Latest / The SEANC View / State Treasurer Brad Briner Breaks Down Recent State Health Plan Wins

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State Treasurer Brad Briner Breaks Down Recent State Health Plan Wins · The SEANC View

• 0:11
  Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
• 0:15
  I'm your host, Jonathan Owens. I have the usual crew in here,
• 0:18
  but we have a special guest.
• 0:20
  We're very excited to have him. He's been a very busy man since you took office.
• 0:25
  We have State Treasurer Brad Briner with us today.
• 0:29
  Very excited to have him in here. He's a very important elected official for
• 0:32
  state employees and retirees as he oversees the state health plan and the retirement
• 0:38
  system. Welcome to our lovely podcast studio.
• 0:41
  It is a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. Awesome.
• 0:44
  We're excited you're here.
• 0:45
  Thanks. In the last few weeks, you've been on kind of a roll here.
• 0:49
  You've had some pretty big news coming out. It's been a big roll.
• 0:53
  On Tuesday, you had a major agreement announced with CVS Caremark,
• 0:57
  which ended a months-long dispute, I guess? I suspect it's years long. Okay.
• 1:04
  Yep. And we'll get into that a little more. But last week, you helped broker
• 1:08
  a deal between Duke and ETA that helps state health plan members continue to
• 1:13
  see their doctors in network.
• 1:14
  So we want to get on both of those topics. So let's just jump right in.
• 1:18
  First question after all that, do you need a vacation?
• 1:22
  No, but the state health plan team does. They have been crushing it.
• 1:25
  And I'm so impressed with the leadership there and all the members of that team.
• 1:29
  They have had, I mean, 25 to 5 has been a tough year in the state health plan. It has not been fun.
• 1:35
  We needed to reorient that plan. And that's not fun for anyone.
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  And they have been working their butts off to make it all happen.
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  And so I'm just real proud of them, mostly over the last week here.
• 1:46
  We had a good team over there. We enjoy working with your team.
• 1:49
  Thank you. You think back, it really has been a hectic year for them.
• 1:53
  And we've been excited to have Thomas Friedman on the podcast several times
• 1:56
  and at our convention to talk to members about all the things going on.
• 2:00
  So let's get into the CVS dispute, I guess, first off. We had Thomas on the
• 2:04
  podcast in August, and I guess it was kind of bubbling up at that time,
• 2:08
  and he kind of told us a little bit about it.
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  But can you start by explaining the dispute a little bit and then the agreement? Sure.
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  So I think it's worth taking a big step back. They call them PBMs,
• 2:18
  pharmaceutical benefit managers. What do they do?
• 2:21
  Mostly it's software. Mostly it's making sure people pay the right price at
• 2:26
  the right point of sale and the medication is there and the insurance pays what
• 2:30
  they're supposed to pay. The members pays what they're supposed to pay.
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  And most importantly, the member gets the prescription they're supposed to get.
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  And that's a reasonably should be a reasonably
• 2:38
  straightforward business they have made it anything but a straightforward
• 2:41
  business we don't just pay a price we pay a price and then we get a rebate and
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  they do that so they can hide all sorts of things and it is a very frustrating
• 2:49
  business to be a customer of but unfortunately given the scale and the breadth
• 2:54
  of members we have all over the state we have to have someone play that role
• 2:57
  we couldn't possibly do it ourselves so that's what Caremark does for us.
• 3:00
  We've had a couple disputes with them over time.
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  The first is that if you go back to last April, April 2024, that is,
• 3:07
  the weight loss medications, GLP-1s, were taken off formulary.
• 3:11
  And that's a big deal and something that we're going to work to rectify here
• 3:14
  in hopefully short order.
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  But that was because of our PBM contract. We did not have a choice between providing
• 3:20
  them for everybody and providing them for the people who really needed them.
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  It was either everybody or nobody.
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  And so they had to make the choice of nobody because they were running $250
• 3:29
  million a year on these medications and growing.
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  That was a part of the dispute. Surely we can have a contract that allows us
• 3:35
  to give people medicines who really need them and not the people who kind of want them. One.
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  Two, when you're dealing with many thousands of claims a day,
• 3:45
  you're inevitably going to have disputes around specific claims.
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  Maybe it was more than just specific claims.
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  And part of that is just math. It's like, how do you actually run this math equation?
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  And if you read a legal contract, it rarely has math equations in it.
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  So you're interpreting a legal contract.
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  We of course interpret it favorable to us and they of course interpret it favorable to them.
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  So we needed to resolve that. And it's kind of aggregation and componentization
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  of rebates is what that's called.
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  So we got that resolved too.
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  And then there are other pieces where you can't really understand their business
• 4:19
  model. You can't see everything.
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  And I think we've made material steps forward so that we can actually understand
• 4:24
  what they're charging and why.
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  I'm confident that we'll still have that discussion, but we made progress in
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  terms of getting more transparency in what they're doing.
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  So those are all the pieces of it. And I think we've resolved most of those.
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  The other one, which is important, is that we now have an ability to direct
• 4:39
  contract for GLP-1s with the manufacturers.
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  Everything we're trying to do in the state health plan is just trying to get
• 4:46
  the incentives aligned between our members and the people who are providing for them.
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  If our members are provided for better, we are happy to pay people more.
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  Fundamental principle.
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  And one of the issues we had with Caremark was that we were misaligned in a certain way.
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  So when these large molecule drugs, they're new drugs, come off patent.
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  In the old world of just pills, these are infusions generally,
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  the next day you'd have 10 manufacturers of pills, super easy to do,
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  generic prices would drop, the list price by 90%.
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  When you're making a big, complicated molecule, it's not that simple.
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  Usually, it may come off patent on one day, and there's no generic the next day.
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  It takes a while. Oh, and they've got so many layers of patents.
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  It's such a sophisticated scheme. It is a sophisticated scheme.
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  Like, almost so sophisticated that you respect it, but then you realize what
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  they're doing, and you don't.
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  But, yeah, there's a lot of patent attorneys who've made a fortune doing things
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  that I don't particularly think I'd wake up in the morning feeling good about.
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  But so be it. So this generic problem in large molecules is real.
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  And Caremark decided that there's another business we'd like to be in of developing
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  these so that there is that generic there the next day.
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  That had the ironic effect when they did this the first time,
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  and it was for generic biosimilar for Humira, that they were accelerating generic
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  supply, which because of the nature of our contract.
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  And hat tip to Dale Falwell, who put this contract in place.
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  The state health plan has a very unique contract. But when Caremark was doing
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  this, they were costing themselves money and not lost profits, actual losses.
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  So it was a very ironic situation where they're creating the supply to lower
• 6:25
  the cost for the state health plan. And not only is that worse for them,
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  it's actually negative for them.
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  So we need to solve that problem. And we solve that problem here, too. Okay.
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  Will members see the fruits of this new agreement in their costs?
• 6:39
  They will. And implicitly, they already are in some way. So let me get to that.
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  We've been at this for five months. We were close at one point.
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  We were really far away at one point, just like any negotiation.
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  When we were setting premiums in August, we did two things.
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  And I think people heard the first loud and clear, and they're still hearing
• 6:56
  it again in open enrollment, and that's the premiums you're going to have in the short run.
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  And we recognize people's frustration with that. It gives us no pleasure that
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  the rest of the healthcare system is doing the same thing to everyone else at the same time.
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  But it is a fact of life that the healthcare industry is broken in many ways.
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  But the second thing we said, which is important and is underpinned by this
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  Caremark Agreement, is that in the future, we would advocate for premium growth
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  to be limited to wage growth as long as we possibly can.
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  And under our financial expectations, that is as long as we can see.
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  And I think that's an important promise that we made. And I think we can live
• 7:29
  up to it in part because of things like Caremark, where those hundreds of millions
• 7:33
  of dollars that we think we're going to gain through this contract underpin
• 7:36
  the ability to withstand if there's no wage growth. There might not be wage
• 7:40
  growth. There hasn't been.
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  There is no budget. Right. But that way, what we're telling state employees
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  is that as a percentage of your paycheck, this is not going to rise in the future.
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  And there is no other industry in this country that can make that claim.
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  And that's a valuable thing, I think, for state employees. And I hope that they
• 7:56
  receive it that way. But it's not something we've talked about a lot.
• 7:59
  Now that we have the Caremark deal done, we can feel even better that we can
• 8:02
  keep that promise. That brings something to mind, though.
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  Suzanne and I have been around here a while. And for most of our careers,
• 8:09
  there was no premium in the state health plan very intentionally because it's
• 8:12
  very hard to recruit and retain when you're paying less than private sector wages.
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  We still pay less than private sector wages by at least 14 percent in some sectors. It's much more.
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  But on average, about 14 percent less than private sector. But the benefits are eroding.
• 8:27
  There did start to be a premium, and then a few times it's increased. It was held for a while.
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  It is still our belief as an organization, which we've been very open with you
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  about, that if we could have transparency in these contracts.
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  You were just saying on CVS, even the plan didn't have what y'all thought was
• 8:44
  adequate transparency.
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  Well, we as members get no transparency in it. And we still feel that being
• 8:51
  that North Carolina's number one costliest place in the country for health care,
• 8:55
  no doubt we're paying too much for the health care.
• 8:58
  No question. So just on behalf of our members, because I know they're going
• 9:01
  to tell me later after this podcast if I don't make this point again,
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  we would argue premiums don't need to go up for them ever until we know what
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  we're paying and we've brought it in line. Yeah.
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  So we can see an aggregate what we're paying.
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  And we see that by member, how much the state is contributing,
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  how much members are contributing.
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  So all of that is available. But I think what you're advocating for is very
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  specific transparency at the procedure level.
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  And so things like Lantern are going to allow us to get there.
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  I think there are competitive issues where, you know, Lantern is a great example
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  of this. We want people to bid against each other.
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  And they will do that as long as they don't have to show their bids to everybody else.
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  Which allows us to reduce cost dramatically. And so the tension for us is always
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  going to be, or it should always be, between saving money and being perfectly transparent.
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  One of the things that I think we have to figure out how we get to,
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  and there's some service disruption issues, which is what you really want to worry about,
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  is we should put a rule in place that says we are never paying anyone more than
• 10:03
  300% of Medicare, no matter what.
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  Yeah, that would be great. The service disruption issues in the rural areas
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  become very real. And so that's what you have to solve before you can say that.
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  Because if we're putting a facility out of business inadvertently, we need to not do that.
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  We need to be very thoughtful about that and not advocating for any facility to close necessarily.
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  But we've got to create ongoing business models for these folks that are real
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  and that provide access for all 100 counties, which is the other side of this challenge. Right.
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  They're using these procedures not because they're particularly profitable and
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  the rural hospitals are not.
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  It's to subsidize everything else. And where they have huge paramix issues and
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  it's Medicaid, which just lowered its reimbursement rates.
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  Yes. Do you think that's going to affect hospitals pushing back on y'all?
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  Yes. Yeah. A hundred percent. It is a balloon. They're squeezing it on one side.
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  If you're losing it here, you're going to want to get it somewhere else.
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  One of the huge issues we have in this state, generically and specifically, is rural versus urban.
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  And that is very true in hospitals and health systems.
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  We have a lot of rural hospitals that are struggling to get by,
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  and Medicaid has been a lifeline for them. This Rural Healthcare Transformation
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  Fund, the $50 billion that was in H.R.
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  1, should help fix some things, but it's not going to fix everything.
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  So there's a lot more to go there. And that's part of our job as a state health
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  plan is to make sure that people have access everywhere, not just the triangle, right?
• 11:31
  No, and absolutely. I know, you know, we have members, many of whom are in rural
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  areas, and they definitely, they've seen it.
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  They've, in some cases, they've seen their hospitals go away.
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  So, and consolidation's not been so kind to rural areas. It has not.
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  And it's also true in water and sewer, too.
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  I mean, we've got, in the end, we need to do economic development in these areas
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  to create population growth in these areas.
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  That's the real solution to so many of these problems. But that's way outside
• 12:00
  the scope of the Treasurer's Office.
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  It's one of the only things that's outside of the scope of the Treasurer's Office.
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  Well, I think that this is a good time to talk about Lantern because you can
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  kind of use Lantern's advantages in that area, right?
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  Absolutely. So, we are in the middle of the Lantern process.
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  We have received bids at this point and we are going through and getting best in finals.
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  But the concept is worth spending a minute on. And I know you all probably know
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  this, but just to remind people, the idea is reasonably straightforward.
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  And that is we want high quality providers to compete for your business.
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  And that doesn't happen in health care.
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  And so when we went out to people saying, hey, you need to bid for our business.
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  And oh, by the way, 30% of the facilities in the state, you don't qualify from a quality perspective.
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  Sorry, do better next time and we're happy to have you. But the reactions to
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  what do you mean compete? Why would we do that?
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  We're telling and thankfully we overcame them in many places.
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  So what Landrum will do is once we have those winners, and it's going to be
• 13:01
  in the five Medicaid regions, so it'll be regional, you will be offered the
• 13:05
  opportunity if you need an elective surgery or a non-emergency surgery to choose where you go.
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  And right now, if your copay plus coinsurance is going to be $1,000,
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  that's still going to be available to you.
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  But we're going to create a tier where that is now $0.
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  And if you go there, you'll save yourself $1,000. It'll still be high quality. It is your choice.
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  But the effect for the state health plan is good as well, because we should
• 13:29
  see 20 to 30 percent savings on that procedure by virtue of what we think are
• 13:34
  expected volumes there.
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  And we can't emphasize that last part enough.
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  These folks aren't on the list because they can't find business otherwise. Right.
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  They're objectively good at what they do. They are. And that's how they got
• 13:47
  on the list, right? Absolutely.
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  Like I said earlier, 30 percent of the providers in the state didn't qualify to bid.
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  And I suspect when you go into whatever health care provider,
• 13:58
  they would be embarrassed to tell you that they didn't.
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  And we're not going to tell you who they are. That's not how you host the competition.
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  But this is about high quality. And if you don't believe us,
• 14:06
  then choose to pay the full $1,000. That's your choice.
• 14:09
  You're no worse off, but you could be better off. And I think that that should
• 14:13
  resonate with our members.
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  I hope to be one of the first people in the Lantern program.
• 14:17
  I need shoulder surgery.
• 14:18
  Oh, sorry about that. But, I mean, I think it's a really innovative thing.
• 14:22
  First reaction was for our people, which you just cleared that up.
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  First reaction was, first of all, you're going to tell me who I've got to go
• 14:29
  to to have surgery and I'm not going to have access to my doctors.
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  And that is not the case at all. That is not the case.
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  And I understand that reaction. I mean, people have been promising fools gold
• 14:39
  in the healthcare industry forever.
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  And we don't think this is that. What we think is that a large fraction,
• 14:46
  maybe even a majority of people, will choose to take us up on this. Yeah.
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  And the provider thinks that too. and they're hoping to get a lot more business
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  so their operating room is not idle so they can have eight procedures a day instead of six.
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  And it's a basic business principle of economies of scale.
• 15:01
  That's how we all win here. And hopefully that will also create access points for off hours too.
• 15:07
  Why should we be doing surgery at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday? Right.
• 15:11
  We can do it at 10 o'clock on a Saturday.
• 15:12
  Yeah. It's better for me as someone who has a Monday to Friday job and it's
• 15:17
  better for the operating room to be busy on the weekends. Why should it sit vacant?
• 15:21
  Absolutely. Yeah. So have you seen any patterns in the providers that you do accept?
• 15:28
  Like, I can see someone saying, well, you're just going to push all your business to Novant or Atrium.
• 15:33
  Do you have providers from all over the state, like all areas?
• 15:37
  So we ran these, there's five Medicaid regions. So they divide the state up into those five.
• 15:42
  And we ran those within those Medicaid regions because it's reasonable to ask
• 15:46
  people to drive 30 or 50 miles. I don't think it's reasonable to ask them to drive 200, right?
• 15:50
  So we wanted to make sure that people had access points in all the different parts of the state.
• 15:54
  And Medicaid and Medicare already do that. So we kind of leveraged their infrastructure
• 15:58
  to do that so that we could be sure.
• 16:01
  You will see material volume go to the winning provider of these procedures.
• 16:06
  But a couple points, it will not be anywhere near all of it.
• 16:10
  Yeah. So there'll still be some in other places because people prefer their doctor or whatever.
• 16:17
  And, you know, we'll see how that works. And then there's a lot of procedures that,
• 16:21
  that we have not bid for. And I'm not sure we can, and we went with the easy ones first.
• 16:25
  So orthopedics are pretty straightforward. If you need shoulder surgery, you can wait.
• 16:30
  If you wait a week and, you know, it'll be okay. As we get into other procedures
• 16:34
  that are more complicated and have more involved follow-ups,
• 16:37
  it's probably not reasonable to ask people to follow up at a distance very easily.
• 16:41
  So we've got to work through some complications there. So for the hospital,
• 16:46
  let's say, who has lost the competition for knee surgeries in whatever region,
• 16:52
  from a revenue mix perspective, it's like 1% of revenue.
• 16:56
  It'll matter a little bit, but it won't really matter a lot yet.
• 16:59
  As we go down and do more and more of this, you're going to carve away at a
• 17:03
  lot of that if they don't win these competitions.
• 17:06
  Yeah. You still have things that can't move. Emergency services can't move.
• 17:10
  Emergency surgeries, et cetera.
• 17:12
  So there's a huge chunk of a hospital's business that never moves, can't.
• 17:16
  So I'm sorry, I didn't mean to single out Novant or Atrium. I mean,
• 17:20
  we've done that before. Just trying to think of the big name.
• 17:23
  But I did hear at the convention someone say that they just,
• 17:26
  you know, they want me to go all the way to Charlotte to have a surgery.
• 17:29
  And those are just the ones in the area. But I guess that's something that you hear a lot.
• 17:33
  I mean, what is, I think, a critical evolution for the health care system in
• 17:38
  the state, if you fast forward far enough, is kind of the Centers of Excellence piece of this.
• 17:42
  I think if anyone has a rare condition and pick your condition,
• 17:47
  there's a place to go in the state.
• 17:49
  And if you asked a medical professional, they'd say, whether it's Charlotte
• 17:52
  or the Triangle or wherever, if you have X, go there.
• 17:57
  That's a strength of that particular place that we've got to leverage,
• 18:00
  and we've got to send more people there, not less.
• 18:02
  So I think as people experience the acute parts of the health care system,
• 18:07
  prepare to travel, but prepare for that to be really good for you.
• 18:10
  Yeah, I mean, if I could save $1,000, I would drive three hours.
• 18:13
  Well, and Leonard's got, they'll pay for travel. Yes. Oh, wow.
• 18:18
  Yeah. In the context of health care costs, travel is so cheap.
• 18:22
  Yeah. We joke about it. I won't name the county or the provider,
• 18:26
  but not far from here, there's a county where colonoscopies are about 6x what they should be.
• 18:32
  Wow. And so we joke, Tom and I, that I'm going to start running an Uber between
• 18:36
  the two and keeping the difference and be the most profitable Uber around.
• 18:41
  But those are the crazy inefficiencies we've got to figure out how we iron out
• 18:46
  without putting that facility in harm's way. So just briefly,
• 18:49
  I want to go back to Duke and Etna.
• 18:51
  Can you tell us a little bit about that negotiation and that agreement?
• 18:55
  And were you able to use the state health plan's largesse to make an impact in it? Yeah.
• 19:01
  I guess the first thing I want to say is that Duke is a great provider and we
• 19:05
  need healthy providers and we want them in the system and I'm glad they are.
• 19:09
  There are a lot of special things that they do that we would be worse off without.
• 19:13
  But that said, we don't live in a world of unlimited funds.
• 19:19
  And we can't give everyone everything that they want.
• 19:23
  That's the uncomfortable reality that we find ourselves in, unfortunately,
• 19:27
  in a lot of different ways.
• 19:28
  So these negotiations happen, and there are like three of them going on in the
• 19:32
  triangle outside this one.
• 19:34
  They don't usually get this public, and the provider isn't usually so aggressive.
• 19:41
  That's what we reacted to more than anything, was not only reaching out to our
• 19:45
  members and sending them multiple letters to scare them, but a radio campaign,
• 19:49
  which was just not befitting of a high-quality provider like Duke.
• 19:53
  We've not seen that level before. Never. Yeah.
• 19:57
  I mean, it could have happened, but we've never seen it. I don't remember one
• 20:01
  ever that was like that. And so what are you doing and to what end?
• 20:04
  And the lack of perspective on what the state health plan is going through and
• 20:09
  the sacrifices we've asked of
• 20:11
  our members, I guess, triggered us is the right way to say it. I loved it.
• 20:16
  You were very, very, you were a fighter out there.
• 20:19
  You know, you kept your diplomat hat on to get it done.
• 20:22
  But I think it was appropriate when you went so far as to use the word greed,
• 20:26
  because it was a bad look for Duke when asked about their billions in reserves
• 20:34
  and or actually that was an investment and then hundreds of millions in profit.
• 20:38
  And I don't know what in reserves right now for Duke, but to say,
• 20:41
  well, we'd have to cut into that a little bit if we made less profit off of these state employees.
• 20:47
  That was, as I think I put on social media, the most tone-deaf thing I've seen
• 20:51
  in a really long time, and it's state employees needed to see their treasurer
• 20:56
  stand up for them, and you did.
• 20:58
  And so we do want to thank you so much. But that is, unfortunately,
• 21:02
  something we encounter a lot.
• 21:04
  Like, not even don't cut into our profits, but don't cut into our piles of extra money that we like.
• 21:11
  But we're cool with y'all not getting a ray. They don't say that out loud, but I mean.
• 21:15
  I don't even think they thank that artist, by the way. You don't think they're
• 21:18
  cool with us not getting a ray? No, I don't think they are. I think they are.
• 21:22
  No, I appreciate that. And while I'm happy to fight, what I'm actually here to do is win.
• 21:28
  Yeah. And sometimes that means we've got to fight in public.
• 21:32
  But usually when you fight in public, it's hard to walk things back.
• 21:35
  Yeah. And so I have a lot of praise for Dr.
• 21:38
  Owens, Dr. Tom Owens at Duke, who helped them walk this back.
• 21:42
  And he's the new leader there. And it's important that we win.
• 21:47
  And I don't need to be out there fighting if I can't deliver.
• 21:50
  And so I'm happy that our team delivered.
• 21:52
  And we got a lot of happy people, too. Good. Yeah.
• 21:55
  Happy they don't have to change doctors. It is also open enrollment right now.
• 21:58
  Yes. I suspect we have a lot of unhappy people, too.
• 22:01
  So hopefully we're doing it right by them in other ways.
• 22:05
  Yeah. And I think a lot of what you've talked about with Lantern as a starting
• 22:09
  point, as a starting point to what seems to be an overall philosophy under your
• 22:13
  leadership at the health plan, which is, okay, we have to insert competition.
• 22:17
  It's very hard sometimes to force the competition.
• 22:21
  So we're going to think of innovative ways that bring people to the table willingly,
• 22:24
  both on the side of the providers and the participants in the health plan.
• 22:28
  So I think that's awesome.
• 22:30
  But I know you also wanted to make sure we talked about the breast MRIs, the special MRIs.
• 22:36
  Is it an mri i thought it was a special it is an mri okay yep
• 22:40
  so it is breast cancer awareness month i'm wearing my
• 22:42
  pink tie so i want to make sure that we acknowledge that because it's a big
• 22:47
  deal for a lot of people and it touches a lot of families throughout the state
• 22:50
  it's roughly half of women have dense breasts and traditional mammography doesn't
• 22:54
  really do anything other than suggest there might be a problem which isn't overly
• 22:58
  helpful this has been known for some time.
• 23:02
  And the next best thing to do is get an MRI, which help you identify whether
• 23:07
  there's cancer there. We've historically not been willing to pay for that.
• 23:11
  And most insurers don't pay for that, to be clear. This was raised as an issue
• 23:15
  during the campaign, and we did some homework.
• 23:19
  Like, let's look at this from the lens of just how many lives is it safe?
• 23:23
  And how effective is it in doing so? And once you start to think about it in
• 23:27
  that term, rather than just an incremental MRI expense, it becomes pretty evident
• 23:31
  that I think you should cover this, not just for the member.
• 23:35
  That's, of course, the priority, but also as a matter of long-term finances,
• 23:40
  it's, as we all know, so much better to prevent than to cure.
• 23:44
  Ounce of prevention, so to speak. And this is just one more example of that.
• 23:48
  So August 1st, we changed that, where it is now not only available,
• 23:52
  but free for our members who need it.
• 23:54
  And again, hopefully changing lives one at a time, and also doing right by the
• 23:58
  state health plans finances too.
• 24:00
  That's huge. That will literally save love. That same advocate had reached out
• 24:03
  to us during that same period of time.
• 24:06
  And I think what you just said about most insurers don't cover it.
• 24:10
  I think you mean in North Carolina, right?
• 24:11
  Because I was shocked when she said, hey, there's so many states that require
• 24:17
  insurance companies to cover this.
• 24:19
  And I thought, really? And looked it up. Yeah. I mean, I was completely ignorant
• 24:23
  to this issue. Same here. Until she called. Right.
• 24:26
  And then it seemed like a house on fire, like we've got to do something about
• 24:30
  this. So thank y'all so much for that.
• 24:32
  I do think that will save a lot of lives. It's very scary.
• 24:35
  It is. You know, in addition to trying to make the state health plan solvent,
• 24:39
  we want to make it better.
• 24:40
  Yeah. And prevention is a huge part of how you make it better.
• 24:44
  Keeping people out of the health care system because they don't need it is always
• 24:48
  the best answer if you can get there.
• 24:50
  And being proactive with testing, primary care check-ins, and other things like
• 24:55
  that is how we're going to do that.
• 24:56
  And it's a huge statement. If the health plan says we want to have this covered,
• 25:00
  you can drive the market potentially to where our state will look like those
• 25:04
  states that think this is very important.
• 25:06
  There is, I mean, there's a huge signaling effect, and we're very aware of what
• 25:11
  the state health plan does for private insurance.
• 25:13
  Some people think that their plan just needs to be better than the state health plan.
• 25:16
  And it's a, state health plan's a pretty good plan, so that's a high standard.
• 25:20
  And so when we raise the bar, you do see that effect. Well, before we get off
• 25:24
  health care, I think we'd also be remiss if we didn't ask the question about
• 25:29
  Aetna, how the changeover is going. We do hear from a lot of members who complain.
• 25:34
  About the new administrator at Aetna. So can you give us some thoughts on that?
• 25:39
  Sure. So we process roughly 25,000 claims every day. Wow.
• 25:44
  And that's Aetna's job, right? It's third-party administrator of claims,
• 25:47
  and there's an enormous number of them.
• 25:50
  So while perfection is always the goal, a little realism is that we were missing
• 25:54
  claims under Blue Cross and we're missing under Aetna, and we're going to endeavor
• 25:58
  to do better, but I aspire to have a perfect day, let alone a perfect year.
• 26:02
  We were missing a lot in the beginning of the year.
• 26:05
  To some degree, that's expected in any transition. Not that you like it,
• 26:09
  but you can understand it. We have gotten better.
• 26:11
  I'm not sure that we are to the point that we're better than Blue Cross was last December.
• 26:15
  Some of that is that is still learning.
• 26:17
  You have an enormous number of potential claims in the healthcare system.
• 26:21
  There's the normal ones.
• 26:22
  You go to see your primary care for your annual physical. That's the most common
• 26:26
  claim, right? But then you have the very obscure claims that just happen once a year.
• 26:30
  And so it's only when we run into that claim, we process that claim,
• 26:35
  we hear from the member, do we actually know that it's different.
• 26:38
  The other piece of it is, and we're trying to iron these out wherever we find them.
• 26:42
  So people please make us aware is what I'd call distinction with a lot of different claims.
• 26:46
  Like as an example, I went to the dermatologist the other day and they charged
• 26:51
  me an $80 copay, which I was confused by because it's supposed to be $25 And I paid it.
• 26:57
  And then I got a check, which had my own signature on it. It was kind of cool.
• 27:01
  For $55 the next week. And so that's $25. That's one way to get to $25.
• 27:07
  Just charge me $8 and refund me $55.
• 27:08
  But that's, people don't appreciate that. And so we're working through some
• 27:12
  of those more customer service pieces of it, too.
• 27:14
  That is not suggesting that the customer service piece is all that we've got
• 27:18
  going on here. But we're getting there.
• 27:21
  They have been a good partner. We have work to do. We know it.
• 27:23
  Well, I think a lot of the time We've talked about this Edna gets blamed Or you get blamed Right.
• 27:29
  When, at least on our social media pages, because people are so confused and
• 27:35
  they're not sure who to be mad at about the cost of their health care.
• 27:40
  And so. Even we get blamed. Oh, yeah. Oh, goodness. Yes. Yeah.
• 27:44
  But there's a lot of people that think, well, it's because we switched over
• 27:48
  from Blue Cross to Aetna.
• 27:49
  And yet I noticed on LinkedIn, which I've had to pay more attention to because
• 27:54
  that's where all the health care people are. Yes.
• 27:56
  They're in a different place than some of the other folks. But that's fascinating.
• 28:00
  Somebody piped up just yesterday, a physician that said, we're in South Carolina,
• 28:03
  we've got Blue Cross, same thing.
• 28:06
  And these are physicians complaining that physicians are not getting treated
• 28:10
  as well as hospitals, which is, you know, that's another concerning thing because
• 28:14
  we don't, we really, our members care very much about their doctors.
• 28:18
  They want to make sure doctors and nurses, workers like they are,
• 28:21
  are not the ones who are, if we're going to overpay for something,
• 28:25
  we want the workers to benefit from that and And not just the top levels of
• 28:30
  admin and the opulent facilities and things like that.
• 28:35
  They're not all opulent. No, but there are some that are.
• 28:38
  And that makes no sense. Right. You know what I mean? I agree with you.
• 28:42
  We really do have a dichotomy in this state, though, between rural and urban in this regard.
• 28:47
  And, you know, as we talk about fighting the hospitals, quote unquote,
• 28:50
  those are very different things.
• 28:52
  Well, yeah. But the governance of groups that fight for them are kind of led
• 28:57
  by the big guys. Yeah, that's fair.
• 28:59
  So that's who we have to kind of focus on.
• 29:02
  But again, I think Aetna and the treasurer's office itself are getting a lot
• 29:06
  of guff where people really aren't sure where to put this frustration.
• 29:10
  And one of the big goals that we have for the state health plan over time,
• 29:14
  and I think we're going to make some progress on this in Q1 of 2026,
• 29:18
  is making health care easier for people.
• 29:20
  Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a basic concept that we've lost the thread on.
• 29:25
  We need to help people navigate.
• 29:28
  It's this, you know, good luck. You know, figure it out on your own.
• 29:31
  And maybe for some people that might work.
• 29:34
  But for most people, we're busy. We've got other things in our life we'd rather
• 29:38
  deal with than scheduling appointments or reminding ourselves to do X, Y, or Z.
• 29:42
  We need to be in the business of calling our members, not having them call us.
• 29:45
  And what does that mean? That's fundamental.
• 29:47
  It sounds simple, but reaching out to you to help you with, hey,
• 29:52
  we noticed you haven't had a physical this year.
• 29:54
  It's like, can we help you find a doctor to do that? How's your schedule?
• 29:58
  We need to be in that business because again, it goes back to prevention versus
• 30:01
  cure. If we can keep our members healthy through basic steps, that is great for them.
• 30:06
  And that is great for everyone as a result. And that is, you have a great team over there.
• 30:11
  We get lots of questions when folks are having those issues with the claims.
• 30:14
  And while I don't have access to their information, obviously,
• 30:17
  you guys are very quick to respond.
• 30:20
  And your folks, all I have to do is send the information over for this,
• 30:24
  you know, for said plan member, and they do reach out.
• 30:27
  So, yeah, guys, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We might not know the answer, but we know somebody.
• 30:33
  And in turn, I know some people. So, no, we're happy to help.
• 30:37
  That's what we're here to do. And we won't know unless you reach out. Right.
• 30:40
  So moving to the retirement system from health care.
• 30:44
  Obviously, that's a big concern for our members. And obviously,
• 30:47
  the first thing on their minds is the cost of living adjustment that they're
• 30:51
  not seeing for the last, what, 10, 12 years, really.
• 30:55
  You were quoted this week in the NC Newsline saying that some of the changes
• 30:59
  that you've made and the investment authority that has been created may bring
• 31:04
  gains enough for a cola in future years.
• 31:07
  Can you tell us a little bit about those changes?
• 31:09
  Sure. So there's always a little
• 31:11
  bit of luck in everything. So let me just acknowledge that up front.
• 31:14
  We've had a bull market this year. I think it helps to be an investor,
• 31:18
  but it also helps to understand where the Trump administration is coming from.
• 31:21
  And april with tariff liberation day
• 31:24
  and a massive stock market sell-off if you
• 31:27
  find yourself just ideologically opposed to him and everything he
• 31:30
  does i think you would have decided to sell
• 31:33
  your whole portfolio and say the world's ending and it turns out that would
• 31:36
  have been the wrong instinct so we've had a little bit of luck a little bit
• 31:40
  of politics honestly but a lot of just basic finance that has gone into what's
• 31:44
  happened this year we were sitting in a portfolio that had kind of roughly 48%
• 31:49
  in equities and 52% in bonds.
• 31:51
  And what you see in most other state pensions in this country,
• 31:55
  it's 70% stocks, 30% bonds.
• 31:57
  We're a fiscally conservative state. We're better managed financially than most.
• 32:01
  And so we don't need to be as aggressive as most people, but that difference in risk was too much.
• 32:07
  That was adding up to us making 5% a year, and this is over 20 plus years.
• 32:13
  Versus 6.5%, which is what we need to make the math work. So that one and a
• 32:17
  half percent compounded every year is why we have a pension deficit.
• 32:20
  It is that simple. Employees are obviously contributing.
• 32:23
  The state is contributing. So it is the investment side. So our principal task
• 32:28
  is to take five and raise it to six and a half.
• 32:31
  Is seven better than six and a half? Yes, it is. But at some point beyond six
• 32:36
  and a half, when you start to take too much risk, that's a different problem.
• 32:39
  We're going to get nowhere near that. But we need to raise 48.52 to something like 60.40. Yes.
• 32:45
  And that's what we've been doing. That's what we've done this year.
• 32:48
  The investment authority allows us to not just raise it to 60.40,
• 32:51
  but to be better in the 60 and better in the 40, which is another way to add value.
• 32:55
  So we've had, we announced the first half of the year was a record profit number
• 33:00
  in six months. in pension history.
• 33:02
  The third quarter was also very good to us. We will publish those numbers soon.
• 33:07
  But this is only one piece of the puzzle.
• 33:10
  And the October 30th teasers and elders, meaning we're going to go through all
• 33:14
  the other pieces of the puzzle.
• 33:16
  It's called an experience review. It is described to me as actuarial Christmas.
• 33:20
  So don't let that deter you from coming.
• 33:22
  Oh, that sounds so fun. Right. Yeah.
• 33:25
  It's almost as good as the state fair. But what we do is we look at all the
• 33:29
  other assumptions you want to know the answer to before you talk about cost
• 33:33
  of living adjustment policy.
• 33:34
  Here's one. Are people living longer?
• 33:38
  It's an important component of all this. What is wage growth likely to be in
• 33:42
  the future based on what it's been in the recent past?
• 33:45
  Not just for per person, but how many people are on the state employment roles.
• 33:50
  You want to look at things like that. The other piece that's actually really
• 33:54
  big, and I think we will change, is what's called our amortization period.
• 33:59
  So we owe $16 billion at the beginning of the year to the pension system as
• 34:02
  a state. And how fast do you want to pay that down?
• 34:05
  You know, you can get 30-year mortgages, you can get 15-year mortgages,
• 34:08
  you could do it all in one year if you're lucky enough to have that kind of money.
• 34:10
  We may need to make that decision. We are doing it over 12 years right now.
• 34:14
  Most states are between 15 and 18. States like California are at 40.
• 34:20
  I think it's appropriate to be in the middle of this pack on this one,
• 34:23
  15 to 18 years. that has the effect of lowering how much you have to put in
• 34:27
  for payment of that deficit over time, plus the excess gains in the investment
• 34:32
  portfolio you get into that deficit too.
• 34:34
  So, getting back to the original question, how fast do we get to a COLA conversation?
• 34:39
  I think it'll be different in teasers versus elders.
• 34:42
  And without prejudging and telling you everything that we're talking about October
• 34:46
  30th, teasers is in better shape.
• 34:47
  And there's a lot of reasons for that. But I think teasers and elders may go at the same time.
• 34:52
  But if one goes before the other teasers would go before elders.
• 34:55
  And I think it's realistic, given what I know today and things change,
• 35:00
  that we'll be having that conversation in January of 2027 for a June implementation.
• 35:06
  Okay. Interesting. So, go ahead, Suzanne. I think you had a – I heard you.
• 35:11
  I heard you have a thought.
• 35:13
  Well, we do a good job of trying to educate our folks on exactly how the retirement
• 35:18
  system is built. The quick way to put that is, you know, the employer contribution,
• 35:23
  the employee contribution and returns.
• 35:26
  That's what makes the system go. And it should produce its own COLA from that.
• 35:31
  Returns are the problem. So when our folks hear that there is a return,
• 35:36
  their first question is, well, are we getting a COLA this year?
• 35:39
  So we also have to take into account the operations, the employer contribution,
• 35:45
  stabilization rate, those kind of things. And there has to be enough of an investment
• 35:50
  return to meet all of those before we have money for a COLA.
• 35:54
  And just as a reminder, the TSIRS board does not have the power to do cost of
• 35:59
  living adjustments. Only the legislature does.
• 36:01
  The local government board does have that power. And so they are different in
• 36:05
  that regard. And we vote on these things usually in January.
• 36:08
  So that's when you'd be teeing up to that conversation.
• 36:11
  But yeah, that's an issue because it's a ton of money for a COLA.
• 36:15
  So that's going to the legislature and asking them to fully fund a COLA is asking
• 36:21
  for. You multiply it by what, 10?
• 36:23
  12. Yeah. 12, you're right, 12. Yeah, just an enormous amount of money.
• 36:28
  Whereas if we have returns that meet goals, we won't have to do that.
• 36:33
  And here's where it's really confusing because we've lived through multiple
• 36:37
  treasurers and a lot of people out there have said, it's Falwell,
• 36:41
  he wasn't aggressive enough, so we don't have the returns.
• 36:44
  We didn't get COLAs with more aggressive strategies under treasurers before Falwell either.
• 36:49
  So we fall back, much like on health care, to what are we paying in fees?
• 36:54
  We do know what other public systems are paying. We know that ERISA doesn't
• 36:58
  apply to public pension plans.
• 37:00
  We know that if we all went out and got a 401k somewhere, we would get documents.
• 37:05
  We would get official documents. We would get prospectus. We would know what
• 37:09
  the agreement was. Employees are putting 6% in a month to something they can't see anything about.
• 37:15
  They're making an investment, and they're unable to see what the terms of that investment are.
• 37:21
  So, I know where you're coming from. Yeah, I mean, like, you could make a 10%
• 37:25
  return on something, but if your fees take 4% out of it. Right.
• 37:29
  So 70 plus percent of our assets have no fee, right?
• 37:34
  And one thing Treasure Falls does a great job of is building our internal capabilities.
• 37:38
  So we used to have external people help us with our equity portfolio, as an example.
• 37:43
  And the vast majority of that now is run through our own trading desk at no fee.
• 37:47
  We do pay our people something, but you can see that publicly available.
• 37:51
  So the vast majority of our assets actually have no fee. As we go forward,
• 37:55
  what I hope to do is bring more assets in-house from an in-house management perspective.
• 38:01
  There will be more cost in-house as a result of that, but we will reduce costs
• 38:05
  external so much more than that, that it'll be a good trade.
• 38:08
  That's great news. That said, we're still going to have areas where we can't do it in-house. Yeah.
• 38:14
  And we will pay people fees and they, on a dollars basis, they might offend
• 38:19
  you, but on a net dollars back to us, after we pay those fees,
• 38:22
  you will like the results.
• 38:24
  So, you know, I guess fees are part of the equation and they are an important part of the equation.
• 38:29
  Someone asked me the difference the other day between Treasurer Falwell and
• 38:33
  my belief about paying fees. And my answer is, I think 80% of the investment
• 38:38
  management industry doesn't earn its fees.
• 38:41
  Dale thinks it's 100, though. And that's the difference, right?
• 38:45
  And so we're going to make exceptions, find people who we think are excellent
• 38:49
  at what they do, and we're going to bake a fee expectation into what we expect out of them.
• 38:55
  And net of that, we need to be better off. Well, and this is where your background
• 38:58
  is such a bonus because what we're hearing from our counterparts around the
• 39:02
  country is often the folks running the plan honestly may not even know what they're paying.
• 39:08
  And it's a particular problem in public pensions. You would probably be able
• 39:12
  to catch those things and know how to surround yourself with people that would catch those things.
• 39:17
  Yes. But see, it's a huge game of trust. for the employees to hope they've got
• 39:21
  one of those plans because there are plans out there.
• 39:24
  Or they have just been robbed. And they've ended up all of a sudden 28% funded and nobody knew why.
• 39:32
  If you're down that low, I bet you know why.
• 39:34
  But yes, there are lots of examples. Well, they went hard and aggressive in
• 39:38
  alternatives in that particular plan. More likely the state legislature didn't
• 39:41
  fund the pension system. Well, it could be. If you're down that low.
• 39:43
  It could be a combination.
• 39:44
  But it is interesting if a plan seems to go so heavily in alternatives.
• 39:48
  So it's a big swing, right? You either make a home run or. So that's,
• 39:52
  I think the cause and effect are, in my view,
• 39:55
  backwards there, where people who find themselves with legislature who's not
• 40:00
  willing to fund the pension system, and we've had a bipartisan tradition in
• 40:03
  the state that has been fantastic for a long time, so we're blessed in that way.
• 40:06
  So people who find themselves in that situation then get desperate.
• 40:10
  And then they take too much risk.
• 40:13
  And not that that makes it right, the order of things, but that's how I see
• 40:17
  it play out where, and I won't pick on any particular state,
• 40:20
  but I know the people who run the pension system, they have an idea of what they're doing.
• 40:24
  They're playing the hand they're dealt, and it's a terrible hand.
• 40:28
  We're not that way in North Carolina, and thank goodness. So we did mention Elders.
• 40:33
  So bouncing back to that, the folks in Elders, let me take one more step back for the listener.
• 40:38
  When somebody retires, there is a formula to get your calculation for what you're going to be paid.
• 40:45
  Elders formula is higher than teasers, than folks who are state employees.
• 40:50
  So the local employees start out with a formula that's giving them a higher
• 40:54
  check by, I can't remember how many clicks.
• 40:58
  Which is one of the reasons why elders is less funded than teasers.
• 41:01
  Yeah. And that gap is widening.
• 41:03
  Yeah. So the implication of that is, going back to the COLA conversation,
• 41:08
  we're in a much better position in the teacher's plan to give a COLA than we
• 41:11
  will be in the local plan. It's in part because of that.
• 41:14
  Okay. Except for elders, every one of those, and I can't remember,
• 41:18
  we're at 1.82 in teasers. And they're at 1.85.
• 41:21
  Okay. So there, for the last however many years, they've gotten,
• 41:24
  for three clicks, that would be 1.2% more a year that they're getting.
• 41:30
  Crediting rate, right. Yeah, it's like they're getting a COLA compared to teasers.
• 41:34
  Right, but the COLA history, even, the limited that it is, has been better in
• 41:39
  teasers than the elders for the last decade. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why.
• 41:44
  But elders has something closer to the average of the states,
• 41:47
  because the average of the states is 2.0.
• 41:51
  Well, according to their website. I'm focused on our state. Yeah.
• 41:54
  Well, it matters to our folks because to be at 1.82 and to check all the websites
• 42:01
  around the country and think, what in the world?
• 42:04
  That's a big difference. That would be somewhere between an 8% and a 9% difference
• 42:08
  in what they're getting every month. Yeah.
• 42:10
  No, I get it. I would want to, because I'm a math guy, go through all the math
• 42:15
  of like you have some pension systems which are not Social Security eligible.
• 42:19
  Are we counting those in there? because that's a big deal. Yeah,
• 42:22
  and some of them are, yeah. Right.
• 42:23
  So I don't know enough to have an educated opinion, but yeah,
• 42:27
  I get why people will be frustrated by that. That makes sense.
• 42:30
  And so, you know, trying to get to the end of the story, I know that one of
• 42:35
  the things you've said publicly recently, and I just wanted to ask you a little bit about it,
• 42:40
  was that if we could get better returns, that could ease some of the burden
• 42:43
  on the General Assembly with this very high employer contribution rate.
• 42:47
  Now, we've seen the time that it was zero. Sure. We've seen the times our funds
• 42:51
  were escrowed and we had to sue to get them put back, literally,
• 42:55
  and take it all the way to the Supreme Court.
• 42:57
  We've seen it all. So we're a little concerned if we start doing well,
• 43:00
  that that's exactly what would happen.
• 43:02
  The General Assembly would say we can ease our burden a bit because we've done,
• 43:06
  they have done a large contribution now for a number of years. Yes.
• 43:11
  So we're just afraid the retirees are still going to be at the back of the line with a 1.82 formula.
• 43:17
  And, you know, they don't really care about your asset to liability ratio in
• 43:21
  terms of, you know, where we stack up compared to anybody else nationwide.
• 43:24
  They care. Do we see any benefit from this, quote, strong pension system we hear about? Right.
• 43:30
  And they don't. I understand where you're coming from.
• 43:32
  You know, the pressures are on three different groups of this,
• 43:36
  obviously the state employees, the General Assembly and allocating the budget,
• 43:39
  and then the budget itself as well.
• 43:42
  And I think it is likely, reasonable, that all three groups need to get part of any excess gains.
• 43:49
  How that is split up is the General Assembly's purview and will be sausage that
• 43:54
  will be made at some point, I hope.
• 43:56
  I mean, I think in theory that sounds like a fair theory.
• 43:59
  The problem is when things get bad, it's been our experience that we continue
• 44:03
  to put in 6% and the state takes a holiday.
• 44:06
  Right. So we can profit share, but we don't risk share. That doesn't seem like a very fair bargain. No.
• 44:13
  I understand. It's hurtful. Yeah.
• 44:15
  So we're at 17% in the teacher system now. Yeah. And, you know, a long way from zero.
• 44:20
  The effect of that is that local employing units are trying to figure out if
• 44:26
  there's a way to get out of the high-benefit system sometimes.
• 44:29
  Yeah, of course. Yeah. And so I think that'd be bad for everybody.
• 44:31
  And so that's another pressure that we have to deal with.
• 44:34
  Yeah. of how do you make sure that people value this appropriately,
• 44:38
  want to be in the system, both on the employer and the employee side,
• 44:42
  of course, particularly.
• 44:43
  Yeah, there's a lot there. I hope that we create that problem by making the
• 44:47
  gains that we need to make. Yeah, I like that attitude.
• 44:50
  Well, we're up for more conversation. I have one more question.
• 44:54
  I know we're creeping up on time here.
• 44:56
  Not too long ago, $170 million was, that was great news.
• 45:01
  Of course, our people got really excited about it. You didn't finish the thought. $170 million what?
• 45:07
  You just said a long... Oh, there was $170 million hanging out there somewhere
• 45:11
  and your staff over at the treasurer's office found $170 million.
• 45:16
  So folks didn't understand, one, where it came from, two, what it can be used on.
• 45:21
  So we got really excited about the possibility of helping with a COLA or the
• 45:25
  possibility of helping with those increased premiums.
• 45:28
  So if you could just touch on where that money came from, how it can be used,
• 45:32
  what it cannot be used for, that might be helpful.
• 45:35
  So the $170 million, just to begin with, was never quote-unquote lost in that
• 45:40
  it shows up in the state's financial statements.
• 45:42
  It's, I believe, on page 384, though. So it's not exactly front of mind.
• 45:47
  And it showed up as restricted cash that really was the purview of the treasurer.
• 45:52
  But it wasn't front of mind for anyone because what it represented was when
• 45:56
  the state went to make usually a capital project.
• 46:00
  Let's say you're building a $100 million office building downtown.
• 46:02
  The state appropriates the $100 million. Maybe they borrow the $100 million.
• 46:06
  The building gets built. But what if it's less than $100 million?
• 46:11
  Doesn't happen often admittedly but sometimes
• 46:14
  it does well that money just sat
• 46:16
  in escrow and it earned interest we went back 25 years
• 46:19
  and we still there were deposits into this account
• 46:22
  before that so this has been going a long time and again it doesn't happen very
• 46:25
  often but that money you know the general assembly doesn't go looking for because
• 46:28
  they appropriated 100 million dollars whoever's the beneficiary of the building
• 46:31
  doesn't go looking for because they didn't need to ask for anymore and so it
• 46:34
  just sat idle earning cash returns we can do better than cash we should and
• 46:39
  use this for something productive.
• 46:41
  So there's only two ways you could use those monies by law.
• 46:45
  One, you could either reduce the state's debt or two, the General Assembly could reappropriate them.
• 46:50
  So we made the General Assembly aware of these proceeds and given the state
• 46:55
  of budget talks, they haven't appropriated a whole lot of things.
• 46:57
  So they didn't choose to appropriate this. So we're going down the other road
• 47:00
  now and that's reducing state debt.
• 47:03
  So we're doing a massive bond refunding plus bond tender this month.
• 47:08
  Effectively, by the end of all this, we'll have saved the state another 50 to
• 47:13
  $75 million on top of what we found and reduced state debt, which will allow
• 47:18
  General Assembly, the voters,
• 47:20
  to think creatively next time with another couple hundred million dollars about
• 47:25
  what they want to spend it on. So that's where we are in the process.
• 47:28
  It gets really deep in the state's financial statements and a little complicated,
• 47:32
  but in the end, just to put some context on it, this is like opening your kitchen
• 47:37
  junk drawer and finding 300 bucks.
• 47:39
  Like relative to an average salary in the state, that's about the amount of money.
• 47:42
  Pretty big deal. It is a big deal. And, you know, maybe a commentary on the
• 47:46
  state of the world we live in.
• 47:47
  We got press inquiries around this. And the first question from all of them was whose fault is this?
• 47:53
  Yeah. And if I find 300 bucks in my junk drawer, I'm just going to celebrate.
• 47:57
  That's the first thing I'm going to do.
• 47:58
  And so that's where we wanted to be on this. I'm never going to answer that
• 48:01
  question because it's just good news for the state and we can do something better
• 48:05
  with it. Thank you for that.
• 48:07
  Do you have anything else you want to talk about? It's open enrollment,
• 48:11
  and everyone needs to be aware of that.
• 48:13
  It's important that you update those elections. It's important that you update your beneficiaries.
• 48:17
  There are a lot of things across my desk, but one of the saddest ones that we
• 48:22
  get is when, God forbid, something happens, and people have not updated their
• 48:26
  beneficiaries, and then something happens that they definitely really wouldn't
• 48:29
  have wanted to happen with their estate.
• 48:31
  So as you're doing open enrollment, as you're making your elections on health
• 48:34
  care, update your beneficiaries so that your loved ones are planned for,
• 48:38
  because that is something that we don't want to have to deal with after the
• 48:41
  fact. But I don't want to leave it there.
• 48:43
  Things are going well in the state and going well at the treasurer's office.
• 48:47
  Please reach out to us if we can do anything better. There's been exactly one
• 48:50
  perfect person to walk this earth, and it's none of us.
• 48:52
  So we take criticism, particularly constructive, well, and we'll look for you
• 48:57
  guys to tell us how we can do our jobs better.
• 48:59
  Awesome. Well, thank you. We thank you so much for coming in.
• 49:02
  You guys have been really open with us and sent Thomas over here a few times
• 49:05
  and we really appreciate it. No, thanks for the partnership.
• 49:08
  We're all focused on the same things and that's making this state the best state
• 49:11
  it can possibly be. Awesome.
• 49:13
  Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We'll take a little break and we'll come back to wrap up the episode.
• 49:23
  All right well that was a great interview with treasurer brian
• 49:26
  i think it was his first first time on the podcast yeah first
• 49:29
  of many hopefully it was a very informative it was cool
• 49:32
  to have him i really enjoy talking to
• 49:34
  him yeah he really knows he knows his stuff right absolutely he
• 49:38
  does and he's not afraid to break it down where we all can digest it
• 49:41
  and make sense of it yeah so yeah that was a
• 49:44
  great and for an elected official i mean we've had a lot of elected
• 49:47
  officials and they're all been really cool but he was cool as
• 49:50
  a cucumber in the old studio here even he
• 49:52
  realizes he's got the issues sitting in
• 49:56
  his lap that are the biggest to state employees honestly and
• 49:59
  that's not fun but his personality is such that he doesn't let that freak him
• 50:03
  out he just keeps his focus on the work and trying to make it better you know
• 50:07
  i was thinking while we were interviewing him that he comes from an investment
• 50:12
  background and i wonder if he thought he would have to deal with state health
• 50:16
  plan issues so much. Well, he knew.
• 50:18
  I mean, that's part of what the treasurer had when he ran for office.
• 50:21
  But, you know, increasingly, Wall Street's buying up health care.
• 50:25
  So I'm sure that he already knew probably a whole lot about the industry before he got there.
• 50:31
  We could have asked him these questions, though, instead of conjecturing.
• 50:34
  It's kind of fun, though, to try to... Hopefully he's coming back.
• 50:37
  Yeah, he's got to come back for me to ask. But he's, you know,
• 50:40
  he's originally from Texas. He's clearly smart.
• 50:44
  You're going to. The plug for things. Just saying. Just saying.
• 50:47
  Do you want me to talk about Sanford now? I was going to say now.
• 50:49
  There it is. It's happened.
• 50:51
  That's two weeks in a row of really big guests for us. Last week,
• 50:55
  we went up to Western Carolina University and interviewed the chancellor.
• 51:00
  Suzanne, you didn't make the trip with us. It was pretty awesome.
• 51:02
  Yeah, y'all sounded like you had a good time.
• 51:04
  Except for Sam sent us on a wild goose chase across the university for a T-shirt,
• 51:11
  but we won't hold that against her. I could have sent you to some of those dorms
• 51:15
  that are straight up a hill.
• 51:17
  Not that far. So what he's referring to...
• 51:20
  We wanted to buy shirts from the student store. We were at the administration building.
• 51:25
  And Sam said, it's more or less the next building that way.
• 51:31
  Now, Sam is clearly younger than we are. That's why she's a Gen Z guru.
• 51:36
  And she's fit. Yeah, I was going to say, we were not probably fit at that age.
• 51:41
  So John and I go off on this trek thinking, okay, next building down. It was straight up.
• 51:49
  You might call it a hill. I call it a mountain. It was at least a thousand foot.
• 51:55
  It was a steep incline. I love how we got like maybe 50 feet from where we were.
• 52:00
  Oxygen started getting thin.
• 52:03
  We got maybe 50 feet. And artists said, we should have drove.
• 52:07
  We should have drove. That's so lazy. To me, it's not that far.
• 52:11
  And I also didn't say it was the building right next to us. I said it's past those buildings.
• 52:16
  It's right past them. So essentially next to it. It was.
• 52:20
  Now, a little bit. So I was looking at pictures of the campus. Beautiful.
• 52:23
  That is not the most steep hill on that campus. Yeah.
• 52:27
  That's the thing. That's what I was going to say. So like, we only saw like
• 52:30
  a very tip of the iceberg of that campus.
• 52:32
  It's so beautiful there. We saw a very small part of it. Yeah.
• 52:35
  I'd like to go back and tour it.
• 52:37
  I spent my whole morning pretty much walking around that campus whenever I got
• 52:40
  there. So I was a little sweaty when we recorded the podcast.
• 52:42
  Do you feel like a lot has changed in the last few years or?
• 52:45
  Not a lot. But, I mean, the new dorms
• 52:48
  buildings that are right next to the administration building are there.
• 52:53
  They were, I think they were almost completed whenever I graduated.
• 52:58
  Because I remember that's where my dorm building used to be.
• 53:01
  And I got to watch that get knocked down.
• 53:04
  Yeah. Because they sent us out an email saying when they were going to be knocked
• 53:08
  down. And those had been there a long time.
• 53:10
  Like, my mom lived in the dorm building next to mine. That was also knocked
• 53:14
  down. And so we knew when it was getting torn down because the school sent out
• 53:18
  an email saying, hey, we're exploding two dorm buildings today if you guys want to go watch.
• 53:24
  I mean, it's a great interest to people. And so it was a really cool thing because
• 53:27
  there were so many students who had lived there and we all just pulled up in
• 53:31
  trucks and cars and sat on the bed of trucks and sat on our cars and just watched
• 53:36
  it happen because there were so many of us that had our freshman year lived there.
• 53:41
  You shared a moment. It is funny how when you first go back to your school after
• 53:46
  three or four years, I guess you're in this position.
• 53:48
  It doesn't change that much, but it starts to change a little bit.
• 53:51
  And now, like, it's been, what, 20 years since I graduated? Oh, yeah.
• 53:54
  Totally different. And Carolina is totally different. They're just buildings
• 53:57
  I've never... Football is the same.
• 54:00
  Not a good thing. Right. Yeah.
• 54:03
  Oh, let's not even talk about it. It's been an exciting week in Chapel Hill. We're a little bitter.
• 54:09
  Even my mom has said, she told me she was like, it hasn't changed too much since she had been there.
• 54:14
  And she dropped me off exactly 30 years after she had graduated.
• 54:19
  And so when she dropped me off, she was like, yeah, there's a couple new buildings.
• 54:24
  But, well, Chancellor Brown, Chancellor Kelly Brown at Western,
• 54:27
  when we interviewed her last week, said, And Western, it's not their goal to
• 54:32
  try to let's become huge or let's become this or that, that they want to be
• 54:35
  awesome at being what they are.
• 54:38
  And I think she said not chase every shiny thing.
• 54:42
  And that is how that campus strikes me, though, even just looking at it.
• 54:47
  It's always nicer than the last time I saw it. They're always upkeeping things
• 54:52
  and renovating things appropriately, but they're not doing, like,
• 54:56
  huge expansions that really alter that character.
• 55:00
  And that character of the campus and of the university is really unique. It's cozy.
• 55:05
  And people love it. Cozy. They love it. We had a great time in the mountain there.
• 55:10
  We went to the golf tournament the day before. It was a lot of fun.
• 55:13
  So this week on the Gen Z moment, Sam, we gave her a little break because she's
• 55:18
  a little bit under the weather, although you probably can't tell it from this.
• 55:22
  But so we gave her a little bit of a break. But I did find this article from
• 55:27
  The New York Times that says that Gen Z is actually great at saving for retirement.
• 55:32
  And I thought I'd bring it up because I know when I was their age,
• 55:37
  just starting out, I did not care about retirement one bit.
• 55:41
  And like. Well, it was so far away. Yeah. This says that 20% of Gen Zers are
• 55:47
  already saving for retirement and they're contributing to 401k plans at higher
• 55:52
  rates than their predecessors.
• 55:54
  Well, good. That's excellent. It also says that they do a lot of almost like
• 55:59
  micro-investing, I guess is what they call it, through like Robinhood and things like that.
• 56:03
  Oh, yeah. And I guess I don't know if you really count that as retirement savings
• 56:07
  because it's almost like speculation.
• 56:09
  It's almost you can access those funds.
• 56:12
  I don't know. But they do cite that as well. Do you find that you are thinking
• 56:15
  about retirement more, Sam?
• 56:18
  Really? Well, a lot of my generation has the fear that we're not going to be able to retire ever.
• 56:24
  So I think that's where the earlier investments come in.
• 56:28
  I'm on the fence about Robin Hood. I did a lot of research on that when I was
• 56:32
  in college in a marketing course. We had to write a paper about it,
• 56:36
  whether it was good or bad.
• 56:37
  And so I'm still not sure about that, even after that research.
• 56:42
  Mixed feelings. Yeah. I think that kind of ties in with our discussion with
• 56:46
  Treasurer Briner, too, that, you know, obviously the retirement plan,
• 56:50
  and he was talking about individual investors and things. I don't know. I don't know that.
• 56:55
  I don't know. Well, I mean, I think it matters in terms of, and we're going
• 56:58
  to be talking to OSHR Director Stacey Meyer soon, but I think all of this matters
• 57:03
  in terms of what state employment has to offer or public employment has to offer to young people.
• 57:10
  What used to be a draw for young people who were more risk averse,
• 57:14
  wanting something more stable, was public service because you had good benefits.
• 57:19
  You wouldn't get rich on your salary, but you would be okay.
• 57:24
  And you would have a good retirement plan and a good health plan.
• 57:28
  And so we did express in our interview with Treasurer Briner that we've seen
• 57:31
  those things kind of diminished a bit, the retirement plan and the state health
• 57:36
  plan in more recent years.
• 57:38
  But the salaries didn't change to be what the private sector salaries are.
• 57:41
  So it's that's kind of an ongoing problem that we're going to have to face.
• 57:45
  The chickens are coming home to roost.
• 57:47
  Yeah, I use I mean, I've started using this thing called acorns.
• 57:53
  I don't know if you've heard that. It kind of takes like really small parts
• 57:56
  of—anytime you buy something, it'll take like two cents out and invest it.
• 58:00
  I don't know. I haven't seen huge returns or anything on it, but— Not on two cents.
• 58:07
  But, you know, I guess that's maybe one thing that Gen Z is using as well.
• 58:11
  We should have a—what are we?
• 58:13
  Gen X or Gen— I mean, you're a millennial. Suzanne and I are X,
• 58:17
  but you'd have to be a millennial. Okay. On the older end.
• 58:20
  Yeah. Yeah. You were the first year of millennials. Okay. I think we've talked about this before.
• 58:25
  So before we move on from Gen Z, we got to talk about the big news from the week.
• 58:31
  Taylor Swift's new album came out. And what are your initial reactions, Sam?
• 58:36
  I love it. I stayed up till 2 o'clock in the morning. I listened to it twice
• 58:41
  through the night that it came out.
• 58:43
  I have a bad habit of just staying up really, really late when an album releases.
• 58:48
  It's so good. It's so good. There's been some backlash to it,
• 58:52
  right? There are some people who don't like it.
• 58:54
  They think it's not lyrically deep enough after she just released something
• 58:58
  like the Tortured Poets Department, which I think is kind of reflective of her life.
• 59:02
  She's happy and just living life joyfully.
• 59:04
  Let her live life joyfully and create happy, fun pop music. Nothing will mess
• 59:08
  with a songwriter like happiness. Yeah. Healthy amount of snark in it.
• 59:12
  And I am always here for snark. There's plenty of snark. I love it. I like Spicy Taylor.
• 59:17
  Yeah, Spicy Taylor. My reactions, I've had to listen to it several times.
• 59:23
  I've not been as excited about it. I mean, my wife and my daughter are very
• 59:27
  excited about it. My wife is really in love with it this time,
• 59:30
  which she's not a huge fan.
• 59:31
  I think maybe it's like geared towards an older person than the younger folks
• 59:36
  this time. But I don't know. I've liked some of the songs.
• 59:39
  There's a lot of samples on it, though. And I guess she's recognized that.
• 59:44
  I mean, in her album, she's said this song is from an interpolation of the Jackson 5 or whatever.
• 59:50
  But you can really pick out a lot of the samples.
• 59:53
  I'm kind of on the fence on whether she maybe used AI a lot to produce this
• 59:58
  album or not. What do you think, Sam? No.
• 1:00:01
  No? No. This is just how Max Martin and I can't think of his other name.
• 1:00:08
  This is how the albums that she produces with those two that she produced it with come out.
• 1:00:14
  Reputation, 1989. They're very poppy albums.
• 1:00:18
  And that's just the way that those producers work.
• 1:00:21
  It's not like Jack Antonoff. He's much more mellow. I mean, clearly it's not.
• 1:00:28
  Oh, yeah. Jack Antonoff is a huge producer as well. He helped her produce a
• 1:00:32
  lot on the Tortured Poets Department.
• 1:00:35
  He also has been producing a lot with Sabrina Carpenter. He produces a lot with huge names.
• 1:00:40
  I do like the Opalite song, and I do like The Life of the Showgirl with Sabrina Carpenter.
• 1:00:46
  The rest, eh, I mean, they're all right. I like Canceled.
• 1:00:50
  I like my friends Canceled. I like Actually Romantic and Opalite.
• 1:00:55
  Those are my two favorites.
• 1:00:56
  What about you, artist? I don't know any of which you speak,
• 1:01:00
  but I have great respect for her talent, for sure.
• 1:01:04
  Look, I've been worried about Dolly all week, okay? Amen. I know that she came
• 1:01:07
  out and was like, I'm okay. Yeah. Did you see the video? Yeah, I'm still worried.
• 1:01:11
  Oh, really? Yeah, something's wonky there. Love Dolly Parton.
• 1:01:14
  You think she's got some ailment? I mean, I don't know what's going on, but something's off.
• 1:01:19
  I don't want to put that out there. Yeah, I don't want to put that in the universe.
• 1:01:22
  But Dolly and Willie are in the world together.
• 1:01:25
  Speaking of really amazing songwriters. You know, they're both in that category.
• 1:01:29
  What is Willie now? Like 90-something?
• 1:01:32
  170. He's going to be fine. He and Keith Richards will be here when everyone else is gone. 92. 92.
• 1:01:38
  Bill Daniels is 98. Who's that?
• 1:01:41
  Did you never watch Boy Meets World? Oh, that guy. Mr. Feeney.
• 1:01:45
  Yeah, okay. He's going to be on Dancing with the Stars next week. At 98.
• 1:01:50
  Danielle Fishel, who played Topanga, is on Dancing with the Stars.
• 1:01:53
  And that is who she is bringing out for dedication night, is Bill Daniels.
• 1:01:59
  And I'm so excited for that. God, I'm old. I need to go get Botox like today.
• 1:02:03
  So just for our listeners, you know, this is the portion of the podcast that
• 1:02:07
  you can turn off if you don't want to hear all this. But you know what?
• 1:02:11
  I like to listen to it because I want to try to stay informed. Young.
• 1:02:16
  Well, no, no. Just informed. I don't believe in trying to stay young,
• 1:02:20
  whatever that means. I mean, you know, you want to enjoy life.
• 1:02:23
  But I want to be interested in what younger people have to say and what they're
• 1:02:27
  interested in. Because, again, y'all are our future.
• 1:02:31
  That's right. Y'all, oh, thank you. You said y'all. Yeah, well, yeah. I love that.
• 1:02:36
  Well, John, yeah, you got a whole lot more time to go, bud. But after our very
• 1:02:41
  informative interview, this is a good part of levity. It's decompression,
• 1:02:45
  yeah. A little decompression.
• 1:02:47
  So overall, where do you rank the new Taylor Swift and the pantheon of...
• 1:02:53
  I was about to say, there's 12 albums to go through there, and that doesn't
• 1:02:56
  even include Taylor's versions.
• 1:02:58
  So is it too early to rank? Yeah. Yeah. What's the big single?
• 1:03:02
  Opalite? The first single that she did was The Fate of Ophelia.
• 1:03:06
  We don't know what the second single is going to be.
• 1:03:09
  It's usually when she chooses singles, it's usually based off of fans and what
• 1:03:14
  they're saying their favorite songs are.
• 1:03:16
  It's not always because the last album was I Can Do It With A Broken Heart was
• 1:03:22
  the second single when everyone was in love with the smallest man who ever lived
• 1:03:28
  because everyone found a way to relate to that, I feel like.
• 1:03:32
  So I have a feeling it could be Opalite, but it also could be the life of a
• 1:03:35
  showgirl so that we could get a music video with Sabrina.
• 1:03:39
  Well, yeah, I can see that. I did see that there's a video for Opalite, though.
• 1:03:44
  So maybe that's it. There's not a video for Opalite. There's a lyric video for
• 1:03:47
  Opalite. Okay, I want Taylor Swift to pay for some kind of sponsorship. This is, at this point.
• 1:03:53
  What's funny is she probably would. If she knew about us, she probably would.
• 1:03:56
  Well, at this point. If she knew about us is the key there. Anyway.
• 1:04:00
  All right, you ready to go to the question of the week? Yes,
• 1:04:03
  Scenic Swifties, let's do it. Yes, because they haven't had enough of us. John's work here.
• 1:04:11
  So Sam picked the question this week because I'm just totally out of ideas.
• 1:04:16
  But it is October, and that means spooky time, right?
• 1:04:20
  So what is your favorite Halloween or spooky movie?
• 1:04:24
  You know that makes us want to say, what's your favorite scary movie?
• 1:04:29
  Scream. From Scream. That actually might be mine, Scream. I don't love scary
• 1:04:34
  movies. I don't either. I'm not a scary movies person.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah, like, I think it's because. Halloween doesn't equal always scary movies.
• 1:04:41
  No, it doesn't, because Practical Magic, boom.
• 1:04:44
  That's my favorite right there, Practical Magic.
• 1:04:47
  Is that the one with Sarah Jessica Parker? No, that's the one with...
• 1:04:50
  Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Oh, yeah. They're making a second one. I know.
• 1:04:56
  More Midnight Margaritas. Yes.
• 1:04:58
  So, yeah, I was very traumatized when I was young because my brother was 10
• 1:05:03
  years older than me, and he loved scary movies and, like, scaring people at
• 1:05:07
  Halloween and just being a crazy teenager at Halloween.
• 1:05:11
  And so I was five years old, and he made me watch Child's Play. I was terrified.
• 1:05:16
  And my mom- That's not good. My mom did not like that. But yeah.
• 1:05:20
  So since then, I haven't really loved Halloween. But I guess maybe Scary Movie.
• 1:05:24
  I was a teenager then, and that was a big deal at that time.
• 1:05:28
  So is it Scream, or is it Scary Movie? Because Scary Movie is a parody of Scream.
• 1:05:33
  No, Scream. Scream, definitely.
• 1:05:34
  Although Scary Movie is funny, though. Yeah. Yeah, so-
• 1:05:38
  I'll just lump them all together. Okay, Artis, what's your favorite scary movie?
• 1:05:42
  I mean, I love Halloween, the movie Halloween.
• 1:05:46
  Jamie Lee Curtis is also a national institution. Yeah, she is.
• 1:05:51
  But the movie that's scary, that slasher films like Halloween are entertaining
• 1:05:55
  to me, but they're not scary to me.
• 1:05:57
  Things where something could really, really happen, those scare me.
• 1:06:02
  There was a movie called The Stepfather.
• 1:06:03
  Oh, yeah. And they remade it years later, but when we were in high school,
• 1:06:07
  Suzanne, so this was way, way ages ago,
• 1:06:10
  they made this movie, and this guy would marry a lady who already had children,
• 1:06:17
  and he wanted the perfect family, and of course, nobody can be the perfect family,
• 1:06:21
  so when they weren't able to be,
• 1:06:23
  he would get rid of them and then move to a new place and do the same thing.
• 1:06:26
  Like, that guy ended up being on a TV show called Lost later.
• 1:06:31
  But he was such a good actor. And he scared me to death because he was so,
• 1:06:37
  the character looked so unassuming and friendly.
• 1:06:41
  And, you know, it just made you look at everybody different after that.
• 1:06:45
  But it was a truly scary movie to me.
• 1:06:47
  I think that my generation had a film similar to that with Blair Witch Project.
• 1:06:53
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And everyone thought it was real at the beginning.
• 1:06:55
  And like we went and saw it like
• 1:06:57
  the weekend it came out and everybody's like, oh, my God, it was real.
• 1:07:00
  Like it really happened. It was free. And then like a week later,
• 1:07:03
  you're like you hear that it's not it was not real. But I'll watch any of those.
• 1:07:07
  See, the things that scare me are very different. Like I will watch any scary
• 1:07:12
  movie, Blair Witch Project, all of those things.
• 1:07:15
  A movie that I remember from really, really young, I was maybe seven or eight.
• 1:07:20
  I had nightmares for two weeks afterwards. And I didn't even watch the whole
• 1:07:24
  thing because I told my parents I'm going to bed before it even finished.
• 1:07:28
  The bucket list. What? I haven't seen that. Yeah.
• 1:07:31
  Scary? For seven, eight-year-old Sammy that's thinking about dying and having
• 1:07:36
  a bucket list and having to check things off. You way overthought this. Yeah.
• 1:07:41
  Way. So realistic things is what terrified me because I started to dread the
• 1:07:45
  future and started thinking about those things.
• 1:07:46
  I have a lot of anxiety and always have since I was really little.
• 1:07:49
  So. We're working things out on this podcast.
• 1:07:51
  We are. It's been therapy day. I gotta look up the bucket list.
• 1:07:54
  Okay, then if you want to see something happy and not a horror movie,
• 1:07:58
  Halloween Baking Championship.
• 1:08:00
  Ooh, yes. Love it. That's always fun. Are you talking about the Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson?
• 1:08:05
  Oh, I love that movie.
• 1:08:07
  Yeah, that scared me as a child. Okay.
• 1:08:11
  That scared me as a child. It's a buddy comedy.
• 1:08:14
  It was not a comedy for me. Yeah. Alright, we'll have to delve deeper into that once we're off air.
• 1:08:20
  Unless I'm accidentally combining movies because there were multiple movies
• 1:08:24
  that my parents would watch and they'd be like, it's a hopeful story.
• 1:08:27
  And I'm like, no, people are dying.
• 1:08:29
  Oh, so you were, as a kid, you were just obsessed with the death part. Oh, yeah.
• 1:08:34
  My mom, she worked in the ICU and I would have to sit there and say happy birthday
• 1:08:37
  to someone in this world and cover my ears anytime she came home with like a sad story.
• 1:08:41
  I would just be like, la la la la la la la la. Happy birthday to someone in
• 1:08:44
  this world. La la la la la la. Stop talking about it, please.
• 1:08:48
  Oh. Well, that's a good way to get away the end of podcasts.
• 1:08:52
  Happy birthday to someone in this world. I actually like it.
• 1:08:56
  Hey, I still say it to this day. It's somebody's birthday. What is today?
• 1:08:59
  The 9th. So if October 9th is your birthday, happy birthday.
• 1:09:02
  Happy birthday. My daughter's birthday is the 11th.
• 1:09:05
  October 11th. This is our most ADHD episode. We are all over the place.
• 1:09:10
  Her birthday is 10, 11, 12.
• 1:09:12
  Oh, that's cool. That was fun. All right. Have a great week, everyone. Bye.