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The Rick Smith Show 8-28-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_04]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, here is the voice of a working class, Rick Smith.
0:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes.
0:16
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the Rick Smith Show.
0:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much for being here.
0:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Today, on the big program, lots to get to.
0:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Lots to talk about.
0:23
[SPEAKER_04]: We've all heard it's affordability to national emergency.
0:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's the kind of national emergency that none of us can be spun away from with a slogan.
0:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm working people aren't asking for a luxury, they're not asking for to make a killing.
0:39
[SPEAKER_04]: We're simply asking it to stop being blood dry at every turn when we buy groceries, pay rent, fill the tag, go to the doctor.
0:49
[SPEAKER_04]: The real affordability crisis is not caused by workers earning too much.
0:54
[SPEAKER_04]: So stop it.
0:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It's caused by corporations gouging us, squeezing our payrolls, turning basic human needs into their profit centers.
1:04
[SPEAKER_04]: That's it!
1:06
[SPEAKER_04]: and look at what Americans are actually worried about.
1:09
[SPEAKER_04]: When you go down the list of the most important things when talking about affordability and life, healthcare costs right at the top, followed by food and groceries and food prices, rent utility bills, gas prices, child care, housing prices and home ownership, will I ever be able to own a house?
1:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Can I send the kids the college?
1:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Can I pay my own college bills?
1:33
[SPEAKER_04]: then you get into the other stuff debt and monthly financial pressures across the board across the board.
1:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It is a road map for everyday life.
1:45
[SPEAKER_04]: When you ask people what they're concerned about, that's it.
1:49
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the political road map.
1:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And if politicians want to know what voters care about, it's kind of right there.
1:56
[SPEAKER_04]: We're not confused.
1:57
[SPEAKER_04]: We know exactly where the pains come from.
1:59
[SPEAKER_04]: It's our wallet.
2:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're getting hit from every angle.
2:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Hospitals charge outrageous prices, grocery chains, exploits shortages, and monopoly power landlords jack up rents while wages barely crawl.
2:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Utility companies don't even get me started squeezing rate payers in all by the way, profiting mightily along with the oil and gas companies who milk every crisis into the best of their ability.
2:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And then you start looking at child care costing more than a second mortgage college has turned almost into a debt trap and credit card balances and medical bills keep putting families in permanent panic mode on the verge of bankruptcy and throw it all all in the one pot it's it's real crisis.
2:47
[SPEAKER_04]: and what do corporations get?
2:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, they keep posting record profits.
2:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Kind of like a middle finger to everyone who's actually doing the work.
2:55
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you wanna talk about solutions from a worker's perspective, start by naming the enemy and the enemy is our billionaire class who's been gouging us and the corporate profit here is who have been robbing us.
3:09
[SPEAKER_04]: what we need is we need to be raising wages across the board.
3:12
[SPEAKER_04]: No, because no affordability plan is real if the paychecks are stuck in the past while prices keep climbing.
3:20
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to tax low-roden employers, extremely hard.
3:24
[SPEAKER_04]: When they pay workers and still demand public second of the subsidies, and we need to stop rewarding companies that cut labor costs to make workers absorb inflation while executives are caching out.
3:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And understand, that means higher profit taxes.
3:39
[SPEAKER_04]: especially on those companies that exploit workers, banning stock buybacks, period, end of sentence.
3:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Ah, that's just legalized corporate self-dealing.
3:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And instead of investing in wages, training, lower prices, or better service, you've got these companies who are dumping enormous sums of cash into inflating their stock price so they can enrich themselves and their shareholders.
4:05
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not capitalism with discipline.
4:07
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a rigged game.
4:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And it should be treated like such.
4:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And the other part is we need to be taxing these obscene CEO salaries and the bonuses that they that they put in their pockets for retention because we gotta keep good talent.
4:25
[SPEAKER_04]: If someone at the top can make 300, 500,000 times what their worker is earning, the system's not rewarding excellence, it's extracting wealth from labor and laundering it as merit.
4:39
[SPEAKER_04]: No family should be told to accept unaffordable housing or unaffordable health care or unaffordable child care while we've got executives getting rewarded for making life harder for everyone else.
4:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Understand that affordability means power and it means worker power, bargaining power, political power.
4:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And if working people can organize demand a bigger share of the wealth that their labor
5:08
[SPEAKER_04]: prices are never going to come under control unless we can do that.
5:12
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't continue to call, read the market while making the rest of us pay for it.
5:18
[SPEAKER_04]: The answer is not austerity for workers.
5:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's accountability for profitiers.
5:23
[SPEAKER_04]: It's that simple.
5:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Want to hear your thoughts?
5:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Rick at theRicksmithshow.com right back.
5:31
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
5:35
[SPEAKER_04]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1919.
5:39
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the day that stages across New York City went dark.
5:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Actors equity went on strike against the producing managers association.
5:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Up until that time, stage actors often faced poor working conditions.
5:51
[SPEAKER_04]: They had little protections from being fired.
5:53
[SPEAKER_04]: often had to pay for their own costumes, and were rarely paid for rehearsal time.
5:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Equity members decided to go on strike.
6:01
[SPEAKER_04]: They demanded rehearsal pay, and ate performance week, and holiday pay.
6:05
[SPEAKER_04]: That night, 12 productions were canceled.
6:08
[SPEAKER_04]: One was called Lightmen.
6:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Unable to resist the play on words, the cast members hired a bus with a banner, reading, lightning struck.
6:16
[SPEAKER_04]: The striking actors received support from the stage hands and musicians.
6:20
[SPEAKER_04]: On August 18th, a weeklong series of benefit performances were put on for the striking actors, kicked off by a parade.
6:28
[SPEAKER_04]: WC Fields served as the MC, actor Brandon Tynon, adopted a speech by Mark Anthony from Julius Caesar for the occasion.
6:36
[SPEAKER_04]: friends, brothers, sisters, countrymen, let me or ears.
6:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Behind us we have more than five million men and women, the ship of hope, the American Federation of Labor.
6:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, dear public, our great public, will you stand up and show that you are with us and join our
6:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Cry equity equity equity the strike continued and expanded to theaters in Chicago finally after 30 days the producers agreed to negotiate the theaters had lost $3 million in revenue and at three o'clock in the morning they signed a five year contract and with that the curtain dropped on a successful equity strike
7:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Labor History in 2 brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith Show.
7:23
[SPEAKER_04]: For more information, go to LaborHistoryInto.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on the Twitter's At Labor History in 2.
7:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the Rick Smith Show.
7:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, here is Rick Smith.
7:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So every, as I said, every conversation about affordability that anyone has ever nowadays, health care is always the number one issue at the top hands down, nothing else even close.
8:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've been saying for a while, we've got to do something because what we're doing, not working, especially for millions of people who aren't as fortunate as I am.
8:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And look, I've been a union member of my entire working career.
8:13
[SPEAKER_04]: I've always had the, what we call a Cadillac health insurance plan.
8:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Perfect example, I'm having my hip replaced here very shortly.
8:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I got the estimated bill 42 grand.
8:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm gonna pay about $90 out of pocket for that.
8:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm not saying that just to go, look how wonderful I am.
8:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going, this is what health care should look like.
8:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody should go broke or have to hold off surgery or hold off anything because they need it.
8:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Just because of the insurance.
8:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think we've got a lot of work to do and here to share some thoughts.
8:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I may be how we get there.
8:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I've asked Natasha.
8:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm afraid to come share some thoughts.
8:50
[SPEAKER_04]: She's the director of health policy.
8:52
[SPEAKER_04]: They're at the Center for American Progress.
8:53
[SPEAKER_04]: They've got a piece out.
8:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Patients and Bill of Rights to lower health care costs.
8:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Natasha, thanks for taking time for us.
9:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely, always a pleasure to join you.
9:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So look, I go back to everyone.
9:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone I talked to, health care is the top issue.
9:10
[SPEAKER_04]: It is the number one concern for families.
9:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And the question keeps them big, why are costs so high?
9:17
[SPEAKER_04]: And what keeps driving these costs higher and higher, especially when people are even pulling back.
9:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And he thoughts?
9:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that has been a kind of my experience as well during my time at cap.
9:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Despite the fact that we find ourselves in this broader affordability crisis, it really is healthcare that rises to the top of everyone's complaint list.
9:40
[SPEAKER_01]: For folks who are ensured and even those who lack coverage, the common complaint is that healthcare is far too expensive and it makes it inaccessible, particularly during those times when folks need it the absolute most.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, you know, the US is an outlier in this perspective, you know, we don't have kind of a universal health care health insurance system.
10:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, we spend disproportionately more than a peer nation's on healthcare.
10:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a myriad of things that are underlying kind of the incredibly high prices that we pay in this country, ranging from kind of provider services to prescription drugs.
10:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But for far too long, kind of the elephant in the room that no one's really been willing to address,
10:24
[SPEAKER_01]: is the cost of hospital care.
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It is hospital prices that have steadily increased, you know, kind of over the previous few decades.
10:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And currently, they account for about 40% of U.S. commercial insurance spend.
10:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And as we've seen hospitals become larger and larger through mergers and acquisitions, across the country there are so many places, you know, neighborhoods,
10:50
[SPEAKER_01]: dominant hospital systems use their outside market power to demand incredibly high prices that ensures then pass on to their enrollees and that's kind of contributing to the affordability prices that we find ourselves in today.
11:05
[SPEAKER_04]: 100% agree.
11:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So is this a situation where privatization and where we're making these
11:12
[SPEAKER_04]: hospital some of them for profit as you said the mergers and acquisitions in the consolidation is it part of that is it the profit margins that people are pulling out of this uh you know what is that because look we've we've had hospitals I grew up I grew up at a time where the taxpayers paid for the hospitals I was born in a community hospital that seems to be going by the wayside is it that we've shifted who's responsible to care for those hospitals or
11:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the landscape, probably definitely the last 20 years has changed significantly.
11:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you mentioned, there was a time where, you know, there were a myriad of community hospitals.
11:49
[SPEAKER_01]: There were a non-profit hospitals who really lived up to their non-profit mission.
11:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But more and more as market dynamics have changed and, you know, kind of the consults consolidation has occurred.
12:00
[SPEAKER_01]: We find ourselves facing down, facing increasingly large and growing.
12:05
[SPEAKER_01]: hospital systems that, like I mentioned, you know, oftentimes are one of two players in town or sometimes the only one.
12:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And that really allows them to demand kind of prices as high as the market can bear.
12:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And that trickles down across the, across the system.
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And unfortunately, you know, where like it definitely recognize the incredibly important role that hospitals play and keeping us healthy and, you know, being there for
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: people when they're sick when they need it, but over time we've seen where they're charging incredibly high prices, nonprofit hospitals, or not necessarily living up to that mission.
12:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And as a result, we are seeing healthcare costs explode much to the detriment of the American public.
12:47
[SPEAKER_04]: No, look, I'll be the first to say I am grateful for the hospital that saved my wife's life.
12:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I am grateful for everything they did.
12:52
[SPEAKER_04]: They're amazing people.
12:54
[SPEAKER_04]: The union nurses who took care of her were incredible.
12:57
[SPEAKER_04]: The union staff who took care of her were just absolutely the best you could possibly.
13:02
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm looking at the bills and I'm going, you know, 7 million dollars in billed care.
13:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Seems seems a bit high, especially when the insurance companies paid about 1.7 1.8.
13:14
[SPEAKER_04]: where you start going, there's a lot, there's a lot here that we should be looking at.
13:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And I guess the question that I have Natasha is, is this something we should be talking about market forces and is this something that is a commodity that we should be wanting a market to take care of like like we're buying tennis shoes or or something else?
13:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Isn't this something that we should be doing for ourselves as part of our government to ensure that what market forces
13:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
13:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, Rick.
13:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think for far too long, our policy makers have been a little bit reticent to tackle hospitals because the reality is, you know, not only are they that critical safety net as it relates to healthcare across the country, but they are also, you know, kind of, in many places, the dominant employer or, you know, kind of have a very large economic impact, and particularly coming out of the COVID pandemic and the critical role that they played in saving lives
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I think for a long time, you know, policy makers were focused on other players in the health care ecosystem.
14:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we saw the long protracted battle with Pharma and more recently Pharmacy benefit managers.
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: However, as we look at the data, the time really is now for
14:27
[SPEAKER_01]: are elected officials at the state and particularly at the federal level to really identify options that are going to address hospital prices and make sure that the cost of care is going down for the millions of Americans who truly need relief.
14:40
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's just one of those things where it really is out of control at this point.
14:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And I argue that the system needs radical overhaul.
14:48
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no tinkering around the edges because I think we've done.
14:52
[SPEAKER_04]: We've done your reputable damage to what is supposed to be our safety net, our health safety net, by ensuring that far too few people have access to it.
15:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, let me make the argument in the hospitals defense because I look at the Trump administration to cut a trillion dollars in Medicaid over the next 10 years.
15:10
[SPEAKER_04]: I look at the assaults on the ACA.
15:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I look at all of this ensuring that people don't have insurance and they're going to a hospital that has to make sure that they don't die.
15:20
[SPEAKER_04]: are to be putting an unfunded mandate on hospitals and this is I know this is maybe a convenient excuse on their part but isn't this kind of the argument that they're making that you guys aren't insuring that we're going to be able to survive we've got a gouge when we got the chance listen record is absolutely you know kind of the argument that I have heard from hospitals as well as their associations it's feedback that I've received from conversations with a hill staff that they are
15:49
[SPEAKER_01]: around kind of hospital, fiscal sustainability, particularly in light of, you know, last year is one big beautiful bill act and the historic cuts to the Medicaid program, and like you mentioned, the ongoing assault to the ACA and
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I absolutely understand that, yes, we have hundreds, you know, countless hospitals that are, you know, really struggling and operating on very thin margins, particularly, you know, world hospitals, some of our critical access hospitals and other community-based facilities.
16:25
[SPEAKER_01]: our patients bill of rights to lower costs.
16:28
[SPEAKER_01]: One of our proposals to tackle hospital prices was actually looking at a cap at 300% of Medicare rates that would actually only apply to you know, kind of larger scale hospital systems and those that were actively price gouging.
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as a part of that policy proposal, undergrating that we absolutely have called for the restoration
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: as well as other policies that are making it much more difficult for people to get or maintain insurance, because we do acknowledge that once people lose coverage, the hospital oftentimes is there kind of provider of last resort and so underscoring, I think trying to strike that balance of ensuring that folks have access to affordable and comprehensive coverage,
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: and making sure that, you know, hospitals are not losing their shirts completely in the process of providing that life-saving chair.
17:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, you know, ultimately, you know, I look at this and it's one of those things that you go, we have to have it.
17:26
[SPEAKER_04]: This is something we should be doing for ourselves, but I listen to you talk about, you know, caps and limits and all of this stuff.
17:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And my mind goes, I'm, I mean, I'm an agreement.
17:36
[SPEAKER_04]: But I don't know if you've noticed we've got a president who says communism is now the greatest threat to America, and you've said something that you know It's not the ideological invisible hand free market stuff.
17:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's got to be got to become anism you're talking about You think if I wrong I mean
17:56
[SPEAKER_04]: because I'm I'm thinking about my red hat email that's gonna come in and go You pop these are all what I did just stifle the free market.
18:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going what the free market once you did if you can't pay you Don't so it seems like there's got to be some some reasonable ground no
18:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I completely agree, Rick.
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and I will say that the kind of political realities of where we find ourselves, particularly at the federal level, it's certainly a challenge, you know, oftentimes, you know, folks will, they're, they're hearing conveniently stops working, and as soon as you talk about a price cap or a limit or anything of that nature.
18:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But I will say, with this idea, and this kind of policy concept was something that we borrowed from the state legislature, and is actually in Indiana, where they have a Republican trifecta, they were able to pass, essentially, a hospital price cap impacting their nonprofit hospitals, because they recognize that, you know,
18:55
[SPEAKER_01]: The very market cannot apply to the health care landscape, like you've mentioned, it's left far too many Americans behind, whether they were uninsured or if they had insurance and left were left underinsured because they weren't able to afford the cost sharing.
19:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And so definitely acknowledging that a Republican state was able to pull this off and see impactful results.
19:19
[SPEAKER_01]: There is absolutely kind of room for, you know, Republican lawmakers and, you know, really kind of Congress as a whole to identify, you know, kind of a common and shared solution here.
19:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but you know, we're led to believe it and I've used this example a bunch of times I guess I were being told that when I'm having my heart attack I should be speed dialing the local hospitals to find who's got a coupon because you know this is a free market issue, you know, the health care is free market and we should be able to choose and we should have, you know, price menus of what we could afford, you know, because our life is worth, you know, maybe we can put some stuff off.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Rick, that is one of the areas where, you know, I think it's a kind of a limitation of a transparency, just for the sake of transparency, like I mentioned, you know, kind of health care choices and health care decisions and needs.
20:12
[SPEAKER_01]: they don't function like other things like you mentioned when you're having a heart attack in the those split-second moments you are not price shopping you know we're not we're not talking about you know getting a new car or trying to find the best rate on on cable these are really time sensitive life or death decisions and while transparency certainly you know has an important place and role in in healthcare markets that cannot be the
20:37
[SPEAKER_01]: and all be all.
20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we have to kind of move and build upon, you know, kind of transparent data and information, but ensuring that there's additional, you policy or legislative or even regulatory mechanisms that are going to provide them much needed affordability to two Americans in their time of health care need.
20:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no, you know, one of the things that I think you guys tackle is preauthorizations, right?
21:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I look at, you know, my surgery had to be preauthorized and they went through and they said, First time I've ever seen this, they sent me an estimate, which is why I know the surgery is going to cost $42,000.
21:09
[SPEAKER_04]: And oddly enough, my doctor's only getting 1,400 bucks at that, which seems really, really low.
21:16
[SPEAKER_04]: But I have a friend who's on Medicare Advantage who they denied his back surgery now for the second time.
21:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So it seems to me that this pre-authorization depending on who your insurer is.
21:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I say all the time.
21:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I've got the greatest health insurance.
21:29
[SPEAKER_04]: There is.
21:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, Central Pennsylvania, Teamsters, health and welfare fund.
21:34
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you got one of these crummy, Medicare Advantage plans or one of these private plans, it could take you a long time to get what you need or if you ever get it.
21:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So it seems to me that this is just another way of well delaying care.
21:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Until we're maybe here dead, they don't have to pay out.
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so when we were working on our affordability agenda earlier this year, we acknowledged that in addition to the enormous costs that Americans face trying to access care in this country, there are other pretty significant friction points that, you know, undermine access and really make people frustrated with trying to access healthcare in general.
22:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And prior authorization was at the very top of that list, like you mentioned.
22:17
[SPEAKER_01]: it delays care, it denies care, and it provides unnecessary additional barriers.
22:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, prior authorization was designed as kind of a utilization management tool for insurers, and it has crept so far from that an original
22:33
[SPEAKER_01]: intent and purpose.
22:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And now it's just unnecessarily advocating care and denying care to folks who need it.
22:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And so one of the things that Cap is proposing is essentially kind of a replace of the current prior authorization framework.
22:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so,
22:49
[SPEAKER_01]: For all routine services, you know, we don't believe that there should be any type of pre-review required and for the small subset of services that might be overutilized or potentially very expensive.
23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things we're calling for is a kind of standardized definition.
23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: of the set of services and the suite of services that require pre-review and then also making sure that it's conducted by a truly external and independent entity.
23:16
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not an activity that should be housed within the insurer because as you've seen and as you mentioned, depending on who your carrier is, you have a vastly different experience and so there is a lot of opportunity at the state and federal level to try and address prior authorization to remove that barrier to
23:33
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, I look at the the whole thing and it seems kind of silly to me that you would go through this whole extra step because I look at my hip replacement surgery.
23:41
[SPEAKER_04]: The doctor says I needed the X-rays all show they needed and it's not something I'm going to do just because hey, I really like anesthesia.
23:48
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not something that's going to just pop up and go, yeah, I just want to.
23:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I want to have my leg, you know, basically cut off and snap like a chicken wing and beaten with a ball peen hammer.
23:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I think I'm really into that today.
24:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know anyone's doing that on purpose.
24:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I completely agree and it's one of those things where so many Americans like you mentioned they're saying my my provider has prescribed this why is my insurer standing in the way of that this additional level of bureaucracy
24:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And then even beyond the patient experience, we've also heard from providers that it is incredibly frustrating for them to have to appeal a lot of these prior authorization decisions.
24:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's you contributing to a lot of additional expenses on their side of the house as well, so.
24:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in an era where there is at the federal level such a focus on, you know, supposed to fraud waste and abuse, you would think that this would be an area as it relates to waste that Republicans would be, you know, particularly keen to address.
24:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Last line of questioning I got for you know, you know, lay out the bill of rights because I didn't we didn't get to get through the whole thing But real quick just you know what would a patient's bill of rights look like and then you know the marching order What should we be doing to help push and an axe something like this because I think it's I think it is important that patients have rights in all of this because it seems like all the rights are on the side of the insurer Are there right to say no seems to be the most important one walk me through some of it if you can
25:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
25:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So as I mentioned, as we were trying to develop an affirmative agenda moving forward, we were really focused on on affordability.
25:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And so one of the first things in the patient's bill of rights seeks to tackle premiums.
25:33
[SPEAKER_01]: What we would like to see is additional more stringent requirements, place on insurers as they
25:40
[SPEAKER_01]: increase premium rates year over year.
25:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what we're calling for is any proposed premium increase that exceeds medical trends.
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So essentially what they spend as it relates to direct medical care would automatically be deemed excessive and therefore insurers would have to provide additional justification on what's underlying these kind of double digit increases year over year.
26:06
[SPEAKER_01]: hospital price cost via that cap at 300% of Medicare acknowledging that, you know, that still provides some wiggle room for hospitals and there would be some exclusion but beyond that we would require insurance to pass down the savings from a price cap.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: to their enrollees in the form of lower deductible.
26:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So acknowledging that, you know, that's another area beyond premiums that we hope would, you know, kind of improve affordability for millions of Americans with coverage.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And then third, we want to tweak a Affordable Care Act provision that essentially seeks to limit insurer profits.
26:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we would change the calculation and methodology there in a way that would really prevent some of the cost shifting
26:53
[SPEAKER_01]: among the very large engineers who are essentially hiding profits among their subsidiaries.
26:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And then finally, like we mentioned, we have a proposal that would shake up the prior authorization process.
27:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And really set it down to a targeted list of services and have that review conducted by an external authority that would do so in kind of a consistent manner to remove that unnecessary barrier and burdenset to care for folks.
27:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And the the path forward is I guess a political revolution because given this administration.
27:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't see any of that happening, but hey, I'm hoping I love the report.
27:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I hope folks will take a look at it.
27:33
[SPEAKER_04]: A patient's bill of rights to lower health care costs can find that over at americanprogress.org.
27:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Natasha Murphy, I appreciate the time.
27:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Always a pleasure, right?
27:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much.
27:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Want to hear your thoughts?
27:44
[SPEAKER_04]: What?
27:46
[SPEAKER_04]: What is it?
27:47
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, is healthcare your issue and do you have any stories?
27:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to hear it, Rick at theworksmithshow.com, right back.
28:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
28:03
[SPEAKER_04]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 2012.
28:06
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the day a release of flammable vapor led to a fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California.
28:13
[SPEAKER_04]: A level 3 community warning system alert was issued for the cities of Richmond, San Palo, and North Richmond.
28:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Toxic black smoke could be seen for miles while the fire burned for hours.
28:24
[SPEAKER_04]: 19 workers were nearly incinerated trying to escape the fire.
28:28
[SPEAKER_04]: More than 15,000 area residents sought medical treatment for chest pains, breathing problems, headaches, and sore throats.
28:35
[SPEAKER_04]: The chemical safety board found that the release was caused by a leaking pipe that eventually ruptured.
28:40
[SPEAKER_04]: The pipe made of carbon steel suffered sulfide at corrosion.
28:44
[SPEAKER_04]: The chemical safety board noted that for 40 years, the refinery industry had known that carbon steel carodes at a much faster rate than higher chromium contents steel pipe.
28:54
[SPEAKER_04]: The pipe in question had no shut-off valve to isolate the leak.
28:57
[SPEAKER_04]: In its final report, the chemical safety board issued a number of findings.
29:06
[SPEAKER_04]: as well, Chevron not only failed to perform 100% component inspections, but it also rejected earlier recommendations to inspect and replace the pipe that would eventually fail.
29:17
[SPEAKER_04]: When it came to emergency response, Chevron failed to identify and communicate process controls or damage mechanisms in the incident command structure.
29:26
[SPEAKER_04]: They also had no leak response guidance
29:30
[SPEAKER_04]: to determine how to handle a process leak.
29:32
[SPEAKER_04]: The chemical safety board found the safety culture lacking.
29:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Workers were reluctant to use their stop work authority and were often encouraged to continue operations despite hazardous conditions.
29:44
[SPEAKER_04]: The chemical safety board issued a number of recommendations, including more stringent regulatory enforcement.
29:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Labor history in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smithsia.
29:55
[SPEAKER_04]: For more information, go to laborhistoryintu.com.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Until recently, corporate executives were eager to demonstrate how green they are.
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But then came Trump, trashing the very idea of a green economy, so to appease the vengeful Republican, upsequist CEOs rushed to dump their green principles, except for one especially
30:24
[SPEAKER_00]: As widely reported, top executive pay has surged during the Trump regime, but wait, they won't more.
30:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So other tendrils of executive pay have sprouted and grown like Jack's Beanstalk, further separating those at the top from the rest of us.
30:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Wall Street Journal reporters have uncovered some $600 million in executive perks that big corporations showed out to their hachoes last year.
30:50
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, investors in Apollo, the Averisis Wall Street Huxter, laid out nearly a million dollars for luxury limo and chauffeur services, so their billionaire CEO would not have to open the car door himself.
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: For tax purposes, Apollo called this a security measure.
31:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than the pompous plutocratic perk, it is.
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Already overpaid, these royals have come to expect all of life's needs and whims to be covered, including $121,000 in free tickets to ball games to please the multimillionaire chief of roto-ruder.
31:26
[SPEAKER_00]: $20,000 in booze for the head of a liquor conglomerate, which insists the freebie is awarded to enhance the boss's quote, knowledge of the product.
31:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And a $492 payout to cover the maintenance cost on a home generator for the chief of Hewlett Packard, who has paid $23,000 a year.
31:46
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jim Hi-Tower saying an old-edged claims that it's the little things that matter and these CEO entitlements show just how little corporate leaders have become.
32:09
[SPEAKER_04]: So, Niri, a day go by that I have someone complained to me about their electric bill.
32:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And look, I'm one of them.
32:18
[SPEAKER_04]: My electric bill has gotten crazy over the last two years.
32:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And look, it's only going to get worse because the things that we were going to do and we're supposed to help ease some of the supply shortages and some of the bottleneck.
32:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, this administration has taken a hatchet to.
32:35
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you're wondering, you know, why are prices so high, why is this getting so far out of hand?
32:41
[SPEAKER_04]: For me, it all comes back down to policy and the good folks over at the Center for American Progress.
32:46
[SPEAKER_04]: They have a plan.
32:47
[SPEAKER_04]: There is a plan on a plan for American electricity affordability.
32:53
[SPEAKER_04]: You can find that over American Progress.org.
32:56
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the authors is here to share some thoughts on that.
32:58
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why I've asked Trigger, Trevor Higgins to share some of those thoughts you
33:02
[SPEAKER_04]: of energy and environmental policy there at the Center for American Progress.
33:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Trevor, that's what I can time for us.
33:09
[SPEAKER_03]: That'd be here.
33:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's start right there.
33:11
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, all of us, you know, everybody I talked to, it seems we all go, why, why, why are they so high?
33:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like most things by the time you get to have big problem like this, there's a lot of things that had to go wrong.
33:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And the prices for electricity are way too high.
33:32
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, for about a decade electricity prices were very flat.
33:37
[SPEAKER_03]: and people appreciated that and now they're rising almost everywhere 70% of America has seen higher electricity bills and their utilities are proposing even more increases.
33:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not okay.
33:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a big expense for people that they weren't expecting.
33:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a lot of reasons why the wildfires at West are burning down the electricity grid.
33:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Natural gas, as a fuel, can be expensive to run.
34:03
[SPEAKER_03]: The AI data center built out is enormous.
34:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And has come on much, much faster than the grid was ready to build for.
34:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And we need far more energy to meet the growing demands and just as you said, the investments that were working to build new wind and solar embattories are being blocked by the Trump administration.
34:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And Congress has with their one-day beautiful bill.
34:32
[SPEAKER_03]: They cut out the investment programs,
34:40
[SPEAKER_03]: as they were a year and a half ago.
34:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, because if you listen to them and talk, you know, wind and solar and title and all that stuff, it's just so expensive and then they seek out to make it more expensive.
34:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Because look, I look at myself, you know, back in 2012, we put solar panels on the house, because it made sense.
34:55
[SPEAKER_04]: There were some smart policies, gave us a little bit of investment opportunity.
34:58
[SPEAKER_04]: We did it.
35:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And we created about...
35:01
[SPEAKER_04]: about half of our electricity and still our bills are crazy.
35:05
[SPEAKER_04]: It was before I didn't really notice it, but the last year, I'm like, what is going on here?
35:12
[SPEAKER_04]: So this is one of those things where, you know, finally people are coming around to how bad the policy has have gotten.
35:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So the question then becomes how do we turn this around and start going in a direction where we're going maybe we solve some of these problems because as you point it out our electricity usage in the coming weeks, month, years is only going to get much worse and if we're not we're not keeping up well the prices are going to keep going up.
35:38
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
35:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we think that there's couple things that the federal government can do, and that states can be doing right now before the federal government's ready to act, to try to help give immediate relief to people, and build a system that's not going to be like this moving forward.
35:54
[SPEAKER_03]: The truth is we need so much more energy.
35:57
[SPEAKER_03]: we need more wind, we need more solar, we need more batteries, we need more transmission lines and distribution lines, the grid is aging, we have to replace what was there and build new to meet all these new demands.
36:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And someone's got to pay for that.
36:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And right now, almost every dollar that goes into the system comes from ratepayers.
36:20
[SPEAKER_03]: that's expensive.
36:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, under the Biden administration, there was all these investments to make sure that the federal government would cover some of the costs for the generation for winged solar.
36:33
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's going now.
36:34
[SPEAKER_03]: We could bring that back.
36:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, who's going to pay for that?
36:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, the thing that we propose in our paper is that these AI data center companies, they want to build these data centers to be competitive and they are so well-capitalized.
36:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Just, they have as an industry, approaching a trillion dollars of money ready to invest.
36:52
[SPEAKER_03]: This is just something we haven't seen before in the power system.
36:56
[SPEAKER_04]: No, and look, I've argued, look, I'm not all in on data centers, but I understand they're going to be built, and I see this as an opportunity to do what we haven't done over the last three decades, because I guess I remember when Jerry Brown ran for President back in 92, and his argument was, we're going to rewire America because we lose an enormous amount of energy in the transmission lines, because they're so antiquated, and we haven't done all of that yet.
37:23
[SPEAKER_04]: So I see this
37:25
[SPEAKER_04]: just what you've said, the money that's being thrown around into this as an opportunity to, I don't know, push the technological bounds of possibilities so that we well keep a lot of the energy that we're already creating and getting it where it's supposed to, but also investing in the jobs and the opportunities for folks like me.
37:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I just think it's it's smart policy if we can get ahead of it.
37:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think we should get these companies to pay for their fair share of the great improvements that they're requiring and we can put a tax on the energy they're using so that it pays back into the benefit of everybody use that money to offer states who want to freeze or lower electricity rights in the immediate turn the funding that they need to make that possible so that you can still make the investments and building a better system for five and ten years from now.
38:16
[SPEAKER_03]: a system that's going to be ready.
38:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be resilient.
38:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be digging off to handle all our demands.
38:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And we can we can start building that right now.
38:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Would it better if we've done it in the 90s?
38:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, absolutely.
38:26
[SPEAKER_03]: No, but here's the thing.
38:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm going to push back a little bit on that fair share argument because I'm not a I'm so tired of hearing.
38:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I want the rich to pay their fair share.
38:35
[SPEAKER_04]: I want corporations to pay their fair share.
38:37
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
38:39
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not fair that they have all of the wealth.
38:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not fair that these data centers are using such an enormous amount of energy.
38:46
[SPEAKER_04]: They should be paying more than the single mom who's trying to keep the lights on.
38:50
[SPEAKER_04]: They should be paying much more than the family who's struggling to keep a roof over their head.
38:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Instead, we've got this opposite system where the people who are just abusing the systems, who are taking so much more than anyone else, where they actually get lower rates and more opportunities because somehow we've been trained to believe that there's this magical trickle down effect that eventually, if we give them enough, we'll benefit somehow.
39:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just call BS on that.
39:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's especially messed up that in many states.
39:22
[SPEAKER_03]: The highest rate for electricity is on residential customers.
39:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Not commercial customers, not industrial customers, not data centers.
39:30
[SPEAKER_03]: It's residential.
39:31
[SPEAKER_03]: There's more reason why that should be the case.
39:33
[SPEAKER_04]: No, look, I think we're up in Cleveland.
39:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And this, I hate to cut you off, but I grew up in Cleveland.
39:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of the things that George DuBoyneovich did when he became mayor of Cleveland.
39:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It was to go after all these big Fortune 500 companies and all these these people and say hey come to Cleveland because Dennis Kusinich saved Mune Light and we're going to give you free power and we basically gave away all the baby the bathwater all this stuff so that Corporations could come and use the free electricity that the the rate payers as you point it out are paying for So we gave all and we've been doing this through you know tax abatements and all this stuff for generations now
40:12
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of these data centers are pursuing the same kind of deals.
40:15
[SPEAKER_03]: They're asking for sweetheart deals on their property taxes or special opportunities to connect to the grid without having to pay for their infrastructure.
40:22
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no reason to ask for the case.
40:25
[SPEAKER_03]: The local governments, the state governments and the federal government ought to all be lining up here.
40:29
[SPEAKER_03]: to set some real rules around non-voluntary pledges from, you know, the president can trump it at the White House ceremony, but actual concrete investments in people's communities and commitments to pay taxes.
40:43
[SPEAKER_03]: In this paper, we suggest a way for the data centers to pay for the tax and the energy they're using.
40:50
[SPEAKER_03]: that's higher when they're off-grid and is less when they're on-grid, but either way it's enough to raise enough funding to bring these data centers into a place where they're contributing to the tax base and helping to build the system.
41:03
[SPEAKER_04]: absolutely look it's for their benefit they should be doing it.
41:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean that seems to be the reality but I guess you guys also are arguing for some kind of a state freeze and am I getting this right you know the freeze rates at this residential rates in order to get some federal support so some kind of mechanism there walk me through with that with that idea looks like.
41:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, we saw a new jersey that Governor proposed an idea for a rate freeze, and then sometimes when big electricity sector reforms are working, and it can honestly be a little bit tricky, because if you are freezing the rates, and that's the only place that the system is getting its investment income from, you could wind up starving the grid of the building, the investment that it needs to build bigger.
41:49
[SPEAKER_03]: What we thought we could do is have the federal government offer states who choose to do a rate-free and temporarily, the chance to get federal funding to build quick new generation better, great infrastructure, new operations, and by some time to make the utility reforms that we're going to make.
42:10
[SPEAKER_04]: But here's the end act of the organization.
42:12
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, that's socialism.
42:14
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, in this area, no, no, no, Trevor, that's communism now.
42:19
[SPEAKER_04]: You're talking about the federal government helping states try and figure out how to help working people, anything that has that equation where at the end of the equal sign working people benefit that's communism today, or help me here.
42:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you think that your idea is possible in this political environment?
42:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's funny how the rhetoric escalates against these kind of ideas, but I'll say that in the power sector in particular, the rates that are charged, it are not set in a competitive market today, they are all regulated by governments who have to choose between what's the right level of investment and what's the right level of rate of cost to put on to rates, so it's already a system that's entirely regulated by the better by the state and local governments with federal oversight.
43:07
[SPEAKER_03]: what we're talking about is bringing the resources to that flight so that doesn't have to only come on the bill of a household.
43:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It can come from the gate from the data centers and the places where there's revenue.
43:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Would this administration do this?
43:23
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they're feeling some pressure.
43:25
[SPEAKER_03]: You see, the president is announcing voluntary pledges and has called for Congress to act.
43:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Congress just passed on a bipartisan basis through the House committee about last month.
43:39
[SPEAKER_03]: A rate payer protection plan.
43:42
[SPEAKER_03]: So what we thought was an impossible problem.
43:51
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that the real solutions that we can see at the scale of restoring investment in wind and solar instead of blocking those projects, that's not going to come until there's some political change.
44:02
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm right there with you.
44:03
[SPEAKER_04]: But what I get from my Red Hat Brigade is that the reason that we were having these rising energy prices, and luck, you know,
44:11
[SPEAKER_04]: you can buy into the BS rhetoric or not, they're arguing that we haven't drilled enough, because we need to drill baby drill.
44:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure you've heard that phrase a time or two, and also it's you liberal folk want all this permitting and you're stopping the creation of new energy, and it's all because
44:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we don't believe in building or drilling or any of those other things.
44:37
[SPEAKER_04]: How much of that plays into?
44:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I got to be honest, you know, in my looking into it, I don't think we've drilled more, you know, the Biden administration was the the biggest driller of oil than anyone in the history of this country.
44:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Even though the rhetoric was as we're not doing it, does that hold any water do you think?
44:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, or healing gas production in the United States was higher under the Biden administration than it was in any administration previously.
45:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's continued to grow and yet we're seeing this huge affordability problem.
45:07
[SPEAKER_03]: But it turns out that producing those fuels, especially when the prices are actually set on a global market or something like the Iran war can send the markets into haywire.
45:19
[SPEAKER_03]: it just doesn't translate into lower and cost for people.
45:22
[SPEAKER_03]: What we need to do to lower cost for people is build solutions that actually work like an electricity grid that you can rely on that can actually handle all the new load and connect it to clean energy, nuclear, wind, batteries, solar, geothermal.
45:40
[SPEAKER_03]: There's so many options available right now.
45:42
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got to start building
45:47
[SPEAKER_04]: But here's the thing, Drummer.
45:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm a little bit older than you.
45:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember Jimmy Carter putting solar panels on the White House.
45:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember Ronald Reagan ripping them off.
45:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember, you know, Barack Obama saying we're going to build solar panels and invested in solar plants and came Trump tore all that down Biden did some more, hey, we're going to move towards, you know, batteries and all this stuff, Trump came in and tore it down.
46:10
[SPEAKER_04]: It seems half the country gets it, half the country goes, hey, we do need an all of the above strategy.
46:17
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just not all about the liquid gold under some Saudis feet, but it is it all of the
46:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know how we, because we just, just pendulum, just keep swinging back and forth and ultimately the country stays just in the middle, doing nothing really positive.
46:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you have any hope that maybe this crisis, because I, I'm a believer in the only time things actually happen is when people suffer, the old labor frame of when your, when your stomach's empty or head gets right.
46:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So as these rates continue to go through the roof, do you think this may,
46:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you think Trump and his war in Iran and all these bad policies may move the country towards, hey, maybe we do need wind and solar and geothermal and title and all of the, the all of the above strategy.
47:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you have any hope in that?
47:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I do.
47:08
[SPEAKER_03]: People are pissed right now.
47:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Nope.
47:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Nobody likes this situation and we need to have answers for it.
47:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And yet, the Republican Party has swung back against progress over and over again,
47:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But each time we succeed in advancing some policy, like we did, that you mentioned number of volatility mentioned provided, we'll do it again.
47:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And each time that happens, the system moves.
47:37
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, since in the last 10 years, the price of battery technology is dropped 90%.
47:44
[SPEAKER_03]: That's enormous.
47:45
[SPEAKER_03]: It means that it's because of policy interventions here and elsewhere.
47:49
[SPEAKER_04]: But it means that we may, let me stop you there because here's it got solar panels, something we invented.
47:54
[SPEAKER_04]: That we gave the technology away.
47:56
[SPEAKER_04]: The battery technology, we've spent so much energy, resource, brain power on, and our view, not China's in South Korea, basically taking that away.
48:07
[SPEAKER_04]: It seems like we keep coming up with these good ideas that we can then keep giving away because we're stupid.
48:13
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a total own goal to hand over our competitiveness for the technologies that we know are going to build the economy, the whole world runs on.
48:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But when I have to, you know, actually some of the things that the Biden administration enacted in the inflation reduction act.
48:30
[SPEAKER_03]: fitting get repealed.
48:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And that includes new investments for battery manufacturing in the United States, new investments for critical mineral, with processing, new investments in geothermal and a nuclear.
48:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So those ideas that those investments are continuing to happen wherever they can sneak past the administration's efforts to block things.
48:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not happening as fast because it was all part of one big package and you can't just take away parts of it.
48:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But we're still laying this foundation.
48:58
[SPEAKER_03]: It is entirely possible for us to build through the right trade policy, the right investment policies.
49:03
[SPEAKER_03]: We can build an industrial based in the United States as ready to meet the next decade and the one after that.
49:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And just because we keep screwing it up, doesn't mean we have to keep screwing it up.
49:13
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't mean you don't keep trying, but you know the sad reality is you just articulated a couple of things that they hadn't got to I now fear that that's not going to be on the list.
49:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks to you
49:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, no, like, I revealed our hand.
49:25
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I mean, that's the fear.
49:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, if Biden's name's out of it, it's got to go even if it's good for us.
49:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's the sad reality.
49:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So last question I've got, which is always a marching order.
49:35
[SPEAKER_04]: What should we be doing?
49:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, if you're angry about your electricity rates, if you're angry that every month, there's more coming out of your pocket, going to these energy companies.
49:44
[SPEAKER_04]: you know what what's the marching order what what should what should people do outside of just what i get from folks which is just complaining and and you know whining and and being angry what's it what's the uh what's the good outrage here how do we get from get motivation
50:00
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we're going to have a chance I think to come back at this from the federal level in a couple of years and really tackle this problem, we don't have to wait for that in the meantime states, including the regulatory bodies like your public utilities commissions that differ by state and your governor's offices, they have a lot of potential tools available.
50:21
[SPEAKER_03]: to make sure that the data centers are paying for what the grid needs to change how much the rates are right now.
50:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Try and cushion the blow.
50:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I think people should be really calling for
50:37
[SPEAKER_03]: the investments in clean energy, and a modernized grid, and it's smart policy on the other centers, that their states can do right now.
50:45
[SPEAKER_04]: I agree.
50:45
[SPEAKER_04]: No, look, I've got friends who are, you know, they're fighting tooth and nail, because not my backyard, no data centers, and I get that.
50:52
[SPEAKER_04]: But I said, you know, it's a lot easier to negotiate from the inside and get what you need when you're sitting at the table, then shouting at clothes, windows.
50:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So for me, this is gonna happen.
51:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just for me, it's just a way of how we're going to invest in the future and extract out of this.
51:05
[SPEAKER_04]: What we need is a plan for American electricity affordability by the folks over at the Center for American Progress.
51:11
[SPEAKER_04]: You can check that out over at americanprogress.org.
51:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Trevor Higgins, I appreciate the time.
51:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much.
51:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you very much.
51:17
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to hear your thoughts.
51:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Email me, Rick at therixmithshow.com.
51:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you happy with your electricity bill?
51:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Happy with the rates?
51:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Want to hear it?
51:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Rick at Therixmithshow.com, right back.
51:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
51:38
[SPEAKER_04]: This day in Labor History, the year was 1835.
51:41
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the day that began the Baltimore Bank riot.
51:46
[SPEAKER_04]: The Bank of Maryland had failed in 1834.
51:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Thousands of people who had deposited money in the bank saw their savings vanish.
51:55
[SPEAKER_04]: But for nearly a year and a half, the depositors wanted their money to be returned.
51:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Anger grew.
52:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of that anger was directed at one of the bank's directors, Reverty Johnson.
52:05
[SPEAKER_04]: The bank directors were accused of fraud and speculation that had caused the bank's failure.
52:11
[SPEAKER_04]: The bank officials were also dragging their feet unsettling accounts with bank clients.
52:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Because the directors wanted to keep their personal fortunes.
52:25
[SPEAKER_04]: The mayor of Baltimore ordered a troop of 30 armed guards to protect Johnson's residence.
52:31
[SPEAKER_04]: The next day the angry mob turned their attention to another director, John Glenn.
52:36
[SPEAKER_04]: They began to demolish his home before the mounted guards stopped the damage.
52:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Two days later, the mob returned to director Johnson's home.
52:45
[SPEAKER_04]: This time, they were able to overpower the guards.
52:48
[SPEAKER_04]: They piled up Johnson's property in the street and set it on fire.
52:52
[SPEAKER_04]: The crowd swelled and moved on to destroy property of other bank directors.
52:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Revolutionary War veteran Sam Smith organized a militia of 3,000 men to stop the destruction.
53:04
[SPEAKER_04]: The leaders of the bank protest were arrested and jailed.
53:08
[SPEAKER_04]: The bank directors received $100,000 from the state as compensation for the destruction of their property.
53:16
[SPEAKER_04]: The bankers were not held responsible for their actions, which caused the bank to fail.
53:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Does this sound familiar?
53:26
[SPEAKER_04]: also never faced consequences.
53:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Labor history in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith show.
53:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So I want to go back to because I hear this all the time, you know, it's just we're not drilling enough.
53:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And yet during the Biden years as as was pointed out, we never drilled
53:56
[SPEAKER_04]: as much as we did during them.
53:57
[SPEAKER_04]: That was record drill, baby drill.
54:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And understand, Biden didn't run around going, I'm drill, baby drilling.
54:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I think the biggest problem of the Biden administration is they didn't, they didn't say what they were doing, often enough, or at all, whereas had Trump had any of the accomplishments
54:15
[SPEAKER_04]: that Biden had during his term at lowering costs and doing things that we wanted to do, you would hear nothing but, and this has always been the problem that Democrats and my labor friends have had when they do good things, they never, they never, they never pointed out.
54:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Biden was drilling, early and often.
54:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And and what's interesting is all of my red hat friends that come back to me Well, you know Joe Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline and I'm like, you know understand that was not going to do anything To lower our costs It was gonna shoot right out of the international market because all oils in the international market How'd you set to me Rick?
54:58
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna we're gonna build it to Chicago.
55:00
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna refine it here and it's gonna stay here.
55:02
[SPEAKER_04]: We're gonna nationalize it Maybe we could talk about that
55:07
[SPEAKER_04]: that may have done something, but understand, our problem is that oil is a finite resource and the international community wants it, you know, by the way, a war of choice that I ran, stupidest thing you could have done, this administration has done to jack prices up and
55:33
[SPEAKER_04]: But the idea was, and I said this, the all of the above strategy, I never said we were gonna end oil production.
55:40
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea was maybe we don't have to keep going deeper and deeper and going after a riskier and riskier reserves.
55:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe we start moving in another direction, wind, solar, title, geothermal, whatever.
55:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I've even come around a little bit on nuclear.
55:59
[SPEAKER_04]: But that's not what this administration is doing.
56:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And look, I thought that during the Obama years, there were some good policies, you know, solar panels.
56:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I put them on my house, because there were some subsidies, some subsidies, people flock to it.
56:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And in my state of Pennsylvania, flock to it so fast and so aggressively that blue right past the state's energy portfolio, and and made the cost of it so low that the,
56:33
[SPEAKER_04]: When I put the panels on my house, the solar energy renewable, the solar renewable energy credits, the S-Rex, we're about 225 bucks, I think, for 1,000 kilowatt hours.
56:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So, as I'm creating electricity, the grid was going to pay me back.
56:51
[SPEAKER_04]: The supplier.
56:53
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was talking about 225 bucks for the first couple.
56:57
[SPEAKER_04]: The amount of supply that came on online in a very short period of time, like me, that went down to about eight bucks real quick.
57:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And the state never adjusted their energy portfolio, so we're creating a ton of solar energy, no matter what my red hat friends are, YouTube soon goes down.
57:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it does, and you have batteries, but you also use the electricity during the pretty much
57:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is the the the weird world that we're in is that half of the country has been trained to believe that you know, shoulders bad or you know, wind because the wind stopped blowing.
57:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And that we've we've kind of moved away from it.
57:43
[SPEAKER_04]: This administration, especially.
57:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And instead of that all of the above strategy to help bring more energy in because guess what going to need it.
57:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And I like what Trevor said.
57:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I've taken a beating for my position on the data centers because I do think, and I learned from the fracking that you have to be able to be in the room and negotiate what you can get out of it.
58:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It's going to happen.
58:08
[SPEAKER_04]: But ensure that we have the benefits and ensure that there's the community benefits agreements are part of this Ensure that the infrastructure built for the future is part of it.
58:18
[SPEAKER_04]: You know by the way that they keep innovating to maybe use less So for me, it seems like an opportunity when I don't want us to lose because we haven't done any of this stuff And I look at my entire lifetime Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House
58:37
[SPEAKER_04]: and the first act of the Reagan administration was to rip him off.
58:42
[SPEAKER_04]: A good sign to the oil companies that your profits are more important than our energy needs.
58:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And Republicans have been doing that over and over and over again at every opportunity and every turn to pay allegiance to our big corporations.
58:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And basically saying that the rest of us, yeah, you're gonna pay higher prices.
59:03
[SPEAKER_04]: You are going to pay for it.
59:06
[SPEAKER_04]: because ultimately, we pay for all of it.
59:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Want to hear your thoughts?
59:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Are we on the wrong track, right track?
59:15
[SPEAKER_04]: You think Trump's doing a great job?
59:18
[SPEAKER_04]: You're happy at the pump?
59:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Rick at therixmithshow.com.
59:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Want to hear your thoughts?
59:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Miss any portion of the program, grab the podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
59:27
[SPEAKER_04]: You shall find hours and as always.
59:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much for being here.
59:32
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll see you back here next time.
59:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You've been listening to the Rick Smith show.
59:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Email Rack, email Rack, at Rack, at the RickSmith Show.com.
59:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, this is Ben, the Rick Smith Show.
59:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We're working people, come to talk.