Do you want to be an American Scouts Long back at at seven hundred ww on the coldest winter morning, we had a long time six inches of snow over the weekend Saturday.
It was beautiful if you watch it yesterday a little chili, especially ahead of the Bengals game. We had warnings danger with the cold tempts which means hypothermi and frostbite. Let me lay it out for you. The coldest day ever at pay Course Stadium yesterday, and you ask fans to get up early to clear the ice and snow from your driveways, Clear the ice and snow off your cars, buy extra clothes, probably drive on icy roads, pay to park,
pay for seats, and the county taxi as well. They just shelled out over two hundred million dollars to upgrade. You get to the stadium for the Bengals Ravens tilt and then you have to clean your seats off yourself and sit with your feet and butts on more snow and ice to watch them lay a twenty four to nothing lopsided egg against Baltimore to be officially eliminated from playoff contention. Now for the third year in a row, what am i missing here. I don't think I'm missing anything.
It is seatgate on this Monday morning on seven hundred WLW, we have Alisha Reese here and clean your own seat day at pay Course Stadium.
Yesterday Alicia, welcome.
We just paid two hundred and twelve million dollars, gave the Bengals counting money, taxpayer money to redo pay Corps and here we go again. You got to clean your own seats off. Now what are we doing here?
Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, Sloan, I would hope that the media this is frustrates me when they report this. In terms of the Bengals Least deal, it was not unanimous. I've voted against it. I did not support the two hundred and eleven million dollars last Tuesday, which has seemed really rushed. I said, now, what are we rushing to pay this two hundred and eleven million plus dollars to the Bengals when the least is eleven years?
And we passed that.
I did not support it. I didn't vote yet as that was passed before. We have passed the balanced budget that we have to do. We have the budget, the People's budget, which is due this week. We have to pass that by by Thursday. But it seemed to be a rush before this game to hurry up. We had to sell notes, check out more debt which comes with interest, and it was a rush. And we normally vote on Thursdays,
but they were rushing. We got a pay, we got to upgrade the stadium for the future, and I kept saying, well, we.
Do this before.
Right now we got a budget where Prosecutor office may be laying off people. We haven't balanced it yet. We have a budget right now because of this lease that I voted against. The property text for homeowners is going to go up next year in a month, a couple of weeks, they're going to get their bills, and you didn't want to give the homeowners a break. But there seems to have been this rush or to vote on a Tuesday, I believe, or Thursday. They were saying, talk
about it on Tuesday. But the rush a week before the budget is due to be passed to give the Bengals over two hundred million dollars. And then we we have Sunday with this situation where the seats aren't you know, the seats aren't aren't cleaned. Everyone else was making sure the city and everyone else was trying to make sure that the streets and all those things were clean. Because this wasn't like a surprise snow right.
We saw this, We saw this coming. We saw this coming. He was coming to clean our driveways, our cars. But the good news here is that according to the team, in the NFL rule book, by the way, says that you're required to remove snow from the entire seating bowl before games. The NFL said, well, the Bengals did the bare minimum to meet that requirement. But it is not the first time this has happened. Happened a year I think two years ago where the seats weren't cleaned off.
That is a fan safety issue during severe weather. And so what what enforcement mechanisms does a county have. Do you have any any saying their their ability to keep fans safe.
Well, keywords you said was bare minimum, and that's what we've seen. There's been a bare minimum, and then it's on the backs of the taxpayers. One of the things I want to make sure, because you always got to read the fine print. When I get down to back down to the office, I want to ask the administrator.
I want to make sure there's no small print or any written clause that turns it back on the taxpayers of Hamilton County because a lot of things that in the in these leases, they've been very uh, you know, being an ownership has been very good at flipping things back. You know, that has any cost association, it gets slipped
back to the county. So, you know, one of the reasons I've been one of waits to hear from our administrator because I don't want to have something that he said, oh well, you know in this over here it was a little line and we agreed to pay for it, because there's a lot of things in that lease that in other other owners other markets, they you know, the team pays forward the ownership, and in our market there seems to be a lot of things that fall on
the tax payers. And so I want to make sure before speaking definitively that that hadn't slipped in somewhere and all of a sudden it becomes you know.
Mission counties. Well, the good news, isy a.
I have a copy of the master agreement here and it is on page nine thirty seven, paragraph twenty eight, sub section eleven, double E. It says that any finds levied by the National Football League relative to snow removal shall be under the sole province and paid exclusively by Commissioner Alsia Reese Hamlin County.
What do you make it?
I know they love to hear that.
That's why I said no.
To this least, No to the least the.
Least put it on.
It's always and also don't want they say, well, now, you know, because we got these new changes and we'll slip it in and and that's what I hear. A lot of it always flips back to the to the taxpayers. And so that's where I have some concern and making sure, yes we do have facilities people, Yes we do have those things, but we should not be paying for all of the extras. And that's what usually happens to to uh,
to us. What I've seen in my years of you know, my few years of being down there, it has been shocking to me. But but no, it was a flap of the face to to the to the fans. And we knew. Everyone knew that this weather was coming. They knew when the snow was falling. They even reported when it was going to stop falling. They knew that the the that it was going to get colder and all those kind of things. And at this at the end of the day, you have the word bear minimum. And that's what's been going.
That's the subject on my show today. We'll get after you go.
I'm going to talk more about the bare minimums, because that really is what what the driver here is, uh, what the legendary cost cutting measures of teams have during the negotiations during contract Have you ever raised concerns with team ownership about a pattern of prioritizing profit and expenses over fan experience that coming.
Well, we started with that.
I said, well, wait a minute, because remember I was on your show and there were some concerns about the seats that are not in the club level where they can make more money. Remember I said, what about the seats up at the top when they were redoing seats brought broken the broken escalator. We were talking about that. So I have constantly been on fan experience when they come down there, whether they're coming down for a game
or another event, but fan experience. And then remember they we got these reports about we we you know, the stadium didn't get good uh didn't get good grades nationally at the top. They even went into the food.
Remember they talked.
About the food for the for the team players families and uh, they also talked about help we got food. Remember for disability, a gentleman couldn't get to the restroom because it's not just it's not accessible throughout the whole stadium. I even talked about going into the stadium. They would have people. Uh they would say, well, no, you got to go all the way to the other side of a person walking with a walker trying to get to
the sensibilities area. And I said, listen to all areas this twenty twenty, you know five all areas should be accessible in this day and climate. And so those were some of the things that we keep hearing that we are always doing the bare minimum with the top dollar on the taxpayers. Even in this deal, they come in and say, well, we're gonna do the bare minimum for the homeowners. Even though the homeowners were promised thirty percent were gonna do the bare minimum, and they went to
four percent. So it seems to be a pattern of the bare minimum. I said, hey, we want to have more events there. Remember we wanted to have the WWE. I believe it was the smack down Summer summer swam right, they went to Cleveland. We at that time we hadn't even applied. So I came on your show you mentioned it. I said we should apply once again. We do the bare minim. Well, we can't have one event a year,
and you know that's good enough. So it has been the bare minimum, bare minimum on their end, but the top dollar on the tax payer end.
There's no Commissioner Lisha resh on this year, we're talking about shovelgate at pay Corpse Stadium and acting like this is hey, this is a rare weather circumstance. I mean, we've known about this for days in advance, and then we're gonna get bitterly cold temperatures on Sunday.
That forecast was accurate.
You planned for that kind of stuff, and we act as if or the response has been, well, it's like a while, it's a big deal. You got to stay in ice and snow. It's not like we don't get ice and snow in Cincinnati. And there are the cold weather stadiums, and I consider it's a cold weather stadium this time of year that they you don't see that happening. You know, now, if you get an event where it's snowing an inch an hour, it's going to be awfully
tough to clear. We understand that we've seen that before, but the storm had ended, plenty of places were cleared off. It wouldn't be that much to ask if they were clearing it as the snow fell before it turned to ice. How do you make sure that doesn't happen again? And I say that because I think it was the last time the Bengals were in the playoffs three years ago. I recall or maybe the year before, where the same
thing happened. The snow fell and there was no adequate planning place to remove the snow and they said, I we'll do better next time. Your contemporary there on the commission, Stephanie Summer Dumas, said that we need to do a better job for next time. Well, this is the next time after three years ago. It doesn't seem like they care or the messages have been received. Do you have any influence in your position to make that happen?
Well, I believe that the influence that the county commissioners had is when we went into the negotiation, and that's why everything in negotiation needed to really be on the table with you know, some type of penalty because you know, if someone goes in there and say they fail, you know, then there's a liability that could you know, fall on the county as well, the county taxpayers. When they filed that lawsuit about the restroom, they didn't just put the Bengals,
they put they put Hamilton County. And then the Bengals ownership wanted to remove themselves from the lawsuit and leave it to the taxpayers. And so really these type of things, that's why I went to know on the on the deal, you've got to really and then be enforceable. It can't be Well, they made a call to the administrator and now he comes and we don't get to talk to each other. Three of us are on the county commission
of to talk. That would be a majority, so there's only one person who can talk to all three of us, and so we end up saying one thing, and then he has a meeting and then they come out and then the next thing, I know, well, we're okay with it. We should have you know, we've got it again. If we hadn't rushed last week to do the two one hundred and eleven million dollars we'd had some leverage, but it's hard to have leverage. If you've given them the checkbook and you've written a blank.
Check, that's over.
You know.
I tried to have some Yeah, you talked about seat gate, has been homeowner gate. I mean, there's been a lot of gates down there.
I mean it's a lot of things going on, but you got to take care of it.
Oh my god, you're negotiating the check book. That's where you have the power.
I don't know how you hold it.
Most I would say almost every other NFL team save maybe one except I don't know if there's an exception or not to that would look at in the public outcry going. Man, you know what, it's the fan experience.
It's a bad look for the team. It's a bad look for the city and the franchise because things like this happen, not not frequently, but enough to establish a pattern if you go back in time, that they simply will do the bare minimum and don't care what the fans or the media or anyone else thinks for that matter. They only care about what their opinions are inside pay corps in the front office, and typically other teams would look at this and go, yeah, this, this gives our
franchise a bad look. We better clean this up and fix it for next time. I think almost every other NFL team thinks that way, except the Bengals.
Yeah. I can't tell you how they think. I just know that when I look at the actual deal. And when you have a chance, Remember we had to have a free watch party, Sloan, you and I. They said let's do what. It came from a It came from a fan that said let's do it. They were once said we can't do it, and then the next thing I know, they came back with it. We found a way to do it. Now we want to do it for ninety nine dollars. We wanted to have some free to get back to the fans every time we want
to do. We wanted to have something to get back to the homeowners.
And they said, now we want.
All the money, and now we only can do four.
You know what I'm saying. So anything that doesn't.
Make money, from what I've seen, it's always we'll put it on the If it costs money, the taxpayers, we want you to pay. If it makes money, then again then it's okay for them. And again there was so much pressure to pass this two hundred eleven million dollars right before. I don't know if they knew that the season was going to end or something, but it was, you know.
The administration said, we got it.
We gotta go, said, this is an eleven year deal. Why we gotta do it so quick? We gotta do it, even before we balance the budget.
We gotta do it.
And now they've done it, and uh, it's two hundred eleven million dollars out a three hundred and fifty million we don't put. That's a pretty big front load. And now here we are, not even a week later, and now we're talking about, well, wait a minute, the seats. What wasn't now you know, well it removed from seat.
You feed enough pigeons, you get fat, happy pigeons. That's what you get.
Commissioner Lisha Reese on seatgate this morning on seven hundred W there's nothing you can do.
It's over. But uh, it helps I think collectively to complain.
No, I think it's you know, we got to bring these things up and and I'm gonna ask the administrator to see what really can be done, and it should be done. But I want to make sure Swan thank you for having me on. But I hope these media when they write that he said, commissioners passed two hundred and eleven million dollars. I didn't vote yes. Please it was two to one.
We know, we know you made your case.
We got it.
I told you so. I told you so the I told you so. Alisha. I always appreciate you coming out. I have a great day.
I don't know if you know this, but Alisha Reese did not vote for them. She always brings the heat, and God knows we need some heat this morning, especially if you suffered through yesterday's If you suffered through yesterday's game, uh and happened to go there, I'll bump you to the top of the call list here because we're going to examine from top to bottom the central idea of the segment of the show this morning, from Alicia to your calls coming up next after news, and that is
the bare minimum, Bengals, the bare minimum. And if you just do the bare minimum, do you ever expect to win a championship in your lifetime? We'll get to that next on the show right after this on seven D all right, slowly rolling with you on this cold Monday morning on seven hundred ww that's a beauty of Cincinnati. Though it'll get better. It always gets better, and and rather quickly. How crazy is this Rob Reiner thing that his wife, Michelle Singer he murdered yesterday, found dead near
Los Angeles home outside of Brentwood. I believe prime suspect as their son. Holy smokes. And what's really weird was I got Saturday? I was flipping through some stuff and Spinal Tap two was on. Rob Ryan of course start directed that one and makes me want to go away. I watch the one, I guess, okay, but man at first one.
Is just classic.
It's classic thought and I was thinking the time, going god, Rob Briner, man talk about a guy just owns it, and now on a day later he's murdered.
Crazy.
I mean, think of the movies he produced, Princess Bride, Harry met Sally, stand by Me, a few good men. I mentioned Spinal Tap, Misery with Kathy Bates and Stephen King Men, goest to Mississippi. Tons of great movies he made his director and of course you know, if you're old enough, remember him as Meathead. It all started with Meathead. Meathead is dead long lived meathead. There's a crazy story
continue unfold. We'll follow that for you too. Rough day in the National Football yesterday, Micah Parsons and Pat Mahomes both going down with knee injuries, season ending knee injuries.
DeVante Adams thought a hamstring. It was rough.
Uh, so, you know, things could be worse, but how much worse could they possibly be? For us here in Cincinnati, we saw about six inches of snowfall on Saturday night. I like snow. I thought it was a beautiful snowfall. The better cold yesterday, no one likes. And ahead of the Bengals game, we had ample warning that there would be snowfall. We knew what was coming. Despite us often pointing fun and making fun of and rightly so, climbate terrorists.
Now they got it right. And it was well, we're gonna get maybe four to five inch, okay, now, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, We're going to go four to eight and yeah, most of the avery six inches And of course he dangerously cold temperatures following that, so that means hype with thermi it means frostbrights. It was the coldest day ever at pay Court Stadium. You ask fans to get up early.
You ask fans to clear ice off their driveway, snow off their driveways, off their cars, buy extra clothes, probably drive on icy roads, pay to park, pay for seats at the stadium, which, by the way, just last week, just last week, as Alisha Rees pointed out, we spent two hundred and eleven, two hundred and twelve million dollars
to upgrade. And you show up after doing all that for a team that is just about da and you have to clear the seats off using your credit cards and your gloves, and you put all that snow where at your feet to stand on more snow and morice to watch them lose twenty for nothing and simply not show up and be eliminated from the playoffs for the third year in a row. As a Bengal fan, how does that make you feel? As a taxpayer, how does
that make you feel? The scary part about this is the Bengals, and Alicia touched on it slightly, and that's the problem with this whole thing is it's the bare minimum Bengals. The Bengals have been a bare minimum team during their existence. That and I'm convinced that the Bengals will never win a Super Bowl in my lifetime, and I know how close we are. I'll get to that in a second. But we hear about all the seismic changes that have occurred since Burrow's arrival, you know, the
ring of honor, on and on, which is true. There's been some changes, But the clear, unchanging, immovable fact, the irrefutable truth, is this team will always do the bare minimum required that existing is plenty. It's plenty, the bare minimum. If you look at the front office now, granted they've added some pieces here, but still the league's smallest front office. We have the small scouting staff and analytics the players
at one time, and this goes back in history. Remember when players were told to hey, if you want gatorade, you got to stop at UDF and bring bring yourself with bottle of water.
We got a drinking fount in here, we got bottle water. No, bring your own bottle of water.
There was a time where I think it was a visitors locker room, or maybe it was also the homelocker and they had to use hand towels instead of full sized tolls. They only had hand tols. It was TJ. Huschman Zada. That said, the Bengals made us jockstraps the only option for player, So Willie Anderson went out and acts with his own money, bought jockstraps to the entire team. There are times where the Bengals refuse to pay for hotels for a team to stay at the hotel before
home game. Hell, look what they did with Boomer sizing. If you, hey, we're gonna induct you in the Ring of Honor, We're gonna give you two complementary tickets, and if you want more, you got to pay for those. And also we're not picking up the tab for your travel or your accommodations. We saw the contract stands of legendary contract stands and makes one wonder why are we
doing this? You wound up signing Trey Hendrickson anyway, you wind up signing Shamar Stewart over that standoff, and what happened. You're just consistently great among the worst teams in the league when it comes to that, the NFLPA, the player Sociation report cards. When it comes to the treatment of families, Bengal's always been at the bottom. Remember when the players' wives are breastfeeding their infants, their new boards on the
bathroom floor. There's no family area there now. Granted, is that a luxury, sure, but you know, if the rest of the league is doing it, you probably should do that as well. And I bring it up because you go, well, what do you mean, Sloan, that they're not gonna win a Super Bowl in our lifetime? I think because the NFL. There's such parody in the NFL, unlike just about any other sport out there, that eventually you can stumble your way into the Super Bowl. You can stumble your way
into greatness. And if you don't believe me, how did the Bengals get to the Super Bowl? Well, they drafted a guy named Joe Burrow. They got Jamar Chase. They have lost for so long and so legendary that they amassed unlosable players, players that are a lock to be successful because they're so good, because that particular draft class and that particular number one overall, Joe Burrow is so spectacular that he will defy odds, can change a game solely on his own ability. There are very few players
like that. The Bengals got at least a couple of those guys. So you look at also the Bengals coming out out of nowhere after multiple two win seasons, and they came out And that's true. In the playoffs, it's about health. It's us about sneaking under the radar because you know you got an easier schedule and people don't see it coming. Like the Patriots. Such a darling story
this year because no one saw that coming. I think if you follow Footblay did because you know the pedigree of Mike Rabel and a lot of the players they had in Drake May fantastic. Now they lost yesterday. I'm pretty happy as a Bills fan about that. But to that point, you know you don't see that coming. I think there's a big factor. Then you can prepare for that going wow, Bengals with the Super Bowl last year, we got it right for their schedule. Got toffer in
what happened? You missed the playoffs now three straight years, and so because of your incompetence, because of the bare minimum, eventually water will find us, eventually get lucky. And I think as opposed to a pattern of hey, we've turned the Corners a franchise and now we have rebuilt everything to the point where we're going to see nothing but success in a dynasty here in Cincinnati. I mean that sounded good after Super Bowl and literally could have won
that game. It was a quarter of a second. It was literally if Joe Burrow had a quarter of a second longer, it's a touchdown.
Came over.
Of course, the Rams went on and got the World championship and we didn't. And it's been downhill since that point. I was peak, and we went downhill after that. Unfortunately, you make playoff appearance which you get bounced, and you know, three straight with that. So here we are again, and I think I'm just absolutely convinced you do the bare minimum. You may stumble in every twenty thirty forty years, but you're not going to build anything that's lasting. And that's
where we are in Cincinnati. I think that that is a factual, sound indictment of this franchise.
And it's not.
Lost on me that just days ago, literally last week, the taxpayers of Hamlin County who got boned back in the nineties, we're on the hook for remodeling. Pay court of the two and two one hundred twelve thousand dollars or two hundred MS or two hundredwelve million dollars, which it was two and twelve thousand, two hundred and twelve million dollars. And once the check was once we got the dealing together, it's like, okay, we'll just go back to the way things were now. Granted, okay, a few
things change, got a ring of honor. They opened it up for the the Sane ex Elder Game a couple of weeks ago. I thought that was great and that's going on. But wasn't that wiped out yesterday by showing up to your seats after all that and going, wait a minute, we can't move the snow and then to be told that, well, you just wipe them all.
You just wipe it off.
We're gonna have an usher. You just ask an usher. You want to wipe your seat off?
You know?
By then it's it's a block ice, you know. Do we expect the seats to be completely clear? And I completely ice and snowflake for of course, not absolutely not. But there are plenty of other plenty of other cold weather teams that have a plan in place to deal with it. I was talking to someone saying, well, you're a Bills fan, you know how bad it is at pay Corps or not. How bad is it high Mark with the snow there like, well, you know, they pay fans to come twenty dollars an hour to shovel snow.
They feed you, they give you food, they turn music on, they try to make it a good time and community thing. A lot of people show up on a pride to clear that stadium up. Why can't the Bengals offer people twenty bucks an hour and free food if they're doing that elsewhere to go, Hey, we got to extraordinary circumstances. We're fighting for our lives and help something like that goes. It's not cheap, that's help helping build community. But you got to pay somebody twenty bucks an hour, it's just
cheaper to go. Oh the hell with it? Where they let the fans worry about themselves. That's horrible, absolutely horrible, And you know today should be the day a lot of other franchises would go. You know what, based on that performance, it's elimination. You guys got blown out twenty four nothing against the divisional rival. Just a couple of weeks ago. You throttled throttled up. You couldn't put up any points against this team against Lamar Jackson. You couldn't.
Shouldn't someone have to pay for that? In most cities, in most NFL clients, the head coach would be canned. Today would be the day. And I think you know Zach Tayler's fine. No personal animus here. It's just the fact that if you lay that kind of egg at home with your season on the line, you shouldn't be coaching the NFL. There has to be a head rolling here, and whether it's his fault or not, it doesn't matter.
But that's also the central theme. You could bring any coach in here, the naxtic man up, finding some new, brilliant offensive mind, some sort of new head. Plenty of opportunities. There's plenty of candidates out there that are well qualified and many overdue to be NFL head coaches. There's no shortages of people who want to run a team in this league. But does it really matter who you bring in? Does it matter who you bring in if the core body itself isn't healthy and this team has been healthy
for a long time. How the history of the Bengals in the last thirty years has not been good. It's an aberration for them to make the playoffs, insane. They went to the playoffs is insane. They went to the Super Bowl. But again, water is self loveling, always finds it. And you know, here we are again the futility of the Bengals a third season where with this generational talent that you have, arguably the best quarterback that the Bengals have ever had, is wasting his prime years. Do you
think anything is going to change? And it's just it's such a little thing, but it's a big thing at the same time, going are you making this big a deal over seats not getting cleaned off slan? I am, because it's indicative of the culture of this franchise. You know, you you disagree with the notion that they old nickel and dime. They throw nickels around like manhole covers, and they're notoriously cheap and frugal in that whole thing. But
that's so tired and all. It's so tired. But again, it just keeps happening.
And we just had this.
I didn't bring it up much, but like, for example, the Ring of Honor thing with Boomer.
You get two tickets.
After that you gotta buy your own and you're on the hook for your own hotel and accommodations to induct a guy who whose name is going to be up there in that wall and that ring. For eternity, you can't pick up the flight in the hotel for this guy. I mean, you're worth billions of dollars. It's that kind of mindset that just continues to percolate from time to time. The snow removal thing is small, but it's part of
a bigger picture that it's about profit over success. And hey, if you can make a profit and maximize your profits and not spend any money and still achieve success, then the team wins. But if you're a Bengal fan and you're expected to go and buy the merchandise, you buy the tickets, you buy the parking, and then get to the stadium to your seat, which costs a small fortune to attend an NFL game, to support a team that's literally on its last dying guests of the season to survive,
to go to the playoffs in a snowbell's chance. If you have a snowball's chance, if you will and you go and you support that team, you got to feel like, why am I invested in? Why do I care more than the ownership? And I think it's just indicative of where we are and since then and have been. As long as things change, they sure stay the same. And we've seen this movie time and time and time again. I thought you turned the corner of the Super Bowl, and it turns out that was just Lady Luck rearing
her head. Lady Luck was on your side that season, because since that has been typical Bengals. As they say, I don't know quite honestly what or how things change, But if they were a serious organization, would not they be changing head coaches and also moving on from Duke Tobin. I would say, who is also and probably has a bigger hand in this whole thing. Do they look at going, wow, we've got to get more bodies in here. We got to take seriously the preparation, the scouting and all that
stuff should be in play. But they don't do that. They add little pieces, but now big ones. And so it stands the Bengals eliminated yesterday. But more important than that, the fan experience took a big step backwards. Scott's loan show seven hundred WW since.
Now do you want to be an American?
Tell me back on seven hundred w WELW I don't have to tell you about healthcare costs justin like since two thousand, they the number there has tripled in most cases. And we're tired, and I'm just talking about healthcare, but pharmaceuticals and everything. And we know what's kind of driving that. Congress is allegedly addressing it and trying to make things more affordable. I don't know how that's going to work
with the HSASH. It's a big question. And we've talked to a lot of people at the receiving end, patients like me and you, healthcare providers, doctors, nurses, et cetera. Very well, very rarely we get a chance to talk to somebody in the inside, and we do today.
It's Beth Kaiser.
She's the West region president for Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield, joining the show. Good morning, How are you, Beth.
Good morning, Scott's nice to be with you there in Ohio.
Appreciate it.
So you know you hear the healthcare We don't have to tell you what happened to the assassination of the CEO in New York City last year, and a teams people certainly have it out for big healthcare companies and the like.
How much of that is on you.
I mean, you guys are caught up in this as well to some degree, but it seemingly always the dirty end of the stick is pointed at you guys.
Is that entirely accurate?
I would say that all stakeholders are filling pressure now to have you know, the affordability of healthcare.
Be an issue.
And so you know what we say at Anthem is Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield, is that unaffordable healthcare is inaccessible healthcare. So it's a critical time for us.
What is the latest affordability to numbers that you guys do internally show and how do our out of pocket increases in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana compared to other states outside the Midwest.
Gosh, you know some people follow the Rand study from years ago, but certainly show that there's plenty of work for both of our states to do. But just to give you some facts, the US healthcare spending grew seven and a half percent in twenty twenty three, reaching nearly four point nine trillion, and as you know, that's continued to escalate. Prescription drugs spending alone increase more than eleven
percent last year. So these trends are putting significant strains own individuals, employers, and government programs.
And we also, let's face this demographic demographic issue. As baby boomers get older and older, they're going to use more, need more care, and there are few people at the end to pay for that, and so it overwhelms the system. And then you factor in people who need assistance, and it it's even worse.
This is true.
So that's one of the reasons addressing people's health from a holistic standpoint, looking at whole health is so important.
Yeah, and that's part of the Republican plan. But I don't dismiss that because we all have a stake in our health. But I mean, let's face it. If the healthcare plan is, hey, take better care of yourself and your incentivis to do so, that that's fine. But so many people and it seemingly there's a story every day about someone who's you know, the drug cost or something for their kid or a loved one is so exorbitant they have to file for bankruptcy.
That shouldn't be happening, but it is.
Yeah, And delaying and skipping care can affect people in the healthcare system as well, So we have to keep it affordable because if those health issues that individuals have worsen, are they become harder to treat, they certainly become more expensive as well, And so that a lot of people think, well, that only impacts the individual, but actually it impacts more than the individual's health outcomes. It puts a strain on the broader healthcare system, and it drives up costs for.
All of us.
How do you determine who gets care for some specific disease lets, I don't know. It might be I mentioned the horror stories, right that someone who's denied care clearly they're sick, it becomes a news story goes viral and then all of a sudden and maybe not you guys, but another health care insurance making sure, maybe like yourself, and others will go ay, okay, well we're going to take care of this person because of public pressure and
the outcry. How are those decisions made at the granuar level.
Yeah, I would say many employers, individuals, families are determining how do they access healthcare? How do they make it affordable? And so we are addressing that by first looking to see the factors that are causing the increased health care costs. And those factors include an aging population, people with increased chronic conditions like you mentioned Scott, escalating drug prices, provider consolidation,
fraud and abuse, as well as ongoing legislative changes. And then we're working to address that with the stakeholders that you mentioned as well.
She's Beth Kaiser.
She's a president of Blue Cross Blue Shilds and and Blue Cross Blue Shield West Region president. Talking about health care costs and the insurance end of this thing, one of the other elements here is consolidation. We've seen that accelerate tremendously here in our region, Beth, And how is that does that help with rates? And we also worry
about rural areas too. We're in Cincinnati, you're out in Indy, but there's a lot of country between us and you and across both of these states as well as Kentucky where rural hospitals and clinics are closing a record amounts.
How do we address that?
Yeah, And unfortunately, you know a lot of people think just what you mentioned that when healthcare providers going together, it may be lower costs, but often it means that patients have fewer choices and the prices actually go up. So what we're doing at ANT and Blue Cross Blue Shield to address those challenges is we're prioritizing strategies that protect affordability and enhance the value for our members. And the way we're doing that is we're creating benefits and
contracts with our provider partners. It give people access to mini quality providers and at the same time, we're helping focus on the think using AI and data to make sure that we're cutting ways and avoiding unnecessary treatment, which
also helps keep calls down. But when I speak specifically to waste and fraud and waste, there's things that now with AI as well as that we're allowed through billing to look at for unusual charges that may have occurred in the system, such as phantom billing where they're built for a service that didn't occur, double billing where they're bill twice, and then upcoding where they're charged for a service at a higher rate than what was provided.
And one of the things you hear from government on this Beth is waste frawed abuse, waste fraud abuse constantly. But you know, I always contended that if you're a business like you are, and you're in the business of providing healthcare, but you have to be profitable, uh in you you probably do a better job than anyone as far as that and making sure that those people who are using the care, or vendors particularly are getting what they deserve, but not more or less.
We do.
It's important though, I mean, you know, we want to make sure or we're looking at individuals and members in their whole health, so helping them remain healthy longer in life and helping them have the tools and the support they need. Where in the past we were much you know, we were known health plans, were know more for you know, just managing the quality, the costs and administration of billing. We feel at Anton Blue Cross we shield that we have a larger role to play.
Let's segue to pharmacy benefits. That's a big one PDM's right. Pharmacy benefit managers not quite sure what they do, but they drive the cost up. That is the constant cry. I guess that you probably hear. What percentage of premium increases can you attribute to prescription drug costs and specifically how do.
You address that?
Yeah, I mentioned just a minute ago that the prescription drug spending alone has increased more than eleven percent from last year. But what specifically, we've been focused on negotiating lower costs around specialty pharmacy as well. That's an important area for us, and our responsibility is to negotiate lower price.
You know that's the model, but seemingly prices continue to spiral upward. Where's that coming from?
Yeah, I would just say that. I mean, we all want we all want access to the best and the latest, and we want to make sure we give our members access. So we feel like as we negotiate for better drug costs, especially around the specialty costs, that we can bring those costs down.
I've had this happen personal experience, family experience with this to where there's times where insurance and we're Anthem Blue Crossbow Shield where we work here at iHeart and have very good coverage. I can't complain some people obviously you don't have that. Maybe your experience varies, but pay you a fair amount of money for that. Absolutely. When it comes to the pharmacy, though, I've noticed at times where we'll go in and say, okay, here's your prescription, Well
how much do I pay out of pocket? And it's less or if I use something like good our ax with which is like a discount. Why would that occur if indeed we're negotiating the lowest prices? Why do Why are medicines cheaper if you get them out of pocket or use a discount?
Yeah, I think that it depends upon the individuals. So in your case, I mean, this is the reason it's so important for us to be talking about affordability because without I mean, the individual's portion of being engaged and involved in their health and understanding what tools, what discounts, what their benefit structure looks like, helps them to be a more empowered member and to your point, be aware of costly options.
Yeah.
We're talking to Beth Guiser this morning on the Scots Loan Show seven hundred Wow. She's a regional president for Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield talking to Ensure about what can be done about high costs and always, almost always we blame the insurance companies, but there's a lot driving that as well, and we're kind of getting into this morning here on the show in a limited time that we have. One of the other questions too, is surprise
medical billing. You know, Trump in his first term said, hey, we know we're going to disclose prices, you're going to know what you're get coming in, and still most of those have not been hit. That is a huge complaint before federal legislation, and we've had a you know, the President doing that and moving even more I think in this term to do that. But we're still getting unexpected bills and costs despite the reforms. Why does that remain problematic?
Yeah, I would just say, first, we fully support the No Surprises Act because the intention was for it to protect patients from receiving surprise to healthcare bills. But as you mentioned, Scott, there have been some issues, some unintended consequences, some fraudulent behavior that have unintentionally raised those costs. And so we're committed at Vans and Blue Cross Blue Shield
to fixing the No Surprises Act. And in twenty twenty six, we'll introduce the policy with hospitals for curb out of network specialists billing through in network facilities and so this will aid those specialists in wanting to join our networks, which will lower patient costs and whole facilities accountable for repeated non emergency use of out of network and so that will drive down healthcare call uh pers. So you can't do that, Scott though without faultful collaboration with our
hospitals and our providers. Right right now, that's the key path to our affordability.
Well, you have the collaboration, and I know there's price transparency tools out there and they're required, but the data and maybe it's because it's new, few consumers use them effectively. Are they confusing? And you know what's driving that? Are more people adopting it or just simply they don't know.
We're seeing adoption, least specifically with our Sydney app. We're seeing great adoption because because of the unaffordability, many members are wanting to understand their benefit options.
Beth, I brought this up before, and I would love your unvarnished point of view on this. You know, I go to my dey, we go to our doctor. You look in there, Okay, I've got a doctor. Maybe he has a PA or a nurse or something like that. And then you have five full of five people who just handle coding and billing and insurance and medicare and medicating and all that stuff, and as we know, it
drives costs up. I always use the parallel to you know, you bring your dog into a vet and you know, canines felines use some and sometimes the same medicine or overlapping meds, and you look at that, go, Okay, that's pretty affordable my dog, cat or whatever comes to me. There's paperwork, there's bills that come for the next six, seven, eight months, and you forget what they're for, and it's
this whole mess. If we simply took the edict and made it an edict for employers in America, Listen, you're no longer in the business of providing health insurance, can offer health insurance. You got buy to the free market. Is that better for you guys? Is it better for the patient?
I mean, I believe that the reason that we want to make sure people remain covered is because if it becomes unaffordable for individuals. In some cases, many people are very reliant on their employer to help subsidize their healthcare call. And again, as I mentioned earlier, if unaffordable healthcare will become inaccessible health care, so it's important that they get
the resources they need. And I think to your point on data, and I mean, how we need to become more efficient and effective with the way we work in healthcare.
That's the job for all of us, and we're doing our part at anteon Blue Cross, Blue Shield by adopting AI, by adopting new data technologies, and providing coordination with our provider partners so that we have access to the whole view, to the whole health view of you, Scott, so that we can see your health holistically and that we can help aid in keeping you healthier longer.
Right.
But I guess the question is more about compliance and things like you. You still have to obviously address compliance issues, but it seems there's a lot of things elements involved, particularly the government in our healthcare. Why can't I just buy a plan directly from you and like minded people do that? I think we'd say have enough money in the long run to be able to take care of the indigen and the people who really need it. Looking I had five years, what do you? And it's just
going to continue to get worse. I mean we're going to start to see things level off. Or is it just simply a matter of demographics that I started with, where you're going to see baby boomers as they age out and eventually pass, we have a younger generation coming in replacing them as old folks, and so it goes. Is it simply just a numbers game that way, or is it going to level out in the next five or ten years.
Well, my optimistic to you, Scott is that we're going to work together the stakeholders. They appreciate how urgent this is. Individuals understand that they certainly can access individual plans, but many again are reliant on the benefits and the subsidies that they have in place today. So we've got to
make sure. You know, it's a delicate issue, right, But what I would say as a society, and what I'm hoping that in the next few years that will come together as stakeholders, is making the healthy choice the easy choice and allowing individuals to have more control over their health and their healthcare calls.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean prices are going now. That's the biggest concern, and you know, we're probably pretty bad about that ourselves, and you know, you led with and it's a good point. If we took better care of ourselves, eight better you know, exercise, did all that stuff, then we'd need less health care. It makes it less expensive for everyone. But we don't do that. But it's not like we're alone. Other countries have the same problem, and yet here in America, our health care costs are out
of control. Administrative costs in the US are substantially higher in other countries. What percentage of premium dollars goes to administration versus.
Actual care, you know, that would be dependent upon the situation. But I'm not sure Scott, if you're aware that the majority of employers are self insured. So, and specifically in the states. I'm in Indiana next to you, ninety percent of our employers are self insured. So what that means is they're paying directly for the cost of a procedure.
And as there's a small admin fee that goes on that, and as you know, health plans are regulated and the cost that we can charge for that is regulated by our government.
Yeah, and that all factors into the cost as well, because the regulation adds a little bit more overhead in that. I guess that's the initial point. As it seems there's a lot of hands in the cookie here. There's a lot of money to be had here, but at the end, consumers suffer, and some people and I'm making the decision to go without healthcare, especially during these times where we talk about the ACA and all that being in jeopardy. Beth Kay is here West Region President for Anthem Blue
Crossbowshield out of Indianapolis. Thanks again for the time, Beth, appreciate it.
Thank you so much, Scott, and I would encourage individuals that are interested in this topic to go to our website. It's www dot Anthem dot com. Forward slash Affordability in Ohio. Thank you Scott so much for the conversation.
Well check news at about four or five minutes on the big one and the very latest of course on the shocking death of Rob Reiner. He and his wife murdered last night, well yesterday afternoon, I believe, with their home in Brentwood, California. So full details on that, of course, the shootings in Australia as well at Brown University. We continue to follow all that stuff and more here and these dangerously cold temperatures are about to change for the better in the coming hours as well.
It's all ahead with news.
Scott Sloane returns with mental health Monday, and Julie h just ahead on seven hundred WW.
Everyone needs alb every on then and she's here to help us get our heads.
Right.
This is Mental Health Monday with mental health expert Julie Hattershire. Now we started us back in COVID and continues on today. Of course, mental Health Monday every Monday morning, because let's face it, it's the coldest day of the year so far, and you're back at work.
What is there to be excited and hopeful about?
I ask, unless you are one of those just deranged individuals like Julie Hattersh here that's happy all the time, which I don't understand. Her happiness makes me miserable.
This is what this does make miserable.
How are you, friend?
You?
Good morning, my friend. I'm great, thank you. I'm in South Carolina right now, and it's sunny and thirty one, so slightly warmer than Cincinnati.
This find of one likes you.
You just drop that nugget in there. Yeah, it's thirty it's terrible, Ryan, we are you. I'm in South Carolina. It's thirty one.
What do we gather?
Well, I mean that's cold for South Carolina. They're treating it like it's really cold for them.
Yeah.
Yeah, all the way down to the Florida for that matter. Outside of the forecast. Let's get into this new sleep study that's come out here too, and the connections only sleep in mental health.
What's the data showing.
Well, So I thought this was a good thing to do because so many of us don't get enough sleep, and so many of us think that we don't really need sleep. I mean, I hear a lot from my clients I'll sleep when I'm dead. They've got things they want to accomplish and things they want to do, and they've got busy lives.
But the more and more we.
Learn about the connection between sleep and mental and emotional and cognitive health, the more important it becomes to get seven to eight to nine hours of good sleep most nights.
And there's a.
New sleep study out several actually that are really starting to hone in on the connection between sleep and depression, sleep and anxiety, and sleep and dementia, which I think is really important for those of us who are in our forties, fifties and six because early onset dementia seems to be on the rise in our country, and one of the theories is that it may have to do with how little sleep we actually get and how poor quality our sleep is when.
We do get it.
Sleep is relative though some people need ten hours, some people can get by with three or four allegedly, what's the truth.
Well, so, actually, one of the things that they're finding is that people actually don't perform well with less sleep. They become accustomed to it. So when you say get by, yes, they can get by with very little sleep, but they're not at their best and it takes a huge toll on them over the long haul. So you can become accustomed to very little sleep by you know, pumping yourself up with nicotine and caffeine and by just getting used to it, but it isn't actually beneficial for you. Your
body doesn't truly adapt adequately to it. Most adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep. Some need more, a few need less, but most people, the best majority, seven to nine hours is the gold standard.
There's a fine line here between back to mental health, Julie, in that you know, you get seven eight hours sleep, you're good, nine hour, seven nine hours, you said, But you start getting above nine hours for a lot of people, that signals a different issure.
That signals depression, doesn't it.
If you want to sleep a lot, it can, It can definitely signal depression. It can signal anxiety as well, that it's just too paralyzingly frightening to get out of bed and.
To face the world. But the quality of the sleep you get.
Is as important, or maybe more important, than the number.
Of hours you get.
So if you're in bed sort of us sleep I use air quotes around that nine hours, but you're actually only sleeping four of that and the rest of the time you're kind of tossing and turning and dozing in and out.
That's not the same as getting.
Three complete sleep cycles, which tend to run about two and a half hours.
Okay, So.
The quality of the sleep matters just as much as the number of hours you get.
Because the question is, you know, as a licensed mental health therapist, is you are how do you assess whether patients sleep problems are the cause of the mental health issues or it's the other way that the mental health condition is disrupting.
Your sleep exactly.
And in the past, we have more thought that people with depression and anxiety didn't sleep well. We thought it was more that the depression in the anxiety and our health condition came first and sleep was one of the impacts of that. What we're now understanding is that it works both ways, that poor quality or inadequate sleep can cause or exacerbate mental health issues, and poor sleep is
a symptom of mental health issues. So when I'm talking to my clients about this, what I suggest is we tackle the easiest one first, And for most people, the easiest one is Let's see if we can clean up your sleep hygiene. Let's see if we can get you more regularly getting said into nine hours of sleep a night. Let's take away screens at night. Let's cut down on the caffeine, let's cut down on the alcohol, and let's see what impact that has on the mood challenges that
my clients are having. And because that is an easy, concrete one for most people to wrap their heads around, it doesn't often it doesn't require medication. Sometimes it requires some cognitive behavioral therapy, which works really well for insomnia and sleep disorders, but it typically doesn't require medication. It requires some habit changes, some lifestyle changes.
And so when you do that to someone, say hey, you need to sleep more. And if they can do that, what changes in brain function do you see when they improve their sleep.
Well, one of the things that sleep does, and we're learning so much more about it in the last few decades because we have functional MRIs, so we can actually put people in sleep labs, cook their brains up to MRIs, and watch what happens when they're asleep. One of the things we're learning that sleep does is it helps memory consolidation and it helps take out the mental garbage in your head.
So if you get good.
Quality sleep, it helps clear away all the clutter that keeps you from performing at your best, and it helps consolidate your thinking and your memories. So think of it as cleaning up all the papers on your desk and putting them in the right files, or on your desktop on your computer and putting them in the right file so you know where to find what you want when you're looking for it. That all happens in r EM sleep, BRIM sleep, and so people who get good quality sleep,
their brains just tend to function more efficiently. They have less clutter they have to cut through to get to what they're looking for at night. It's like sleep cleans up your desk for you, or cleans up your desktop for you, so when you wake up, everything is where you can find it more easily, and it increases your tolerance for distress and irritation and frustration, so it keeps you from blowing up quite as easily when things don't
go your way. It helps you keep your mood more regulated and that's better for everybody in your life as well as for you.
She's Julie hattersh here, our licensed mental health therapist, Mental health money in the Scotsland Show on seven hundred WLW and new studies showing that sleep and getting seven to nine hours is critical because of your mental health and your mental health will software what kind of things manifest when you get like a like to sleep you talk about mental health?
Is it depression?
Generally, depression is one, anxiety is one. Irritability is huge. Most people will get really cranky when they get sleepy. And if you think about the impact that has on your relationships. Let's say you're someone who's chronically sleep deprived
and you live with other people in your life. If you're perennially irritable and cranky and short tempered, they're not going to like you very much and they're not going to want to be around you very much, which means that you're going to be more isolated, perhaps less connected, and less loved and less having less fun in your life, which just may life seem bleaker and can certainly lead
to depression. The anxiety ramps up when you're not getting enough sleep, so things that would normally not bother you too much can take on an outsized importance. You can become frightened or easily startled, or easily flip your lid at things that don't go well, so you're just more on edge much of the time, which decreases the quality of your life and the quality of your relationships, both at home and at work.
So how do you balance those treatment recommendations if you're like, so, let's say a shift worker.
Yeah, shift work is really hard, and shift workers have their own protocol and there are several out there and they should be following it for how to get the best possible sleep under the circumstances. The easiest kind of shift work for people to adapt to is when they work and off shift consistently. So let's say they consistently work nights or they consistently work evenings, so that they
can just adapt their life to it. The hardest is when they have to go from sort of normal daytime hours to evening or overnight hours and then back to normal daytime hours again, so things like blackout shade so that they can get sleep during the day. Sometimes medications like melatonin can help. That would be something they should discuss with a physician.
Which I am not.
Making sure that they practice their best sleep hygiene no matter what shift they're working, not trying to catch up too much with the things they don't do when they're awake, and not trying to catch up too much on sleep when they can so that they're off their schedule.
But that one is really really tough.
Luckily, that's a relatively small percentage.
Of the population overall, but if you are one of those people.
It's really hard, and there are actual professionals and protocols that can help you maximize and optimize for that.
What about that teenagers talk about sleep schedules because we expect them to get up early to go to school at the exact same time their body clock says you should be going to bed because they're.
Night outactly exactly, So teenagers actually need as much sleep as children do, and children need a lot more sleep than adults do. They need closer to ten hours eight to ten hours. Teenagers actually need as much sleep. But the problem is that their clock, their biological clocks cir Katiean rhythm, shifts by about two hours later, and so
they tend to stay up later. School tends to start earlier, and the reason for that, I've been told one of the reasons for that is so that the older kids are home when the younger kids get home from school, and or they've got practices or meetings in the mornings, and so they have to early, so they're chronically sleep deprived.
We expect a lot out of them during the day in terms of school and sports, sometimes taking care of younger siblings, often working a job, and then when it comes time to go to added a reasonable hour, there's still two hours from being tired and from their bodies being tired. So teenagers have a really rough time. There are some school districts that are experimenting with a later start and a later end time for kids and finding that that has a lot of benefit to their ability
to stay awake in school. I remember falling asleep with my head on the desk many a time. And also, yeah, yeah, stay awake in school, perform better in school, perform better in sport. It's challenging for a lot of other reasons, but some high schools are finding that that shift to a later start time is really beneficial for everybody involved.
I fall asleep before during my show while I'm talking. That's to show you just how pervasive this whole problem is here when it comes to sleep, and so horrible.
It's a terrible, terrible time.
I think the reason why we forced kids to get up then and got laire and the outside their ball its class because it's to do it otherwise would be inconvenient for mom and dad, but also especially inconvenient for the teachers and the administrators because they don't They can't stay up that lad either.
Right exactly. Yeah, we want kids to get up early and get on with their day. We want them to operate like we do in our lives with adults who go to work, but their biological clocks are very different than ours. And that does start to return back to adult hours in their early to mid twenties, but those teenage to early twenty years, they really are operating on a different biological clock than adults.
Are most of the time. They will never be it's challenging.
Yeah, they'll never be a solution.
For the bus is coming, Boss, get up getting bass the boss.
What parents do exactly eight years?
Boss, that's kind of boss.
She's Julie.
That bus now right, the bus is coming. It's mental health Monday in the Scotsland Show on seven hundred w OLW. How much is sleep apnea involved? I mean, every time you hear this, okay, you're not getting enough sleep, it's got to be sleep apnea. I'm not saying it's over diagnosed anything like that, but how common is that from your experiences that that that is the core of interesting what.
I've read is been actually underdiagnosed in certain populations. So one of the one of the things that is common for women.
In menopause is sleep apnea.
But because we don't snore quite as loudly as men do, generally speaking, certainly there are women who do. It's not it's not tested for and caught as much. It's about the lowering of estrogen lowers our muscle tone and our throat and our throat.
Muscles collapse when we hit menopause.
So sleep apne is underdiagnosed in some populations and adequately diagnosed in others. Tends to be overweight. Men tend to be diagnosed adequately with sleep apnea. But sleep apnea obviously contributes to all of the symptoms that we've been talking about that that poor quality sleep does, but it also carries with it an increased risk of physical problems like heart attacks and strokes, and cognitive problems, high increased risk of dementia and early onset dementia because of the lack
of oxygen to the brain associated with sleep apnea. And that's not the same thing as associated with just plain insomnia. There's no lack of oxygen to the brain and insomnia, but in sleep apnea there is, and so it has long ranging consequences as well as the more immediate consequences that we are aware of.
All right, connection between mental health and sleep and before you probably could even not hear that last segment, Goh, yeah, I get that, but it's it's a lot deeper than you think.
So talk to a professional. She's Julie hattersh here.
She's our licensed mental health therapist in the Scotsland Show, practicing out of Clifton. Hey, Julie edb connected dot has let her be connected dot care. If you have a question or maybe a future topic for us to discuss. She'd love to hear you, Julie. Thanks again, Well chat next week. Stay nice and warm down in the Carolinas. Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Yeah, gotta go because the bus is coming. The bus is the bus is here. I gotta go, I gotta go. News is coming up in just minutes on the Big one seven hundred. Wo that includes the tragic and confusing murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. If you're just hearing this for the first time, they found his he and his wife both dead of stab wounds at their bed, and their son is now a prime suspect in custody. Will continue to follow that story as well. Just absolutely bizarre.
Of course, we've had these cold temperatures, but for how much longer? I mean, we will get up to close to freezing today, but the rest of the weeks starting to look good. We got that, we got traffic, a lot of black ice out there. Just be advised you're gonna hit some of that today. If you're on the highways for suare a'ready hearing now day. That's kind of a steady drumbeat of those type of accidents from the
police today, So just be advised. We'll do news and at eleven oh seven he's Kevin Werner from Ohioans to Stop Executions related to the Elwood Jones case, which County pillachers throwing Joe Dieters under the bus and Joe Deeters may respond to this whole thing nonetheless, is it time for the death bones to go away? Simply because of how inefficient it is and seldom used? It is Scott Sloan Show, Home of the Best Bengals coverage seven hundred WW Cincinnati.
You Want to be an American Scott Bloon Show on seven hundred and W well Wan.
One of the big stories that just happened is the name Ellwood Jones. He may recall this had been Cincinnati. While he has become the twelfth convict in the history of our state to be exonerated from death row after Hamilt County Prosecutor County Pilach announced that she is dismissing all and any charges against him, and nationally there are over two hundred exonerations. We know how the death penalty is supposed to work, but in practice doesn't work like it should.
On that is Kevin Werner.
He's the executive director of Ohioans to Stop executions. Kevin, welcome back.
How are you?
Thank you? Scott him Well, good morning.
Yeah, this is kind of, I don't know, a shocking surprising news. In the case of Countye pilach mate saying no, we should throw this out. Let's talk about this case. Most of us weren't around back then. In nineteen ninety four when he was convicted for beating sixty seven year old wrote to Nathan to death and blue ash it was aggravated murder, robbery and burglary. Here we are now in twenty twenty five and he's completely exonerated.
What's the narrative of that case? Refreshers.
Yeah, I mean, you know, missus Nathan was traveling into the area, you know, some kind of family. I think it was a wedding or a family celebration. And you know, Ellwood Jones happened to work at the hotel where she was murdered.
And so.
The narrative here, I think is that, you know, even back in nineteen ninety four, there was all kinds of evidence that mister Jones.
Did not commit this crime.
What happened though, I think investigators got that tunnel vision where started to sort of try to make things fit even when they did not, And it took decades for all of the evidence to come to come out. And what we know today is that four thousand pages of documents were withheld from mister Jones, and within those four thousand pages was all sorts of evidence that the viability of other suspects, the fact that you know, he could
not have committed this crime. And so you know, thirty years later, we have finally for him a result that that you know, exonerates him. But you know, for the Nathan family, I can only imagine that this is this must be devastating. You know, they were told thirty years ago, we got the guy, We're going to get justice for your mom, for your family member. And you know, had they not withheld the evidence that was withheld, we certainly wouldn't be having this conversation today.
And yeah, granted the evidence was held the four thousand pages, was there anything in there that directly showed that he didn't do this? Because as I recall that he worked at this hotel, he had a master key to the rooms. There was bruising on the victim that aligned with items found in his toolbox. Also the cut and shape, the byte pattern on him because he had an infection, and we know now that there's a particular bacteria that's only present in human saliva, and this type of infection you
can only get from that type of contact. And so a bite, definitely we see that president not all the time because there's a particular bacteria he tested. He was swabbed and tested negative I believe for that bacteria if he carried himself. But this infection on his hand could only be gained by punching someone, possibly striking their teeth, punch in the mouth. And so those, as I recall, were the circumstances that led to his conviction. Are those disproven in the four thousand pages?
Oh?
What the four thousand pages show is that first of all, there's hepatitis bee was not something that mister Joe's ever had or contract, and that was part of what medically made it not possible for him to be involved in
this in this offense. And so you know, I think what we have to recognize Scott is that you know, the investigatory techniques and the science that we have today, and when we look at crime scene evidence, what we had, what we haven't understand today, what we know today or that the theories that we had thirty years ago have
been have been proven incorrect. Not related to this case, but things like shake and baby syndrome, things like certain kinds of bitemarks, things like certain types of uh, you know, blood piping, which used to be you know.
Is it A, is it B? Is it a positive?
Well, now that we have better techniques to figure out and use science to see whether or not someone is in fact culpable or did play a role in a homicide like those are the things that we need to do.
And I give the.
Prosecutor a whole lot of credit here because the easier thing would have just to be to continue this case and to continue the ape and continue to go down the road. But I think what the prosecutor's office did now was recognize that this is not in the interest of justice and the evidence that we have today, and when you stand that up next to the science and the techniques that we use today, Joe clearly that mister Jones could not have committed that offense.
And you know, I think you said something critical there. A lot of people see this.
At the time, the prosecutor was Joe Dieters, and that somehow that hey you know what, we just found a guy.
Let's pin it all on him.
You kind of intimated that's not what at least what you're thinking is is the fact that the science has gotten better over the years seems exonerated, not be because of any necessarily miss misdoings on the part of the prosecutors offer though, or are you making that contention still?
Well, I think it's both.
I think that both things certainly can be true. At the same time, it's hard to square a voluminous number like four thousand documents being withheld from a this was just the case of our science was wrong. I think that that the when you look back, you say, how did this occur? I think both of those things are true. I think investigators and prosecutors with held evidence that they shouldn't. I mean, the court found that. That's why mister Jones
was granted a new trial that ultimately never happened. And the second thing, of course, is that you know, evidence today is different, and capital cases today, what would be brought is the death penalty case today, if ever, vastly different than the types of cases that were brought in the mid to nineteen nineties.
Okay, makes sense, Kevin orders here. Executive director of Ohio's Stop Execution Elwood Jones has just been exonerated from death row in the murder of Rhoda Nathanson back in nineteen ninety four and are beating death and evidence. Cornem was with Hell in the court. The prosecutor sided with him on this one. And I think there's people that still think this is political. Connie Pilach comes in, Democrat, It's going to go, hey, you know, I'm know there's a
different regime in town. I think some do you think some politics are at play here? Or does that even concern you because you're solely focused on justice.
I don't think that it's politics. I think that it's a different view of the cases. Right is the prosecutor's job to uphold the conviction at all costs?
Or is the prosecutor's job to do justice? And I think that.
You know, when you have a changeover an administration, you have a different set of eyes that are looking at at at cases. And you know when you have things like all of these documents was held, and when you have you know, the science saying you know this, this person could not have committed this offense, you know, doing the right thing here with certainly to the charges. I don't think it's political as much as I think that, you know, there may be a different view towards these cases.
Is our job to just uphold the convictions at all costs? Or is our job to actually figure out did we get it right? And in those cases when we didn't get it, it's the responsibility of the prosecutor's office to set a course that can begin to make that right. And I think that's what the prosecutor's office did last week with the Elwood Jones case.
Maybe listening to this Kevin Werner and go, okay, well, it's justice for Elwood Jones after all these years?
Is justice? So what about justice for rode to Nathan.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I mean what we see here with this case is an example how the death penalty system fails across all sectors, right, And we're talking about failing victims family. So, you know, the trauma and sort of the readliving that that worst day thirty years ago is now right back front and center with the with the Nathan family, they probably have
more questions than anybody at this point. And so what we see is when you deploy all your resources towards this one thing, the death sentence that will likely never occur, and you and you and you do that at the expense of making sure that victim family members have the resources that they need to move forward to heal, to kind of put their lives back together after.
This kind of these kinds of events.
We're doing it exactly wrong, where we're not taking care of the families who were involved in these kinds of horrific offenses. If we flip the script and put the resources toward those family members instead of trying to chase death sentences, I think that the Rona family, for example, would be in a different place today than they clearly are.
The other argument of the saying is is you're making the case against the death penalty. I'm going, well, this is an example. It's the two hundredth person, two hundred and second person I think nationally to be exonerated. Ohio, that this is happening again for the twelfth time. One may turn around and go, well, this is what it should prove. The system works right because you have an appeals process, pellet process, you have interested parties, and so
we're not going to execute anyone on death row. Who doesn't deserve it now. I think the other way to look at that is go, well, does that mean we have or will in the future, And that's a big question mark.
We don't know.
Yeah, so you know, big picture, we're forty four years into having this system. It doesn't work very well at all. It gets the wrong person. This is the twelve persons say there are other guys on Ohio's death row that have really concerning claims of actual innocence. Right, it costs an arm and a leg, and for what for thirty years later to overturn a case that leaves one family trying to put their lives back together, the other family trying to catch up on thirty years of lost time.
I mean, that's what this system does. All it does is cause harm.
And so even if you say we're absolutely certain that this person is we have the right person, you can effectively hold that person accountable by a much less expensive sentence and one where we're never going to have the one or did we execute the wrong person? Because Ohio has come frighteningly close. You know, if mister if Governor DeWine for example, had not caused executions and executions were just happening as they as they had under previous governors.
You know, could Elmwood Jones have been executed in the past seven eight years. Yeah, I mean, this is what we're talking about. And so the death penalty just risks way too much and we're getting nothing in return except harm to county budgets to victim family members, and.
So we should stop doing it.
It feels like the all against execution that you've kind of won the war of attrition are And I will point that out because years ago, when I was younger, I thought, yeah, death penalty, it's fair eye for an eye, Biblical. It's like, there's some crimes that are just so heinous and so gross that the only way to do this is to execute. And people go, well, it's it's murdered to it's not because there's an absence of malice. You know, the person who murdered that woman in Blue Ash in
ninety four had malice. Issue is murdered. When we execute someone, there's no malice. It's sterile, right, You're not doing out of hate, you're doing out of justice. It's a different motive. That said, though, it confounds me that so many people in victims' families is what I worry about, And when you talk about justice is the fact they've got to sit around for ten twenty thirty years or more and
sometimes never. The odds of the person on death row dying of old age is greater than them seeing the executioner's hand, the needle, the electric chair, that the noose, whatever it might be, whether or the mechanism is and
it seems like there's no justice there. For a long time, I was very pro death penalty, and I think the way things have changed where death penalty is not a death penalty anymore, essentially is a life sentence because you're a lot more likely to die of natural causes on death row or at the hand of another inmate than you would be from the executioner's hand. If that's the case, it seems like a tremendous waste of time, effort, and resources to continue fighting for something we don't use.
That's absolutely correct, you know.
And the other component that we have to think about and we talk about executions and the death penalty, and you know what the outcomes are is we put a lot of state workers and a lot of state prison officials in positions where they are negatively impacted, and they have post traumatic stress, and they have lots of mental health issues as a result of being part of the process. And so you know, add that other layer to this and it's just clearly not worth it. It's clearly not working.
And we have, you know, for more than forty four years of evidence that shows us that, you know, one of the things we don't cost And I don't want to get ahead of what and where you know, lawyers what they may do for on behalf of mister Jones. But you know, we talk about the expense of the death penalty. We don't count the wrongful conviction awards that people get for millions of dollars for being you know,
on death row for thirty years. So like you know, there's only going to be more more pain, There's only going to be more you know, problems that come along with these types of cases. And so again we should just stop doing it.
He's Kevin Werner with ohioan to stop executions. Thanks again for the time, Kevin, appreciate the insight, great conversation.
Thanks Scott.
We'll get a news update here in just minutes on the Scott's Long Show. And the pain continues the pain of being a Cincinnati Bengals fan. Is this a turning point for the organization? Which has been said a lot a lot in the last several decades. I've been a Bengals fan, But is this a turning point? With the loss yesterday and especially how the fans are too to James Rapen is here, we'll talk about that coming out to heads for the lunch hour and Willie seven hundred
ww Hoday Morning, Scott's Long Show, seven hundred WW. So with the munch how we're approaching one of the tops of conversation, as always this time of year, will be football, and that will be the fact that the Bengals are
now eliminated completely from play off contention. Yes, fans to get up early, clear ice and snow, off driveways, off cars by extra closed drive on icy rose, pay to park, pay for seats, and just last week County taxpayers out there on the hook for over two hundred million dollars
for the pay Corps upgrade. And then you get to your seat and you have to clean them and then sit with your feet and your ass on more snow and ice to watch them lose twenty four to nothing to Baltimore and get eliminated for the third year in a row. The Bengals will miss the playoffs with all this talent on offense for the third straight season. On that, James Rapine from Bengals Talk dot Com and Locked on Bengals. James, you were at the game yesterday, give me your take on the conditions.
Yeah, it was surprising. No on the seats as there was, And I totally agree with you. If I paid to go to that game and I was in the elements and doing everything that it took to get there, I certainly would expect my seat to close to it and that that wasn't the case. And then after that, fans obviously rewarded with a store performance on the field, and it really was not the way you want to make history, but certainly the Bengals did.
Yeah, I start to see the unraveling now. Granted, last two games here, Joe Burrow did not look like Joe Burrow. He said, one of the worst games he ever played. If you can't get up for an elimination game at home, and Joe Burrow loves says he loves playing in the cold and the pass. He's played very well in the cold over the last couple of games and maybe even since coming back from injury in the past two games. In particular, he doesn't look like Joe Burrow Joe. He
looks like the bengalized version of Joe Burrow. He looks like Carson Palmer, he looks like Andy Dalton. He started to turn into that guy. Granted it's a small sample size of two games, but he hasn't even officially become bengalized after yesterday.
I mean I wouldn't even say two games. I think he was the best player on the field in Buffalo for three quarters. Yeah, and that includes Josh as I wouldn't go full two games now, but no, he was awful on Sunday, and so bullvangalized. I wouldn't say that. My question would be why why did this team look like that? Why did they not have any answers at any point during the game and make any adjustments that
worked in a winn or go home scenario? And that that's what's concerning to me, is they were a pickoff from the jump. But someone needs to figure out something to get some points on the board and get some momentum, and they just never not once could do that, and I think that at this stage it's fair to stay there too. Joe Burrow centric for lack of a better term. Now, if Joe doesn't go, they don't go, and they need to be able to go, even if Joe had an off game.
Well NFL NFL's worst deference and several metrics here and that of course looked every part of it yesterday, although for you know, for the first half it was competitive, they were there, and then the wheels just fell off and it was too few and far between. They just simply couldn't score. Two interceptions, no touchdowns for Joe Burrow, two pick sixes in consecutive weeks. And this, by the way, also followed his side eye producing comments about not having fun.
I can't imagine it was fun for him yesterday.
What does that mean?
Yeah, it certainly wasn't fun for him yesterday. And I think that's that's sick. Winning is fun. Joe's a winner. Joe's one, Joe one in high school, Joe one in college. Joe won early in his career here, and that's the plan. And so to think about this and to think of three straight years without missing the playoffs, like people in Kansas City are freaking out today because the Chiefs missed the playoffs once with Patrick Mahome, right, and obviously you
have the injury and everything like that. But I even look and I think of how all right, well, Brian Peyton Manning, they never missed the playoffs in Indianapolis. Never Now did they run into Tom Brady and the Patriots and they stubbed or telling the playoffs when they shouldn't have. Yes, but they were winning twelve games a year, and so how in the world is this team with its talent not finding ways to win some of these games? And I mentioned Joe Burrow centric they went one in eight
without Joe that that should be impossible. You should be able to go four and five without Joe. So you're not coming back and having to win out and all these ridiculous, ridiculous scenarios that we've really had to discuss for two years now. Oh, if they win out and this happens and the easter Bunny comes up, it does this, Well, they're gonna make the playoffs. Well, I don't want to talk about the Easter Bunny in December.
It's like the Reds, you know, we got to find other teams need to screw up for us to win.
That's right.
Yeah, the Doctors has four guys and maybe we can get two hits in a row.
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, If you win, you control everything. James Rapeing from Bengals dot dot com Lockdown Bengals hashing up yesterday's cataclysmic disaster at pay Corps. Uh, the focus should be on the franchise.
You know.
The entire team, as we all know, is built around Joe Burrow. Okay, and Joe Burrow says, look, winning means fun. I'm not having fun. I gotta I gotta win. I gotta have fun. Okay, So let's let's look at that. Examine that for a second. If you're not winning, that means you're not having fun. And if you're gonna keep him happy, you've got to make it fun again and start winning. Today should be the day after being eliminated from the playoffs, after being embarrassed twenty four to nothing
and showing no push on offense and especially defense. Should today if this team were serious about that, I'm serious about winning, would Zach Taylor and or Duke Tobin be fired sometime today?
I'm gonna answer. I'm gonna answer your question with a question, and it's the question that you have to ask any time you make a decision like that, do you think and this is the question Mike Brown has to answer, But I'm gonna ask you, do you think Zach Taylor is the man to lead this team to a super Bowl?
I would say it doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter that you could bring in Andy Reid here, you could bring in the ghost to George Hallis, you could bring in Bill Belichick, you could bring in any of those guys. I don't think it matters in Cincinnati, and I think it's because of what we're talking about. They do the bare minimum all the time, and the bare minimum because a parody in the NFL will get you a playoff appearance. Hello,
we'll get you an AFC title. Hello, we'll get you to the super Bowl, and you're an eyelash away from winning at all. That's not because of anything. I don't think now that you have a sample here of missing the playoffs since that Super Bowl in the last three years, James Repene, I think what to show you is the parody of the NFL that anybody can get lucky once and get into this is the fat was and I all, we've built this championship. No, the reason you got there
was because you were so bad for so long. You have massed so many to first round draft picks and first choice choice that you it was unbeatable by sheer luck, by your incompetence. You stumbled into this. That's the way the NFL is set up. But it wasn't sustainable. That's the issue. That is not that's above Zach Taylor.
I think that's a good answer. So that's one, and this is how I would answer it. And should one of those guys be out, I would not be against getting rid of anyone in the building because this is a once in a lifetime. A lot of people listening haven't seen a quarterback like Joe Burrow with a guy like Jamar Chaf and will never see and I'm thirty four and I'm not sure i'll see it again type of talent at Paid Course Stadium. I think Joe is
the best quarterback in franchise history right now. I wrote a history book about the ben This is some young nist guy. Just no, I've looked at the Kent Anderson years and Boomer and all those things and so you need to have that urgency. And you're right though, it doesn't matter who's there. If that person that you get isn't able to make you change, isn't able to push this franchise forward. And I think that's where the conversation is. Marvin Lewis did it. He pushed it forward in two
thousand and three when he got here. Obviously not far enough. I do think that they've made some changes in the Zach Taylor splash Joe Burrow era. Yeah, they need to whatever it's going to be, Maybe it is Zach, I don't know. But whoever's going to push them forward needs to push them forward now. And it doesn't feel like they have all the answers in the building.
Well, yes, it was an example bare minimum, right, we bare minimum requirements to remove snow from the seats for the fans a week ago. We just spent over two hundred and twelve million dollars on extending the Bengals least for another eleven years, with all the improvements going on, and they turn around and go, yeah, you clean your own damn seats off.
It's no big deal.
Draymond Jones made some comments eye opening comments after the game, saying the Bengals weren't ready to play.
It was too cold for them.
There are times where guys take shots at teams and you go, it's them just chirping because of the division rivalry.
I think he made some good points.
I don't think the Bengals are ready one bit. I think it was an uninspired per playments. I think they were. I think they were somewhere else, somewhere else. And yeah, the defense made some plays early, and you know who was making plays, Guys that had to be right there because they're playing for jobs and contracts, right And it was good to see Miles Murphy with a couple of sacks.
Demetrius Knight Junior. I've been very critical of stepping up and making some plays early, and so do you know what? They should have been up ten nothing, thirteen to nothing, fourteen nothing early in that game, and they weren't. And why weren't they? Well, the guys that Zach Taylor should be winning with Joe Burrow, jamar Chie, these guys would
just were out of sync, completely out of sync. And I don't know why, but that why is an indictment on the entire team and how this season has gone because they should have came out with their hair on fire yesterday, putting out the snow on all the seats, and it was the exact opposite.
Yeah, yeah, it was a letdown from beginning. And then James Rapine this morning chopping up the Bengals twenty four to nothing elimination loss there four and ten, now no hope of the postseason. Three years of this and James is over at Bengals Talk dot com, the only daily Bengals podcast locked on Bengals, and the book entered the jungles. Of course, the Bengals drafted seventeen defensive players. I believe
it was the number since twenty twenty two. And how many of those guys have panned out to you know, to show you it's not just Zach Taylor, it's within the organization itself. How many how many defensive studs canna go wow, Okay, DJ Turner great?
Who else?
I mean that as of now, I do think I do think that Miles Murphy is showing a promigrant and he's gone from like a guy that you're wondering if he anything to oh, well, he can be a useful piece moving forward. And what his feeling is is interesting, and that's what the final three weeks of this year, that's what it should be used for. I honestly, because there's gonna be a lot of talk about Zach Taylor. I don't think the final three weeks should matter when
it comes to Zach Fays. I think we've seen enough and you're making a decision one way or another, do tob and same thing, right your whatever your decision is. I don't think the results of these final three weeks should matter from that standpoint, because you know what I want to do. I want to evaluate all these young guys. I'm not necessarily focused on the result of the game as much as I am. All right, well, how's Minles Murphy progressing? How are some of these young guys progressing?
Is Jordan Battle doing everything he can to be a building block because he's had an up and down season and even yesterday, nice interception, but it happens three plays after an awful misstackle where he should should have made the play in the gap on the running back, so that there are evaluation mode, for lack of a better term, is the way to describe it. But yeah, as far as overall stars on defense, Yeah, you might have DJ Turner and then as of now there's we're still star hunting.
I would say, yes, I guess and any Shamar Stewart, you know, you look at some of the guys they drafted and go, okay, well, events is going to pay dividends and it hasn't. And again, you know, to the to the point you made about well, is it really Zach Taylor, I don't know. We changed coordinators from lou Ana Aruma, who did pretty well until the Colts cell A Park by the way, no fault of his, I don't think, but we have al Golden in there, and
the statistically the defense, well, I think they've regressed. I just again, you keep bringing guys in that's not the problem, and I don't think it's a problem that'll ever get fixed until the ownership realizes that they're the problem.
Well, I think ownership made that change because Zach Taylor said that's a change that needed to be made, and that's my words, not back, but that's that's how I kind of perceived it. And obviously it hasn't worked out. Now are there reasons for that?
Yeah?
I think so. I think the Bengals should have went out and been more aggressive and free agency to your point, and they didn't. And then in the draft it puts unnecessary pressure on Demetrius Knight, Jamar Stewart and all these guys that, yeah, may end up being good players, but you'll look at their pre draft evaluations, no one expected them to be plug and play starters right away. Yeah, And so that it's just a tough, a tough situation. Like I don't even know if al Goin's an awful coach.
Obviously the Fats say he's an awful defensive coordinator in the NFL. I don't know if that's the case because of the talent issues. So what's wrong right now? Everything?
Can it be fixed?
Of course it can, but a lot of aggressive things need to happen for that to be the case. And I'm just not sure that the powers that be are willing to do that. They're still thinking about those seats, I think.
Yeah, Well, I mean those two things together, the abysmal loss of seats and everything else. They are oblivious and they simply don't care about what everyone else thinks about them. That's been a consistency as long as I've been a Bengals fan and.
You as well.
That's just as sure as the sun's going to rise and the east said in the west, that's a given. Especially, I will say let me let me went at one point. I think it's especially true now that the least extension for eleven years is done.
I get it. I do get that, and that, no doubt was a huge factor in that building. I will say this, Mike Brown is the one that would sign off on any major change anything you're thinking of Zach, Duke, anything like that. He'd be the person that said, all right, we need to make this change. Not Katie, it's not Troy, it's not whoever else you think might be.
Mike.
He saw all those MPCs, he was there for that game, he saw against the division rival, with the season on the line, how awful that that performance was. That does hit them, they like he does take a note of that. I'm not saying that it's going to be the difference and Zach is going to be gone or this kind of I'm not saying that, but I do think that that's probably the first time this season where I look at it and I'm like, all right, well, what's your excuse?
You had?
Joe? The seasons on the line. You're at home. It's the team to be thirty two to fourteen two weeks ago and you get boat race and shut out for the first time in the Borough era.
If that's not a wake up call, James, I don't know what is now we see you wait, I mean today the cases, man, it would be that like today tomorrow, that's a day where Zach and Duke Tobin especially, we're moving on from you guys. We've got to do something to show the fan base that we actually care about winning football games, not just making money. But here's me and you and everyone listening holding their breath. James, appreciate as always. We'll talk again next week, win or lose.
Will you be here.
All wait?
I'm always. I appreciate you, buddy. Thanks again, Have a great day. James Rapine over at SI's Bengalstalk dot Com and Lockdown Bengals podcast. Scott Sluan Show with Willy on the Way to Pick It Up and See Gate continues on the Home of the Best or Worst Bengals covered seven hundred w Dowt Cincinnat