don't have a way to get it, but you even in, right? We're already behind the eight ball. Look, all the hospitals now in this state are saying all you employees that work for a hospital, sorry, you're going to have to be vaccinated. But here's the problem. Here we are August the fourth. You know it takes so many days after you get your shot before you're eligible for the second shot. And then it takes another 21 or 28 days depending of its Pfizer or Moderna. So we're looking at almost a 60 day stretch there. How much faster and more spread will the Delta variant have not only in this state, but every other state? If everyone were to get their vaccination tomorrow. Well, pay him to stay home, but can't think that's when the government can start using some of those incentives. If you have to go, you have to be vaccinated to go to work. Then you are able to have access to be paid for those few days that you have to stay home those two weeks, whatever it is, that you need to miss work while you wait until after your vaccine. Well, my point is we're already behind the eight ball. We're already 60 days out from where the vaccinations would be effective to blunt the variant. So you have to do things other than vaccines during the grace period. That's the wrong word, but during the interim period. And that means masks. It means good masks, not lousy masks. It means we've heard all this before, social distancing. You have to take all those precautions. Now, if people don't want to do that, there should be serious penalties. And I think fines are really the beginning and fines are steep. There's arrests and prosecutions if you don't follow the rules. So yes, we have to require vaccines. Yes, we have to require passports. Yes, we have to punish people who don't follow those rules. It's not them there being stupid about it. It's hurting us, every one of us, even the people who have had vaccines who've gone to the trouble. We are at risk. I would take strong step, but in the interim, we have to take equally strong steps. Just like Cynthia says, we have to mask them. We have to keep them social distancing. We can't let them participate in anything without following these rules. Okay. You know that will create some consternation amongst our population. Consternation is better than dying. Good point. So what does the federal government do about those governors? And I'll point out Texas and Governor DeSantis of Florida. What should the federal government and the Biden administration do about someone who's basically throwing everything you just said out the window and not only not promoting it, but going out of their way to not promote it? Vaccinations and or masks. I mean, Governor DeSantis said, you're not going to require masks and you're not going to require passports to get into public restaurants. He took it one step further and right and and said, I will not allow people, it's him that said, I will not allow mask mandates to be made in the schools. Correct. Correct. It's aren't going to be protected when they go to school. Now, I don't know if the federal government can censure a state governor. No, but they could hold back all sorts of federal dollars for certain projects. And I'll tell you, that's how the Civil Rights Act was effectively put into place in the South. The government said, okay, you don't want to enact now, what is federal law? Guess what? You're not getting all these Fed dollars for multiple of highway projects and sorts of things. Right. And you know, we got to remember that Florida and Texas make up one third of the new case. That's a big chunk in only two states. Branded their states, but still that's just nuts. Okay, so I totally agree, Tim, you know, you hold back federal and I think the president has the power to do that. Even if it was originally allocated, you know, appropriated, he just, you know, not give it to that state. Let him scream, let him holler, let him sue him, not give it to that state. The other thing that I don't know where we go on this and be breaking new territory is we say if a public official lies to the public and people accept that to their detriment, they accept the lie and they die in the process. Don't you think they ought to have a cause of action against him? Don't you think there ought to be a lawsuit against the Santas for misleading all those people and causing them to get sick and have pain and suffering and lose their lives? I think so. And the Congress can do that. The Congress can allow a cause of action by people who have suffered at the consequence, as a consequence of lies by public officials, have to prove it in court. But boy, that would give them pause before they did it again. So it's a combination of things and it's a combination of things. It's all draconian, but it's life and death. You know, desperate times require desperate measures. That's where we are. Good point. Cynthia, you want to say something? There's already a precedent for that with the tobacco companies. Remember, they were doing all these commercials that made smoking look so glamorous and then all these people were dying and they took the tobacco companies to court and won. So that's already set a real good precedent for that for people to be able to go out and do that very thing. And remember, as we're talking about all this, you know, instating something new, right? Remember seatbelts, okay? Nobody wanted to wear them. Everybody hated them. So pretty soon it was a clicketer ticket, right? So if you don't click it, you get a ticket. So the same kind of thing for the vaccine, right? If we could maybe come up with some sort of, if you don't have it, yeah, you have to pay a fine. Although I'm not quite sure how we catch people, but it's kind of a call. Well, you know, the United States, you know, it's a Fourth Amendment kind of thing, search and seizure and stop and frisk has been struck in many places. But I think that if a person presents himself and is sick or appears to be sick, then a public official ought to be able to say, let's see your passport. And if you don't have one, then you're going to get it. We're going to do something to you for not having it and not having taken the vaccine. You know, this is a new world we live in. They could write books about what's happening here. They are. Well, they are going to write books about it, Jay. And we have to save ourselves or the country, aside from the individuals and the communities in the economy, the country is at risk. Well, you know, President Macron of France, he did that. What you said, desperate measures required desperate actions or excuse me, desperate times required desperate actions. And so Macron took that. And he said, all right, I'm making a distinction in this in our society. And those with a passport have access to all the public places, all the privately owned businesses. And those who do not have a passport are not coming in. I was invited to a gathering last weekend to Alamoana. It was a restaurant. And the requirement was no one comes in without their vaccine passport. It's happening here in this state. Now, I wasn't allowed access because unfortunately I was wearing slippers and there was a dress code. And I didn't know that. So I didn't get in anyway. Anyway, so Cynthia, Macron's Macron's approach. I haven't heard the media talking about it. I haven't heard politicians talking about it. It's a, is it a great idea? Is a bad idea? And why aren't we moving ahead with something like that? I think it would be really hard to, okay, you know, I don't know if it would really be easy to do here in the United States. I mean, it's a great idea and all, but it kind of goes against the constitution in some ways. Now, Let me talk social psychology for a moment. You're familiar with that. So on day one, you know, we do Macron. Okay. Oh, there's all kinds of, you know, resistance and pushback and, and everybody is complaining and writing, you know, articles and newspaper on day two, not so much on day three. It's okay. That's what, you know, that's what would happen. It's like my firm stopped smoking. What I mean, they stopped the act of smoking downtown here in Honolulu. And on day one, oh, there were people smokers who resisted that and argued with it and made a big stink about it. On day two, not so much. And on day three, everybody was on board. You know, when you do something, you take action. There's a certain momentum in that. There's a certain, it has a life of its own. And if Biden would, would stop being so chicken about this stuff and take action, sure, he'd suffer on day one and maybe day two, but on day three, everybody would go along. Jay, with the polarization, unrail his infrastructure, voting rights act bills, all the things of his agenda with something like that split the entire Congress apart and where they're already split apart. But at least some things will look like they're getting done, not much, but with it derail the Biden agenda. I don't care. Good answer. This is life and death. Those guys want to go down and be on record for killing people. That's their choice. They've been completely ineffectual. Congress is a casualty already. It wouldn't surprise me if Congress turns out to be a continuing casualty on infrastructure also. But the bottom line is he's got to be strong about this. He can't tip toe around about it. People are dying by the hundreds of thousands. We can be, you know, and one of the point I want to make is that you said that we haven't heard about what happened in Macron in France on Macron's edict, you know, and maybe I don't know the true answer. We have a show tomorrow morning with somebody who's going to report to us on this from Brussels on how things are doing in Europe. But I would guess the reason we haven't heard from it is that people are going along with it. If he was strong people would go along with it and there wouldn't be all that much pushback. It wouldn't infect, sorry to use that term, it wouldn't infect the infrastructure deal in Congress. That's what I think. He's got to take strong steps, because if he takes strong steps in this area, then he will have the benefit of that strength in other areas. As all good leaders know, true. Okay, we've run out of time, Cynthia. What are your closing thoughts, comments? Well, we brought up the infrastructure, so I'm going to not make my last comment be about COVID or the masks or the vaccines. I believe, in my opinion only, that the infrastructure, I don't trust the Republicans for nothing. Okay, I think that's infrastructure package, all this stuff that's going on, they look like they're going to cooperate, going to be on board, and we're all paying attention to infrastructure, and nobody's doing anything about voting. And if we don't do something about our voting rights, so is this just another shiny object that the Republicans are trying to pull to keep everybody's hope and alive over here for the infrastructure, when in reality, what's happening is voting rights are disappearing and nothing's being really done about it. I mean, we got lots of hubbub happening in Washington, Texas Democrats came up, there's lots of meetings and conferences and all this stuff, but Congress isn't really paying attention to it. And that's what I want to see speeches on the floor every day. I want them to hold sway till it's done. And instead, they're looking at this and looking at that and looking at the other. Well, my response to your comments, Cynthia, is Lucy yanked the football away from Charlie Brown just at the opportune moment more than once. Exactly. And that's what we're there we go. Your last comments, please. Honestly, I couldn't have put it better than Cynthia put it. That's exactly what the problem is. It's one shiny object after another. Congress is dysfunctional. I predict, by the way, that some of that infrastructure will pass. Why? Because in the 2700 page bill, every senator gets something. His district is going to be lush with money. And that's why they're going to push that. But the real important issue, well, primarily it's life and death with COVID. They're really not doing too much on that. Sorry. Incentives and free food is not really the answer. It has to be stronger than that. Two is voting rights because voting rights is the framework of our future. We cannot afford what's happening now. And this is going to crush America, not only for the next 10 years, maybe for the next 100 years. And when you wake up, like Rip Van Winkle, it's going to be a different place and you won't like it. And then, of course, we have immigration reform. We have gun control. We can talk about all this stuff. They haven't done anything, nothing on that. It's dysfunctional. If anything passes, it's because somebody is getting paid off. And the infrastructure bill is one great big payoff. So it'll happen, but nothing else will. That's my prediction. Well, Congress used to work before Ted Stevens of Alaska and the Bridge to Nowhere. That's how Congress, that was the grease that made a congressman work with other congressmen. Is what am I getting from my home district? And I hate to say it, but that was the grease that made Congress work. And then when those, I forget what the term is, but when those went away, I call them ornaments on the Christmas tree. Earmarks, thank you. Yeah, when the earmarks went away, Congress started to freeze up. Now I don't know if there's a one-to-one correlation to that, but seems to be part of the mix. So we've run out of time. I want to thank you, Jay Fidel, Cynthia Lees and Claire. Thanks for joining us on What Now, America. I'm Tim Appachel, your host. And please join us next week, Wednesday at 11 o'clock. Until then, aloha.