← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Buck Brief - Democrats Ruined Healthcare and Still Cave on Shutdown
00:27:31
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- [00:00]
Buck Sexton
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Podcast Announcer
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- [03:14]
Buck Sexton
Get your podcasts back by popular demand. Alex Berenson, everybody. The man himself. Some people are saying unreported truths on substack, the best substack. Also author and a man who told the important truth during COVID and still telling important truths, including when his own audience is going to yell at him. But I'll let him explain that to you some other time. Mr. Barrett said. Good to have you on.
- [03:38]
Alex Berenson
Is there anyone who doesn't say unreported truths is not the best substack? Because I want to find that.
- [03:43]
Buck Sexton
No, I think, I think especially anything you say in Trump voice is inherently true and inarguable. So I feel like it has been blessed. It has been blessed from on high. Now, um, let's start, let's start with this one. Democrats, as you and I speak here, we're heading into the end of this longest government shutdown ever. And what we've been told is that this is what the Democrats could stand for, everyone to have health care. But to me it's, hey, everybody, maybe pay attention to the fact that Democrats have ruined, ruined health care more so than I think anyone even recognized until they started looking at the numbers.
- [04:19]
Alex Berenson
Yeah, I think you're right. So, you know, they were gonna, they were not gonna back off until they got, you know, umpteen billion dollars more in subsidies for Obamacare. You know, for people, by the way, who are making up in some cases to $150,000 a year. So not even middle class people, really, upper middle class people, because, you know, you may maybe if you are, you know, a Democratic politician in, in San Francisco, you don't realize that $150,000 is actually a lot of money for most of the country. And so, and so, you know, the Democrats Want to shovel billions and billions of dollars in subsidies indefinitely for Obamacare for this care that, you know, isn't. Doesn't seem to be particularly good. The coverage doesn't seem to be particularly good. And it's hard to see who's really getting rich off that except insurance companies. And so, you know, I mean, I think, you know, President Trump a couple of days ago sort of threw this bomb out where he said, well, let's just eliminate Obamacare, eliminate the subsidies, and we'll give the money directly to people who are, you know, now ensuring through these exchanges and they can figure out what to do with it themselves. And yeah, the Democrats don't want people really thinking about that.
- [05:35]
Buck Sexton
It's amazing to me that we have, we have normalized, which is a good term that I feel like we've taken from a left, but I'm going to keep using it. We have normalized. Oh, I think that I have, you know, strep throat, like the most kind of standard. I need to go to a doctor to get antibiotics. So I need to go make an appointment where they're going to ask for my insurance card and run my insurance and get into this whole thing of whether I'm in network or out of network and what is acceptable. I always tell people, even when you're. I can't even understand my health care bills right now. And I'm a pretty healthy guy. I don't have a lot of health care bills, but I just had a baby, so we had a lot of hospital stuff. Even when you're in network, they do this thing where they say, well, yeah, you're in network, but they charge this. And so you're. They're only allowed to charge that. So you're stuck with the difference. I'm like, so then what's the point of the net? The whole thing is just like a three card money. You know, on the street they used to do that. It's complete horse hockey. It's nonsense.
- [06:35]
Alex Berenson
Horse hockey. Watch your mouth. Watch your mouth. So, yeah, I mean, listen, I've gotten a lot of emails and notes on Twitter because I've been making noise about this in the last few days, but it is absolutely true. Think about what insurance should really be for. Okay? If you have a car, you don't have your insurance to get your oil changed, okay? You don't have your insurance even for a minor ding or getting your tires repaired, you have insurance if there's an accident right where you need a new car or that you need, you know, you need liability because you hit somebody or somebody hit you, and it's complicated and difficult, and you're, you're not expecting that to happen. You're not wanting that to happen. Okay? So, so health insurance, I mean, I think it should be more like that. All right? And the other thing is we've somehow. And this is, you know, I'm going to say this out loud even though, Even though, you know, I think saying it out loud, it may hit people hard for the first time hearing it. But when you think about it actually makes sense. We don't expect everyone to get exactly the same car. Okay? We don't expect everyone to have exactly the same house. But, but we have this idea that Democrats have said now there's a, there's a, there's a right to health care. Right? And it is a right that is essentially divorced from any ability to pay, from any choices you've made in your life, from any choices, you know, you might make going forward. About, let's say you had a million dollars in the bank, okay, and there was no health insurance and you had a terminal diagnosis. You might say, you know what? I'm going to spend $200,000 of that, but I'm not willing to spend the whole million on myself because when I look, it actually looks like I maybe get a couple months of extra life, you know, with this expensive cancer drug. And I don't want to do that. I want to give the $800,000 to my, to my kids or my grandkids. We don't. I mean, that, that is a decision we expect people to make in every other part of their lives. But when it comes to healthcare, somehow there's this magic idea that no matter what you do, you should have unlimited coverage for everything for the rest of your life. And we're going to figure out how to make that happen. And I mean, I do think, like, if that's where we are as a society, and it may be, then that's where we are. But we need to sort of say explicitly that healthcare is not like any other product in that case. And, and then maybe the answer is, I don't know, maybe the answer is that we have a single payer and everybody gets covered.
- [09:05]
Buck Sexton
But, but hold, but hold on. There's an important, there's an important correlator what you're saying, which is that instead of the market and individuals making these determinations, there, there is only so much care. There are only so many doctors, there are only so many hospitals. There are only so many experimental cancer, experimental Cancer, drugs, drugs out there. And so all you're doing is empowering a massive and unaccountable bureaucracy to distribute, to redistribute the actual health care, not health insurance, but health care that exists as it sees fit, instead of allowing at least the localization, the skin in the game, the efficiencies of people being able to make choices and then live with those choices.
- [09:48]
Alex Berenson
That's right. I mean, that's also true. No, we've pretended that there is no upper limit. And by the way, Republicans definitely do that too. Right. So I don't want to hear about that.
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Buck Sexton
It is true. It's very frustrating. Republicans are very cowardly on this issue as well. They won't speak the truth.
- [10:03]
Alex Berenson
They want to be the truth. And one more thing about this, and I think it's really important. So you mentioned you framed it as you go in, you present this card, and then everything's paid for. I think that. So in the United States, we are over medicated, we are over diagnosed, we are over disease. Okay. And there's all these diseases that are sort of, you know, whether it's fibromyalgia or. Or, you know, do you see all these things about.
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Buck Sexton
About how everyone's supposed to cleanse now? I don't mean like a juice cleanse. I mean detox and get all the heavy metals out of your. I've seen, yeah. Different things.
- [10:39]
Alex Berenson
Therapy, long Covid, all this stuff. Okay? One of the reasons that this has happened is because we have a system where being sick gets you more stuff that you don't have to pay for ever. And there's going to be a group of people to whom that's attractive. They're going to want to go into the doctor and say, I don't feel very good. It's a place where if you have other problems, you can be treated suddenly, you know, with. With dignity, with respect, with your voice being listened to, and it's all on somebody else's dime. So. So we. I mean, I truly believe that the United States is making itself sicker with this sort of medical, medicalization of life. And because. Because then you wind up with a prescription on the other side of that and you take those pills and maybe they help the thing that they were supposed to help or maybe they don't, but they have side effects, too. So I think if we were all in a position where going in cost you 100 bucks and you could decide whether or not that was worth it to you, just like you decide whether or not you're going to have the hot dog or the hamburger or the steak based on the cost at the grocery store, it might make things better, honestly, for all of us.
- [11:57]
Buck Sexton
Can I. My example to give on this is I remember years ago, I had, like, you know, a terrible. Like, some kind of stomach bug. And all I wanted was an IV because, you know, I needed some rehydration fluid, fluids, and that's basically what they do in a lot of cases for you. If you have a really bad. You go to the hospital. You know, you go to the hospital, you get an iv. And I didn't know about these people that come to your house. Anyway, long story short, I go to the emergency room because I'm so sick and so weak. And I'm sitting there and waiting and waiting, and by the time I realized I'm going to wait here for so many hours that it's actually not worth it to me anymore to be here for, I just go home and try to chug, like, Pedialyte or Gatorade or whatever, because I waited, like, three hours. I got a bill for $1,000. Yeah, I didn't.
- [12:37]
Alex Berenson
Were you even seeing anyone?
- [12:39]
Buck Sexton
I didn't see it. I didn't see a doctor. I didn't get help. I had a nurse come out to me in the waiting area to take my blood pressure. She put a blood pressure cuff on my arm. They, you know, they had me fill out a form. And then she said, we'll be with you three hours later. I'm sitting there. I'm, like, running to the bathroom. It's misery. Nothing. Thousand dollar bill in the mail. And I sit here and I'm just like, how does anyone think. And if I was some illegal. By the way, there's no. There's no bill. I pay the bill for the illegals. That's the whole point. I'm paying the bill. I don't actually get to get seen by anybody. I get to sit there in misery and, like, you know, hope I don't vomit all over everybody. And I pay so that other people don't have to pay. That's actually the system we have.
- [13:25]
Alex Berenson
Yeah, It's. It's. It's crazy.
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Podcast Announcer
And.
- [13:27]
Alex Berenson
And by the way, at the top of that hospital company, whether it was nonprofit or for profit, there's somebody making $5 million a year. Right. So. So, you know, the hospitals are. They are terrible actors in all of this, and people are not willing to say that either because they're sort of politically powerful, insulated, you know, because, you know, in New York, there's a. I mean, New York's a huge metro area, right? There's a handful of big nonprofit, quote unquote hospital chains here. I'm sure that's true. In fact, I know it's true in South Florida. It's, it's increasingly true everywhere. And that's just a game to squeeze the insurance companies. Not that I' the insurance companies are great either. They're all terrible buck and, and you know, the whole system has fed off our unwillingness to say no for 50 years now. And I don't know how it ends. But I do think this fight over Obamacare and this unwillingness to subsidize people making $150,000 a year because they, you know, supposedly cannot afford their insurance, that shows you how screwed up it has become.
- [14:32]
Buck Sexton
Well, think about this. The policies. I saw this. The policies for some people, like family of four policies without the subsidies that the Democrats were demanding for the shutdown were going to be 40, $50,000 a year. That's.
- [14:45]
Alex Berenson
Yep, yep, that's.
- [14:47]
Buck Sexton
And keep in mind, you may not go see a doctor once that year. I mean, you know, maybe the parents, maybe the kids get a sniffle or two that family for you are giving 50 grand for. By the way, I'll just note this. You know, I live in South Florida. A lot of people are just, I think they call it going bear. I believe that is the term about, about home insurance. I'm always like, am I allowed to say that? You know, but you know, they're going bear because they, they're just like, look, I'm not going to pay $30,000 a year for hurricane insurance. I'd rather just sort of see what happens. And if I have to, you know, bite the bullet, so to speak, I'll bite the bullet. You can't. You're not even allowed to do that with health care, though.
- [15:24]
Podcast Announcer
That's the thing.
- [15:25]
Buck Sexton
Like you have no option now.
- [15:27]
Alex Berenson
That's right. And by the way, you have a lot more control over your personal health than you do over where that insurance hits or that hurricane hit South Florida.
- [15:35]
Buck Sexton
Yeah.
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Alex Berenson
I'm not saying you have perfect control. You can get cancer at 45 or whatever, but for the most part, I mean, again, like if we the. So I said single payer. Right. The opposite would be a system where everybody's required to have some kind of base catastrophic insurance. And you know, and for poor people, we'd offer like a real subsidy for that. But beyond that, everything is sort of posted price and you decide on your own and, you know, I mean, that system, I think a lot cheaper.
- [16:06]
Buck Sexton
I would. I would say to people if I were like, emperor of the universe, which would make everyone's life better. But that's another conversation. I'd say we got to come up with something where, you know, 5 or 10% of your income up to 150 grand, and then tier it beyond that, you know, you set aside for, like, health expenditures. I don't know. You know, people have to actually be involved in this or else. To your point, it just turns into everyone thinks everyone else is paying for their endless layers of bloat, waste, and nonsense. And people end up waiting, you know, for six hours with like a screwdriver stuck in their shoulder because they can't get seen in an emergency room. Do you know the numbers in New York City? This is a real number. 30% of ER visits in 2024 were illegal immigrants getting routine care, not emergency care routinely.
- [16:53]
Alex Berenson
I'm sure that's true.
- [16:54]
Buck Sexton
30%. So. So when people say, I feel like the emergency rooms are clogged. Yeah, because people are going in there to get, you know, this matter, get this, and they can't be turned away. Anyway, it's a total mess. But let's fix the housing system. We come back here in a second. 50 year mortgages. Alex, we're going to talk 50 year mortgages. That was a big thing over the weekend. But to my fellow history nerds, let me tell you, our sponsor is Hillsdale College, and they do awesome stuff online. Hillsdale College is online courses, for example, on the Federalist Papers. Includes 10 lectures each about 30 minutes long. You can take the course at your own pace. There's no cost to sign up. Plus, Hillsdale offers more than 40 other free online courses, including a course on C.S. lewis, the book of Genesis, Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic, ancient church history, all amazing stuff, all free. Go online right now while you're thinking about this, to Hillsdale Edu Buck to enroll for free. There's no cost. Easy to get started. That's Hillsdale Edu Buck. Hillsdale Edu Buck. All right, housing. 50 year, 50 year mortgages we're talking about. Now, there is a housing problem in this country, but I feel like no one is really honing in effectively on the problem or on the problems. What do you see? If you had to tear. The 50 year mortgage is not going to solve it. Okay, if you have. Well, actually, first give me your rant on the 50 year mortgage idea. I'm curious what you think.
- [18:15]
Alex Berenson
We haven't talked about this is just like, this is just stupid, right? I mean, they do something like this in Japan. All right, the problem, the problem, look, lots of problems with housing, right? But if you are, if you have a 30 year, okay, if you chose to get a 30 year, particularly with rates a little bit higher as they are now, your first few years, you're just paying off interest, basically, you're paying down very little principal. So if you, you know, that house goes up 20%, let's say over a seven year period, goes up a little bit and you turn around and sell it, by the time you're done paying the real estate agent and paying the mortgage tax or whatever other stuff you got to pay and mo, you're going to discover that you really haven't made that much money on that thing because so little of your payments have gone to the house. It has to be a very low interest rate environment or better, a shorter term mortgage where you're paying off more of the principal every month. That's how housing becomes a real store of wealth for people. So what we're seeing with housing and I mean, it's twofold, right? First of all, we used to build more like 2 million homes a year. Year, right. And post the 2008 financial crisis, we've been building more like a million. Maybe it's gone back up to a million and a half. We need to get back to building 2 million a year. And you know, in the blue states, it's very hard to build. So again, I live in New York and one thing that I have seen recently is there have been some apartment buildings going up near the Hudson river by the trains in Westchester county, which is nice to see. It's nice to see that you can actually change the rules a little bit even in New York and get some multifamily nice looking apartments built. We need more of that everywhere. We need it in blue states, red states. It's, you know, historically easier to build. But I think some of the codes have gotten tougher and they really should look at that and see, you know, do you need an 18 foot wide staircase in a one bedroom or one, you know, a three unit condominium or whatever it is they're doing that's driving up costs. And the other thing is, you know, whatever they did to discourage the banks from, from making home building loans, you know, obviously we don't want it to be 2008 again, but it seems like we've gone too far the other way. So I'm a big believer that this is something that we can actually fix in a meaningful way by encouraging building. And there's one other thing, and this is a problem. And I don't, and I've sort of become increasingly convinced it's a problem. Not sure what the answer is, but you have this situation where you have, because U.S. residential real estate is a, you know, it's a, it's considered a very safe investment. It's a good market in the long term. You have all these Wall street, you know, private equity firms, not so much the banks, but the private equity guys coming in and buying residential real estate. And that actually might be a problem long run because it does make, look, if you own a house, it's good for you. You're, you're, you've got a new competitor in there to buy, might push up the value of your house. But if you're on the bottom trying to get in on the bot, you are now competing with, you know, Blackstone and that, that's kind of unfair. So I don't know what we do about that because I feel like, you know, if you just ban these people from buying, maybe they'll use shadow purchasers, maybe it gets complicated. But we need to think about giving individuals a leg up for their own primary homes. I'm not talking about a second home. I'm talking about if this is going to be my house that I live in.
- [21:36]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, this is my concern with a lot of those, a lot of things that come to mind. But one issue from a political perspective is a lot of what I would consider the class warfare chirping that you will hear out there is just nonsense. Right? It's just emotionalism. It's so funny. Bill Gates has basically just been like, yeah, I guess, like climate change isn't an existential crisis. I've just gone through almost two decades of my life. People looking at me like I'm insane because I'm not worried about climate change. I mean, you know, anyway, there. But there are all these things you hear people talk about and on the, on the class warfare side of things, Bernie Sanders, like millionaires and billionaires, as if they're all right wing, as if, you know, he's not flying private and as if there aren't huge donors, the Democrat Party, who are also millionaires and billionaires. Like, it's just, it's just manipulating people's emotions. Right. That's how, at least that's how I see a lot of the class warfare stuff. But when you have the, the amount of money you need to qualify for a mortgage, for a Single family home in America in a five year period, give or take, doubled. So you have to make 100% more money to afford the home that you would have been able to afford because of fiscal policy, because of spending, because of government decisions, including during COVID of course, to just pump all this money into the economy and inflate everybody's assets. I do understand, you know, this is where we get into the Mamdani thing a little bit. His solutions are wrong, but the diagnosis of the problem, it is a real problem, which for Democrats is unusual. I find they diagnose a lot of fake problems, but this is a real problem.
- [23:16]
Alex Berenson
It is a. By the way, the climate change thing actually fits in here too because I think less in Florida, but in New York they're trying to push out any like gas fired stoves stuff that is crazy and will make and is already affecting the cost of construction and we'll do more of that in the future. So, so getting rid of that would be a positive too. But yeah, we, I mean, look, I mean there's this, there's this thing that, that Peter Thiel wrote a few years ago that's gotten attention, right. Basically saying, yes, it's easy and fun to sort of paint all these 25 year olds and 30 year olds as just, you know, champagne socialists. But. And there's some of that going on. But, but some of it is driven by real fear that, you know, they're never going to be able to buy a house. And you know, how do you, how do you start a family? How do you feel connected to a community? There's reasons why primary residential, you know, homeownership is important and we should encourage it.
- [24:12]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, no roots in the community is a, is a real thing. It's not something that people should dismiss as some part of like a bygone era that people feel connected to where they live, the other people around them. And something else that I think is, is a challenge here is you have a lot of, you have all these people, for example, who will point out how you can build, you know, how you can build wealth or you can build these things. Yeah. But if you can't build it until you're 50 or 60, family formation is really supposed to happen. And this could get us in a lot of trouble here, Alex. But it should really happen in your 20s. Biologically. That's actually, it's just the truth. It's just, and I'm an old.
- [24:52]
Alex Berenson
Somebody didn't do it till later. I, I agree, man, I agree with that.
- [24:56]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, me Too. It's, it's, it's a young. It's supposed to be a young man and young woman's game, to be very clear. And what we have set up is a society where you just basically work yourself like a. Like a madman or mad woman until you're like 35. And then maybe, maybe you have enough assets in whatever your field is, whatever your work is, you've saved enough money that maybe you can consider buying a home and maybe you can consider having. This is a big problem. This is not the way it's actually supposed to be.
- [25:24]
Alex Berenson
Or you don't work like a madman and you sit in your basement vaping and playing magic. The gathering. And like, some of those people crack, right? And even the ones who don't crack. Is that what they really wanted from their lives? Is that what we hope as a society to, you know, to set up their lives as being. I don't think so.
- [25:42]
Buck Sexton
I need to also have you come on at some point just to tell everybody. I, I rarely will admit that I actually, I'm going to admit that I was wrong on something, but I'm going to, I'm going to wait till we come back because I got to hear our sponsors, Paradigm Press. My friends, Money and Power. That's the E. Newsletter I want you to subscribe to. It's totally separate from this program and it's all about big political stories and opportunities in the markets. In fact, something I'm calling Manhattan Project 2. This is about opportunities for everyday investors, about leveling the playing field with great information brought right into your inbox. Get a subscription at insider2025.com right now. Insider2025.com Insider2025.com paid for by Paradigm Pressed. All right, Alex, what I was gonna say I was wrong about. I might have said this to you before. I actually believed a lot of the big weed propaganda that, like, it's not a big deal, people's choice, everybody else. And now I, I view it as both a public menace in terms of just quality, a quality of life menace everywhere. It smells everywhere. People don't care that, you know, kids around, they don't care. And then also, the more I look into this, and I've seen some of your work on this, it is civilization undermining and how bad it is actually for people. And I need everyone to stop telling me, like, what about this famous person who's really rich who smokes weed? I was going to be like, well, they're an exception. They're an exception. In a whole range of things. And maybe they'd be a lot happier if they weren't smoking weed.
- [27:10]
Alex Berenson
Right. And by the way, the fact that Mike Tyson smokes a lot of weed doesn't, you know, that does not convince me. It's good for you.
- [27:16]
Buck Sexton
Yeah, I think that's fair. I see people really well, and there's a. One thing I see here in Florida. Big weed is a thing. There's a. They call it the cannabis industry, but they throw a lot of money around at people, and people get that money, including in politics, I think. Very surprising at some of the names.
- [27:37]
Podcast Announcer
You'll see.
- [27:38]
Alex Berenson
Yeah. No, listen, the Desantis have held strong on that, and that's. I'm happy for that. But, yeah, it's. I mean, you know, right now, they're debating this, basically, the United States, without meaning to fully legalized cannabis in 2018 with this hemp bill. Right. So I don't want to get into the nuances of it, but. But by and large, you can now buy THC gummies even in states that. Where there's not legal cannabis, and buy THC drinks, you know, even by a big alcohol retailer like Total Wine, which I know is a big, you know, player nationally. You could. They're stocking this stuff everywhere, and that's legal because of this loophole that the federal government created. And it looks like Mitch McConnell sort of is maybe his last big act in the Senate is going to be to close that loophole, which I think is a good thing, whatever you believe about cannabis. And, you know, even if you think, hey, it's great, it should be legal everywhere. The process for legalization should not be that we accidentally did it, you know, with a bill in 2018 that enabled sort of a bunch of smart chemists and lawyers to figure out a loophole so that, you know, convenience stores and Circle K can sell gummies. That's not what it was supposed to be.
- [28:54]
Buck Sexton
I'll let you close us out here by telling everybody what your next member. You can go subscribe to Unreported Truths on Substack. Alex is a very prolific Substack creator and author. What are you writing about next as I duck for cover here?
- [29:10]
Alex Berenson
So I'm writing about U.S. drug policy. You know, I have decided that I want to be the least cool person in the world, and the way to do that is to be vociferously anti drug. So I'm like, super anti drug. The book I want to write about US Drug policy is everybody hates drugs except for the drugs that they do. Whether that's, you know, psychedelics or Ketamine or, you know, amphetamine in the form of Adderall. We all have some excuse for the. How the drug we use is not actually a problem, but all the other ones are. But this piece is just about kind of US drug policy broadly and, and how, you know, blowing up a bunch of speedboats. This is the part that's going to get me in trouble. Blowing a bunch about above. Blowing up a bunch of speedboats in the Caribbean may feel good or the Pacific, but it doesn't actually do anything in terms of our much bigger cultural problem around drugs. And that's what we should be talking about.
- [30:05]
Buck Sexton
What, what about if we just want to topple Maduro's government and play a little coup, plotting on the side, you know, I don't know.
- [30:12]
Alex Berenson
I thought that was not what we were supposed to be doing anymore. I thought we were, you know, sort of sticking to home.
- [30:20]
Buck Sexton
You know. We'll see. We'll see. I wonder sometimes looks like we're getting pretty, pretty ready for something in the Caribbean. But you know what, Alex, we'll have you back. Maduro gets overthrown. We'll have a chat, go check it out. Always fun, always good to see you.
- [30:36]
Alex Berenson
Thank you.
- [30:37]
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- [31:07]
Buck Sexton
You know what your customers are doing right this second? The exact same thing. You are listening to me. Which, let's be honest, is kind of, kind of flattering. But my point Is, ads on iHeartRadio actually get heard in the car, at the gym, on the couch, while people are walking their dogs.
- [31:22]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? You're a good boy.
- [31:25]
Buck Sexton
That's right, dude.
- [31:26]
Alex Berenson
You're a good.
- [31:27]
Buck Sexton
So why not make the next ad about you? Get started today. Call 844-844-IHEART or go to iheartadvertising.com that's 844-844, iheart or iheartadvertising.com this is an iheart podcast.