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Silicon Valley's Rush to Replace Your Doctor With AI · Paging America

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's got to be a way to protect free speech and not give a tax advantage to
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: the Children's Health Defense Fund,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: which is such a grift filled with things that are bad for people.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that there's ongoing conversations about what to do about
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: the American tax fund,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: but it just strikes me that Children's Health Defense is example number one
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: at something that's gone terribly wrong.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, Rob, good to see you.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: You've been on the road quite a bit, haven't you?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: I just got back in Philly.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was meeting with docs in Philly, kind of talking about what's ahead.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: If Pennsylvania turns into a trifecta next year, what we can do.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: But got to spend about five hours in an airport in Chicago connecting flights
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: to my little town here.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's getting, I don't know, it's not my most favorite thing in the world.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Airports lose their luster once you hit all three terminals and you're done walking.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Not a lot to do.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: You should start flying
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: like the HHS secretary, Robert Kennedy.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: He's been on a $9,000 an hour military jet campaigning for the Republican candidates
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: for Congress, which is, I think, not part of the job description of HHS secretary.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it seems like a particularly expensive way to move through the sky.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, apparently we just have to become a cabinet secretary and then no more connecting flights.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's the answer.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Why do all these guys need?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: They need military housing.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: They need military jets.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: What are they up to?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, welcome back to Paging America,
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: everybody,
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: where we explore the power of profit and politics shaping American health care.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you can hear news and interviews from people building the universal health care movement.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, campaign strategist, Miles Baker.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Dr.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Rob Davidson.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: And we have a jam packed show for you today.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: But before we get started, please head over to YouTube.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: And hit the subscribe button.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Help us fight misinformation and disinformation on the platform
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: with real health care news and opinions.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: So if you'd like us on YouTube, we'd appreciate it very much.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: But today, Rob, we have a big show.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to be getting into Robert Kennedy Jr.'s headlining of
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: the Children's Health Defense Conference,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Trump administration steamrolling AI into health care,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: admin changes how measles deaths are counted.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Newly minted CDC director Erica Schwartz's complete absence from public life.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then on the back half of the show,
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: we have an interview with Pennsylvania House candidate Hadley Haas in
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: a really important race in Pennsylvania and your regular reminder
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: that down-ballot races are critically important.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: For the health of the states and the country.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: We'll jump right into the top story, Rob.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: So Robert Kennedy Jr. is returning to his anti-vax roots.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: He's going full circle.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: His eat, pray, love in the government is coming back to how he got started in his quackery.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: So as we're recording this episode,
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: is headlining the sold out Washington DC conference For
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: the Children's Health Defense,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: which Kennedy chaired for eight years and is perhaps the leading purveyor
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: of vaccine disinformation and anti-vax messaging before he stepped down to run
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: for president.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: He was paid about half a million dollars a year from the so-called nonprofit.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Other speakers at the conference include Andrew Wakefield,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: the author of the now retracted Lancet study,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: which falsely claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: Senators Ron Johnson.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Who is maybe the biggest quack in the Senate.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Rand Paul and Maha President Tony Lyons.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: How are these guys still out there doing this?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's so out of the mainstream.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: And here we have the HHS secretary headlining their conference.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and he may need a job after November too, right?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's going back.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: He's re-interviewing.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: His chairmanship of this org has, you know, his job there.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is what should have been the message to Senator Cassidy, right?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Back when, during the confirmation hearings.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like a private meeting of him giving assurances in no way.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he says now, well, how was I to know people were lying to me?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: you look at nearly a decade of him making a half million dollars
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: a year running this joint.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And like, it's pretty obvious to any normal, rational person, that's who you're getting.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I mean, he's going back.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's going back to his roots.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And again, maybe a little job interview at the same time.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how it keeps going.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's because with the Internet and the rapidity of misinformation
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: and disinformation and how it spreads,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: I just think there's always space for the bullshit they're peddling.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Just as a reminder,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: in case you are not up on Children's Health Defense, just a couple of highlights.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: First, there was the ginning up anti-vaccine sentiment in American Samoa,
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: which killed a large amount of young people and babies in that territory.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Children's Health Defense petitioned the FDA to rescind all COVID-19 vaccines.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: It organized rallies against public health efforts to mitigate the impact of 19.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Kennedy and others compared vaccine mandates to Nazi programs.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: It linked the Tuskegee syphilis study to vaccines to target target messaging to black voters.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it hosted a deceptive website on vaccines and autism that looked identical to
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: the CDC web page on the same topic.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it did all this before Senator Cassidy had that conversation where he got his assurances.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yes, he should have known.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was easy to know.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: Should have known.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Just very quick Google.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe one of his staffers didn't Google right.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they didn't Google.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they use an AI that somehow was trying to appeal to his desire to vote for
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: the guy because he was still trying to stay a senator,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: which he will not be after this year.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think the American tax code giving tax free status to something like
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: the Children's Health Defense,
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: which is such a grift filled with things that are bad for people.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's got to be a way to protect free speech and not give a tax advantage.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: To the Children's Health Defense Fund.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: There must be a solution to that.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that there's ongoing conversations about that,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: both on the political right and the political left,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: about what to do about the American tax code.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it just strikes me that Children's Health Defense is example number one,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: that something has gone terribly wrong.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: They are not providing a social benefit or any kind of social welfare, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: They are actually wreaking havoc and creating death in places where they have a large footprint.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: It seems to be a no-brainer, at least to the two of us.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: You shouldn't be able to be the keynote speaker with these people and HHS secretary.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Those things should be completely mutually exclusive.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: That is happening in America today.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Put it on your radar and we can move on to the next topic.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: So AI has been in the news a lot, Rob.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: On the healthcare side, the Trump administration is steamrolling AI into healthcare.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Just to draw your attention to some reporting by the New York Times,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: the Trump administration is accelerating efforts to make artificial intelligence
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: an integral part of medical care in the United States,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: throwing the resources and support of the federal government into projects
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: that deploy AI agents to diagnose and prescribe treatments to patients.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: The multi-front effort at HHS has raised concerns among some officials over the past few months.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: That change is moving too quickly with inadequate evidence of
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: the technology's safety and efficacy.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: They also worry about the outsized influence of Silicon Valley investors
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: that have previously played little role in federal health policy.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: The article quotes Vinod Khosla,
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: a billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist whose son has
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: a healthcare AI company and who they say has been particularly influential
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: in conversations with top health department officials.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's over for doctors,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: human doctors, he said at a July AI startup event, AI is just going to be better.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think, Rob?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this one got me hot, Miles.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what's up?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a self-preservation of like, well, I'm a doctor and these things can't be doctors.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just truly terrifying that we're in this major conversation of the fact
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: that AI could destroy society.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like these things can develop their own sense of self And get out of the sandbox
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: and trainings and not tell their handlers what they're doing and just go rogue.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And to what end?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know, right?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: If there's misalignment, who's alignment, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Are we aligning with the priorities of this Silicon Valley billionaire or his son
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: or Trump or those acolytes or aligning with humanity in general?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Concerns me for sure.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like the profit model,
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: they're now working on developing codes for Medicare
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: that will pay these AI companies for the services rendered.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's not going to you folks.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: These are Medicare tax dollars going to
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: the billionaire venture capital folks funding these AI startups in Silicon Valley.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: That to me is a concern.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess the other piece just comes literally from the bedside.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking about this Before we started recording,
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: like such a big part of being a doc to me and the way I learned it and
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: the way I teach it is sitting down,
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: looking your patient in the eye,
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: putting your hand on their bed, having a conversation.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much nuance, right?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's studies, there's evidence, there's all of that.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: We all learn that.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: We all have to have that in our brains.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: But then the vast majority of how we do medicine, they call it the art of medicine.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: It really is that.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it can truly be boiled down to algorithms and ones and zeros to have
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: In fact,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: there was a,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: OpenAI has been sued by someone,
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: I believe in Florida,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: over them using ChatGPT for medical purposes and
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: the person ended up having massive blood Blood clots in their lungs.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they showed the screenshots of what chat was telling it like,
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: oh, no, no, you should just stay in your recliner and relax.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, well, the people at my church think I should go to the hospital.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: They said, oh, no, they're not thinking about your interest.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: God wouldn't give you a body that couldn't handle these things.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know what the outcome of that lawsuit will be,
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: but what's going to happen if these models that are getting reimbursed,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: these companies are giving bad information and people have bad outcomes?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're going to be responsible, right?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is the venture capital's billionaire going to be on the hook?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I guess that's why we need to slow the roll here and do this in a responsible way.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: It has to have a place, but it's not ready to replace what folks do at the bedside.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's some really interesting research about The AI tools being,
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: as a general matter, better at diagnostics in some instances.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, for sure.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Your median physician, right?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: But there's certainly other component parts of healthcare that it's hard to replace.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: But it does seem like rolling it out.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: The crime here is not deploying AI into healthcare.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's doing it really fast in order to make a buck and doing it before there's
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: the right safeguards in place, right?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: We are planning on covering more More about the intersection of AI and
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: the AI companies and the healthcare system as we go along.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: So if you have a great AI story, please throw it in the comments or send us an email.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: We'd love to talk to you because I think we are in the process
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: of collecting more information about how this is showing up in people's lives,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: whether it's physicians or patients.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And to prove I'm not a complete Luddite, I mean,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: I will shameless plug or plug for someone I'm not connected to, open evidence.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think most physicians now and providers use this.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: It is an AI tool we use clinically.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's honestly mostly for a thing.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Sometimes it's for these weird,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: like this rash associated with this set of vital signs
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: and this particular patient population.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it can like get you a populated list of like,
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: hey, scouring all the evidence-based data out there.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like here's some things you might want to think about.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this happened the other day.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had a pregnant woman who had found a bat in their room where they sleep.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, talk to me about the rabies vaccine and rabies prophylaxis for pregnant women, you know?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can reassure this.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, here's a whole list of things.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can click and go look at this study and have that conversation with somebody.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, as a tool, it's incredible.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Even now, transforming how we do healthcare for sure, right?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: As a replacement, not quite ready for prime time.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Rob, while you were chatting, I asked Claude why measles was back in the United States.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the vaccine rate.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's because the vaccines have dropped.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's because of anti-vax sentiment.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: So even the robots are pissed off about what Kennedy's up to with his messaging.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: So in this way, we are aligned.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that's
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: the way we are aligned.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: So a fourth person has died of measles and none of them count for the Centers
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: for Disease Control.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: A fourth Pennsylvania resident is dead from measles associated causes.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: The latest death was an unvaccinated 18 year old who died
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: from acute disseminated encephalomyelitis.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: Rob.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to have to have you say those ones from now on.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: But it's a rare and severe neurological complication of measles.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: County Coroner Andrea L.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Akkad said in a release,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: however, the CDC still shows an asterisk for the number of 2026 measles deaths.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's because,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: as The Guardian reports,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: the Trump administration has changed how it counts measles deaths.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: The CDC is now using data from the National Center for Health Statistics,
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: which is a way to track mortality trends over time.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: According to a note published on the agency's website on the 4th of September.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Previously,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: the CDC used a system called the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System,
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: which the agency has described as the supply chain from data
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: from local jurisdictions and states to the federal government.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: CDC will report measles deaths if and when the NCHS reports measles as
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: the underlying cause of death.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Former CDC Chief Medical Officer Deborah Howery told The Guardian that
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: the system is not meant to confirm individual cases.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: But rather, it's usually focused on high quality, long term mortality trend analysis.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we're tinkering with the data over at HHS.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: What do you what do you think about this, Rob?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a real problem.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like some people, unscrupulous people do this in research, right?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: You figure out what you want something to show,
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: and then you figure out how to work the data,
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: how to work the data you've collected to show that outcome, that result.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is why we end up with, quote,
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: studies that Ron Johnson brings to hearings talking about ivermectin fixing COVID.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is why we have things that Josh Hawley brings to hearings talking about
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: the abortion pill and its safety record that are just untrue.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can mine data however you want and present a narrative however you want to do that.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what the CDC has done now under the guise of their new director.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: They've decided that this tool that Dr.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Howery rightfully tells us,
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: talks to us about long-term trends in mortality,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: is not meant to report actual cases on the ground, right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it's pretty shameful, but not surprising at all.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it seems like they got, it seems like they had a bit of a dust up in Pennsylvania.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: They tried to deny reality because it wasn't favorable to them.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: Then they had a big fight with the governor of Pennsylvania.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then now, instead of saying, all right, well, we're not, we're just going to accept reality.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: They're changing the way that they count.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: In order to not have to accept reality.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: This is just another example of the Trump administration basically saying
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: the government is just going to do things inaccurately or change its statistics.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: I always go,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: whenever I read about them just messing with numbers like this,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: I go back to the moment when Donald Trump Tried to extend the path of the hurricane
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: at the press conference with the Sharpie.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, it's like the nationwide full federal government version of that.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's that we say like, we don't like reality.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we're going to use our Sharpie or in this case,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: we're going to, we're going to count measles differently.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I am not going to read measles and cephalomyelitis.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: You are going to continue to read those things because I think that is part
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: of my entertainment value of spending this time with you.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is you watched The Pit.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: There was a case on The Pit of measles and cephalomyelitis.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it was season one because I watched only a little bit of season two.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: there was a case and it was about vaccines
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: and Noah Wiley's character becoming very upset with the family who didn't want to do
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: the prescribed treatment.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: They were worried about what that kind of related to their vaccine.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: A young kid who is-
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: Also in Pennsylvania.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: So by God, you know, life imitating art.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Terrible, terrible case.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: So the CDC is tinkering with the numbers.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: So where's the boss?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we can get a hold of the boss.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Surely she's on the case.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: She could fix it.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: So the newly minted CDC director, Erica Schwartz, is completely missing in action.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: So when you've been put in charge of a public health agency
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: that has become politically charged and is in utter turmoil,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: it's not surprising that you keep your head down and get to work.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: But as The Hill reports,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: we're heading into the fall flu,
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: RSV, and COVID season, and Director Schwartz is essentially AWOL.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: This is from The Hill.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: The country is heading into respiratory virus season and the public guidance on COVID-19.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Flu, RSV vaccines has been muddled at best.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: The worst measles epidemic in more than 30 years continues unabated,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: while the HHS secretary is downplaying measles deaths.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Openly feuding with the city governor.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to add, not from their reporting, flying around in a $9,000 an hour jet.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: And through it all,
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: CDC Director Erica Schwartz has made no public appearances
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: and made no public remarks.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: Little official communication that has come from the agency has been
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: from social media and overtly political.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I think like any fleeting thoughts that Erica Schwartz was some sort
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: of compromise or some sort of like Some sort of good actor who is navigating sort of
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: a bad set of circumstances.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: We can basically assume that that's just not true.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: And we have another political operative colonizing the health infrastructure of
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: the United States of Yeah.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're putting out press releases,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: taking victory laps over the explosive diarrhea,
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: coming to an end of which they had very little to do with ending it
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: or helping actually investigate it.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And meanwhile, people dying from blueberries.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: But sure.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just keep our heads down and not say much about the thing that's going
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: to flood the hospitals and kind of, again,
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: year after year nearly break a system that is built to be broken
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: the way it's currently constructed.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that should be disqualifying.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: But in this administration,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: that level of ignorance to the issues, it's sort of like table stakes.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: You show up, you have to have that in your resume.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Of just sort of ignoring the big problems and kind of zeroing in on the little minutiae.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know if she's doing that, but she's certainly ignoring the big problems.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Erica Schwartz, get back to work.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: You should go back to work.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: You should go to the minutiae.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Or not.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, don't go break in anything, though.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, you're just kind of, you know, maybe don't go back to work.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Do whatever you want.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Can I just ask a quick science question?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Can I just say?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly because we can edit it if I don't know what the hell you're asking.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And as people who listen to this, you have to hear me pronounce science words.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: They know that I must have a different background at least.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: But is COVID just going to come back every year forever?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's just out there, right?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, yeah.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just always like this underlying thing.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to have little pockets pop up.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of why these things happen more in the winter is we're congregating indoors,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: People's immune systems may be a little more susceptible because of,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: you know, kind of being in the cold and all that.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I have, I mean,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: literally our college daughter sent us a message, said,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: should I get COVID and flu,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know, for vaccines because it's available on their campus.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's almost like I think they're developing some combined shots, right?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: That would be great.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I just think people should think of it like that.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you're someone,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: and you should all be people,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: unless there's a reason you can't,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: who get the flu shot every year and have done that, it should just be part of it.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of your routine.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: You get the COVID flu shot and call it one thing, coflu or cofefe.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe cofefe.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we could repurpose that word from Trump's first term.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, yes,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: it is going to be with us and continuing to mutate and we're going to continue
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: to have to stay ahead of it to keep our system from breaking every single winter.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to go get my shot tomorrow, I think.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm going to go to CVS down here and go get it tomorrow.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: For an episode,
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: because I don't want to hear you whine about how your arm hurts
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: or you got body aches.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, come on.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Moving on.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Next up.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: So not over at the CDC, but we'll take a little walk over to the Surgeon General's office.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: Trump's Surgeon General nominee, Nicole Sapphire, has some interesting anti-Maha investments.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so we continue to see how sort of the corporate side of Maha and
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: the Maha activists are incongruent and they don't make sense as a coalition.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: And if you are a person who thinks our food system should be good,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: you should not be part of this coalition.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bad coalition to be part of if you're a person who's into health.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: Despite being considered to be Surgeon General,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: nominee and social media influencer, Dr.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Nicole Sapphire has investments in an array of tobacco companies,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: sugary beverage manufacturers and pharmaceutical giants.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: The investments include Philip Morris, that steward of health.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: Philip Morris, Monster Beverage Corporation.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: Unbelievable.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's got, I can't even have, I've never, monsters are gross.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like, I know people like it, but I
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: think- Never have them,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: never.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and then this small pharmaceutical company called Eli Lilly.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: Eli fucking Lilly.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: She's invested in Eli Lilly.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, and more.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: These are the very same companies that RFK has been attacking and accusing
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: of unduly influencing our public health agencies.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Sapphire disclosed the investments in an ethics agreement where she pledged
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: to completely or partially divest from them.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: She also revealed that she has received $270,000 in business income
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: from her company EmpowerMD, which owns a supplement line.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: She's like the basket.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: She's like everything.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: She's got every single grift.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: The corporate, the corporate profiteering, the Maha grift.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: She's got it all.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Sapphire Face questioning from the Senate Health Committee this week as part
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: of her confirmation process.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: Senator Bill Cassidy used the hearing
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: To once again castigate Kennedy and Trump,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: saying that America's worst measles outbreak in 35 years is quite,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: quote, going to be a terrible legacy for this administration.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that, quote,
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: misinformation and misguided policies are leaving children and adults unprotected
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: from disease that we know how to prevent, end quote.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Bill Cassidy, it's literally your fault.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: Your fault.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Your fault.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And meanwhile,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: the Trump's pick to lead the FDA,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Heidi Overton,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: will have her own help committee hearing Next Thursday,
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Semaphore reports that it is still unclear
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: whether Senate Help Committee Chair Bill Cassidy is ready to support her.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, a lot going on.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like, just we can get back to Nicole Sapphire here.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Heidi Overton is an ideological zealot.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: She is anti-vaccine.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: She is anti-abortion.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: She was the policy lead at the America First Institute.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: She is scary.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: And we are going to continue to follow her.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to have some special content on her a little bit later.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: But back to Nicole Sapphire.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she's invested in every pharmaceutical company in the world.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Look at all the big ones.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: When we say big pharma, this is like a who's who of big pharma.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: And she's making money on all of them.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: Should she be the search of
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: general, Rob?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: In this administration,
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: it's like she was created in a lab of the perfect Trump appointee to upper level
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: of government, right?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like you could not draw it out better.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Was she in Eli Lilly's lab or Johnson & Johnson's lab or Pfizer's lab
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: or AstraZeneca's
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: lab or Merck's lab?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely a compounding lab.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's a compounding lab.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Off the books, not FDA approved, for sure.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so like her, even Kennedy, Dr. Oz,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: like all these people,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: like they're kind of goobers in their own ways
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: and they have their weird little niche things they do and they're making money off
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: the system.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're grifters for Maha and for wellness.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Heidi Overton is different.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as you said she's a zealot,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: in my brain,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: like five seconds before that,
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: when you brought her name up, I thought zealot, right?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: So she, to me, beyond any of those other people, is more terrifying by orders of magnitudes.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because she's a zealot.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because she buys it.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: She breathes,
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: she sleeps all of this garbage that these people do a little here,
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: a little there for their little side piece or maybe make a little money off of this,
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: that, the other.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think she would do this job for zero dollars and pay someone to do it just
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: to be there to be a zealot.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's terrifying.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's terrifying.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: The surgeon general is primarily a communications role.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think it has 6,000 staff at its disposal.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a nothing job.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's an important job, but it is not the head of the FDA.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: The FDA has real power.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: It has market power.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: It has government power.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: It touches so many things in American life.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk a lot more about Heidi Overton.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: When she divests from Philip Morris, do you think she's going to have a cigarette?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think she's going to be the first Surgeon General to light up a cig?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not the first.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: We've got to go back in history.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe since C. Evercoop.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: C. Evercoop was the last Surgeon General.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: He had the thing on the box about it.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's when the morning went on the box about cigarettes causing cancer.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: We'll say since then, yeah, she'll be the first.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: She'll be the first.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, smoke them if you got them, Nicole.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully you don't make it through your confirmation.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: We are going to go to our great interview with PA House candidate Hadley Haas now.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so we'll throw to that.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back, everyone.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: Today, our guest is Hadley Haas.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: She's a Pittsburgh native mother of two and community advocate running
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: for state representative in Pennsylvania's 44th House District
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: in Western Allegheny County.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: She's a longtime volunteer in local schools and a defender of public education.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: And for the last 22 years,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: she's been fighting for childhood hearing impairment awareness
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: after her two sons were born deaf.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for joining us at Paging America.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for the opportunity.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's my pleasure to be with you guys.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great to meet you.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you caught our attention with the recent social media campaign ad
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: where you talked about your two sons who are deaf.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit more about maybe about that,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: about why you're running, a little bit more about your district.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I really think back and my advocacy really started with my sons.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: You just never know where life's going to take you.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And my sons are now 20 and 22.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: But initially, my older son, Declan, wasn't talking and we didn't know why.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And through a series of,
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: rolling things out,
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: we realized that he initially had a moderate to severe hearing loss,
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: started with trying hearing aids.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: He still wasn't making that much progress in the interim.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was pregnant with My second son,
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: we found out a week before my second son Bennett was born
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: that Declan's hearing loss was genetic due to something called Conexin 26.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when Bennett was born, he also carried that recessive genetic trait.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he was severe to profoundly deaf at birth.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Declan's hearing loss progressed.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so we ended up having two surgeries within months of each other.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Both boys got cochlear implants.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think really early on,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: because we missed some time with Declan,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: it was really important that we did everything possible
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: to make sure Bennett didn't miss any of that critical time.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we did a lot of advocacy and I was really trying to make up ground for Declan
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: and make sure we didn't repeat any past mistakes with Bennett.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were advocating really strongly with the insurance company
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: to get approvals for things that initially Were denied.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: My younger son, Bennett, got simultaneous bilateral cochlear implants at six months old.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: That was considered off label,
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: but something they were doing in Europe that,
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: we knew the earlier he could have access to sound, the better off he would be.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, that fight continued for a long time.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Declan initially got one cochlear implant and then got a second,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: and they were going to deny that because he had too much residual hearing.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I had all of this access.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I had family members who worked in the insurance industry.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have family who are doctors.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: My mom had been a speech pathologist.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew a lot of this stuff.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I knew how to make sure we had a peer-to-peer meeting with the medical director at
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: the insurance company,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: who of course is not an ENT and not an expert in any of this stuff,
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: but making sure that they could have The conversations with the experts
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: who could explain to them why this was better,
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: why getting my kids access to sound and this technology would enable them
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: to be thriving, productive adults later in life.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that whole process really showed me how the disparity of opportunity
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: from access to healthcare.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we moved here, we relocated to Pittsburgh, back to Pittsburgh.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was born here.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: My family had moved to Michigan and then I met my husband in Chicago.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: My kids were both born in Chicago.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when they were two and four,
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: we decided to move back here so they could be surrounded by families,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: still have access to good hospitals.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to work with Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh to do some fundraising
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: and advocacy work and eventually fund an educational liaison here.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I also realized the number of families that would move here
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: from central Pennsylvania or Western or West Virginia or Ohio
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: because they didn't have access.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: To the type of services that we had here in Pittsburgh.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And often those kids were so far behind
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: because they didn't even realize what they were missing until it was too late
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: for them to achieve optimal outcomes.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that became a passion for me.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And really that type of advocacy is what set me on this path toward politics.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: I tell you what, every candidate kind of gets that question, what is your why, right?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like why are you running, why are you running?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like that, it's an incredible story.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's an incredible story, particularly someone who had so many connections.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, your mom's a speech pathologist,
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: your doctor's in the family,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: you know, people,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: People in hospitals and all,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: and still, and still you had to kind of, the challenges.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that jumped out to me was that your son had too much residual hearing
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: to qualify for the other cochlear implant.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is where we're at.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, well, sorry, you're not bad off enough.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: We need you to be the worst possible version of the illness you have
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: before we're going to intervene.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, what,
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: was that he had 25% speech perception without his hearing aid with that ear.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he could hear nothing.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we weren't preserving it for anything.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't providing him anything and having that second cochlear implant.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's huge for safety.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: It enables you to localize sound.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: It has all of these benefits and it improves your speech articulation.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it really helped him.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: His teachers,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: we were actually able to go back To the health insurance company after
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: that second cochlear implant about four to six months later.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And our ENT,
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: who's now a good family friend,
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: was able to go back to them and say,
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: this kid, these teachers are reporting that he's more confident.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's less fatigued.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: His speech perception or his speech articulation improved vastly.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they were able to change their guidelines around bilateral cochlear implants
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: because of that experience.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: What insurance company was that?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: So initially when we were in Chicago, it was Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then here in Pittsburgh, it was UPMC Health Plan.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Great job, Blue Cross in Illinois.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got a Chicago guy here in miles and I'm in Michigan.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for your great effort, Blue Cross.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: You're doing a bang-up job.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: To the point about disparity in access to the health system and why you're running,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: so Pennsylvania has lost more than 25 of its hospitals over the last decade,
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: and at least another dozen are at risk,
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: closing due to the recent Medicaid cuts and the one beautiful bill.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: How do you think your state should respond to the challenging environment
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: for hospitals,
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: especially those in more rural parts of the state,
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: and especially because we see sort of private equity crawling all over Pennsylvania
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: in a way that's kind of unique in the country?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that question.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is such an important issue in Pennsylvania right now.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And here, even in my district, we lost a hospital.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not immediately in my district, but Ohio Valley Hospital is in Kennedy Township.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know anything about Pittsburgh, people don't like to cross bridges.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this is on one side of the Ohio River and it was,
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know, where People went to the ER, members of my family.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I have lots of family who grew up in that part of Pittsburgh, and they all went there.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever there was an emergency, they were over at Ohio Valley Hospital.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like something imprinted in me as a child.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: We would go visit my grandma at Ohio Valley Hospital, and that closed in 2025.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's still a relatively dense area,
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: but they have to cross the river and cross the bridge to get over to swiftly to get
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: to the other Heritage Valley Hospital.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: They've lost access to that emergency room.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was also an inpatient mental health facility that the community no longer has.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a big loss.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I know we're seeing that across the state and we absolutely need more oversight
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: and around private equity and mergers and acquisitions.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: There is a bill to make sure that the Attorney General here
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: in Pennsylvania had access to that in order to potentially shut down some
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: of these mergers if they were impactful for communities.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the least we can do to ensure access in Pennsylvania.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just at an event and I saw Representative Borowski,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: who was, I think, the sponsor of that bill.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she expressed her frustration with,
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: as these bills and you're not in the legislature yet,
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: hopefully you will be next year.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: But as these things kind of get washed through the cycle of two houses
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: and she said it had so many amendments that gutted it
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: that she's not even sure she could support the thing that she originally conceived.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: so would you favor something,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: with more teeth,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: with stronger provisions such that we could really kind of keep private equity out,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: that profit model out of the hospitals in Pennsylvania?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: In Pennsylvania, 100%.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something where right now in Pennsylvania,
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: we have a two-seat Democratic majority in the State House,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: and we don't have the Senate.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it's 27-23 in the Senate, Republican majority.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really hard to get meaningful things done.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that by adding seats,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: so this seat where I'm running in Western Pennsylvania is one of
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: the top flip opportunities for Democrats across the state and our best chance
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: in Western Pennsylvania and really one of the top most important elections in all
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: of Allegheny County.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because we need to strengthen that majority
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: because we know we can get more meaningful things done and we don't have
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: to compromise with members who might be in more difficult districts.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: We can just be stronger about our convictions and get meaningful legislation passed.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly I'm feeling very confident about my friends who are running
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: for those state Senate races too.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: And really hoping that we can get a trifecta because the deadlock
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: in Harrisburg has been really frustrating.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's been fascinating to watch sort of the unstructured retreat at the top of
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: the ticket,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: where essentially they've given up on the governor's mansion,
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: which hopefully has down-ballot effects, fingers crossed.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: Earlier this year,
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled that your state's 44-year-old ban
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: on using state Medicaid funds for most abortions is unconstitutional,
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: and that your state's constitution's Equal Rights Amendment guarantees
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: a fundamental right to reproductive autonomy.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Are Pennsylvania's strong abortion protections at risk of being reversed or of being defanged?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what would you like to see to ensure reproductive freedom in the state?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, thank you for the question.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is really important.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is something that we...
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Feel comfortable.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: People like take their eye off the ball in Pennsylvania because we do have
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: the governor's mansion and we do have that slim majority in the state house.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: But what we know is that we can't depend on that.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: We never know what's going to happen.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really important that we pass legislation to codify the right
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: to abortion here in Pennsylvania.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something that my opponent has opposed.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Something that we really need to get done.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And again, with that trifecta, I feel confident that we could do that.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: It'll be a meaningful change and protect the rights of women across the state going forward.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: Your opponent is an incumbent.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: What flavor of pro-life is this person?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Is it like just regular radical or are they like extra radical?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Where do they fall down in the continuum?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: Of sort of people that are on the fridges of this issue.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: It depends who you ask, right?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: She pretends to be a regular radical,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: but then does things that kind of put her in the other category.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: Behind closed doors.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Makes a lot of excuses because she's not going to vote for that because
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: a medical provider could be a dentist.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of dentists are opening abortion clinics, right?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was something she said on the House floor.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, God.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: A radical.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that's being put out there somewhere.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: I really hope.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And saying it's what it is, so like a radical, but being kind of a coward about it.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: I said it, you're definitely going to move on it.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad you're talking about this because I was just at a meeting of docs
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: in Pennsylvania and one asked me in particular,
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: why are people running on reproductive rights?
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: We have strong abortion protections, right?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: What is the problem?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's really important for people to understand
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: They need to be stronger.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like the number of attacks that are coming at us from the federal level,
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: from people in the state on a regulatory basis at the FDA,
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: all that are coming out so fast and furious.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: You need to shore that up in the States.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we did it here in And I'm glad that that's something that you're talking about.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: it isn't the topic it was in 2024 when I ran the first time
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: where it was something we were leading on all the time.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: we're talking about affordability,
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: especially healthcare, affordability, housing, things like that, energy.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: But we know we can't take our eye off the ball on it.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we always,
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so one of the ways we think about it is like the zealous stay in motion.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: So like even if we do,
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: even if we are able to secure people's rights, it doesn't like mean that they stop.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: So that sort of,
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: so making sure that there's like an ongoing bulwark against is so important
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: in Pennsylvania in particular.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you brought up 2024,
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: and so just kind of looking back,
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: you lost in 2024 to the current incumbent,
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: and yet in the primary,
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: you received nearly twice as many votes as Valerie Gatos, the incumbent.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I'm just wondering how things have changed in the 44th District,
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: and kind of what does that much larger turnout tell you about what we can expect
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: in six and a half weeks?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it's a great question.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: We, you know, that was my first time running for office.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: I had no name recognition at the beginning of it.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: We ran a really strong campaign and we worked really, really hard.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: And like most of us, we felt pretty depleted and dejected after the 2024 election.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Governor Shapiro actually had a Zoom call with a few of us and was like, stay in the fight.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to go through a lot of hard things,
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: but that's going to mean that the environment is going to look different
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: for Democrats in 2026.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about that all the time because truer words have never been spoken.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've gone through a lot of hardship.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: But what we've seen is that Democratic enthusiasm far outstrips Republican enthusiasm here.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen growth in our Democratic committees around the district.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: People are out,
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: they're meeting,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: they're knocking doors, they're talking to their friends and neighbors.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: yard signs don't win elections,
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: but I have a lot more yard signs out there right now
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: because people are just excited.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: But we've done other things, too.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've done this senior outreach program where we've been in senior centers
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: and nursing homes and finding ways to make sure we're meeting voters where they are.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing family picnics and doing school supply drives to reach younger families.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we're doing a lot of different things.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Polling suggests that this is a much different year,
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: that the enthusiasm is on our side and that my name recognition is building on
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: where we left off last time.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just working a lot harder.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Our team has knocked over 20,000 doors.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've been knocking thousands of persuasion doors over the past several months,
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: having good,
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: meaningful conversations with independents and Republicans and showing them
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: that I'm someone That no matter your political persuasion,
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm willing to show up and look you in the eye and listen to what matters to you
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: and treat you with compassion and respect.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Miles is a political strategist.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not, but I don't know.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think more yard signs sounds like a good thing.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if you win, maybe, maybe it was a yard.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good thing.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: there's a great study,
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: I believe it's out of Stanford,
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: where in low salience elections,
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: yard signs actually have a measurable treatment effect.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: So the people who are out there saying yard signs don't vote,
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: they're dismissing great science, actual political science.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that, Kyle.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: Hadley, I think we're probably wrapping up here.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: So if people want to support you in your race or they want to learn more about you,
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: where can they find you?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my website is Hadley4PA.com.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's the word F-O-R.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also Hadley4PA on Facebook and Instagram, and we've got a lot of good content out there too.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Would love to have extra volunteers,
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: even if you're in neighboring states like Ohio,
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: New York, West Virginia, come help us out here.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're looking for people to knock doors and make calls and have good conversations
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: and be a part of something that's really hopeful and exciting.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you so much for joining us at Paging America.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: Hadley Haas is the candidate for Pennsylvania House District 44.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for joining us.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed it.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: Great interview with Hadley.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're rooting for her.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully she does well
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: on election night.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: All right, today's episode was written by Chris Savage, Dr.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: Rob Davidson and me,
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Miles Baker,
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: Paging America,
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: The Situation Womb,
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: and all of our on-call segments this week were produced by Peter Ogburn
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: and Chris Savage.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: All shows were edited by Peter Ogburn and April Stewie.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: Our music is by Annette Somerset at Duneflower Productions.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: And if you enjoyed today's show,
• 44:06
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• 44:08
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• 44:10
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• 44:12
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• 44:14
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• 44:15
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• 44:18
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• 44:22
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• 44:25
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• 44:27
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• 44:30
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• 44:31
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• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: As always, it was great chatting.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: See you next week.