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The PoliticsGirl Podcast
Don’t Die: A conversation about American healthcare with Dr. Anahita Dua
00:55:36
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- [00:00]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Contagious diseases are no joke. They do not care about whether or not you have your MAGA flag outside or you have a leftist flag outside or what color you are or what you. How rich you are. They come for you and they sneak in through all kinds of things. Your food, the air, the water, touch grandma, and suddenly you're in a real problem. And again, you know, I don't want to be hysterical. I'm not trying to make this like, oh my God, there's fire everywhere. But I'm saying the fire is coming. And you have two big problems in the administration currently back to RF1, a lack of education and understanding of these diseases, and secondly, a complete lack. And frankly, this is much more scary to me as a doctor about how to contain something if it transpires. So if you have a biohazard outbreak tomorrow, whether it is engineered by another country as an attack or done by accident, by an accident. We have no protections in place. We have no task forces because all of these things have been eliminated.
- [01:10]
Lee McGowan
Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Lee McGowan. Let's get into it. America's health is in danger. We're not testing our food, water and drugs like we should. We're limiting access to vaccines. We aren't testing for Covid or bird flu or any other communicable diseases going around. And the people in charge of our health, from the administrator of the centers of Medicaid and Medicare and to the Surgeon General, are on the spectrum from quack science to anti science. And on top of that, we have the Maha movement on the rise with the power and financial grift of a non doctor, non scientist, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Ultimately making all the decisions to keep America healthy. To discuss how much the group in charge of our health is actually bad for our health, we are joined today by Dr. Anaida Dua, a cardiovascular surgeon, associate professor of surgery and founder of Healthcare for Action. Ana, welcome.
- [01:59]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Anaida, thank you so much for having me.
- [02:01]
Lee McGowan
Thanks for coming. Man, oh man, I have to tell you guys, and I just got out of surgery like a moment ago. She's literally talking to us post surgical. So somebody has done very well because she worked with them and now she's joining us. So listen, right off the top, let me just say, as someone with a very serious disease herself, someone dependent on insurance premiums being affordable, on pharmaceuticals being safe and accessible, on the health care industry itself, not falling apart, I'm having a really hard time watching what this administration is doing. And I know, I'm not alone in feeling that way. So what is your take on where we are right now when it comes to health care in America?
- [02:38]
Dr. Anaida Dua
So we were never good with healthcare in America to begin with. Everybody has talked about that, you know, for now, going on decades, frankly. It's always been a point of contention. It's always been a point about politics because people are not really sure how to go about managing health. We are the richest country in the world, we spend an enormous amount of money on health, and yet our people are some of the sickest and certainly the sickest when it comes to first world world countries. So something's not right. We all knew that. And I think honestly that's how Trump and RFK sort of get away with some of these really bad decisions that of course we're going to chat about. Because there is a problem. They're right about that. The issue is not whether or not there's a problem. The issue is what's the solution. And what it is not is what's currently going on in the administration. So what we are seeing as the providers is that right now access to healthcare, costs of healthcare, and basically explaining what the needs are to our public has always been kind of a problem. RFK coming into healthcare has basically turned it from a scientific data driven thing to an influencer wellness thing. And you know, if somebody wants to go and put salmon sperm on their face to look younger, sure, it's not hurting anybody, no big deal. But if somebody tells you that salmon sperm on your face is gonna cure your breast cancer, we have a problem. And I think that's what's kind of happened. You have people like RFK and Dr. Oz, RFK has even said it himself. I'm not a doctor, you really shouldn't listen to me. And these people are the ones making policy decisions. And the sad thing about it, the confusing thing about it is even I'm not sure if it's coming from a place of kind of like diabolical evil, like they're trying to do things that are negative, that are going to impact people's health, or is it sheer incompetence. But either way, we, the public, end up in the same spot. Uninsured, lack of access to healthcare, sicker and dying faster and not knowing what to do about it.
- [04:46]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, it's a real travesty. And people always say, you know, in the richest country in the world, why can't we get it together? I mean, there's at least 70 countries in the world that have some sort of, you know, universal health care. I was born and raised in Canada. You know, I'm not saying their system is perfect by any means. It is not. However, like, when I was in a car accident at 16, there was no part of me that was like, don't call the ambulance. I can't afford it. You know, like, that's just not something you worry about. It seems to come back to me, to this, who the administration chooses to hire to do jobs because Donald Trump doesn't care about our. He doesn't care about our health care. Right. He doesn't. He's going to get what he wants when he needs it. And because apparently karma is not real, he seems to be in relatively fine personal health despite his lifestyle. So what we're seeing is people like our RFK put in charge, people that are more of an image or an idea or a Persona than actually prepared to do the job. And, you know, he. We just see rfk, he just got a lot of press for firing the entire Board of Vaccine Safety. Right? The pulling back on Covid vaccines to the hiring of his completely inappropriate surgeon general, which was apparently RFK's pick. And so it all kind of comes back to him. So what, what are your thoughts on this person running the show when it comes to America's health? Because like you said, RFK himself will tell you he's not a doctor and you probably shouldn't listen to him.
- [05:59]
Dr. Anaida Dua
I think that unfortunately, I mean, the word is travesty, as you said. And, you know, sometimes I will say, like, one of the problems occasionally with Democrats is that sometimes, you know, there's too much hysteria and kind of like everything is a major problem. So when something really is a problem, you know, it's sort of the boy who cries wolf occasionally. And I think what's happened is we are facing right on the wolf, a real wolf, because the. And it's not even a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's just a wolf who's sitting saying, I really don't know what I'm doing. I want to ensure that I'm pandering to the President. This is RFK now I'm talking about, because he needs to, of course, he has to pander to the president.
- [06:38]
Lee McGowan
Well, I mean, it literally could be any secretary in that Cabinet, if you've seen any of those Cabinet meetings. I mean, like, I've never seen such pandering in my life. Like, no one is there to do the job. They are all there to, you know, be the most supercilious over the top sycophant that they can possibly be.
- [06:51]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Right. That's exactly right. And therein lies the fundamental problem in these positions. You absolutely need somebody who can say, you know, I don't think that's right, and this is why. And then a conversation ensues. You need somebody who really has the public's best interest in mind and actually will stand up and say, I don't know everything about everything. If I was the Surgeon General today, I'll be the first person to tell you, I don't know everything about vaccines. I'm not an immunologist. I haven't studied it for the last hundred years. But you know what I can do? I can absolutely select people who have done those things, who have excellent qualities to sit on a panel, along with other people who may know how to talk to the public, along with people who are tribal leaders and all the people who can ultimately get the vaccines out there to people. And then I can bring them together, we can make a plan, and then we roll out something that actually works for the American public. And then I also have the capacity to bring together the right people to measure, do metrics, to say, yes, we did this thing. Now 10 years later, we have this good outcome. That's how it's supposed to work. It's supposed to be boring. You and I shouldn't even be talking about this. We should be talking about, like, you know, Tom Cruise or something. But we're talking about rfk. Why? Because, again, we've slipped from, like, almost the science and the nuanced importance of these sorts of things into a talk show kind of into a entertainment debacle where everyone is talking about this all the time. The same way we used to talk about people from Jersey Shore back in the day, which is a problem.
- [08:20]
Lee McGowan
Well, we did hire the reality show president, and he is hiring, I think we have something like 30 members of Fox News that are on his team. And I think ultimately, like, if people don't understand what the doctor and I are talking about, it's basically, there's a committee, there's a group of people, 17 expert members who advise the CDC on all our vaccines. And they were all fired. All 17 of them were fired at the beginning of June. And these are the people that are in charge of updating our vaccine schedule, when we get them, how we get them, that kind of thing. And public health experts were absolutely outraged about this. They were beside themselves because no one's ever done something like this before. And children's health Experts were pointing out that these panels recommendations over the past 60 years. By the way, these guys have been doing this job over 60 years. They've had such incredible public health wins because of it. Nearly eliminating certain diseases, substantially decreasing hospitalizations, making sure babies don't end up back in the hospital, making sure our entire, all of our graveyards aren't filled with children under two. Right. Which is what they used to be. And there's this major concern now that RFK has his hands on way too many levers of power around America's health. And that this mass firing should really be seen as a five alarm fire. Because it's not that these people were in charge of like approving the vaccines, right? The FDA approves them and then the committee comes in and decides, you know, how they will best be rolled out to the public. And I think this is so important because I think most of us aren't, you know, we don't know any of this insider baseball stuff at the cdc. Right? It takes about two years for these people to be appointed to that committee in the first place. The panel itself is an incredibly serious job. Choosing the people that are gonna be on it are like super rigorous. They have to be top of the top. And then RFK comes in, fires them all. And now he gets to rehire all of those people. And I'm like, okay, but bro, like, how are you gonna do that? And he's already put people on it. Not two years review, not figuring out who they are. He's like, I like this guy and I like this. But these people are in charge of all of our health and what we get with vaccines. And I think we all need to get really clear on how dangerous that is.
- [10:31]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Absolutely right. He's doing what he said he was gonna do. Everybody knew that RFK was a vaccine denier and where he gets his information from and what he's specifically talking about. I mean, honestly speaking, it would be, I would love to sit down with them, be like, talk to me about what research you are talking about. Because to your point, you are absolutely right. If you walk through a graveyar, even in the United States, weirdly enough, you see a bunch of gravestones of people who are like 90 years old. And you're like, that doesn't make sense. They used to say the life expectancy was 30. That's because it would be averaged with hundreds of children that were dying. And it was overwhelmingly, you can look in the United States and in Britain, infection, infection, infection, infection. And a lot of those things have been Cleared because of vaccines. So, I mean, we are really going back in time. But I think to your point, what we're seeing is RFK is doing what he believes. He's not doing what is scientifically accurate. Anybody on the street, if I stop someone at the corner, they will have certain beliefs, perhaps about food dyes or about organic things or about pasteurized milk or, you know, aliens, whatever. They. And. And everyone has the right to have those beliefs. But when you take a serious job like this, where other people are affected, you can't just believe what you want. So, for example, I'm a doctor, right? I believe lots of things about, like, you know, patients need to not smoke, and smoking is bad for you, and if you smoke, you're gonna have diseases. But does that mean that if you come to me and you're sick and you're a smoker, I don't treat you because I'm like, oh, well, you smoke and so I'm not gonna. It couldn't. You just can't do that. And unfortunately, what RFK is doing is he's bringing his emotions and feelings into the panel. And what that does is two things. Number one, you start to identify people who agree with what you say because you don't want to have the hard discussion. And you get an echo chamber that starts to perpetuate these lies because everyone's bouncing the same stuff off each other. And the second thing you do is you bring the panel down to a level that now is not scientifically accurate. You start to do things that hurt people, and it's going to take decades to rectify that. So we're going to have generations of people now that are going to be affected by this horrible mistake. The solution, frankly, to the problem is right now, he is the. He is the HHS secretary, and this man needs to be told, fine, you can be in that position. Fine. You even fired everyone on the panel. All right, you know, you did it, fine. But the people that you hire back need to be the best of the best of the best. Go and do your own thing. Republicans, you're the guys always saying, merit, merit, merit. Good, good. Go out there, get your merit sheets out and pick the very, very best. You will find that a lot of the people that got fired will be rehired almost immediately because that was already done for that particular job. We don't. In those situations, it's not a matter of, like, woke politics or leftist agendas or none of that garbage. These people, you should meet these people on these panels. These are serious People who have spent decades studying something, who are ready to listen to new information and integrate it to help the public. And they take that charge very seriously. And I cannot say that about the people that he's hiring.
- [13:44]
Lee McGowan
No, I mean, honestly, I just, I feel sick about it. Because the thing is, is that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but when the previous board made recommendations on vaccines and then it was confirmed by the CDC director, those vaccines would then become part of like a public health plan, right? And then insurance companies are responsible for paying for them and that kind of thing. But if a vaccine isn't insist upon, right, like if the board is like, you can take it or you cannot take it, we're not going to say if it's bad or good. That confuses everything. First of all, people that don't really understand vaccines. I know that when I had my son, people were giving me all this anti vax stuff and I went to my doctor and I went to my friends that were doctors and I was like, is it safe for him to take these vaccines? And every doctor I was like, yes, Lee, give your child the vaccines. Right? But like you hear it in your head and it makes you nervous because you want to do the right thing. I do think a lot of people who are confused truly want to do the right thing, but they're being confused. But it also allows the insurance companies to be confused, right? So if you're not insisting that they have to pay for it, then they can say, well listen, it's not recommended by the cdc, you can take it or not take it, but you're gonna have to pay out of pocket. Which then means we have a two tier system of people that can afford to be vaccinated and people that can't afford to be vaccinated. And I think that in itself is a massive problem.
- [14:57]
Dr. Anaida Dua
I completely agree with you. I mean, and you really, you know, in our capitalistic society, which I have no problem with, love capitalism. I'm just saying in that society that's exactly what's going to happen. It's funny enough, you know, it's not even just about, you know, the vaccines are a microcosm of the problem across the board. The epa, of course, the Environmental Protection Agency. I mean, listen, are all these agencies and their bureaucracy a huge pain in the ass? Yes, yes, yes. We're not saying they're not. No, we're totally. But there is, is a method to that madness. You know what, there was a time where people would drink water that had poop in it. In fact, very recently, we know even in the United States, if you don't have laws that can protect you, that the corporations will do things. And you know what, Trump actually himself said it once when Hillary Clinton had said, you know, hey, you know, you, you don't pay taxes. And he's like, if you want me to pay taxes, fix the loopholes and I'll pay them. Yeah, he's right. I mean, like, you know, if the law says something and he's not doing something illegal, then even if you're doing something immoral, you don't necessarily get hit. And that's exactly what's going to happen. To your point, the insurance companies are going to say, it's not recommended, it's not forced, therefore I don't have to pay for it. And you do. In fact, I wouldn't say you have a two tiered system, because we already have a two tiered system. You will further increase the disparity between groups. And the thing about it is, it doesn't work that way where like, we can just say, hey, your kid is not getting vaccinated because you couldn't afford it or you didn't want to do it. And mine did get vaccinated because we know vaccines are not foolproof. No one has ever said that they were. They protect. And the hope is that if you have herd immunity, so multiple people, the majority of the people vaccinated, then that disease goes away. Like smallpox, for example. Yeah, but when you don't have herd immunity and you have more and more and more people not vaccinated for whatever that reason may be, those diseases will come back and they'll come back with, you know, vengeance.
- [16:56]
Lee McGowan
That's exactly right. I mean, here's the thing. Like, if people don't understand herd immunity, if everyone else isn't vaccinated, you don't have what we're calling herd immunity, which is like, the more people who are vaccinated, the harder it is for a virus to spread from person to person because it like the virus jumps and then they're like, oh, this person doesn't have it, so I can't go to the next person. So you. The more people that are vaccinated, the harder it is for the disease, disease or the illness or whatever it is the virus to move from person to person. And that protects the people who aren't vaccinated or the people who can't get vaccinated, or the people that have immune compromise, or people who are pregnant or newborns that don't have their vaccinations. Yet that kind of herd immunity helps everyone. So it's not really a pick and choose situation. And this might be a good time to point out that the U.S. just recorded the highest annual measles case in 33 years. Right. Which makes a real, really huge public health reversal. We had basically defeated this stupid contagious illness and then the anti vax movement kind of gained strength in America and now we're back to dealing with it again. There's a TB outbreak in Kansas. We're dealing with bird flu and salmonella and listeria outbreaks, and we can't get information to people the way we used to because this administration has also shut down communications between doctors and the cdc, doctors and the nih, this kind of thing. Can you speak just a little bit to the rise of these preventable illnesses that we're seeing spread across America right now? So my dog chips is now 10, he's getting older, and I want to make sure I'm taking the very best care of him and make sure he's with us for as long as possible. So it's very important to me that he eats well. Chips has always been a picky eater and we've accepted that. But it's also one of the reasons that I'm so crazy about Sundaes for dogs. 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- [21:52]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Oh absolutely. I mean, in Order for people to ensure that they're protected. When you have a situation that is preventable, they need to have two big things. Number one, they need to have education about the actual disease. And I'm not talking about education like you went to Princeton. Nobody cares about that. I'm talking about just like an understanding of how diseases are spread and basic things. I mean, basic. Wash your hands when you touch something. And it may seem so obvious, but it isn't actually. And a lot of people just go about their lives. But if you suddenly are like, ooh, this thing is contagious, people can understand that. So if you can highlight it, they can protect themselves. The other thing about it is, if you do get the disease, how you contain it, what do you do? Because you know, what you want to ensure is that you don't have a spread. The bubonic plague years ago that essentially eliminated humanity, frankly.
- [22:38]
Lee McGowan
Yeah. What people call the Black death. She's discussing the Black Death.
- [22:42]
Dr. Anaida Dua
The bubonic plague, yes. That was spread like crazy, actually, because people didn't understand the whole idea of when you move from place to place. They didn't know how it was being spread. And ultimately they found out it was from fleas on rats. But nobody knew that at the time. They had no idea. They thought it was breathing, they thought it was touch. The doctors used to wear big cloaks and the big masks. And so the point is that when people understood they were able to do things like fumigate and take care of rats, that then translated to a decrease in the disease. But that kind of mass education can only be done by the government because people trust the government. And that's supposed to be. That's who we elect to care for us, to ensure that the taxes that we pay are going towards an agenda that protects us in exchange, not just going into, you know, somebody's pockets or being wasted. And so I think the problem is now what people should really focus on is not even that we are at the highest number of measles cases, but the real thing is, look how fast it happened. Contagious diseases are no joke. They do not care about whether or not you have your MAGA flag outside or you have a leftist flag outside or what color you are or what you. How rich you are. They come for you and they sneak in through all kinds of things. Your food, the air, the water. Touch who? Grandma. And suddenly you're in a real problem. And again, you know, I don't want to be hysterical. I'm not trying to make this like, oh, My God, there's fire everywhere. But I'm saying the fire is coming and you have big problems in the administration Currently back to RFK1, a lack of education and understanding of these diseases and secondly, a complete lack. And frankly, this is much more scary to me as a doctor about how to contain something if it transpires. So if you have a biohazard outbreak tomorrow, whether it is engineered by another country as an attack or done by accident, by a, by an accident, we have no protections in place, we have no task forces because all of these things have been eliminated. So what happens is that will be unable to be contained and then that sort of thing can spread pretty, pretty quickly. You'd be amazed how fast actually. And so sadly, with the measles aspect of it, I mean, again, you know, the discussions about anti vax have been around for a very long time, but the fact that it's gotten mainstream traction and there are people who are actually believing that they shouldn't be doing it, that's what's really terrifying. And you couple that with a lack of the ability to respond and you are looking at a lot of people that are going to be sick and dying. And you know, I am, I am a true American. I believe in freedom of choice and I totally believe in freedom of speech. And people should be able to do what they want, but as long as it's not hurting anybody else, which is of course the American way. So if you really want to eat something that you know the government doesn't recommend or do something that the government recommends, that's all fine, but it shouldn't hurt others. And again, the herd immunity thing is such a big deal that it is going to hurt other people. And I think that's the fact that really needs to be honed in upon that if you want to live in a society, you have to be adhering to certain rules so that all of society can benefit from your existence and you from their existence. And I think that's where we're getting hurt a little bit today.
- [25:54]
Lee McGowan
Well, that's the thing. It comes back to it. If you want to live in a society, there are certain rules that we need to be watching out for. Certain things we need to be watching out for because we have to collectively do it to serve the community. And I think the thing is, you're saying it's only the government that can do that kind of education to people, that it's only the government that can do that kind of like broad stroke stuff. But if the government itself is deferring their job to say something like the Maha movement, which is the Make America Healthy Again movement, which moves me From RFK to RFK's pick for the United States Surgeon General, Dr. Casey Means, who's big in the Maha world, then we're in a real pickle because now that is the government. But they're telling us the wrong thing. Like Donald Trump had no idea who Dr. Casey means was when he hired her.
- [26:39]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Right.
- [26:39]
Lee McGowan
But you know, RFK had said she was great. So he was like, that's great. And to be clear, for people who don't know, because I did not know, the Surgeon General's job is to provide Americans with the best scientific information on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness or injury. So it is an incredibly important job, but it's also based in science. And then here we have this woman who was hired, who, yes, has a medical degree from Stanford but never finished her residency, so her medical license is actually inactive. And she refers to herself as a metabolic health evangelist, but really we would probably call her a wellness influencer.
- [27:18]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Correct. That's exactly what she is.
- [27:21]
Lee McGowan
How does that serve us?
- [27:22]
Dr. Anaida Dua
It does not serve us at all. And you know, she knows that too. If she, I mean, I, I actually did my training at Stanford also. I didn't go to medical school there. I did my, my vascular surgical fellowship there. You know, Stanford is a, is a highly intellectual, data driven place. People don't finish their residencies for many reasons. And you know, I think there was actually an article out about her ex chief of the division, gave an interview about what happened and basically kind of said, you know, just couldn't cut it, frankly, in terms of the surgical aspect of things, and started to disbelieve some of the things that they were saying about medicine and surgery. And again, that is her right. But to take somebody like that, who exactly is a wellness influencer, I mean, back to that salmon sperm thing I mentioned earlier, you know, you cannot do that. That's where it gets really dangerous and that's where it really starts to hurt people. If you are in a position where you are supposed to take care of others and you are not taking that seriously, or you allow your own emotional convictions to get in the way of science, that's not right. And I think in this particular situation, that is clearly what has happened. But frankly speaking, it's all a trickle down effect. The President is picking the Surgeon General. It is an incredibly important job. And it is his responsibility to ensure that the person in that position is at the bare minimum, medically qualified. And to your point, I mean, on camera, he said, I have no idea who this person is. So it speaks to the idea that I don't need him to care about everything, but he needs to at least put the right people in place who can then do the work if he doesn't want to do the necessary work for him. And unfortunately, in this particular situation, RFK picked Casey, likely because, and at least this has certainly been published in the media as well, there was a relationship with them historically. There was money exchanged. There were all these, like, untoward things that, you know, said, hey, you know what? I have this fun position. Why don't you do it? And I think ultimately, to me, again, and I could be wrong again, maybe this is some diabolically evil thing, but I really believe that these people actually, one on one, if you hook them up to a lie detector test and you ask them, do you think vaccines are bad? Do you think, you know, goat milk from, like, this part of the Himalayas is good for you? They would say, yes. And the lie detector would say that they were telling the truth. They really believe what they are saying. But that's not good enough. Because if they believe something, they can't go and put it on the mass public as an experiment and then 30 years from now say, oh, crap, I'm sorry, 15 million babies died. Sorry about that. You know, we didn't. We forgot to tell you we didn't know.
- [29:58]
Lee McGowan
It's not like RFK didn't do that already. Right. He did that in a smaller community where he said, don't do the vaccines, and all those babies actually did die. This has actually already happened. And I have to point out that Dr. Casey means our new Surgeon General. She spent a huge part of her career, much like RFK did, criticizing scientists and medical schools and regulators and saying, you know, they take money from food and pharmaceutical industries, which you and I are saying, like, look, we know these industries are not perfect. We're not saying they are. Like, God knows, the pharmaceutical industry, big pharma in America, is a total nightmare. So it's not that we don't agree that some of these things are entirely true, but at the same time, she is promoting dozens of health and wellness products herself. Right. She's been caught numerous times failing to disclose that she's profiting from the things she recommends or that she's promoting companies she's actually an investor in. It's all also a massive conflict of interest with her as the Surgeon General that she's now Advising and investing, you know, in the same companies. Right. That she can benefit from policy positions that the President takes financially herself, or we can say certain products have the US Surgeon General's approval because she's gonna make money from it. It's just adding to the grift of the Trump administration. But again, with us Americans health on the line completely.
- [31:16]
Dr. Anaida Dua
And the saddest thing about that is that, you know, in this particular situation, that particular role is so fundamentally important right now because as you said earlier, you know, we're starting to see these measles outbreaks and all of these other kind of negative things that are. That are happening. And the Surgeon General is the one person that actually mobilizes. That's why it's called the Surgeon General. That person mobilizes the quote, unquote, troops, which are basically public health officials, to go out there and contain these things and fix these problems. But now we basically have, have, I mean, kind of two. Two people that should be working together for the best health of the United States. At the bare minimum, if one is not doing the right job, the other one would be the course corrector. But now we have both of them aligning on the negative side of things. And I think what people really need to understand is that we have a serious problem because this is going to affect every single industry. You know, Big Pharma gets a lot of plaque and as it should for. Absolutely. You know, it's a. Their companies are trying to. And when you try to try to profit, you do things that are not necessarily moral sometimes. On the other hand, without Big Pharma, we would not have the drugs that we have, we would not have the medical advances that we have. Industry pays a significant amount of money to get scientific research out there. And I can point myself to a number of studies. Just recently there was a big company that did a study on a drug coded balloon that was a balloon that basically has drug on the top of it to see whether or not it worked in certain blood vessels. And they funded the study and they did a great job. And guess what? At the end of the day, it showed that the balloon actually did not have an effect. And they published it because that's the way it should be. So like, you know, we as Americans have to take the charge on ourselves as well. There will always be RFKs and Casey means and Donald Trump's and one of the beauties of the country is that we have the ability to voice opinions that may not be with what the other person is saying, but we have to take it upon ourselves to be educated and to ensure that we do our own civics. You can't just rely on the government to do everything for you in terms of education. And what I mean by that is the government can't stand up and say, I mean, we can't anymore. Historically we were able to because we were able to, but now we can.
- [33:27]
Lee McGowan
See where the problem is. And if you get the wrong people.
- [33:29]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Yeah, you're going to do the wrong thing. So now we have to say to ourselves, well, how do we fix this problem? And I think what is happening is as beautiful again as this country is. We have a number of groups, groups that are standing up and saying, all right, government's not doing it for you, we'll do it for you. We'll give you the right information. We're the non profit or we're even the for profit. But we will do what our government is failing to do for us. And it's interesting because that's how America was started in the first place. The government of all those countries in Europe were not doing what they needed to do for those citizens. So those citizens got up, got on a boat and said, screw you guys, and went and did it their way somewhere else. And that's how we live in the United States. And that's why I have a lot of faith that we will course correct because we're not idiots and we can see this for what it is.
- [34:16]
Lee McGowan
I hope that is true. I hope you are using peer reviewed scientific data for that piece of information. Cause I don't know if I've seen it.
- [34:27]
Dr. Anaida Dua
I think, you know, the loudest people are what people do in their homes and what people kind of come out and say are sometimes not aligned as we know. That's how Trump wonders twice, you know, and so, but, but I, I think, you know, this is a charge to not necessarily say, hey, rfk, you need to change, because the guy's not gonna change. We need to sit around saying, okay, what are we gonna do about it? We got this problem. We got somebody who clearly doesn't know what they're doing, who's not educated in this and who is gonna hurt us if we don't take our own lives back. And what you need to do is go and talk to your doctor, go and talk to the people who actually in this particular realm, in the healthcare realm realm, have a conversation with them, make them show you. If you are somebody who does not believe in vaccinations, bring your information and put it down. And if you were with me, I would be like, let me see. And I'd say, oh, okay, okay. These were the limitations of this study. This part may be true here or may not be true. And this is the data that's already in existence. And we might even have a nuanced conversation. Like, you know, there was a recent article that said something about a vaccine that that causes heart disease basically in women. But that happens. It's a side effect. It can happen rarely in a few women. But the other side of it is X amount of people benefit from the vaccine and most people do not have this complication. And so that is also a nuanced conversation. Things are not black and white and we again as Americans need to stop putting everything into TikTok and Twitter 25 characters and start saying if I want to be healthy and I want to be smart, I need to sit down and I need to learn. Because no longer can I just go to the CDC website and get the truth.
- [36:03]
Lee McGowan
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- [39:28]
Dr. Anaida Dua
No longer can I just go to the CDC website and get the truth? Unfortunately, yeah.
- [39:32]
Lee McGowan
Unfortunately, because the days of blind trust are over. I think most of us don't want to try and be health experts like, you know, there's only so many hours in the day and I think that, you know, even when you look at the Maha movement which I think has become, and the wellness industry itself become like a huge special interest group in this country. I watched a friend fall deeply down the Maha rabbit hole. But I think she really truly believes, like you said about RFK in general, that she's doing the right thing. Right, but it's centered down this kind of anti vax rabbit hole which is sort of a gateway to a lot of the MAGA ideas. But I think that Maha itself is really starts out when people are trying to do the right thing. They understand America's unhealthy, they just have to look around to know that. But then these influencers like you saying on, on these social media sites get their claws in them and these people are trying to do the right thing, but they end up disregarding doctors, disregarding scientists going down this kind of anti science rabbit hole. So they don't believe what the truth is or they believe some, you know, story written that's basically an opinion article in some weird journal rather than a peer reviewed study from a scientific journal. And they don't know the difference. So if someone brought you some information and you're like, I would sit down and talk to them, I would hope that more doctors would try and do the same thing and more people would be open minded enough to listen. Because often we think, well now I know the exact truth and it ends up we just listened to the wrong snake oil salesman.
- [40:51]
Dr. Anaida Dua
That's completely correct. And you know what? That is our charge historically doctors have not needed to do that because you know, again the government would do it or people would just have a mass thought. But I think that's our role. You're fully right. There are people that will always capitalize and exploit those that they deem to be not weak but, but targetable frankly. And you know, it's funny because this is the same thing that the MAGA movement says about the scientists that like, oh, you know, they brainwash you and they make you think these things that may not be true or, and, but you know, the fact of the matter is that science is an evolving thing. What is true today and what the data supports today. It is possible that 15 years from now, I mean, you know what, I'll give you a classic example. Red wine, it's bad for you, it's good for you, you can drink it in pregnancy, you can't, you shouldn't, you can have a little bit, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of times the devil, as per usual, is in the Details. If you read a study, you know, they might say, hey, this is good for you. But then you look and see the follow up period where they followed women or they like. The reason I'm thinking of this is there was a study recently that came out about this new thing for breast cancer and they were like, oh, it like increases the life expectancy and they were making all these claims. But if you look at it, the study follow up period was three years. So did it increase the life expectancy? It depends on how you, how you. Because none of these people went on to die in three years. It's just that you would think, you know, based on like the fact that they got three years more, that maybe in the end of the day, if you follow them for 15 years, you can extrapolate that, oh, they would live longer. But you need to know those sorts of things. And again, to your point, the day to day average person is not going to do that. In the same way that, I don't know, the intricacies of divorce court or like, you know, what I need to do for my plumbing, I don't know. And I rely on somebody to come and tell me the truth. Truth. But if my plumber came to my home and I was like, hey, I went on the Internet and I looked this thing up and if I put, you know, antacids down my toilet, it'll unblock, I would hope my plumber wouldn't laugh me off and be condescending toward me and instead would say, oh yeah, I know about that. But you know, actually this is why that's not true and you should do this instead. And that's what doctors need to do. And I think sometimes we haven't done that. We've gone the more the condescending route, which is why people are where they are today. And so I put a charge out to them, to my colleagues, that when people come, whatever the reason is, we need to every time we have an interaction with a patient, make an effort to ensure that they're doing the right thing for their lives. Because it doesn't help them if I do a big heart procedure on the patient. But then they go home and don't vaccinate and get Covid and die. I overall did not do what my goal was, which was to save their life. And so I think like, like that's the big charge as we move forward. And I think we really need to be a little more thoughtful about the unintended consequences of our votes. We do get everything. When you vote for one person. And in a way, people who voted for Trump are getting what they wanted to. They wanted people to question authority and to question the status quo. And I actually think that is great. You should question. Questioning is good. But then you have to be ready to listen to both sides to pick the answer. You can't just get in an echo chamber because that's how people get hurt. That's how bad things happen. And we have bodies littered in history of people who have gotten into echo chambers and ultimately have ended up dying because the wrong thing has been perpetuated.
- [44:19]
Lee McGowan
Yeah. Like you said, it's a country of free speech, free will. Say what you want, but not up until the point in which it hurts someone. Like your freedom ends when your fist hits my face.
- [44:27]
Dr. Anaida Dua
That's correct.
- [44:28]
Lee McGowan
Kind of thing. And I think that's where we are with healthcare. Right. And I think that's probably one of the reasons you started Healthcare for Action. Right. Like, you started this organization to get more democratic healthcare workers running for office. Because we need more people in these positions of power making decisions over public health that actually understand public health. And when I read that about your group, I was like, that's brilliant. Because my husband is in tech and he's constantly talking about how people who are running our government don't know enough about STEM or AI or the rise of technology. He's like, they're not asking the right question questions like, not only are we not making the right laws to limit what's happening, say, with AI, but they don't even know the right questions to create policy to protect us. And I'm sure that's how you feel about medicine.
- [45:10]
Dr. Anaida Dua
That's 100% right. It's actually shocking how few. Because, you know, health is such a big deal. I mean, you, you were talking about Canada recently. Like, you just mentioned that you, you grew up there. And you know what? Like such a basic thing, actually, that our government even doesn't say, you know, more than 50% of the country is on, ultimately on Medicare and certainly a significant proportion on medic, which is universal health. That is what health care is. We are paying into the government, who then turns around and uses our taxes to take care of these people. Now, the way we think of it is somebody gets Medicare after they hit a particular age and they spent their whole lives paying into it, which is correct. But that's the point. It is socialized medicine, that aspect of it. So what we would be saying is, hey, the rest of the country would also get the same benefit instead of employers being but again, again, you know, your eyes glaze over the minute I start talking about something like that because people are like, what? I don't care. So boring. And so you need my eyes don't glaze over.
- [46:06]
Lee McGowan
I think universal healthcare is totally fascinating. And if you want to be a country of freedom, I always say, like you shouldn't be trapped in your job or trapped in your marriage or trapped in something because that's where you get your health care. If you want to be a country that's truly free, we would need some form of universal health care, universal option so that you can move from place to place, you can go, you can leave your marriage if you have to, not just because you happen to have Ms. And you can't. Your husband has your insurance and that's it. So you have to deal with it. That's not freedom.
- [46:33]
Dr. Anaida Dua
I totally agree.
- [46:34]
Lee McGowan
And we pay more money per person anyway and we don't even get universal health care. And then half the time our insurance company can deny us. So it's not serving any of us even the way we have it now. So watching it get cut for through things like the big beautiful bill, it's going to affect everyone whether you're on Medicare, Medicaid or not. It will affect, affect private insurance people too. Because the other hospitals are going to be filled up.
- [46:54]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Exactly right. And the private insurance premiums and, and the are going to go up because the hospitals are going to start charging.
- [47:00]
Lee McGowan
They have to offset the cost.
- [47:01]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Exactly. I mean that, but that, but you know, that's the thing about it, it's almost so convoluted and painful. You think it's engineered and. But guess who knows? This stuff, us every single day we live these lives. So. And not only do we know it, I also don't find it boring even though like it is because it is directly, intimately related to my life and my ability to care for patients. I also went to medical school in the uk, so I lived in a universal healthcare system. And I can tell you a list of all the problems with it and how if we were gonna do it in America, how we would do it correctly even if you didn't care. And you said, you know, I don't care about the humanitarian aspect of it, I don't wanna pay for a bunch of people and I don't want my taxes to go to that. I would make the argument that my most people who are Republicans and believe in the small businesses, small businesses run the United States. They are the backbone of the United States. And small businesses are getting killed with the insurance premiums that they need to pay for the couple of employees that they can have. They have to put people on part time because they can't afford. So everybody wins regardless of which way you go. If you get some sort of universal health care system, but definitely not in the way that's been done in other countries, we would have to do it our own American way and we would have to sit down with the right people and we, if anybody can do it, it, it is us. And now with AI on the rise, to your point, my husband is also in tech. What a beautiful time to figure it out with AI, you know, and imagine having a panel that the government set up that had doctors who know the problem and people in AI, for example, or tech who can create a solution. And these people sit on one panel and figure it out. They lock the door, they get some Chinese food and pizza and they figure it out. And not by September, like you know, these guys are saying, oh, by September we're going to tell you what. No, whatever time it takes to figure it out, to do it once and do it right. And this is not a pie in the sky thing we've done, for God's sake, we're going to Mars. You tell me we can't, we can go to Mars and we can't figure out healthcare. We can. We just haven't got the right people in place. And like you said, because we can't ask the right questions, we can't get the right answers. And so Americans, the day to day, Americans like me, like you need to push for whoever's at the top doing the entertainment. Fine. But the people who are actually doing policy, they need to be agnostic in terms of political party. They need to just say, what do I need to do to make sure Americans are safe and taken care of. That's it. And it's interesting. So I was a presidential leadership scholar, which is this group that President Bush and President Clinton have run for the last decade now, where they pick 60 people from the country from different disciplines and we go and they kind of help us learn how to lead and how you do things. And it's so interesting to hear them speak again. You know, Bush and Clinton, you're talking about Republican, Democrat, because it's all about compromise and it's all about asking the serious questions. And we are, we're not being serious anymore. And I think that's really where our downfall is. And I think as we move forward, that's the space that we as like regular Americans need to get into, which is why Healthcare Correction was created to get those people who are serious on the right track, who really do care just about Americans. Not Republicans, not Democrats, not. What is that party called? The Big Political. Whatever. Elon Musk's new party is the American Party. I'm sorry, that's right, the American Party. The American Party, whatever you are, he.
- [50:24]
Lee McGowan
Started with a Sig Heil party.
- [50:28]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Wherever you are, if you are in this country, we are going to take care of you. And the reason I brought up Bush and Clinton is because what's fascinating is when we did that program, they brought a bunch of people in who were part of the different political parties over the course of like, you know, 20 years. On the one hand, it was kind of unsettling because it was sort of like, wow, you've been in the same job for the last like 20 years. Shouldn't someone else be in this job at this point? But on the other hand, it was amazing because what that meant is regardless of who the political party was that was in power, this person who was an expert was hired to stay on. Which means that ultimately, sure, again at the top, you can do whatever song and dance, but when you're talking about the actual American lives, nobody says, I'm a Republican and therefore we should do this or that. It's supposed to be just what's best for America. And we gotta get back to that.
- [51:18]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, we do have to get back to that. There is no doubt about it. It doesn't really matter who's on the poster. At the end of the day, the people doing the work have to know what they're doing, be professionals at what they're doing and keep all of the American people, in this case health and wellness, in mind. I want to thank you so much for joining us today. Dr. Zhua, please tell people how they can support your work and help move your mission to get more people that understand this stuff in government forward.
- [51:41]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Thank you so much. What would be great is if you go to the website www.healthcareforaction.com. it's all one word, healthcareforaction.com you can go on there and see some of our work. I actually started it in 2022 and it was all again with this idea. I'm a full time surgeon, so it's on the side. And you know, nobody makes any money here. It's all doctors. You can go and it out yourself. And what we do is we support people who are running for office who are in the healthcare profession, not just for healthcare, though, because remember, this is something really important. If you got sick tomorrow and you showed up in the ICU and you were dying, and I come in there and the infectious disease doctor walks in and says, hey, you know, I want to do this today. And I say, no, I want to do that today. We don't just stand there screaming over your body as you die. We walk out of the room, we have a conversation, and maybe I tell the infectious disease guy, okay, fine, you get 60% of what you want, you can start this antibiotic, but I'm taking her to the surgery tomorrow. Then we compromise. I don't get everything I want, he doesn't get everything he wants. And we go back in the room and we just work on you. You are America in this analogy. You are the thing that needs to move forward. And right now what's happening is Congress is screaming over your body as you die. And that's problematic. So doctors are the most extreme. Equip people to be in these positions. Because even if I'm sitting on a panel in Congress, let's say I was in Congress and I'm sitting with somebody, and you know, that person doesn't believe in abortion, and I do. But we're talking about building a road in Nebraska. We can have that conversation about building the road in Nebraska. And that's what's important. You have to be able to focus and get stuff done. This is the most ineffective Congress we've ever had. Right. Has not gotten the least amount of stuff done. And it's because of this. And both sides are at fault, by the way, for this. I'll say that, frankly.
- [53:21]
Lee McGowan
No doubt, no doubt. Absolutely no doubt.
- [53:23]
Dr. Anaida Dua
We just, at the end of the.
- [53:25]
Lee McGowan
Day, we do have to move away from all of that. What we have to do is move back to the idea that the American people deserve to be represented. Not just one party, one person, one tax bracket, I think, is where we're at.
- [53:36]
Dr. Anaida Dua
Absolutely.
- [53:36]
Lee McGowan
And I have to say, as a surgeon, thank you for having a side hustle to make us all well.
- [53:41]
Dr. Anaida Dua
My pleasure. My pleasure. Love doing it. Thank you so much for having me.
- [53:44]
Lee McGowan
Thank you for coming. So that was Dr. Anaida Dua reminding us that with the moves this administration is taking, the fire is coming, that the people in charge of our health, though perhaps well meaning, are not prepared or experienced for their responsibilities. And we will all suffer because of it. Now is the time to talk to your doctors, to ask the questions, to do the research. When you hear something and think, I'm not quite sure that's right. As Dr. Dua says, it's not that American was ever great at health care. We've been far too political about it for years. But it is time that we started to prioritize it. Because if we can't trust our government to hire the best and brightest for these jobs, every single one of us will be in trouble. I want to thank Dr. Dua for joining us today and you for caring enough about this country to be here. Now go check out healthcareforaction.com and let's get more people who understand our health making decisions about our health. Until next week. PGM before you go, would you like to get this podcast ad free delivered directly to your inbox along with my kitchen rants? Then please consider becoming a member of Politics Girl Premium by going to politicsgirl.com and signing up. If you're already a premium member of this podcast, thank you so much for your support. And if you're not, please consider being a patron of my work. Mainstream news is only giving you a version of billionaire backed propaganda at this point, so if you want real knowledge, it's essential to support those of us out here still bringing it to you. There is a link to sign up in the bio of this episode, but also@politicsgirl.com and as always, please like and share these podcasts so we can grow our audience because the more people who have access to this kind of information, the better. As always, thank you so much for your time and support. The Politics Girl Podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.