Meidas Health EMERGENCY Episode: Mass Chaos as Trump Panel Blows Up

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2:38Ben Meiselas:SpinQuest is a free to play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpinQuest.com for more details. This is an emergency edition of Midas Health. Dr. Vin Gupta is the leader of the Midas Health initiative that we do here to counter all of the disinformation, all of the quackery, all of the dangerous conspiracies coming out of the Trump regime. And we had to do this emergency edition to conclude this week based on all of the lies coming out of this regime, the current health department, which might as well be named the anti-health department at this point. And you probably have been hearing about these hearings or these committee meetings being held by something called the ACIP, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice.

3:35Ben Meiselas:And they've basically replaced the committee members who have scientific backgrounds, who required peer review information, who used rigorous scientific testing, and who were there for the greater interests of public health. And they replaced it with RFK Jr. Stooges in the depths and the bowels of conspiracy, of anti-vax world, of far right-wing extreme podcast world, again, of spreading this dangerous quackery. And look, when it's just right-wing podcast world and it's not totally informing public health decisions that impact all Americans, it's one thing, as dangerous as that is. But now this is actually impacting the type of vaccine recommendations that are being made, that are reaching the physician level, that are reaching the level of, hey, when I'm bringing my 11-month-year-old daughter to the doctor, what types of medication, what types of vaccines are the doctors prescribing?

4:46Ben Meiselas:My brother Brett, as you all know, just had a baby as well in the past two weeks. What types of vaccines and medications are going to be encouraged, discouraged the chilling effect on physicians to prescribe certain types of medications as a result of CDC, HHS, NIH being co-opted. So Dr. Gupta, I want to break this all down with you. I mean, you know, of course there's this headline this week that RFK juniors, HHS voted to no longer recommend this critical vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella, and other things. I want you to get into it. The question is, there seemed to be even confusion among the medical community what was actually being recommended or not.

5:37Ben Meiselas:It actually seemed that at the ACIP committee, the Trump, RFK-backed people had no clue what, they didn't even know the process as you were listening to the committee. They didn't even understand what their role was in this. And they were laundering in non-peer-reviewed stuff the entire time. The question was also, what else were they going to take away from recommendations? And were they responding to public pressure or not? There just seemed to be mass confusion out there. I'll tell you, the American Academy of Pediatrics. This isn't like the Democratic American Academy of Pediatrics. I mean, we're seeing just medical groups across the country issuing statements like this.

6:24Ben Meiselas:Today's ACIP meeting promoted false claims and misguided information about vaccines. AAP will continue stepping up and working with local, state, and federal partners to make sure every child and every community continues to have access to immunizations. You had Ed Markey post measles, mumps, rubella. The vaccine is safe, it's effective, and it protects us all. RFK Jr. is leading our country into dangerous, uncertain territory. He must resign. And it talks about the advisory panel recommending restrictions on MMRV vaccines. You and I also talked about restrictions on COVID vaccines. There's a lot to follow, Doc.

7:04Ben Meiselas:So what should our audience take out of what's been happening this week in general? Where are we? Well, Ben, I mean, that was quite the tee up and completely on point. You know what I would say to everybody listening is there is no new medical information that the United States Health and Human Services Administration has that no other country somehow has. And no other country is having these types of discussions. So I think, number one, we're inventing some sort of problem here that isn't really a problem, number one. And two, then they're coming up with these so-called solutions in this effort, Ben, and we talked about this, to portray that there's some sort of white knight pushing forward radical transparency in healthcare.

7:51This is what they're claiming. And they're claiming that those of us actually caring for patients, pediatricians across the country, I'm a pulmonologist, that somehow we're duping our patients and holding critical information. So that's their game. That's the agenda and the narrative arc. But what do you need to know? First of all, nothing that they've done in the last 36 hours in any way is helpful to any American family, number one. They have not made a one consequential decision that's going to improve the lives of everybody. What it's going to do is it's going to confuse everybody. And I've gotten a ton of questions from patients, from peers.

8:29What is going on? How is this impacting coverage? What can and can we not do when it comes to the COVID vaccine? They're worried about hepatitis B vaccine being on the chopping block for reasons that would make absolutely no sense. And so this has caused a bunch of confusion without actually materially helping anybody because that's not the point. They're not in this to actually help anybody. But let's take a few examples. Today, they're saying that we should now, for those under 65 years of age, engage in shared clinical decision-making, to use their words, between patient and provider on whether or not to get the COVID vaccine, which sounds like a good thing.

9:11Sounds like a happy phrase. Talk to your medical provider about the COVID vaccine. Here's the problem then. For the last five years, people are normed to go to their pharmacist, get the shot. It's part of a routine. Yes, we're not back in the throes of the pandemic. Yes, the urgency is different. But there are still important groups that need this vaccine without needing to have a long conversation with their medical provider. That's the whole point of these organizations. Give firm recommendations based on the evidence so that you can make the life of your frontline clinicians easier because we can't talk about everything.

9:45It's an incredible burden that you're putting on medical providers, primary care doctors, pharmacists across the country to say, hey, add this to your workload. We litigate things that we don't need to be litigate. So what does the American Academy of Pediatrics say? Kids between six and months and 23 months of age, regardless of their underlying history, Ben, should get the shot. Pregnant women should get the shot. No shared clinical decision making. This is nuts that we have to now add this additional barrier, which is what every medical society is saying. why are you introducing this barrier of effectively needing a prescription?

10:19What they really want to do is say, if you're between six months and 64 years of age, talk to your medical provider first to get their approval and blessings, which is in effect a form of a prescription. Why? Why do we need to do that? This is part of their agenda. Number two, we talked about this earlier, the combination measles, mumps, rubella, varicella vaccine, they eliminated that as an option for kids yesterday for those kids under four years of age. Again, no medical reason why. We have no new information. What I should tell you is that the CDC prior to this yesterday, the American Academy of Pediatrics have already said for kids under four years of age, there's a very small risk of something called febrile seizures.

11:05If you give this as a first dose to protect against measles, mumps, rubella, varicella. Four infectious diseases, one shot. The advice to parents is, you know what, because there's this very small risk, let's split the shots. Give measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella separately to eliminate that very, very small risk. Some parents, though, have a difficult time accessing healthcare. Some parents have kids that are very needle phobic. Who likes needles? But some are very needle phobic. So there's a purpose to that combination shot, where after a discussion about risks and benefits, specifically in this case, we provide it in very select cases.

11:45Eliminating this combination shot in the absence of any new data makes no sense. Again, it's a barrier that didn't need to exist, but it aligns with their narrative that somehow they're doing something that should have been done for many, many decades. No, this was all transparent. We talked about it. And sometimes medicine, It's the art of medicine. There's nuance here. Lastly, I'll just say, today, they did something interesting. Just to give your audience a sense of how unqualified the people on this panel that RFK installed are. They, yesterday, voted to remove this combination shot for kids under four.

12:21What did they also do yesterday, Ben? They voted to then say the Vaccine for Children's program that funds the provision of these vaccines across the country for kids should continue to fund access for kids under four completely. So they're saying, medically speaking, they're going to remove eligibility for kids under four. But when it comes to the financials, keep funding it. How does that make any sense? So somebody pointed out to them overnight, hey, by the way, you might want to change your vote because it's contradictory. You're saying fund vaccines, that combination shot for kids under four.

12:56But you also told the American public, you're going to remove the indication for kids under four. help us understand that. Overnight, it was revealed that they didn't know what they were voting for, so they reversed the decision today. That should be chilling to all of us, regardless of political ideology, Ben, that our top now top leaders, quote unquote, guiding vaccine policy for the country do not even understand what votes they are taking. And here they are, potentially they're delaying this vote, but they're going to take a vote soon on hepatitis B vaccine for kids and the birth dose. That's shocking to me that we're even having that debate, but especially with an unqualified panel that doesn't even know what they're voting for, they're going to make these consequential decisions.

13:40That's why you're seeing states really take the lead here, like the West Coast Health Alliance, California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, say, you know what? Enough's enough. We're not paying attention to these yahoos. We're going to take matters into our own hands. You're going to see more models like that.

13:53Ben Meiselas:Right. We're seeing a kind of Northeast model. We're seeing a West Coast model. And then we're seeing a Florida model, which is going deeper down the rabbit hole. So it's interesting to see the state coalitions form West Coast blue states. Hey, we got to follow the science. We got to protect people. We got to just do what the scientists are saying. Same thing. The Northeast model, like the West Coast Alliance, they announced their formation in the past week as well. And then it seems that Florida wants to almost lead the way in the anti-vax, anti-science stuff. And it's going to result in horrific, horrific outcomes.

14:33Ben Meiselas:You know, I think about authoritarian regimes in the past and dictatorships and and countries that were not developed democracies, you know, in periods where major viruses would spread. I mean, I remember, you know, all of the lies that would come out about HIV and how America had to combat all of this, all of that disinformation there. And especially because a lot of the lies about it at a leadership level by by strong men leaders in certain countries across the world by putting out. And it's a similar mindset as a Trump that I can I'm the source of info, not the scientists. I alone can fix everything.

15:26Ben Meiselas:And it resulted in horrific outcomes. that we're still dealing with today. But the ultimate irony there, Doc, is that RFK Jr. is reversing all of the progress America made in helping the international community fight things like HIV and other diseases when those could eventually spread here. I mean, people travel to locations. There's no such thing as borders when it comes to viruses. So, you know, so I guess speak to that aspect of it. But then I want to talk about another thing that happened today that I think is going to have profound consequences on the medical profession. It's Trump entirely changing the H-1B process, where we get a lot of residents from foreign countries.

16:24Ben Meiselas:And Trump did something today that may gut about 30 percent of residents who come from international communities who aren't going to be able to afford to come here anymore. We'll talk about that, but maybe talk about the broader assault that you see taking place and the attack on an international perspective as well. You know, you know what I'll note for the audience is RFK's top advisor, Kaylee Means, actually responded and engaged on Twitter with some of the content we've been doing in the last 24 hours. And what's clear is they don't like being called out on clinical terms because they don't have anybody then on their team that is credible in the clinical community.

17:10Not a single person, much less Kaylee Means, RFK's top advisor. I encourage everybody to read something by Catherine Evans, who was actually on Midas Health earlier this season, talking about her investigative reporting on Kaylee Means. This guy is a lobbyist. He has no healthcare background whatsoever, but now is really fashioning himself into this Maha person as though he has a sort of fly-by-night expertise. But you can tell based on his response, they don't have a response. And they're trying to dupe the public by thinking that some activity is meaningful activity. To your point, I alone can fix it.

17:49Just engaging in activity doesn't mean it's high value or that it's doing anything materially for the American public. And that's what we're seeing here. We're seeing marginal sort of ruminations and activity on the edges that isn't actually doing anything for pediatricians, for medical providers to bring clarity, much less for patients to understand what the heck to do. They are confusing people across the board, which is why we're in this unprecedented place where coalitions of states are having to bandy together to say, hey, what do we do? The AAP here is under the crosshairs of RFK. They're putting out tweet after tweet trying to keep up.

18:25This is not normal. I do want to get to your point on residents because I think that's really important to talk about. But this is where we're at. And I Just as a plug for Midas Health, we're going to keep bringing the nation's best healthcare leaders to come to Midas Health, to engage in these conversations, to make sure that your time is used valuably so that people can use Midas Health, frankly, Ben, as a place to get the information that they need. But to plug it real quick, for parents that are confused, and I don't blame you, go to healthychildren.org. This is a website that's completely nonprofit, produced by the American Academy of Pediatrics, also nonprofit, that is aiming to cut through the noise, apolitical, calm, no-nonsense information on childhood vaccines, healthychildren.org.

19:12Ben Meiselas:So let's take a look at the issue as it impacts residents. So the Trump administration, I call regime, they put a, they raised H-1B visa fees, and then also created an expedited path if you pay$1 million for an H-1B fee. As Dr. Nick Mark posted online, he goes, this is going to be absolutely devastating in the medical field. 30 % of residents are international medical graduates, and 10 ,000 of the 43 ,000 residency spots are filled by docs with H-1B visas. Previously, the H-1B fee was$5 ,000. no hospital will pay a$100 ,000 fee for a$55 ,000 resident salary. Or if they do, it's going to mean more of our healthcare costs going up because the money has to come from somewhere and it's always passed down.

20:11Ben Meiselas:So as someone who's gone through these steps and someone who utilizes residents in your day-to-day practice and is part of this whole world. Just explain what a big deal this is to our audience. What happens if we lose residents from foreign countries and what's your experience interacting with those types of residents? First of all, my mom was a foreign medical grad and became a successful neonatologist in Ohio. I have seen that model power health systems in places that American medical grads, just to say it, don't want to live. And we need foreign medical graduates across the spectrum, wherever they're coming from, to care for an aging society.

21:01I mean, Ben, let's just look at the numbers here. We're going to have the oldest society on record by 2027. More people will be over 65 years of age as a proportion of society than those that are working. in the working age demographic. That is shocking. We're looking to look a lot more like South Korea and Japan than we've ever looked like before. They're the most graying societies in the world. We're not far behind them. And what do we need? It's not going to be artificial intelligence. We are over-relying on this amazing technology, AI. Don't get me wrong, it has its place. It's going to do its thing.

21:35But at the end of the day, we need surgeons. We need ICU docs. We need pediatricians, because I'll tell you this, I can't tell you how many patients I've interacted with and families who say, you know what, I'm sick and tired of working with an online medical chatbot to tell me what's wrong with me. I'm going to speak to a human being that I trust. And that's where human capital matters. And that's where we need more human capital because we're having an aging population. Demand for medical services is going to skyrocket. So like everything that this administration has done. The impacts of what we're talking about right now, H-1B visas and fees going up, supply going down ultimately, it's going to show impacts once Trump's out of office, just like NIH cuts.

22:21We're not going to see those immediate impacts to research and therapeutic development happen tomorrow. No, it's going to be the research project that we should have started yesterday, bearing fruit in say 18 to 24 to maybe five years. We're going to see impacts in the medium term. And here, it takes anywhere from four to six years for a resident to graduate, get skilled, get credentialed. So these impacts, they go into effect today, are going to rear their head as we're entering the next election. People that want to get in or need to be seen by a health system, suddenly, where's the human capital to do it?

22:57And here's why this matters for everybody out there. Once you're a full-fledged doctor like myself, I mean, I'll say it, it costs more for a hospital to employ me than a resident. A resident, we often joked about it when I was a resident with my peers. In some ways, it's a form of indentured servitude is how it was sometimes described. We were joking, half joking, but you work long hours, you barely get paid. Who benefits from that? Hospitals. And there's a rhyme to the reason. Hospitals train us. What they give us is an ability to get skills. In turn, we give them heavily discounted medical services.

23:38If you have less people populating and being willing and able to take those jobs, what's going to happen? Same thing that's happening with immigration more broadly in our farms and other places. Physically, we're just not going to have enough people to care for the demand in medical services that every American is going to need at some point. But this is going to rear its head in about four to six years, Ben. And mark my words that this actually gets passed. And it's going to impact Republicans and Democrats. And the irony here is it's probably going to impact red states more than blue states.

24:08Because red states are places where there's more community hospitals, more rural hospitals, frankly, more places where American medical grads tend not to gravitate towards. Instead, who fills the gap? It's the foreign medical grad who Trump just made a lot more difficult. He made their path a lot more difficult to actually get educated here. So where are they going to go? They're going to go somewhere else. They'll go to China. They'll go to Cuba. They'll go to Latin America where they'll get paid, where they will be more welcome, and their path will be a lot easier. And so this is going to have significant impacts, not just in the short term, but very much in the medium term here.

24:49And that's the irony of a lot of these policies. They'll impact red states, and it's not going to be felt immediately. there.

24:54Ben Meiselas:That's why what we're doing at Midas Health, what we're doing at Midas Touch, it has to be viewed really as a generational project. Yes, there is a rapid response the way we do an emergency episode today and say, here's what happened, here's what you need to know. But the enduring mission of Midas Health, which you do every week when we don't have emergency episodes, just bringing in people, yes, the top experts to talk about what's happening now, but also to provide a broader perspective of the past, the present, and the future, because there really needs to be an accountability structure in the future to make sure that when future administrations are handed this bag of SHI, you know what, and people are suffering, that it's not, again, viewed as the firefighters who are creating the fire when they're trying to put out the fire created by the arsonists, and it's not going to be easy to put out.

25:53Ben Meiselas:So it's going to be very easy to blame a future administration, to use a medical term or my own view, a medical term, to pull the bandage off, you're going to see some of the injuries. This current regime just lies. We brought in$17 trillion. Everything's great. We're perfectly efficient. Things are amazing. But when you have an actually transparent administration that, you know, unrelated to medical. Today, we learned that the Trump administration was blocking inflation reporting. So we don't get to even know what the data is right now from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So in the future, when we find out here's what really went down, it's going to hurt.

26:33Ben Meiselas:We're going to see it, and we're going to have to address it. And we're going to have to do it intelligently. So it's not just, oh, you're there, you inherited it, you're to blame. Otherwise, we're going to be back in this cycle where people who are causing the problems are going to get back in there and keep causing the problems. Before we go, Doc, anything else you want to say in this emergency edition? Tune in to Midas Health. Ben, thank you for giving us a platform to elevate truth, especially in this moment. And we're going to keep bringing you the nation's best. Thank you. Dr. Vin Gupta, leader of the Midas Health Initiative.