Gray Matters Radio With Michael DeVine

A Mount Carmel Hospital doctor has been making the national news this month but for all of the wrong the reasons. While the motives surrounding how a doctor might over-prescribe Fentanyl has not been discovered, the press has been all over the hospital system, asking how this could happen. Th local and national press have been asking the whodunit type tabloid click bait questions but there are ever bigger questions that nobody is asking and more important, nobody is connecting how what is going on at this hospital is actually just a symptom of a much bigger problem in our healthcare system across this country.
If we are truly going to have a debate about healthcare in this country then we need to actually look at what the real problems are and our elected officials have not been honest in explaining that to the public. If they would be honest, then we would all realize that none of their solutions work and that the only purpose of their rhetoric is to distract and divide us so the system stays the same. What are they distracting us from? They are distracting us from the fact that the power that doctors and the medical industrial complex have over healthcare system is one of the main problems with healthcare. It is what makes our healthcare so expensive and why our system is so broken and ironically makes up none of the national debate about what needs to be fixed. This episode kicks off with the Mount Carmel incident because at the core of the problems in our healthcare industry is the power that doctors have over hospitals and how greed plays a central role in their decision making…both the doctor and the hospital. It explains why they are able to get away with so much but also how it drops a huge financial burden on the system…i.e. me, you, tax payers, and our government.
While the press releases from hospitals across the country will lay out all of their plans to prevent abuses from happening and those programs might make us feel better but none of these solutions serve anything more than a band-aid for a bullet wound. The press is missing out on the real story and we are going to deliver it for you. To help explore this topic we welcome our regular healthcare correspondent Richard DeVine who served as the Chief Resource Officer and VP of Supply-Chain for the Mount Carmel hospital system as well as a healthcare supply-chain consultant with over 30 years of experience. If anybody will know the power of doctors and how their power affects the healthcare system it will be him.

Maybe it was a 30 plus day government shutdown, maybe it was our president claiming that 800,000 federal workers were Democrats, maybe it was Nancy Pelosi using a shutdown to play politics and refuse to negotiate, or maybe it was Wilber Ross saying that he didn’t understand why not receiving a paycheck for over a month would make people go to a foodbank. Whatever it was, this shutdown was clear evidence that our government is full of people who put party above country and have absolutely no idea what real Americans are going through.

I would say that the shutdown was the canary in the coal mine dying but that canary died years ago. In all reality the shutdown was a zombie canary that has died several times over and finally was beheaded like in The Walking Dead. But should we really be surprised that all of this is happening? What do we expect is going to happen when 50% of our government is made up of millionaires and Trumps team is made up of multi-millionaires and billionaires. We are talking about people who are so far removed from the reality that most Americans live in that instead of asking why don’t they get it we should be asking ourselves why are we surprised that they don’t get it?

To me it was like the public shift in how Americans viewed war before Vietnam and after Vietnam. It was the first war that Americans saw footage of war and the collateral damage that was being caused. Americans for the first time saw war for what it was and they couldn’t look at it in the same way and demanded change and an end to the war. It took seeing war for Americans to have a paradigm shift. It wasn’t that they didn’t care, it was that it was so far away that they just didn’t know.

I think what we are saying is that it isn’t that the wealthy don’t necessarily care, its that they are so far removed from the struggles of regular Americans that they don’t see the collateral damage of their policies and political games. They don’t see the problems that their tactics to get elected or their rhetoric creates. But that brings up the question of do they have the ability to represent us if they don’t understand us? I think that answer is resoundingly clear. Texas State Rep. John Bucy said it himself, that you can’t run for office if you are not wealthy because it doesn’t pay enough. The worse part is that they want it that way…which means the system is rigged to only elect wealthy people that largely have no ability to understand the average American.

Join us as we discuss this all too important topic and try to figure out who we want to be as a country and what we need to take the country back & elect people that actually have the ability to represent and understand us. Joining me in the studio as always is my co-host Bill “Billy Ray” Reed of the armchairqb.org and we are also joined by our political correspondent Richard “The Professor” DeVine.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

One of the things that has really bothered me about this whole border wall induced government shutdown…besides the actual shutdown…is the fact that we are shutting down the government and making immigration out to be the gravest threat to our existence when other much more grave threats are going on right now and nobody is talking about them.

We have discussed the issue of substance abuse a lot on this show but I wanted to hit the growing issue of the rash of pregnant mothers who are struggling with addiction. What makes this problem even worse is that nobody is really talking about it. What is even worse is that I knew that I would have to get peoples attention in other ways to care about this topic besides the awful details of what it is like for a baby to be born with NAS or Neo-natal Abstinence Syndrome. The numbers of children being born with NAS have quintupled in the last 5 years.

So why would anybody care about this besides the obvious and how does this relate to the government shutdown? Well, Medicaid covers roughly 51% of all child-births in this country and guess what, 81% of babies born with NAS is paid for by Medicaid. To put it in perspective the average cost of a Medicaid childbirth is $3500 where an NAS child costs $66,000 on average to Medicaid. The costs don’t end there, most of these kids will stay in the system and usually have IQ deficiencies, mental illness, learning disabilities, neurological problems, etc. for the rest of their lives which requires continued care from Medicaid and eventually Medicare or Social Security Disability.

The Medicaid total budget for 2015 was $535 Billion dollars with almost $200 Billion of that going towards long term care of people with IQ deficiencies, mental illness, learning disabilities, and neurological/medical problems. You don’t have to be an accountant to realize my point here…this problem is literally bankrupting our budget and while we haggle over $5 Billion for a wall we should be talking about how to do more to solve these issues rather then cut the budgets and hope it works. What is the real threat to the average American…a immigrant criminal or drug addiction? What is robbing our country more, illegal immigrants or drug addicts and their drug addicted children?

Our focus is in the wrong place and we need a reality check here! To help me discuss this issue I am joined as always by my good friend and co-host Bill “Billy Ray” Reed of the armchairqb.org and this week we welcome into the studio a nurse with 13 years experience in woman’s services & neo-natal intensive care nursing. Because of the sensitivity of the subject and her current job our guest would only come on the show under condition of anonymity so we shall just call her Nurse Jane.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

If there is one thing that we can agree upon as Americans, it would be that our country is so hopelessly polarized that we can’t even pass a budget anymore without shutting the government down. Instead of doing what is best for the country our politicians are doing what is best for their party at the expense of real Americans. I guess that is what we deserve…allowing ourselves to elect millionaires who have zero clue what it is like to struggle or live paycheck to paycheck.

We should have seen this coming, but like a frog in boiling water we didn’t see it until it was too late. So the question is what do we do about it? The obvious answer is to throw all these bums out but even if we did that, the cancer (i.e. lobbyist, dark money groups, etc.) is still there and would infect even the most idealistic democratic or republican candidates. So maybe we need to have a real discussion of whether it is time to have a legitimate centrist 3rd political party?

The reality is that it’s great in theory but if it were easy to do it would have been done already. That is where tonight’s guest Solomon Kleinsmith of Uniters.org comes in. Join us tonight 7:00est as we dive into the realities of starting a centrist 3rd political party and the reasons why it has to exist but also the challenge of getting there. The short answer…its fucking tough but if we have patience it can happen. So if you obviously don’t want to miss tonight’s episode because the future of our country is at stake and by missing our show you don’t get the plan on how to save it….no pressure at all.

Joining me as always in the studio is Bill “Billy Ray” Reed of the armchairqb.org blog where he keeps me in line and makes sure I keep the show nicely situated in the gray.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

I know this week’s episode is going to raise some debate but if The Gray didn’t take on the responsibility to discuss it then we shouldn’t even be on the air to begin with. For this week’s episode we take on the border wall and decide whether a border wall is the most pressing need in America and whether Trump was right to shut down the government in order to get it. As always we veer far off course in our discussion but always end up exactly where we need to in order to have the discussion that needed to be had on this topic.

Before listening to the show the one question that I want everyone to ask themselves is what are the things that they worry about the most in their lives and the lives of their family members. Not what the media tells you but what you personally worry about the most and why you have that concern. That answer will serve as the basis for our show and our exploration into whether the wall should be built or more specifically when the wall should be built.

This is a hot button issue that will surely strike a chord in all of our listeners but I think regardless of what side of the debate you are on, you will like where me and my guests go with the discussion and walk away with some great insight as to where we go from here as a country. To help me dive into this topic I am joined as always by my co-host Bill “Billy Ray” Reed of the ArmchairQB. & our good friend of 30 years who we only know by the name of Fro. We would ask what his full name is but after 30 years I think it is kind of rude to admit to someone that you don’t know what their real name is.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

Damn, here I thought we would take the Christmas week off from our show and would be able to do a nice fun New Year’s show but apparently this administration can’t take a break for the holiday. Literally so much happened over the Christmas break that we couldn’t even get to everything that happened in one show.

For our New Year’s episode, we decided to catch up on the weeks news and tackle the General Mattis resignation, John Kelly firing, and explore whether Trump’s decision to pull our troops out of Syria and Afghanistan was a good idea. Naturally if we were going to explore middle-east military strategy and history we needed to bring in our resident history correspondent Richard “The Professor” DeVine to keep our facts straight. As always, I am accompanied by my trusty co-host Bill “Billy Ray” Reed of “The Arm Chair Quarterback” to keep me sane and on task.

So while you are cleaning your house for your New Year’s Eve party or just getting ready to go out, tell Alexa or Siri to put on Gray Matters Radio in the background and start 2019 out the right way…in The Gray.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

As a counselor who has worked with families and clients on the Autism Spectrum for over 18 years, I have seen it go from a disorder that people have no clue what it is to almost every person knowing at least one person they are close to having it or being affected by it. One would think seeing the Autism rates jumping from 1/10,000 in 2000 to 1/59 in 2018 would make voters demand their politicians take action in making sure every American has access to quality treatment…but I guess most of us didn’t get the message and instead are too pre-occupied with border walls and whether Donald Trump is a racist.

The sad truth is that while people privately will express concern about autism and whether their child will be born with it, politically we seem to get caught up in the tabloid BS that out media and politicians are peddling. The sad truth is that quality early intervention therapy can cost upwards of $60,000 a year and much of that is not covered by your insurance and partially covered by your state Medicaid programs. Schools have an additional cost of $18,000 per student per year who are on the spectrum and if they already are short staffed now when the autism rates were 1/500, imagine what it will be like in 10 years when babies born today at the 1/59 rate enter the school system. If you aren’t scared yet, most coverage only covers to age 7, and ask any parents of a child on the spectrum what it is like having a teenager on the spectrum and see what the costs for therapy, tutoring or even worse a private therapeutic school that will cost upwards of $50,000 a year.

What about the adult autistic children who will need care much beyond the college years? How does that work on a fixed retirement income? You can try an long term care community but places like 29 Acres in Texas are charging $60,000 per year for long term care. The truth is that not only is our government totally neglecting this important issue, they have no idea how in trouble school districts will be in a few years or how much the social security disability budget is going to explode. How do I know? Because I help my clients on the spectrum in their 20’s get on SSDI and sometimes its the only way to help them and their parents support their children for basic needs like rent.

We have a huge problem on our hands and to make matter worse we have private clinicians and organizations completely taking advantage of the situation and gouging families for insane costs. They have basically made it to where there is tiered care for autistic clients and their families where only the wealthy can get the care that is needed. The schools and programs pat themselves on the backs and have elaborate galas and fundraisers where they pat themselves on the backs for offering free or discounted tuition for a few clients while 85% of their clients/residents are wealthy individuals who pay fill rate and they make a killing, often opening up multiple locations across the country. Where is our government in policing this matter? They step in during hurricane emergencies to make sure no one is price gouging during an emergency so why aren’t they stepping up here? We talk about curing autism now but what about treating autism now? Oh wait that’s right….it’s treating autism now for the rich. I just don’t know how these people sleep at night…very comfortably I suppose.

To dive into this topic I am joined by my good friend Bill Reed of the Arm Chair QB Blog and Ginger the Female Voice of The Radical Center. Join us 12/17/2018 at 7:00est/6:00cst in our quest to bring this important topic to light and help us force our elected officials to actually do something for the people that elected them and prioritize the right things.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

As a counselor, I have a unique perspective on the world. I have this perspective because I get to talk to people from every walk of life, political party, socio-economic status, religion, etc. I would argue that no other profession has a better feel for the heart beat of a nation than counselors. Our only goal is to help so people have a tendency to be honest with us and check all of the BS out of the door.

What I hear people talking about is not fear of illegal immigrants, terrorism. or globalism but rather fear of their children getting addicted to drugs, being depressed and committing suicide, getting bullied, fear of the influence of the internet, being taken advantage of by sexual predators, etc. That is what people worry about and who would blame them? Every year suicide & drug abuse rates go up and despite new awareness and money going towards these programs the numbers keep rising.

Just look at these statistics, according to the CDC suicide rates are growing at their highest rates and in 2016 alone 46,000 Americans age 10 or older committed suicide. That is not including the rash of well publicized cases of under 10 year-olds committing suicide due to bullying. A NSDUH drug abuse study found that over 21.5 million Americans ages 12 and older are struggling with addiction with the CDC reporting 72,000 Americans dying from drug overdoses in 2017 with 2018 trending to top that number. One would think that the news would be covering this non-stop but the problem is that the political rhetoric of border safety, globalism, democrats, republicans, etc. sucks all the air out of the room. They are talking about theoretical consequences of these problems while very real people are dying every year and at increasing numbers.

Why is this not a bigger issue? Maybe its because we think because we hear something about a billion dollars being spent on a program that we are absolved from worrying but guess what? If those programs would work they would have by now. Putting more money in a program like this, is like flapping your arms harder and hoping to fly. We have a huge problem in this country and the media and politicians are distracting us from what we really talk about in private what worry us and its time we change the conversation to the very real threats now. We need to do border security but damn it guys, I want to have a conversation about what really might hurt my 4 year-old daughter in the future and its not some illegal immigrant.

To help me with this discussion, I am going to be joined by our good friend Ron the Opinionated Veteran to help us discuss this all too important topic airing

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

Just 2 short years ago we had elected our oldest president Donald Trump at the young age of 70 years old, which will put him at 74 when he goes for re-election. Now this is not an article or a show that will try to say Donald Trump is a crazy old guy but I do want this show to be about an honest discussion about age and our presidents. Just the other day Joe Biden declared that he was the most qualified person to be president which would make him 78 years old when he would take office. Lets also discuss how the other expected front runners in 2020 are Bernie Sanders who would be 79, Elizabeth Warren who would be 71, and Hillary Clinton who would be 73.

So think about this for a second, most of the major front runners would be well into their 70’s with some being in their 80’s when they got out of office. Now I am not bashing on older people and saying they can’t do the job, but what I am saying is that should we have serious looks at candidates and how their cognitive functioning is at this age? I used to work for a neuro-imaging clinic and we had to assess clients in this age group all the time for what was called pre-frontal lobe dementia.

What is Pre-frontal lobe dementia you ask, it is an early onset dementia that typically begins to show symptoms around the age of 65 and attacks the pre-frontal cortex or the thinking and emotional regulation part of our brain. Here is a summary of the major symptoms of this type of dementia

Personality Changes
Personality changes that can occur because of frontal lobe dementia include:

Impulsiveness
Apathy and indifference
Socially inappropriate behavior
Cognitive Problems
Frontal lobe dementia does not cause memory loss, but it can other cognitive and neurological problems similar to those caused by Alzheimer’s disease or stroke. These symptoms can include:

Difficulty with speech and language
Inability to concentrate
Inability to plan
Using the wrong object for the wrong task, or at the wrong time
Movement and balance difficulties
What is scary about this type of dementia is that many of the patients were brought in by their family, were having significant problems at work, were often leaders of companies, and did not think anything was wrong with them. Because the symptoms were gradual in onset and not overtly present, the companies often had no real way of saying that they were incapacitated and were often left in power to make bad decisions or being taken advantage of by people who knew what was going on.

A family business is one thing, imagine what this would look like if it was a president? President Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when he left office and only then did stories come out about some problems he was having. Imagine if we had a president with pre-frontal lobe dementia which some people are arguing that President Trump has been demonstrating symptoms of. To help us discuss this issue, we are joined by our good friend Max Miller of The Voice of The Radical Center on Talk 1370 AM and also joined by our own Richard “The Professor” DeVine to be our resident elderly statesman.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com

So what is a counselor turned radio show host to do when one of his regular guests Ron the Opinionated Veteran taught him the basics of how to launch a psychological operation? Easy, he decides to use it on his Facebook friends and see what happens. Join us as we go over the Psy-Op campaign that Michael waged on his Facebook friends to see how they responded to emotionally charged comments and Michael’s attempt to bring the conversation from the polarized extremes back to the area of the in-between. Joining us in the studio will be the main guinea pig of this experiment, Michael’s friend of over 20 years & unabashed Trump supporter Ryan X. Well maybe he is still my friend…he might just be coming over to beat me up. So either way you are tuning in to Ryan talking about the experiment with us or to the silky smooth sounds of one mans fist hitting another mans face. All in a day’s work at The Gray Matters Studios.

Gray Matters Radio is a proud member of The Reporters Network family of podcasts & TheReporters.com