 So if you argue to me in my local religious community right my local synagogue where we know I'm orthodox Which means that in my community there are 300 families in our synagogue We all know each other we go over each other's house as we babysit each other's kids if you said to us We are going to have a synagogue subsidized national health care single-payer program I bet okay. That's worth arguing about like I'm more than I'm definitely willing to have that comment I know all you people I trust you people I trust you're not gonna be a free rider on the system and take advantage of the system because I know you and There are social penalties for you not doing it right if you refuse to engage in the duties of the community then We cannot have you over for lunch, right? We can we cannot have you at the synagogue, right? There are certain penalties that is hatched But you can do that at a small level as you abstract up the chain It becomes more and more difficult and one of the things I see and this this happens pretty frequently on both Sides of the aisle is an attempt to take your your top level solution and cram it all the way down in a universalistic fashion So you so people will take sort of a democratic socialism that might apply in your local community and they'll say okay Well, I want to apply that at the national level, but that's not you can't do that and you or you'll say I mean You have to do that when it comes to health care like that's the only way to actually Universalize the system and make it so that way there's better outcomes Like you don't want to have like this patchwork of different health care across the states with varying prices During networks because if you have that then that leads to a system that we have Right, so you don't want that you want everything to be standard. You want federal standards You want one one plan one insurance company for everyone and that company should be the government Libertarians will do the same thing. You know, I'm a libertarian I think there should be no internal penalties for any individual decision that you want to make That's not gonna work in your family It's not gonna work in your local community. In other words, the levels of control. Okay, he's like trying to pretend as if a society is Comparable to a family when that's a false equivalence like you exist simultaneously in both So you can't just say well, yeah, I'm communist in my family, but I don't want to be communist in society There's no economic system in your family in the same way that there's an economic system in In government in society right institutionally speaking So I hate this type of like this type of argumentation where conservatives will Try to bring you to their side by using a close-to-home argument like another example is I would I would get into, you know arguments with conservatives in my family over immigration and they'd say oh well if you support immigration Well, then why don't you just leave your front door unlocked? And I'm like what what does that even mean like see because it's like just leaving the border open So you wouldn't leave your front door unlocked So we should close the border as well. Gotcha, and it's like mother we have a closed border like because people get over doesn't mean that we don't have a border and like I just When I hear something like that, they're just trying to avoid saying we need to be very harsh to immigrants and Break the Constitution and not allow them to even seek asylum Like that's all that I hear because they're trying to find a very nice way of saying that stuff thing Maybe it's to make them feel better. Maybe it's to make us feel better But either way it's still fucked up and the substance is the same. So that's what I you know, that's what I get from Ben Shapiro's argument here, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth But you exercise ought to change based on the level of abstraction that we're talking about I think that part of the problem is we don't see each other as fellow Americans at all and We're so divided that you know, I think you make a valid point in you know, at least some portion of the country wanting to reject some of these National policies or national programs They don't see someone living in here you know what I'll put it in in the context of the left and honestly what my own biases were and What I used to see the middle of America as and how I've kind of grown away from that This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I'm obsessed with that show Yellowstone specifically because It's a good show Kind of destroying my preconceived notions about it. I'm thinking of yellow jackets I have not seen Yellowstone So I don't want to endorse a show that I have not seen so yellow jackets is good Yellowstone I can't speak to that which part of this country, right? So The show I think Does a good job in tearing down stereotypes about people in Wyoming's definitely but ranchers Conservatives all of that you watch that show and you start remembering. Oh wait, yeah, they're Americans They're like us. They have maybe a different lifestyle, but at the end of the day, they want the exact same things I think what's important is to like again bring the temperature down for a second and Give Americans accurate information about what the policies would really do and then allow them to vote on that on their own Right instead of trying to sway them in one direction or another Americans know that health care is broken in this country I think that you know, there's a lot of on both sides, certainly I mean corporate Democrats and corporate media like MSNBC. They hate Medicare for all I mean, they've been tearing it down from the beginning same with CNN The the question that we heard over and over again when Bernie Sanders was running and promoting Medicare for all was how are you gonna pay for it? How are you gonna pay for it? How are you gonna pay for it? Okay, great They don't ask the same question when it comes to shelling out tens of billions of dollars for a war effort in Ukraine Exactly about it. Now. Look, I happen to think it's important to help Ukraine defend itself because we made security commitments after not just like Military industrial complex spending they never ask questions when it comes to tax cuts for the rich Maybe a little bit with the Trump tax scam because they hated Donald Trump But they also don't ask how we pay for fossil fuel subsidies like there's this bias Whenever it's spending that benefits the American people the question of how we're gonna pay for it always comes up But never when it comes to like spending on war like if we're if we're blowing people up if we're spending money like Bombing people in the Middle East and North Africa. That's fine But don't ask me how we're gonna get clean drinking water to to Flint. Don't ask me how we're gonna feed These starving children don't ask me how we're gonna house the unhoused It's just it's such a bullshit double standard that shows you how corporatized our media is like they are Just status quo defenders as subservient to government as state media would be Gave up its nuclear weapons. We were part of those negotiations. I think it's important to keep our promises But with that said it is interesting how the corporate media puts its thumb on the scale They pretend like oh my god, this is the most costly thing in the world How are we gonna pay for it? But when it comes to other issues like issues that would enrich defense contractors There is no conversation about how we're gonna pay for it. That's a problem I mean I totally agree that we should always have the conversation about how we're gonna pay for it And I also agree that that what is happening in Ukraine it may be an unpopular position on some parts of the right But I've been an advocate of funding Ukraine It seems like the single best defense investment that the United States has made in the recent past it for relatively cheap cost We've absolutely crippled the Russian military, which is something I think is probably a good thing globally speaking With that said there obviously is a difference in scale between the amount of money that we're spending in Ukraine and the amount of money They would do Medicare for all right and there are obviously significant drawbacks to Medicare I mean if you look at the NHS for example, there's a recent article New York Times talking about the delays in for example ambulances people waiting 12 24 hours literally see they always bring this up. It's the oldest talking point in the book For elective procedures, sure, you're gonna have a wait time but studies have shown consistently that the wait times are The same if not better in countries where they have a universal health care system where it's free at the point of service and When it comes to spending like people like to make it seem as if Medicare for all is incredibly spendy and it is what they're not telling you is that Yes, federal spending will increase by a lot but currently the way that health care is funded is By states right so the way that would work is Federal spending would go up while state and local spending on health care goes down Right so even if you're spending more federally you're saving money at the state and local level and when you're universalized that system You make it more efficient There's less administrative costs You have one payer. That's why it works so well in other countries So this whole fear-mongering about how expensive it is like if poorer countries have been able to afford it Then I think that a country with its own fiat currency Where money is literally just fake we made it up taxes don't even fund spending if you look at it technically speaking I think we we can we can afford Medicare for all we can figure out how to how to fund it But the reason why we don't is because we live in a late-stage capitalist society Where the goal isn't to deliver health care the goal is to make sure that insurance companies are able to make profits and Those profits in turn go into the pockets of politicians either through stock investments or campaign contributions and That's why things haven't changed because our system runs on money our government runs on money and it's sickening So I talk about this study all the time but the 2014 Princeton University study by doctors Gilinzen page They found that we functionally live in an oligarchy. What that means is based on their research whatever businesses and Corporations and elites want that gets passed but just normal working-class Americans We have a statistically insignificant impact on policy outcomes meaning what we want never becomes law That is the product of capitalism hollowing out our democracy because capitalism is like a virus, right? It seeks to commodify every single element of our society and once all the businesses have become commodified You know where you take health care and things that were previously public services education You turn those into businesses. What left is there for capitalism to go after then democracy and that's what we've seen Little by little with the Buckley v. Valeo in the 70s Citizens United So like this is all not like some sort of defect of capitalism It is a feature an expectation of capitalist systems, and it's not just in the United States It's happening elsewhere as well, but the difference is that in other countries like I want to say states I mean countries by the way But in other countries They're at least savvy enough to know that you have to give the peasants more than in crumbs Otherwise they start to question the legitimacy of that system at least give them health care So that way they don't die so we can have a healthy working-class who can be exploited by these capitalist laborers overlords But our system is like the worst of the worst when it comes to capitalist Hellscape's the on a field not being able to get what they need because once you Make system national you're going to have to in some way ration the resources and then the question becomes what are the resources? Either you have to increase we already have rationing we ration not based on need we ration currently based on income Health care is given to those who can afford it And if you can't afford it then you either don't have health care or You have to go to the emergency room. That's your health care That's your doctor and that's spendy too and even if you have health insurance Well, you're still gonna have to pay co-pays. There's deductibles or God forbid you get taken by an ambulance And you go to a hospital that's out of your network It's as if you didn't even pay for insurance in the first place So we already rationed what he's saying is an old scare tactic to get people to believe that the shitty system that Fixed them over and makes them pay thousands every single year for shitty insurance is actually preferable to a system that just makes sense like Canada's Resources that you're utilizing which means increasing taxes or increasing regulations Or you have to regulate the amount of care that people can receive on the other end What my personal experience with with sort of a Medicare for all system is in Israel Their emergency care is very good. And if you have cancer you are Serious trouble that and this happens to be what the statistics kind of bear out The United States has the highest five-year survival rate for things like breast cancer kind of bear out okay, look at the overall picture look at health outcomes overall and consistently other countries with universal health care systems either similar to the NHS or Single-payer like in Canada They have better health outcomes than us and they spent less so what he's saying here is he's trying to find specific examples Within the realm of health care where the US might excel and he's trying to make it make it seem as if that's representative of the bigger picture when in actuality if you zoom out you'll see Actually these other countries with universal health care. They fare far better than us and again. This is key They spend less. There's no argument against it You have a serious disease people are coming to the United States for surgery for treatment if you have a broken arm You're probably better off in a nationalized health care right people come to the United States because we ration care based on income So if you're a really rich person in Canada or Israel or the UK Sure, you can come to the United States and get quicker care and probably really good care because you can get in if you Have money because again, we ration based on income and money not on need Which is the way that a logical health care system would ration Because it's fairly simple thing to solve and it's not gonna cost you quote anything except indirectly But I think it's really important to differentiate the quality of care that is available in the United States Which I agree with you is fantastic if you can afford it and when exactly your life or when it comes to a family member's life Let's say you don't have the money up front to pay for the procedures or the treatment that you need, right? People are willing to go into debt because at the end of the day. It's about your life and I am tired of seeing elderly individuals retired individuals in this country lose everything go bankrupt Because of how broken our health care system is and I really hope she brings up the fact that a Princeton study That came out in 2019 pre-pandemic. So the numbers are probably different now They estimated that 68,000 people die because We have a shitty health care system because they have a lack of health insurance and That number is a pretty conservative estimate because they didn't take into account people who are under insured So they have insurance, but it's it's insurance that is trash Or they couldn't afford the deductible So yeah, excellent point by Anna here needs to be fixed. So on one hand I agree with you the quality of care is certainly here It's it's where people come to to get the treatment they need But in a lot of cases Americans go bankrupt for this. I'll give you an example my mom was diagnosed with She'll be okay with me sharing this because I've talked about it on the show before she was diagnosed with blood cancer Last year I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, and it was it was really difficult because her bone marrow stopped Producing hemoglobin and we didn't know what was wrong with her before she got diagnosed. She was just very Very weak. She had no color at all. It was terrifying She had to keep going in to get blood transfusions. Finally, they diagnosed her and they said look the good news is there is a medication You can be on this medication for the rest of your life. It's a chemotherapy medication. It's called Revlimid But it's monopolized and even though Revlimid was discovered Decades ago and I think the 1950s if I'm not mistaken the way patent law works with pharmaceutical drugs I mean they found loopholes and they were able to extend the patent extended So there's only one option and even with insurance. I mean my mom's older, you know, she's she's covered in everything Even with insurance, it's twenty five hundred dollars out of pocket and you know, I'll do anything to keep my mom alive You know work will contribute to it. Luckily, you know, they found a solution. She's doing great But if you don't have the privileges that my family has if you don't have family members who are making enough money to Contribute to help pay for that medication. You are screwed. You're either gonna go bankrupt or you're just gonna decide I'm not gonna get the medication and I'm just and I'm so glad that she's bringing up this anecdote It's so sad to hear about that like I'm glad that She got the medication But yeah, this is this is something that a lot of families experience Ben Shapiro can't like look her in the in the eyes and deny her lived experience deny this Horrible situation right So that's why you always got to bring it back to These personal stories because even though the micro isn't always indicative like of what the macro is gonna look like In this instance like our health care system is so shitty that like everyone has these types of stories, right? Like I talked about how after my my dad died in 2020 for months. My mom got These bills for tens of thousands of dollars And since our health care system is so confusing. He had insurance He was a veteran, but was also on Medicare and so it's like she didn't know do I have to pay for this? Am I on the hook for this bill for $60,000 that I just got like it's overly complicated It's a pain in the ass. You have to re-up you pay monthly payments Like there's just there's no good argument for keeping this system And the only way that you get Americans to consent to keep this system is by either Lying to them or duping them into thinking that the Alteria alternative would be worse, which is what politicians have resorted to doing and my life that way, right? And I don't want Americans suffering from that So we need to find a better solution and so far from what I've noticed in different models in other countries That single-payer solution seems to be the best option, right? So I would obviously argue that's probably where and then I probably disagree a little bit I think that single-payer is great And I would take that in a heartbeat if we had the opportunity, but like if we're really starting from scratch I want a national health care system like the UK now their system is not perfect as well But the difference is is important here So a single-payer system just means that the government is your insurance provider But a national health system like the UK not only means that like the government is your insurance provider and Healthcare is free at the point of service, but hospitals are actually Owned by the government as well now. There's some private hospitals in the UK, but for the most part hospitals Doctors, nurses, these are government workers And the reason why that's also really important is because we have to decommodify all health care decommodify Hospitals and if you do that that changes things because hospitals are no longer operating as a business They're not trying to increase profits and nickel and dime patients. They're trying to produce Good health outcomes right because the state would benefit by citizens being healthy being able to work and so that's what you get in the UK now It's not perfect like the Tories have been going out of their way to undermine the national health system Even in Canada Doug Ford is trying to pick up their health system and Americanize it because again There's a profit motive there it's like and conservatives might use those examples of Conservatives in other countries Conservatives in the US are trying to use this example of conservatives in other countries Trying to Americanize their health care systems as evidence that Their way of doing things doesn't work in our way of doing things is preferable But the reality is that these are also capitalist countries, right? So just like we have health insurance companies here. You have health vultures You have lobbyists in other countries who are trying to chip away And neoliberalize these health care systems carve out exceptions to care So that way the possibility of insurance can pop up, right? Break the system propose fixes with the fixes being privatization like this is what they do It's their method. It's what they've been doing here with regard to Social Security So we've heard how Social Security is going bankrupt in in ten years. Yeah. Well in 2024 It's gonna go in solvent in 2037 in 2025 then it'll go in solvent in 2038 like it keeps rolling over but they want to make it seem as if it's broken So they can propose a fix and that fix really is reforms that undermine it privatization Like it's it's a go-to trick for these neoliberal ghouls who want to turn public services into private Profit money-making ventures, which is sickening to me have to take into account a few different things in a situation like that One is the cost of development of drugs virtually all medical patents happen in the United States specifically because it is a free market We fund the research and development though I well I mean we do but it's not even close to what the the actual medical companies spend on research and development what the federal government spends on R&D for medical product is so much lower than what Pfizer spends on R&D and it takes forever for I mean the vast majority of these things are washouts Hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent on drugs pharmaceutical companies pharmaceutical companies that don't go to face I mean they certainly provide quite a bit to their shareholders. Well, I mean it depends on which ones Yeah, you're looking at the ones that actually succeed I mean there for every pharmaceutical company that succeeds and actually becomes a thing there are a dozen that fail I mean this is this is just the way that pharmaceuticals bio pharmaceuticals work I was talking with my friend Vivek Ramaswamy who founded Reuven Sciences and this is literally how he used to invest The idea was that you invest in a bevy of drugs. I just have to point out I'm not watching this at 1.5 speed. This is just the speed that Ben Shapiro talks at so I didn't change anything Motor mouth ask it and the vast majority of them will die before phase three and a few of them will be successful How do you make up all the money to pay for all the ones that fail in order to pay for the one that succeeds? So how do you continue to incentivize it? So I think that the the questions that we ask right are the same questions the solutions are different So right how do we continue to incentivize the creation of drugs that can help your mom to? How do we help your mom pay for the drugs once she gets sick without destroying the incentive three? how do we actually incentivize doctors to care for your mom with say Medicare reimbursement rates that aren't significantly lower than what they Can get cash out of pocket which very often you're seeing doctors in specialized fields Just stop taking Medicare entirely because they're operating now across the table They'll just say we'll take cash only this happens in surgical profession a lot a lot right And so the there I think systems that are in between what we have and Single-payer health care that have been significantly more efficient in this respect Switzerland is one of them Singapore is another one of them my argument isn't with restructuring the system It's how we restructure the system and I and that this is a simplicity the simplicity of the NHS comes with significant downstream effect, right, so like the one other thing what does he want like you want something between what we have and what other countries have so like a public option because Conservatives will also denounce that as socialism and look I'm desperate. I'll take a public option But a public option also is not the end-all be all because that's a multi-payer system and what you're gonna see happen is That will be underfunded and overburdened because private insurance companies will push sick people off onto that system and then Conservatives will use that as evidence that socialized medicine doesn't work It'll undermine the fight for Medicare for all a single-payer system and we're back to square one again So I don't I don't like for me I would take a public option and be happy with that if that's all that we could get but we can do better and we should do better I mean you need all Americans in a single risk pool, right? Because that's how you keep costs lower and also we've got to focus on like preventative care as well Like that's one thing that people don't talk about like we discussed risks And risk pools but not like how to prevent people from getting sick or a needing health care in the first place But that's a different story for a different day Say is okay. So just quickly on the pharmaceutical drugs I mean you will admit though, right that when you look at the amount of money Americans are charged for pharmaceutical drugs relative to any other country. We're being price-gouged Well, we're we are subsidizing the rest of the world in their price gouging is what is how I put it I mean, the reason I say that is because we are paying free market prices and they are paying cartel cartelizes They've cartelized their price their pricing structure. And so we could okay, but what does that matter? Like you agree that we're paying way too much like just you agree, right? radically Bargain negotiate with it with drug companies and then all the patents will get filed elsewhere. That's why I mean That is the other downside in the very in the very least I mean one of the proposed policy solutions in build back better that was next was Allowing for Medicare to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare recipients, right? That was squashed I mean not entirely. I think there's like a handful of drugs No, it's it's for and it's for this reason Right because the great fear in terms of the incentive structure was if you allow Medicare Which supports a huge percentage of people who are taking these drugs to negotiate the price What you're going to do is remove essentially the R&D budgets of a lot of these of these coming This is a straight up talking point from these pharmaceutical companies Unironically this mother f***er is a pharmaceutical. What he's saying here is bullshit Like he's actually arguing that Medicare should not be allowed to negotiate drugs Because he buys the line from the pharmaceutical companies whose motive is profits Not healing people that oh well you see if if you negotiate prices then R&D goes down And we're gonna have to charge you more Like I'm sorry, but this is all bullshit if they don't want to allow Medicare Negotiate or if they don't want to negotiate with Medicare How about we nationalize these fingers every single American drug company? We nationalize them and now you're not worried about profits. You're not worried about shareholders R&D The government will take care of it. Why don't we just do that dissolve the board nationalize these pricks He thinks that this is like a valid argument Not buying that The profit margins in these companies I mean take for example Moderna Moderna had to sink tens of billions of dollars into the development of R&D vaccines and it was a complete failure until COVID I mean that like that was a Moderna was essentially bankrupt before before COVID happened And this is unfortunately the way that that science very often works that it fails and fails and fails until it succeeds And it costs and costs and costs until it succeeds And this is I think a general point about business that people should understand as a person who is a business person runs Successful business for every business that gets founded succeeds and people see the really rich person at the very top They miss the five businesses that they started before they failed and literally for me my business partner It was several businesses that we had started before that did not succeed until we hit the one that actually worked They also missed the funding from right-wing billionaires as well Which you know a lot of normal Americans don't have access to and They don't see the other businesses that started and failed most industries are more like the restaurant business And they are like any other well I mean look you're gonna start a business and you take a risk and if you succeed you succeed if you fail you fail But at the end of the day when we're talking about Americans Funding research and development for these pharmaceutical drugs. I don't think it makes sense for us to then be price gouged By these companies which look I mean look I don't have the numbers in front of me I wish I did as simple as that to even discuss the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare within the context of businesses Is so stuff like we've already lost if we're talking about it in that context like I'm not talking about like the framing here And and is doing a wonderful job I'm just saying like in general the way that we conceptualize pharmaceutical companies is not the public good that they provide It's well, you know, they there's there's costs associated with R&D. We are funding them mother Okay, and they're making that back tenfold They're gouging American citizens and Ben Shapiro with the straight face is saying well You know, maybe the profits aren't that great and they really spend a lot of money. I Can't he is insufferable But you look at the profits from these pharmaceutical companies the amount of money They make profit alone every year year after year the amount of money. They pay their executives year after year I don't think you can make the case that the amount that they charge Americans for these drugs makes much sense I mean, obviously, we'll have to we'll have to disagree on that one. It's fun. We're getting disagree. You have to disagree on that one 38 million shareholder return 28.7 percent 32 million Shareholder return negative 21 percent, but all the all these other ones positive shareholder return 386 percent 18 million salary for their For their CEO look at million million like 15 million 10 million all positive shareholder return 8 million 7 million we're talking about salaries where these pharmaceutical CEOs have you money They can buy anything in their wildest dreams a mansion another mansion another mansion a yacht a Lamborghini Like they're gonna have so much money and by the time they leave that company like they'll have even more money That they would never be able to spend all that money if they live to be a thousand years old and Ben Shapiro with the straight face is saying well There's a lot of costs associated with you know research and development and they put in a lot of money So, uh, you know, they're not doing as good as you think they are. Yes, they are Ben. They are okay God this is like for does anyone remember that meme first world problems. It's like the first world problem meme of the business world and he's like Just saying they're talking points for them like I I hope that he's getting paid for using their talking points I hope that they at least take him out for dinner Because of how hard he's riding their dick because to do all this for free is honestly embarrassing