Scott's loan return here seven hundred WLW. Here we go back half the week. We all good sew. Here's what you need to know. Pharmaceuticals very expensive, especially insulin. If you are on insulin, you know how expensive that is. And the Federal Trade Commission a number of states and cities, and now Hamilton County, Ohio suing three pharmacy benefit managers at ECBs, care Mark, Express Scripts and optim Rx, as
well as Eli, Lilly, Novo, Nordisk, and another manufacture. And those comprise about ninety six ninety seven percent of the insulin market. And the reason they're suing them is for allegedly fixing insulin and diabetes drug prices. So right now, if you look at the cost it would have cost them because about now less than are around two dollars a vile to make that sells for literally hundreds of times to that. We're talking one to three hundred times
what the cost is. And the suit alleges illegal price manipulation. On this is County Commissioner Denise Treehouse. Welcome back to the show, Denise. How are you.
I'm good, good morning, Scott.
Good Mark. You seem healthy. I'm healthy In this regard. I am not on insulin, and I also don't think I have anyone of my immediate family on insulin. But I hear the horror stories.
Oh, there are many, many people that use insulin. It's a life saving drugs. And in Hamilton County we've got about eighty eight hundred county employees and family members that use insulin, and that.
I believe is the highest drug category for coverage, right, yeah, yeah.
Fromenty twenty three to twenty twenty five, this diabetes medication was the single highest cost prescription drug category for the county.
Okay, So what triggered the county to jump in this lawsuit?
Now?
Was there a particular spiking costs complaints from employees or was it because the FTC settled with Express Scripts and said, hey, there's an opportunity here to go after the other pharmacy benefit managers and certainly the drug manufacturers.
Well, prosecutor pillage this to our attention, to be fair, I didn't. This wasn't my idea, although I love the idea because other communities, as you just said, were waging lawsuits. They're about five hundred and fifty other entities, whether they're state cities, health plans and so they are, you know, weighing in on this, and we didn't want to miss
the boat. It kind of reminds me of the opioid settlements where we were chewing and then we joined others in that lawsuit to bring some resources down to Hamilton County.
All right, No, that makes sense. I know that the defendants here in this is in case the companies point out that previous insulin pricing cases have been dropped or lost or settled for no money. What makes you think this time is the magic charm, the magic bullet in Hamlin County and the other areas of successful days.
Well, first of all, we're not paying anything upfront to wage the lawsuit because we only pay if we win, and so much like the opioid settlement, right, so we're not no money lost to hear. But also what we know is that, as you said, the cost of insulin is skyrocketed, but the cost to produce insulin has gone down, and so we are waging that they are colluding. They are it's false price fixing, and so that's what we're
saying in the lawsuit. And I think we've got a really good case in winning, as do five hundred and forty nine other jurisdiction.
Yeah, in the drug manufacturer as they say that the out of pocket costs are pretty low. Lily's been claiming listen, it's like less than fifteen bucks a month on average. So if the math mass there, if employees aren't paying hundreds of per mile out of pocket, who's actually bearing the inflated costs? That's the big question is taxpayers to the county plan And that's why the county's evolved because this is taxpayer money.
Well, we're paying thirteen million dollars for insulin coverage for the county. That's a lot of money. And if we can reduce that cost because we don't have these folks colluding about price fixing, then we reduce the cost to the county, and that translates the cost savings for the tax payers.
The PBMs argue that they're actually the counterweight, that they balance pharmaceutical the pharmaceutical monopoly with this and that they can negotiate down prices. How would you respond to that? Why they included in the suit?
Then well, that's that's a question for the prosecutor. I mean, I'm not an attorney and I don't pretend to be one. But the process.
That's why I like you, Denise, That's why we like you.
Yeah, I only say what I know. But Connie and her team have identified the as you say, the drug manufacturers and the benefit managers as part of this lawsuit. I trust that, and I'm more than happy to pile on and say, yes, this sounds like a good idea. We need to go after these guys and say the taxpayer some money.
That's what I'm calling you. You were right in the coach of Cokannie's doing all the talking. You were standing in the background. I like that. I like that. You're get a look crowdit for standing back there and ride the vape trail. She is Denniy's freehouse Hamlet County commissioner. We're talking about the county now jumping on the lawsuit bandwig. And no cost to the taxpayers either, because there's a
contingency basis. They went to the back of the proverbial phone book and found lawyers out to think out of phillyre somewhere and said, Okay, we're going to try this as a class and it's Philadelphia. It's also, as I mentioned, other states are getting involved with US as well. I think Hamilton in the first county to do this, and
they're upset about obviously high insulin prices. You need that to live, and the costs of production are dwarfed by the cost it actually winds up paying by taxpayers and those people who need that medicine to live. We're talking one hundred two hundred three hundred percent mark up on that, and that is the cause for the suit here too. But part of this is how much of this is should be at the federal government's feet though, you know, the opia you mentioned at the onset denise about this
kind of models the opiate lawsuit. But you know, as I recall with opiate, it's one of the big problems, was it no one ever addressed was well, you know, the FDA mandated, the government mandated that pain be treated as a fifth vital sign, and so that encouraged the over prescription of these things that later the government said, well they're bad for you. Well, you had a hand of that, you drove that. I think the same thing is here. You know. The one of the big problems
is patent ever greening. I'm out of here familiar with that, but the original patents expired a decade ago, and what they do is they just slightly reformulated to keep the patent alive to make more money. Is that something you can be cleaned up by Congress?
Well, I mean I think we should be tackling this at all levels, of course, but this one is you know, and by the way, we hope to be part of a multi jurisdictional litigation that's coming out of New Jersey. So that's what this is about.
So we are.
Filing it individually. And if we don't get to be part of the multi jurisdiction litification, that's fine, we'll pursue it on our own. But the idea here, much like the opioids, is to join together with others that are doing the same thing to bring down resources to our local community. If we don't file suit, we miss out.
And why would we do that. I mean, you know so because so many others are in and yes, we should tackle this at all levels, but we don't want Hamilton County to be left out of you know, what's happened in many other states and jurisdictions.
I always go on record, God, I always hate what politics is doing in this country right now because it's so mindless in bottom feeding and my side VI your side, And I'm not alleging you doing that, but I'd go back and go you know, this has been a problem for a long time. Why are we waiting until now to address it? Because this has been a problem under Republican administrations as well as Democrats. And the lawsuit targets
PBS and manufactures. But like I said, you know, the rebate system we can get into that is the core problem.
But like I said, you know, whether it's that or the patent issue, patent evergreening, or the PBM scheme that requires legislation to fix, not litigation, what's forcing Congress to actually do their job here other than going after the I guess the people are profiting it from which feels good and it's very very populous, but again it doesn't address the core issue, and that is government helped create this whole thing.
Well, and I you know, I can't speak to why the government at the federal level is not acting on this. I mean I can't speak for them.
No money is why they're not acting on it.
Well, well, you know you have to ask them. And again I'm not going to speak for other people. But this litigation out of New Jersey is the prompt here. That is the reason for the action. Now there's something going on, it's got legs. We want to take advantage
of that. We want to be part of it. And so that from my understanding, and again and prosecutor brought this to it, But that is a prompt on by way of timing, because there's something rolling down the tracks, and if we don't jump on and file suit, we miss and so we don't want to miss that. So the opportunity is now.
Okay, if you win, though, get what you want in your fourth lower prices. What's going to prevent these companies from simply exiting the Ohio market.
I don't know the answer to that.
I mean, that's a third round. I don't know that they will, but that's a third round. Like, hey, if we can't make money off this, then we're out. We've seen that happen elsewhere and I don't know if that happened here or not, but that's that's pretty sobering. And then where you get your diabetes medication.
Well, I'm not suggesting that these companies shouldn't make money. We're saying that they shouldn't be colluding with one another to jack up prices on taxpayers. That's what we're saying. I mean, I am not used to be a small business owner, as I've told you before. So you know, businesses make money. That's fine, they've got their nets, they're selling insulin, that's great. But to collude and falsely elevate prices is something entirely different. And so that's what we're saying.
We're not saying they shouldn't make money, and they will make money, but they shouldn't make as much as they are by colluding with one another.
Gotcha, did you guys have to make going into this to Connie share with you what the estimate of potential recovery is here? How much money?
You know?
I asked that question.
So I just told you that we're spending about thirteen million for this cost of account. It's a lot of money, and so I mean, I don't know the answer to that, but if it's a few millions, that's really meaningful in a budget that's you know, strained and will be strained last year, it'll be strained next year. But any money that we can find to help with that is going to be to our benefits.
For sure, who would get the money? Does go back in the general fund? Does it? Does it go directly towards prescription prices and offset with the county pays? Does it go to to the Bengals? Where's the money going somehow? Wait there, I think Mike Brown gets a percentage. I don't know how this sits. Apparently in the master agreement.
Is your preoccupation with the bankers? But no, no, it'll go into the general fund. And so then we have to make a decision commissioners. You know, the general fund pays for the deputies for for nine to one one call takers. Are all the things that we've always talked about. Or is it a benefit to those that are in the benefits system the healthcare system of the county. And do we offer some relief somewhere else for our employees or do we put it more towards the general fund
for more general purposes. And that's something we'll have to decide down the road.
If this is successful, does that open the door for other suits for other things that might be expensive? I mean, do you just continue this path? I'm not saying it's a bad path, but what open mind? Hey, we got money we're able to fix this, what's next.
Well, I think we always should be open to an opportunity when there's a big suit going on in multi jurisdiction litigation, I think we should always be open to piling on it is worthy, right, if it's worthy of our attention. Again, we're not paying any money to do this right now. It's on a contingent basis, So that's the good news for the taxpayers. But yeah, I don't know why we wouldn't look for opportunities to write size
things in Hamilton County. But again, you know, I'm not the prosecutor, and so the prosecutor's job literally is to file these actions with the support of the Commission, and so that's what we're doing here.
Yeah, yeah, I mean this has been a let's face it, back to politics. This has been a talking point for Democrats for a long long time. I mean, it used to be the insulin cost two dollars to make. That's been thrown around for a long long time. And now we're there's action on this. And you know, obviously Democrats get hammered on cost of living issues, and now that's
starting to turn the other way. But you know, I think this is maybe a populist idea here that has some legs, and find out exactly if you can get some money back from these companies. I just wonder, why don't we just address the route. As you said, that's outside of your scope as a commissioner. I appreciate and understand that. I think we're both frustrated with the system
the way it is right now, especially with healthcare. I don't know if this fixes it, but it does cost some of that money back, because you know, if you need insulin to live and you can't afford it, that's a huge problem. And also that thirteen million dollars that the county pays, and these are for people who have coverage because they work for the county. There's so many people that don't, and that's a scary part well.
And you know, we don't want these companies taking advantage of, you know, providing a drug that's life saving to people in our community. I mean it's insulting, I think. And so when you particularly when you talk about insulin, because it's not like this is some drug that people may or may not want to use. This is life saving. People need the drug. And to to collude over the prices of insulin I think is an insult. I really do. And so we're holding the companies accountable.
I think that's what we should do.
I think that's what frankly, people expect of their elected officials. And so you know what we're doing it the time is right. I can't really speak to the timing otherwise, but I know that the timing is right here to join this suit coming out of New Jersey, and so that's what we're doing.
Do you believe there's a collusion going on or is that is that a fact?
Has it been proven that that is what is being alleged.
Yeah, that's a tough one to prove that they're all in on this together than saying, hey, it costs what a cost? And the way the system is set up that that those who regulate the system allowed this to occur. I think it'd be more of an indictment of the of the politics of those again above us in Washington
versus the companies themselves. They've they've got to find a way to make money, and it's kind of like you know, the cries over you know, billionaires paying too few tax as well, Okay, then fix the system, close those loopholes that you allege are there. That's why are you beating down on the people who are smart enough to figure that out.
I agree, But we just talked about the cost of producing insulin going down, and yet the cost of buying it is going up. So there's something going on here. I think that doesn't make sense, and so I agree with you that you know.
These are broader issues.
We can do what we can do here in Hamilton County to protect the taxpayers here. That's my job and that's what we're trying to do. And you know, it's not as if others don't see what's happening. I mean, five hundred and fifty other jurisdictions of files too. So this is a big movement and certainly people are paying attention.
Yeah, it's on the heels of tobacco. It's on the heels of the opiate issue as well, and this certainly fits into that category. Is like, the next thing is affordable drugs Insulin for crying outline. I mean, there's other drugs out there. I think, like you know, the EpiPen thing. Epinephrine is another in that effects far fewer people than than insulin. But i'd imagine if this is successful, that might be something that would be explored. It's a life
saving medication that you need. And you know, we heard that for a long time. It's like, well they only last I forgot what is ninety days or six months or something like that, and we've got to throw them out and get a new one and it's just simply not affordable. We don't heard those crises as much anymore. There are some I think there was some regulation that's been done, but you know, there are plenty of drugs out there that you could wind up going after as a result of this.
Well, that's right, and epiethin's are extremely expensive. So I've got some personal experience with one of my relatives, right, So yeah, I mean, I agree with you. And let's not forget though that the benefit and this is a little different from the opioid settlement money, but those dollars that we are investing now because we were successful and that lawsuit, are going directly into Hamilton County to save
lives and get people into treatment. I mean so, and then it's coming through the foundation at the state level, but there are direct payments coming to Hamilton County and other jurisdictions in Hamilton County to the benefit of our constituents.
So this is real. The benefits are real. This is a little different because it's going to the general fund, but those are taxpayer dollars and so you know, I just don't want to understate that there's a real benefit here if we win and there's no cast involved to do it, so you know, again, to me, it's just a win win situation. So yeah, but the benefits can be real and seen on the ground.
Has this fir amount in New Jersey? Have the litigators giving you a timeline? No?
I asked that question too, and you know how attorneys are. They were, Oh, yeah, not sure, you know we're doing like all right, all right, I get it. So yeah, no, I'm you know, I'm not an attorney, and I'm not I'm not disappointed by it.
Yeah right, well, I'm Suna. There's plenty attorneys out there, some of our good friends of mine, and then there's people like yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, get it. Hey, Denise, thanks for jumping on this morning. Answer the question certainly an interesting perspective. We're going to talk about this a little bit behind your back, if you don't mind, we'll get some calls and from people affected by this, and you have a wonderful day. Thanks again for jumping on.
Hey can I ask you something?
Yes, ma'am.
Yes, So, I don't know how much time we have, but we did do a big dedication yesterday out at in Bonds Hill for the big building, the Mercy Building out there.
Yes, right right right, yeah, yeah, please go ahead, yeah yeah.
So two days we named the street going up to the building, Pat McCollum Way. This is a named after a woman that took in many, many kids in our community both foster care adoptive care, and was tragically killed not so long ago, and so we named the street after her because of the nexus with jobs and family services, so we wanted to honor her legacy through naming the street. But the building itself was owned by Mercy. We now
have it. It's a consolidation of county services up in one site, so lots of efficiencies here for jff d D, public health, addiction response, environmental services, and veteran services are going to be up there. So it's centrally located in the county. And I just want to say there's free parking. There's free parking at this facility. There are a thousand spots out there, and so you don't I always hear about the cost of parking, how terrible it is to
come downtown. That is no longer the case, and so we're very excited about this. It's accessible to people that need that kind of access, particularly veterans. So we're really excited about the opening of the building and we dedicated it yesterday.
You know, we were texting back and forth. I completely forgot because I'm stupid to mention. I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to definitely get a plug in for that six I think sixty million dollars is the cost. Now you also have this is the other hard part here is this huge levey on the ballot for children's services. But love to revisit that maybe the later date because those two things go together. You got the building, but now you got a fund.
Well, the other thing is that we're getting out of a bunch of different buildings because of all those departments. We're in different buildings all over the city and so as we just like the alms and depky Downtown is a good example of it that is now going to be converted into housing, as will a property up in Walnut Hills, and so it's really great for the communities because we're and you see this all over the country, we're converting office space into residential and we need residential.
So it's just really a great move for the county and it's going to save money.
All right, I'm sure we'll talk about that a later date with the love come up and Denise all the best. Thanks for jumping on. I appreciate you. Yeah, sure, all right, got right, let me get a news update in. I want to talk if you're on the insulin. I'm just curious because I don't have anyone in my family that is. And that's a blessing for sure, because I know how hard that is being diabetic. But the impact of that,
I'm your wallet. And also if you think this is a good idea ensuing the drug companies to get the price of insulin down, we'll talk about that, dex. I'll give you some reasons as to why you know this, this whole scenario exists. I mentioned the government getting involved in regulation that can easily fix on the men easily
but fixed by Congress. I want to touch on that in just minutes and We'll get your phone calls in at five one, three, seven four nine, seven thousand, iHeartMedia and seven hundred w WIT Cincinnati's on Procter and Gamble. If you've got someone there you would like for us to recognize on the air, just text us their name at five one eight eight one and be listening here
on seven hundred WWT. Here we go, Sloanly on seven hundred WLW thanks to Commission Denise three House jumping on the show this morning talking about this lawsuit involving Prescription Benefit MATP Pharmacy Benefit Match, I should say, and three drug manufacturers for allegedly fixing insulin and diabetes drug prices. That there's collusion between the three is the alegation collusion? We got collusion because insulin costs two dollars a vile
to make. That's a manufacturing cost. A mark up on this thing costs the county thirteen million dollars for the eighty eight hundred employees under its healthcare coverage, by far the highest drug category cost and outline for them. And so this on the heels of the FDC. The Federal Trade Commission just settled with Express Scripts requiring business practice changes and the like, and so they said this kind of set the pattern. They settled. They see an opening.
They also look at the opioid crisis litigation against drug distributors and say, there's money to be regained for at least the people here in this case, not what they do with the money, the commissioners, who knows, but to try and cls some of that money back. It is a much much deeper issue. However, like anything like this, than just going well, there are a bunch of crooks. Look,
we all pay a lot for prescription medication. Okay. I am not a big fan of pharmacy benefit managers, even though we have one here at iHeart and I'm lucky to have it. Also not a you know, a fan of people who are out to, you know, try to make as much money as possible where you know, in a fact where you're you're it's almost confiscatory. Listen, I'm fine with profit, but you here are three hundred percent profit. I hear that, and I go, okay, yeah, who wants
you know, profiteering and exploitation. I get all that, but is this something that's being litigated that should be solved by legislative needs? So we're litigating instead of legislating. And again back to my central gripe here about government that we've lost sight of because we're so polarized and entrenched in, you know, being ultra progressive and everything that you know, the the party or everything that ultra progressive believe it.
I have to believe so even though I think maybe deep inside it's wrong, and I would say in the same is true for MAGA, which you'll hear about later on. President Trump is proposing a ten percent cap on APR credit card rates. We'll get into that eleven oh seven on the show, and maybe a five time a little bit more. Here is kind of the tease. But and you gut to step back and think of that, going, well, what is that sound? Well, our guy, our team's champion,
so it must be right. You know. Sometimes I think the problems we've got to step back and think for ourselves and go, yeah, isn't this going to cause more problem? Or in this case with insulin, okay, is that really driving it? Are they really mustache twirling, corporate, greedy Robert drug Robert barons that are to fleece us of every dime just to keep us alive? I mean, it feels that way and it makes a good theater, but there's
that reality. You know what I mentioned with the denise the patient evergreening thing, So what happens is insulin's barrown for a long time, so original insulin patients, that patent expired decades ago, and so you know, you can get a generic human insulin and it's like twenty twenty five bucks at like place like Walmart, for example. But what they keep doing is tweaking the formulation in order to
restart the patent. So if you make a little change to it, it restarts the patent, and now you're on the clock again. Now they say it's new and improved, and I know that Lily has improved their product multiple times since the nineties, and each tweak extends that patent protection. But the drugs themselves are just marginally better than the previous version, you know, things like are faster acting, or they stabilize your blood sugar more or something like that.
So you're locked in that version. It's legal, but it feels exploitative. The pharmacy benefit scheme through the middleman problem, right, and this is where it gets really crazy, is the pharmacy benefit managers. These are your care marks, your express
scripture optims. They are between manufacturers, insurance, and pharmacy. So they negotiate these rebates that manufacturers set at a hireless price, and that gives the PBM kind of a kickback if you'l So, for example, if the price and insulance, like I don't know, the tag on it, like a car, is three hundred dollars, the pharmacy benefit manager quote unquote negotiates one hundred and fifty dollars rebates, so it's one
hundred and fifty dollars net cost. The problem is the benefit manager's pocket summer most of that rebate instead of passing the savings onto patients or insurers. Now, you know, all for making a profit, but what are we doing here.
You're artificial and fronting the cost here. So the manufacturers have to participate because hireless prices mean higher rebates, and you could see this whole race to the top, and it's kind of like a perverse incentive here for drugs that keep you alive right now, And this is another problem that the government can solve, because government largely is
the problem here. There are three companies that are being sued those are the three companies controlled like ninety six ninety seven percent of the insulin market across the globe by the way around the world. Question to be okay with there's so much money in this, why is there more competition? There's lots kind of be because there are higher regulatory barriers, the clinical trials expensive because the testing process is very, very thorough and very expensive, and that's
also driving this whole thing up as well. So in my book, and insurance certainly covers Insulnza, patients still see the true cost until they hit their deductibles, and there's no normal market pressure, so all of these artificial layers in the market are what's causing the prices to be absolutely outrageous in people who are going without their medication to save their lives. It's also a huge regulatory failure. I mentioned the opioid crisis. No one mentions it's driven
was driven entirely by the FDA. It's like, why did so many physicians start writing it? Is it because of the evil people that are creating the drug? And they're looking the other way somewhat because you know, there's greed there and government is supposed to check that, not encourage it. What happened though, was the government said, oh, yeah, you
know what, pain is a fifth vital sign, let's just okay. Well, then if that's the case and we can't allow people to be in pain, what the hell do you think doctors are going to do if it's being kind of up to some degree by the manufacturer, like the addictive nature of it, and the government's going, yeah, let's go all in. Isn't the FDA's job to make sure this
stuff is safe before we put in our bodies. And it happens all the time, you know, the drug comes out and oh, everybody take it, and then wait a minute, I'm growing a third nipple on my forehead. Well then they turn around and go The FDA goes, we're going after the manufacturer. We're stopping them from gouging consumers and creating third nipples. You guys are supposed to be the police here. You're supposed to be responsible making sure that
didn't happen. Where's your liability in this, not us or the government. We're here to help. So the regulatory failure, in my opinion, the FDA approval, it's expensive, it's slow, there's no price controls, that starts driving this whole thing. So it's yeah, I get it, there's greed involved. We know that business people are greedy, they want more market share. I understand that we know that that is a foregone conclusion. But how about it demanding our government be more referee
and less encouraging that kind of behavior. A lot of the stuff could be cleaned up if Congress actually showed up and did their job. I know that's that's unique, considering they shut down for a little bit on Monday Tuesday over whatever it is this week. Maybe you see these people are running for Congress. Maybe i'd just say, you know, what, are you gonna keep the government open? Are you actually gonna do something besides campaign? Because that's
all I see. I see ads all the time. I'm getting my phone blown up all the John Housteed's texting me twenty four to seven about voting. Okay, great, but what for what what are you guys doing? Are you actually getting your asses and like doing anything legislatively or just letting Trump signed executive orders and you're sitting back at in the check five three, seven, four, nine, seven, eight hundred the Big One talk back iHeartRadio app So maybe you're on insulin. A loved one is how how
hard is it? So I said, I don't have experience in this myself. I'm blessed. Families blessed. We don't have people with the sugar. Have some few online friends it might have that issue, but we don't really talk about insulin prices. And like, I'm curious how this is impacting you and your take on this whole lawsuit. Let's go to Rick and Clean. You searched up this morning on the Scot Salon show. Rick welcome, How are you brother? Big Ricky with me?
Rick?
Quick?
Quick?
Hey?
Rick?
What's going on?
Not much? But I'm not from Cleaves?
Okay, duly noted. I'll put that on the record. Dave put that on the official record. Rick is not from Cleaves. But are you on insulin?
Yes?
Sir, all right, so we're one for two. That'll get you in the Hall of Fame. What's your how how much is it costume? Is it the point where you can't afford it?
H No, I'm actually pretty lucky. I got a good retirement ood, but it cost me thirty five dollars a month and that went down about three or four years ago. Gotcha under Biden. Now, last year, my needles that I need to use to get the insulin out of the pens rocketed. They went from being free for twenty years. As soon as I'd order insulin, I'd get the box of pens, right, and I went last year and they for one hundred pitner needles. I'm sorry for under needles.
It was costing me, are gonna cost me eighty dollars until I complained, and then they quickly brought it down.
No h.
Card like h R X card. They just brought it down to like seven dollars.
And now and now it's almost like it's almost like damn, you know, damn close to one thousand dollars just for the just for the syringes.
Yeah, exactly.
It's it's more expense like the it's like the printer and turner cartridge scheme.
Yeah, that that has since come down. I just I just got needles probably a month ago, and they're like ten bucks. But like I say, uh, I used to get them for free as soon as I order the insulent, that needles would come with it. Yeah, I had no charge. And also on my oral uh By beds medicine, and it actually went up too, so the insulin came down and everything else.
But those companies that did do these syringes for they're not the same ones that may make the drugs, so as I can never really go, well, they're just you know, they're switching profit one profit for the other. They're taking a hit here on the insulin, but we'll charge you more for the syringes, but it's a different company makes host.
That is true.
I wonder if that's the pharmacy benefit people though, figuring, hey, we got to make our money up. We'll just gouge on the on the on the uh, you know, on the supplies to administer the drugs. It could very well be rick thanks to the call. That's I mean, that's
something to think about. Okay, we'll cut this up. But you know, it's like if they said, hey, you're only allowed to sell a gun for I don't know, I don't know why they would do this, but yeah, five hundred dollars, okay, one hundred dollars okay, great, Well, now the bullet's gonna cost ten times there because we got to make up the difference. I guess if if guns were indeed covered by your health insurance, I'm not quite sure if there are any plans out there that got
that one. I have to look that one up. I mean guess probably not, probably not bad bad analogy, but you get the idea. You get the idea where we're going. Yeah, I mentioned him complaining about, you know, complaining about the government not doing their job. And of course today the Senate has a test vote. I don't know any to test vote on the partial shutdown. Maybe it's a test boat to go. You know, we've been in competent for so long we forgot how to do this. Well, you
had all the ads vote for me. Well wait, the last guys said vote for me or re eluct me. Why you haven't done anything? You guys are off half the year and then when you're supposed to be there, you're shutting the government down over different causes. On the left hand the right side, what are you guys, what are we hiring you to do? Exactly? Maybe we got to start examining that on a lawsuit. Maybe we Denise
get together on that one. It's five three, seven, four, nine, seven thousand, the big one talk back iHeartRadio app And that is the problem, of course, is uh, you know, drug prices are just they're insane for everybody in healthcare and that Johnny, I know I talk often about that, but that is such a core critical issue in my opinion because it affects everybody. Like previous caller Rick there for not from Cleaves was you know, he's retired, I'm working,
I got healthcare. Maybe you are on Obamacare or maybe you don't have insurance right now. You know, if you are someone who is part of this gig economy, and it just blows me away just how steadfast around the way we've always done things and how slow things are to change, despite younger people coming into power seemingly more and more every year, how much stays the same in that regard is that, you know, we have this untapped
potential in America when it comes to healthcare. And you've heard me drawn on and on about this, but a great example is the gig economy. You know, so many people are working side hustles and the side hustle became main hustles and the side hustles have side hustles, and it's it's it's kind of frightening in a way, how quickly it's all changed from Hey, I have an employer.
I got my healthcare too, all right. I can go out and door dash, or I can go out and whatever it is I'm doing on the side to make a little extra cash because I need it. Or how many people cobble together a bunch of those kind of things because they have severe ADHD like me and go, hey, you know what, I'm just not married to one job. I got do a bunch of different things. It'd be great if you could take your health care with you.
It'd be great if you didn't have to rely on an employer for that, or you know, a bloated government where I have to have subsidies because it's not affordable. The affordable character is anything, but it's extremely expensive. It's just like you're getting a subsidy. You're getting a coupon paid five paid before by the American taxpayer to get that healthcare doesn't really address the issue. You know, we gave you the medicine, but we have the cure and
we refuse to use the cure. That's really what's driving this whole thing. We're going to time out in coming up next on the show on seven hundred WLW and interesting A lighter case here by the way out of a Newark, Ohio. And it involves a man who, speaking of government intervention, simply wants to enjoy his life and make his own bourbon. You know there's a law against that that he might go to federal prison. I really
visit the story a few times. I like just keeping on top of these to revisit these stories like this, and I will in just a second of Bob Alt from Buckeye Institute in Columbus. But you know, it's on the heels of the whole CBD beverage band, Like why are we doing that? So many people enjoy it, they like it. It seems to be a better alternative to alcohol for a lot of people. It's the fastest growing segment as far as beverages go, and craft beer is
fading and THHG and fuse beverages are exploding. And yet the federal government and the state government don't want any part of it because well, it's a vice and we can't have that. And no, Ohio, that's problematic. But the idea that like, Okay, I can make my own beer. I could make my own my grandfather, you grandpa used to make dandelion wine. Uh, And as I recall it was awful and I didn't live because I was a little kid then, but I remember my dad going, it's
just as awful. It's an acquired taste from the home country, from Italy, the Paizon making his dandelion wine or whatever it was. You can do that. You can't make your on Burt, Why why not? It gets back to you don't big government doing what they do, and that has overshadow everything we do. If you just opened it up, let it roll, I think we'd be much better off. Really, that is a central theme here on The Scots Loan Show and the Home of the Red seven hundred WW.
Since then you want to be Americ?
Good morning, Scott Floon Show on seven hundred wallswts question, will you be willing to go to prison for your hobby? Guy's name is James Reem, and mister Reem lives in Newark, Ohio, dress up the road from us and he wants to distill small qualities of alcohol. He likes bourbon, he likes rye, he likes whiskey, and uh yes, fascination with brewing. Owns a Burrow Mini Broad micro burw as a matter of fact, and I wants to make some alcohol own home for
his personal consumption. If he decides he's going to do that, he is subject to felony conviction ten thousand dollars in fines. We're talking about five years in prison, longer than a murderer might get simply because he is making his own distilling his own alcohol in his own home for his own use, not giving it away, certainly, not selling it, but of his own use. That is a crime in America,
and I think that is a crime overall. Robert Alt is President and chief executive officer of the Buckeye Institute in Columbus. Let's talk about John Reems case here. He lives in Newark, Ohio, retired engineer, I think, and he owns a micro brewer. And his wife said, hey, you know what, here, here you go. Here's a home brewing kid. He does that making money. It's great. It's called trek brewing, by the way, and now wants to get into home distilling. Why is that illegal?
That's a darn good question. And the answer is, there's a there is a law on the book. This is a federal law. This isn't the state law which prohibits you from distilling any alcohol. For for consumption in your own home, even if you don't sell it, even if you're just doing it as a hobby. So you can.
You can make beer in your own home.
That's perfectly legal. You commit find in your own home. I don't necessarily advise it. I don't know if I've ever had good homemade one, but you can do it. But if you make any amount of whiskey, it's a felony. And not only you listed off these penalties on the website for the enforcement agency, they they make clear not only can you get fined, not only can you get
imprisonment imprisonment, but they'll go after your house. They'll go after wherever it is that you were engaging in this unlawful conduct and potentially try and seize that as well. The penalties here are absolutely draconian. But the real issue here is how is it that the federal government has the authority to go ahead and regulate what you do in your your own home as a hobby. If they can regulate this, there's literally nothing that the federal government can't regulate.
It's a victim of crime. Now, if you sell it distributed to get maybe there's something there. But if you make something, whether it's alcohol, whether it's bread, whether it's a pie, then the only person you're gonna harm is yourself if you get it wrong. Does this law let's go back in history, is this Does this stem from prohibition when people were literally poisoning others but with things like best of gin.
This actually the law I believe actually predates prohibition. But you know, if we're concerned about regulating the production of alcohol for public safety, you know who's actually really good at do it at handling these sorts of regulations are the states, and in fact the Constitution of the under the twenty first Amendment, the states have you know, special authority to regulate in this space. Uh. And if you take a look, I mean Ohio regulates in this space.
But I'll Hio actually doesn't have any.
Prohibition on home distilling.
There are some states that do in addition to the federal government, but Ohio doesn't. And so there's really just no purpose for this law.
You know, maybe there was a time where people get sick in poison and maybe that stems from this, but now it just reaks it protection. Because we have science, you know, you could learn how to do anything really in the comfort of your own home, if you're going to use it for your own consumption, or if you're you know, if you're a neighbor like, hey, I'd like to try some of your whiskey. As long as money's
not changing hands, there's no violation. But if he wanted to do this, would he then have to go through the process of getting a federal license? And what does that look like?
So he would have to get a federal license, he's actually lawfully prohibited under the statute. It is not permissible to distill in your own home, and the statue is written in a very bizarre fashion. If you happen to have a large piece of property and potentially had a shanty way out in the woods, perhaps that would be lawful.
But if you're trying to do so where most people are going to actually try and engage in this, if they're doing as a hobby, you know, in your own home, say in your basement or in your garage, that you can't get a permit to do that. And if you if you engage in distilling without a permit, that will rack you up felony felony charges.
I go to this.
The big question here is, you know you take a look, and you would ask the question, how is it that Congress.
Has the authority to regulate this?
To begin with, Congress only has limited and enumerated powers on the Constitution. They can't just regulate anything willy nilly. And so the big claim that they make here is that they're regulating interstate commerce. But this is a situation in which they're regulating something which is neither commerce nor interstate I mean, literally, what's happening in the confines of your own home. If they can regulate this, they could regulate bread baking, they could regulate your having a home garden.
It really doesn't matter how local, how non commercial it is. It would be within the ambit of congressional regulation. And that's just not what the Constitution says. Yeah, not at all.
And if you're selling it different stories, there's no commerce going on here. So you said interstate commerce, but there's no commercial enterprise. Doesn't it fail that?
Tesk absolutely? And to the extent, and the interesting thing here is to the extent that there are some court decisions that have had more expansive interpretations of what that means. Congress still has to be regulating the interstate market. It has to be necessary and proper to regulate the non commercial market. In this particular case, the home distilling prohibition, it's not regulating an interstate market. This really is getting to non commercial activity.
Okay. The argument from the government on this one basically is it's the reason why this is prohibited. It's uniquely dangerous. Unlike home bread baking or vegetable gardening or whatever it might be. No, no one's die. People may die if you don't do this right. It probably could say the same thing about beer or wine. I suppose it may not taste good and it's why, But someone can get
sick and die from a poorly made homemade whiskey. However, I would say, if you grow vegetables and you have a surplus of vegetables, a lot of people like to can My mom used to do that, make your own pickles and put up tomatoes and stuff like that as well. I'm sure it's very rare. But what about food born botulism?
What about food borne illnesses from poor canning techniques? If I gave my neighbor a can of I don't know, pickled beets or something like that, and it turns out that I didn't do it right, they got sick and died, how much? How is that any more dangerous than we're talking about here.
Well, and here's the other thing. Ultimately, that doesn't give the federal government anymore authority. The fact that they may come up with, you know, and they really haven't pressed too hard on the health rational But even if they do, there isn't a general protection health clause in the US Constitution. They're protecting health and welfare. That is traditionally a set
of powers which belongs to the states. And so if we're concerned about that, the states have the ability, they have the authority, and they do regulate actively in that space. And so if that's our concern, there are other governmental eneities that can do that. The fact that the federal government might be able to point to some justification that doesn't create a fount of new power for them.
He is a Robert Oll President CEO of the Buckeye Institute. Interesting story about your hobbies. Guy named James Reem and New York, New not New York, Newark, Ohio. He wants to sell small quantities alcohols on home, make his own whiskey, basically for his own personal consumption, not for distribution, not for given away just because he's into it. That's his hobby. If he does that, though, he's looking at five years
in prison. He's looking at a felony conviction and up to ten thousand dollars in fines just for creating alcohol for his own use. We allow home brewing with a home wine making and a whole bunch of other things you can do in your house. Why is alcohol so dangerous that you need a federal exxemption and a license
in order to do it? That is the argument before the court, and the Buckeye Institute is leaning into that as a friend of the Court and a friend of mister Reem, and he's on the show this morning to discuss here on seven hundred WLW. You know you mentioned earlier about Article one and the authority to criminalize home distilling. If you go back to prohibition, the federal government needed
the eighteenth Amendment to ban alcohol production and consumption. Does that show that Congress lacks the authority to criminalize home distilling?
I think this goes to, yes, the limitations on government power, the fact that you couldn't just simply have Congress go ahead and restrict it across the board, you needed a constitutional amendment to actually get to a flat prohibition broadly on this if you take a look in this particular case. I mean, the other argument they meant that they make in this case is that it's somehow necessary to the
taxing power. But it's it's interesting in this case, producing alcohol is potentially subject to an excise tax, but the prohibition actually prevents the federal government from collecting any tax. As we've said in this case. Uh, and we actually not just a friend of the court, we directly represent mister Reim in this particular case. Mister Reim would be willing to pay a tax on producing the alcohol, uh, if they would just let him actually produce the alcohol
for his own consumption. So the interly, the oddly, the federal government is preventing itself from getting the tax revenue.
I mean, what would cost for a like I'd imagine it's a lot of mind. It's like a federal firearms later to distribute firearms or something like that. It's it's exceptionally expensive to do that. Yeah, I I I look at this and it's like the same thing. And this guy's willing to do it to pay the tax, and they still won't let them. There's no, there's no, that's unreasonable. I guess that's a great exist I think that's a helpful illustration for your cake Stone.
You.
Oh absolutely, uh. Well, and you know, we we just had oral arguments down there in Cincinnati last week before the Sixth Circuit Quarter Appeals and I'll tell you it was I felt like it was it was a bad day to be the federal government's attorney. The the the the government actually had tried to just argue a very narrow set of issues in the briefs. The court asked the government to be ready to discuss the constitutional arguments
beyond the narrow standing arguments. Uh, and the government essentially refused to do so, so the the court. The court was none too please. There was some test the exchanges, and the court actually went ahead and sent an additional order to the government to provide additional briefing responding to the Back Eye Institute and mister Eam's constitutional clients.
I'm not an attorney. I'm a simple layperson with a simple mind. But I would read that is they don't even have an argument as to why this is the law. That's what it sounds like.
Well, you know, we'll we'll, we'll, we'll see what We'll see what they come up with. But suffice it to say it was, it was. It was a better day to be representing mister Reeve. I'll leave it at that.
Well, I guess the question would be is if their job is to enforce the law and fight for the law in this case and they can't even come with a reason why making your own alcohol for your own consumption and your home is illegal, is that indicator that the state should just give up?
Well?
Yeah, again, as someone who's arguing on behalf of mister Reem, I will say, I don't think that the government should be regulating in this space. I don't think they've been able to articulate a good reason. You've actually articulated stronger reasons for why it is that they might be able to regulate in this space I think than the government has.
That's frightening. Either I'm in the wrong place or the government's really stupid. Anyway, Bob altis here, President, Robert Hall, president, chief executive for the Buckeye Institute. So what's next here? Before the sixth Circuit? It sounds to me like and you never can read the tea leaves when it comes to a court and a judge obviously, or judges obviously, but it sounds like they're they're going to side with you. What happens if that's the case, and moving forward?
Well, right now, the government actually has a brief due next month. The court has given us a very short one week time to respond to that brief. If the Sixth Circuit were to rule in our favor, as we hope that it does, presumably at that point the government might appeal the case to the US Supreme Court. So we will see. But I have a feeling that whoever loses this case, it's it's likely to keep on going up through the courts, and the next stop would be the Supreme Court.
You recall, there's an argument, in all your years as an attorney and studying the law, Robert, that there's been an instance where the government has no solid reason as to watch something is banned or is the law, and yet they continue to fight for keeping the status quoe.
Why is that if they represent the people and it's in the people's best interest, Going, yeah, I mean, maybe there's a time in America where we needed that, but clearly that time has passed, especially when you look at the deregulation of things like marijuana for example, and guess what,
you know, gay marriage, whatever it might be. You know, the earth is still spinning and we're just fine despite all of these horrible things going to destroy the fabric of our country and our makeup, and yet we continue to march on forward. Alcohol home distilling of alcohol seems to fit into that category as well. So if they represent the people and they are fighting for the people, because that's the state the people versus in this particular case, why they continue to fight.
For this, you know, that is an excellent question, and it's one that you know, at times, I do think sometimes the government just you know.
There there is this.
There is a practice within the Justice Department to defend any statute that's on the book so long as there's any conceivable legal justification for doing so, you know, and and I this is this is the policy, regardless of
who the administration is. But this is one of those cases of that I think really makes you scratch your head as to why is it that we're spending government resources to defend a statute that really doesn't serve any good purpose and for which the government really, you know, lacks the authority to have regulated here to begin with. If you start distributing this stuff and selling it, we know that, you know there will be federal agents. It'll be breathing down and re acting.
You're facing rightly, so stiff finds penalties, jail time if you're selling and distributing your alcohol. We have a law in Ohio that says I can grow up to twelve pot plants and do with it what I believe. And yet somehow home distilling is is something worth fighting for. It makes this argument makes no sense whatsoever, which tells me this argument will continue to go on for years to come.
Unfortunately, sometimes it seems like the things that are the most common sensical those are the things that are the hardest to actually succeed on in government.
This is what we're fighting for. Robert All, President CEO of the Buckeye Institute, representing James reim out of Newark, Ohio. And I'm definitely on team Alt and Tim Reen. Thanks again for the time, Robert, thanks for having me the latest on the Nancy Guthrie disappearance. I found a clue yesterday. I will say how much closer they are to maybe catching the caps in the subject or the subjects. I guess, as the case may be, and your full forecast just ahead.
Scott Sloan returns after noon seven hundred WLW Sloany, seven hundred wl W Cotton throw it back half the week. We're good, were good, were good, and in studio as usual, Shavor Cremani's here are a resident physician and health and fitness and food expert at dine Wall. Doc Sanjay, good morning, how are you brother? I'm doing well? Slowey, how are you? I'm doing well. Valentine's Day? You have a fiance? What are you doing? What's the deal?
We're actually going to keep it low key, so we're actually having some people over close friends and we're just gonna have a dinner at home and all the mess of restaurants, but uh, it's the mess just being because it's hard to get a reservation, so just keep it at home.
Are you a chocolate dip strawberry gar or not?
I do like them, yes, just on those days though. And yeah, Matt and Parrett with a champagne.
Okay, got you? Because Dorothy Lane market up and Mason dropped off. I'm not a big strawberry chocolate kindic. I like strawberries like chocolate for some reason. It's not my jam. But I watched women and some men davorro the They have chocolate cover strawberries there that are as big as an onion. I mean, they're ridiculous. I don't know what kind of superhuman chocolate strawberries they brought in. All the food. This is the this is the opposite.
Luck.
I think in the back I had their their bougie orange juices fresh squeze, the best orang juice you have ever in your life. But they dropped off kish this morning. Some uncured bacon. Oh no, nitrates are night nitrotes night nitrogens. Uh and it's delicious. So I ate all that and stuff. Well, thanks for saving me. No, you can smell my burp later on.
Uh no.
So thanks again to a door lit the Dorothy Lane Market. So if you're like sounding, maybe cook at home or something. You can go there and get some stuff pre made, which is fantastic, or get your ingredients it's all fresh, and cook something nice and special. You're giving me good ideas because I know you love there.
You haven't hather pecan pile yet, not yet I'm saving it for a special day, and that might be the Saturday.
I'll do it. Yeah, I'm telling you it's the best in the world, thanks to our friends at the Dorothy Lane Market. All right, h we'll talk this morning. I'm gonna throw a curveball at as I usually do, because I know you like to prep for the segment. But you're the smartest guy in the room. You should know the answer to this stuff. Doctor's physicians, especially eedy doctors like yourself. Your physicians will go, oh, doctor Google, because
you know my daughter does that. I think I have I think I think I've got ebola, Like you don't have a bolo. It's what it says. So now it's a chat. It's chat ebt or clawed or whatever it is. Here's an interesting story though. So this woman goes to present to the EAD and the nurse says, well, you got gout. Okay. She goes home, she's like, I don't
know if that. She takes a picture of it, puts it in an AI client and it comes back and it diagnosed her correctly with something far more serious than gout. So it was a misdiagnosis. So now you're confirming the biases of the people before going see I don't trust doctors. I'll just do it. I'll just google it, I'll just put it into AI. How do you respond to a doctor.
That it's tough. I mean, you know, we're still human as physicians, and we have to be humble about that.
Now.
Will our computer is better than we are right now in certain things, for sure, but they will also be wrong a lot of the times too, and we can't have that. They don't have the same interaction that we can with a patient. And so I understand it for people that are already mistrustful of doctors or healthcare in general. Sure, like you might see this one story and say, there it is, I can't trust it. But overall, by and large, we still encourage you to see someone.
In real life.
I understand the you know, the appeal one you don't have to pay a copay to log on to chat GPT, and too, you don't have to divulge anything to another human and so yeah, I get it. But at the same time, be careful of completely relying on AI to to be your physician.
If you suspect something I can you could probably do it and get a second dig but you still need to see someone because you know it's it's certainly imperfect. At this point, I wouldn't put all my trust in AI.
No, and it's it's tough with the whole doctor Google thing that that took a lot of change for myself to you know, increase my humility to say, all right, there is thing. There are things that a patient may bring to me that I know nothing about or that I haven't thought about, and it's blending that with my expertise. That that's how I've been able to navigate it and just say, you know, there's I know a lot of things, but I don't know everything, and you know, the Internet
can help me with certain things. I mean, there's more and more to learn every day as a physician, and so if I just say I know more than everybody else, I'm going to be in trouble. And so just having a little bit of humility is the way I navigate it. And I encourage patients to read up on their illnesses or what they might have its just to eventually have a conversation as opposed to me telling them exactly what's wrong and them telling me what's wrong.
Instead, let's talk about it. Yeah, okay, Yeah, it's a concern too, because any other element of that too would be I would I'd run from a place where I went to and go, yeah, I don't know what this is, and you look at it and go, holy crap, I gotta google that. I like, I'm probably gonna go see another doctor and I get to get a picture of me with this hold on.
You know.
I think that's going to evolve too, I think, you know, I remember fifteen years ago, I had a patient who had a sore throat and the light was off in the room or the you know, the tomoscope, so I couldn't look in their throat, and I took out my phone and I was like, I'm just going to show this flashlight back there. And the patient's like, you're going
to use your phone to look at my throat. I'm like, yeah, it's got a flashlight, and like today, that's how I do it most of the time, because that light is more powerful than anything on the wall, and a patient doesn't blink twice, you know. And so I think the same thing's going to happen with patients understanding that, like we're we still have to fill in some blanks, especially as an emergency position where I have to I'm expected to understand and diagnose everything.
It's hard to do alone.
Yeah, And the more that I can lean into my own humility and the patient can understand it, the better I think.
For truth, I don't know everything. I think that's good, all right. I want to pivot to this thing because I've seen it around before, and I don't know how many people are doing this or not, but the cold plunges in cryo thing right now, where people are freezing, the freezing themselves. It's like the hot cold new trend,
if you will. And I've done it before. I've done the ice bath before after you know when when they used to do more physical workouts and stuff like that, and after that first five to ten seconds as a man, it's very you don't look forward to it, but after five ten seconds it does have therapeutic effects. I know this is a very small segment of the population that it's even interested in doing this, but it's one of those new grottes of people go, well, it's an ice bath.
I mean, you know, you could get a tub or you get something on Amazon for like fifty bucks where you fill it with ice water and you jump in it, and I've done them after like a boxing workout before, and it feels really really good. But it's not for everybody for sure. Why Why is this thing taken off now? And it's it also claims to heal and cure a lot of things, a lot of things outside of muscle sort of.
Yeah, and then you said the magic word. There is claims and there is not a ton of evidence on this stuff. Now I'm not saying it's not beneficial, but at the same time, there's there's mixed evidence and there's evidence, but it doesn't show a huge benefit in a lot of cases. So, yeah, you've nailed it as far as what it is. You know, this is submerging yourself or cold water immersion, so submerging your body in colder water.
You know, some people go to extremes. If you've seen a lot of influencers, you know, it's just all ice in there and then they just submerge themselves.
The Swedes, yeah exactly.
But they're doing something right up there because they're like the happiest nations out there. You know that the happiest or the Scandinavians, and that's where it's cold and dark all the time, although.
I think it's the threat of if you don't you don't quit be depressing, I'm gonna throw an ice water. Yeah, exactly, they forced it.
It's not really happy to assign you you will be happy, whether you like it or not.
It's all in act. They're visible. They're cutting themselves and drinking themselves silly.
Yeah, so the you know, the the optimal temperature for a bath is fifty to fifty nine degrees, So we're not talking thirty two degrees, not forties. It's fifty to fifty nine, so kind of pretty cold, but not to a point where you're like you think you're gonna die. There's certainly not where you want to get to. But there are benefits and you've mentioned them already, which is
the physical ones. You know, your body kind of after a workout of some sort and just recovery, and it's not to help due to decrease inflammation, but also you know, kind of numbing your body a little bit by making it cool. That being said, you don't really want to do this for more than ten minutes at a time because that's when that's when the second round of dangers come. Because there are dangers in the early phase of a cold lunge and then later on too.
Hypothermia is right, Yeah.
The hypothermy of the frost bite, more circulation, the whole bit that can happen with either you know, really cold temperatures are really prolonged times underneath and again it could be more than just ten minutes that can actually do some damage.
Okay, so on the cold thing, but the other side, the hot So how come you can sit in a hot tub for like two hours drinking.
Yeah, so hot, you know, it's not going to burn your skin necessarily unless you've done something whatever degrees. Yeah, and and what that will do? You know, the main risks at hotter temperatures or you know, all your blood is going to your skin, so it's not going to your head, and then you can feel lightheaded and pass out right, and you could also become dehydrated because you're losing a lot of extra sweat that way. So those are the two Those are the main risks of hot
but it's not as dangerous as cold. And so what happens with cold You initially get in you've you've referred
to it men and women alike. On the initial hit, which is a burst and heart rate and blood pressure, so both of those will go up because of the stress to the your body's like what is going on and it freaks out and your heart rate and blood pressure go up, which aren't necessarily bad things, but they can be bad things for patients with heart disease, any any type of heart disease, high blood pressure, history of stroke, a lot of things that can kind of go haywire
in the very first few seconds of doing a cold plunge.
Okay, what are the therapeutic benefits of that cold bath or cold plunges that were in that? I mean, is it more of a placebo effect? It does it? What does it do to your muscles? I guess to alleviate the pain or the joint pain, whatever you have. Is it just throwing your mind off, going hey, now it's cold, you got to worry about this as opposed to the chronic pain. There's probably something to that.
It's also yeah, it's physical decreased inflammation, and so they've done some research with markers, but it's hard to reproduce a lot of the studies, so it's not very conclusive as far as the evidence, But overall it looks to be helpful. That being said, a lot of a lot of the things, a lot of the benefits are to
do with mental resilience and how it's affecting your mind. So, you know, starting off the day with a cold plunge, or what I prefer to do, which is the easy, accessible and cheap thing, is have my warm shower and then turn the dial to complete cold. For the final thirty to sixty seconds, I'll just take five deep breaths in and out, so ten total breaths under the cold, and then it just starts my day. And what they've actually have found is that that will actually increase your
mental clarity. It helps you overall deal with things through the rest of the day, and it actually gives you a boost. Your neurotransmitters go up, your brain functions a little bit better, and it really wakes you up.
Some people are doing the cryo therapy, which is the extreme of that too, that's really really.
Cold, really really cold, and that's where you know, is the juice worth the squeeze?
And then what are the risks of that too? Cost for that matter, it's not cheap.
No, it's not cheap. Every you know, every session does cost money. There are some benefits there, but again the shower version is cheap and free, and that's why I prefer to do it. And it's you know, you don't get as cold temperature, just.
Take a cold shower, is what you're saying. It's the same thing essentially.
So there was a study done a couple of years ago in the Netherlands where they took people and they said, okay, we're gonna have a control group that's take a normal shower, and then people take finish off their warm shower with a cold shower thirty seconds, sixty seconds, ninety seconds, so not a ten of time under the cold after their initial warm shower. And what they found was that there were less sick days taken for the people that did
a cold shower. So if you did a cold shower after your hot one, you reported less, you called into work sick less often, which makes you think, what, oh, you're helping the immune.
System, which is the that's one of the claims right to make.
Ok Yeah, However, everyone reported the same incidents of being sick, and so every whether you took a warm shower only or followed up with cold, you got sick just as often. However, you called into work less often if you were doing the cold plunge call off of work. So the question is, well why, and then what they think is.
Go, yeah, I want to hear your answer.
So they're thinking it builds up your mental resilience. Okay, I'm sick. I can deal with this. And that's what I kind of like about the cold thing. I start off the day being like, man, I just I just took that on. I was cold, and I stuck with it for one extra breath, and I thought I could. I'm a I'm a beast. I can start the day. I can take on anything. And and they think that's part of it. Yeah, you have fortitude, like, okay, it's it's the sniffles. Of course, I'm going to be safe
around my colleagues and everything. And you wash my hands. But I think I can work today. I got it at all.
Yeah, you spend a long more time, the more time in the shower, less exposure to germs and other people. Yet you just wash it in the shower all day. You're not going to get sick.
Well, why don't you bring your shower with you? I expect you to expected to see a.
Tug and just carrying around that shower cloud following me around side. Shave A Kramatis series are Resident Physician and also Health and Fitness. We're talking about the new trend and well maybe not new trend, but the cold bath thing, and and also cryo therapy, and it claims it to boosts your immune system, which doesn't look like it's true. Also, weight loss is one too. I mean, it's kind of like drinking cold cold water, drinking ice water stimulate your
your but how much like a couple calories? It can't be. There's no prolonged you're pretty close to, right, a couple of calories.
Yeah, So the thought is it activates your brown fat, which we all have, and if that brown fat is activated, it melts away. So the thought is with prolonged exposure, that will burn away more.
Because it's activated.
Really, what it amounts to is like one hundred to two hundred calories probably, but not a ton. And you know, there's other things we could be doing, and in fact, like taking a walk that could do the exact same right, with less danger.
Yeah, but you're actually gonna walk as supposed if I just take a cold bath.
We love a good hack, you know, and we as a society love a good hack, but at the end of the day, it's the basics.
Just take a shower, eat a pizza at the same time. But like cancels. Have you ever tried it? Cancels it out? No, but they're encouraged have beer shower, but pizza shower. Different story. Also, I would imagine the anti aging thing is probably a little overdone that people tend to use cold showers. Is that more of the fact that like, well, if you're doing this in the first place, you're probably living a fairly healthy lifestyle.
Yeah, I mean we talk about confounders all the time. You know, the people are cold showering are probably doing
other things to make sure they stay alive. And it's just one more thing that being said in the in that Norwegians or Netherlands study, the people who did the cold plunge or did a cold shower after their warm shower and exercise regularly, they had fifty percent less sick days called in And so, you know, as opposed to just exercise or just cold plunge, this is actually the group with the most So the more things you can
do to stay healthy, uh, the better. And that seems like basic stuff but the evidence show what was it that being said? Again, you know, if you're not exercising this the cold plunge thing. You know, if you're not if you're not eating healthy, if you're not sleeping well, if you're not reducing your stress, the cold plunge stuff is like peanuts. Yeah, you really want to focus still on on the core stuff and then this is extra
stuff if you have the time and ability. But again, just adding it to the end of your shower is probably the easiest way to do it.
Yeah, why is it we would go, oh, man, a nice hot tup is great, but getting in cold water very few people want to do that. What is it about the way humans are built that wou'd rather be warm and warm water than cold water?
Well, I think you know the thing is getting into cold water. It's a true shock to the system. It's a stress to the system where all of a sudden, again your heart rain and blood pressure go up, your flight or flight goes crazy as opposed to warm water, which is soothing, relaxing, and that does the same thing to your muscles. You know, your muscles tense up in the cold, whereas in heat they're just going to relax. And your brain's going to relax and everything's going to relax.
Right, Yeah, it's it's more calming, I guess than tensing. Weder. They common intense. We love contents already. I don't know what we're talking about this. We just suffered for the last what month of subzero temperatures. You want to you want to cold bath? Just go outside, go start trying to take one deep breath, Start to start your car. He's a son Jay Shavcremani. He's a physician also our health and fitness guru on the Scott Sloan Show at
Dinewell Dock. We'll talk next Thursday. Appreciate you, thanks so much. How about a news update. Let's do that and more to follow here afterwards. Scott's Loan Show Home the Red seven hundred WTW.
Since then, all right, here I goes long back, got seven hundred WLW.
We have a record at five credit card debts.
The average household.
In Ohio, Kentucky can carry about sixty three one hundred dollars per household on average stom So the President proposing a ten percent future three camp Now that sounds like good, populous.
Middle finger fu to banks. But this could actually hurt those it intends to help by putting a cap on how much credit card companies can check to use their money. Kerriy Scheffler is here. She used to be with a political in the Hill. She's now a senior policy analyst at the Independent Women's Form. Kerry welcome, How are you.
Here?
I'm great, Thanks for having me.
Yeah, so it's kind of funny. I mean, the right got all worked up about Mamdani in New York City with rent price control, that scheme in New York which has been tried and broken, because well then you just have empty buildings. And we saw what happened in the seventies in New York City. If you're called that or our student of history of that, you see what happens when you try. Our government tries to artificial control prices. And I think conservatives are right to look at that
and go, well, that's a bad and horrible idea. Is it hypocritical not to call out the same here, because price controls are price control. Isn't it a price control?
You're right, it is a price control. It's constraining the market forces and the market signals, because that's what a credit card interest rate is really a signal to the borrower, signal also to the lender about the credit worthiness or the credit history, and all of the components in coming up with a credit rate and a credit offer, and you're basically distorting that by putting this interest rate up. And look like you said, this is a I think it has good intentions. I think the desire to help
people who are struggling financially the good desire. The problem, there's going to be a lot of unintended consequences if this happens federally, because we've already seen this at the state level, because some states have already tried this.
Yeah, it's nothing new. I would think the biggest one would probably be a credit desert occurring. Right, So, if you're low to middle income in your first time bower, you could wind up losing your credit line entirely, right, because they don't want to take that risk because they're not going to get their money back because they can't charge an IRPR.
You're exactly right. And we saw for example in Illinois where they did put an interest rate cap, and what ended up happening is that fewer people were able to get access to loans and more people who were shifted into the dangerous black market. And so if the intention is to protect people, it has the unintended consequence of actually putting people into more harmful types of lending products. So the the and and the thing is it's not
This isn't just for the poorest families. And I say this as someone who was When I was a child, we were homeless. My brother was born in a tent. My dad used to have to go to pawn shops in order to get loans. He had to pawn his watch or his ring just to feed us. This isn't a great situation for poor people, but for anyone who's listening, this is also for people who have great credit scores
and strong finances. Because if there's a study for Ohio, for example, super primed cardholders, those are people with credit scores above seven hundred and eighty, They are also going to experience gative consequences. It means higher fees, reduce rewards, higher credit standards, lower credit limits, fewer bonus points when you're talking about miles and things like that. So this affects people across the income spectrum.
Yeah, if I get Jennifer Garner smiling, at me one more time about what's in my wallet and getting these great rewards. And I'm traveling and beautiful people around me in this lounge where I'm getting steak and lobster, and I'm flying these exotic locations, and all I have to do is spend more on this card and I'll get those points. That's going to largely dry up, isn't it.
Exactly? And just in general, the ability to open a credit card in Ohio alone, there's been an estimate based on study that between seventy three and eighty five percent of people in Ohio are going to see their credit
lines reduced. And this is again, this happened already in the Illinois and there was a study comparing Illinois to Missouri, which did not have a rate cap, and it was the perfect natural experiment because their neighbors and I lived in Missouri, my family lives in Missouri now, so Missouri
versus Illinois. What happens in this natural experiment with the rate cap in Illinois, Well, it turns out that many people said that their financial well being declined after this and seventy nine and this is according to a study from the Federal Reserve. So this is a government federal government study, and seventy nine percent of people in the study said that they wanted the option to return to their previous lender after this rate caap happened in the state of Illinois.
Yeah. Yeah, she's Carrie Sheffield, and we're talking about Trump's proposal to cap aprs for credit cards to ten percent. Now that's a popular study. Sounds good, right, It's like, oh, good, screw the those guys, they're gouging me. But the problem is it's going to ruin credit for a lot of
the people it's intending to help. And if you're also have a good credit score and you use your credit card for the points as opposed to carrying a balance, you're gonna get hammered that way too, because those points are going to kind of go away. So if they got to cut it to ten percent, then how do they make money? And not that I'm worried about the banks not making money. They'll find a way to make money carry for sure, But it squeezes both then, So
who would their core target consumer be? Because you don't want the people at the low end, they're going to get priced out with interest rates. The people at the upper end that are paying their credit card every month are basically leeches because they're not making money off of us technically, and they got to give us points to do that. Who do they want?
Well, they're going to increase their fees. I mean even a lot of people with super prime high credit scores, a lot of credit cards they pay annual, they charge annual fees for example. You're going to see those fees go up. You're going to see the points dropped, you're I mean, it's the cost goes somewhere, and uh, it's and it's usually a combination of consumers and companies paying higher prices as a result of price constraints. So uh,
that's really what it's going to happen. And when we're talking about inflation, this is this is one way to make everything more expensive rather than here's the thing. When you have competition, you can naturally lower uh whatever whatever it is, including an interest rate, through more competition. But this is going to have less competition in the end because there'll be fewer lenders who will be able to enter these markets. And here's the other interesting part about it.
When people mention, you know, a credit card interest rate, and it sounds astronomically high. Most people, like you mentioned, I mean, a lot of people don't carry balances from months to months. And for those who do, a lot of people it's only for a short period. And when you're talking about such a high interest rate, quite often it's actually for a fairly small amount. And so there's a thought experiment that the economist Thomas Bold did. He
gave the example of a hotel room. If you if you go to a hotel and it charges you one hundred or two hundred three hundred bucks a night, you annualize that that's an insane amount. So let's say two hundred bucks times three hundred and sixty five days. I mean, that's that's just it sounds like you're totally gadging someone, right, But this doesn't make sense because you're only using it for a few nights. Maybe, So annualize that that's seventy
three thousand dollars just for using a room. And so if you're going to let your hair on fire because someone's charging me at seventy seventy three thousand dollars annualized price.
It's insane.
And so most people's credit cards, and same thing with what they call quote unquote pay day lending. Most of this is short term landing, and so it sounds so much worse than it actually is when you actually look at how people use credit. And so again, study after study shows that when you construct a credit market, people's financial wellbeing goes down, their choices go down. And there's a lot of Hyperboleave that's not based impact.
Well, Kerrie, if this goes through and they wind up capping aprs at ten percent, you know you mentioned payday lenders. I'm glad you did. I wanted to bring that up because back in the day, payday lenders here in Ohio, ay where were getting cracked down. It's like, oh my god, these are ConA confiscatory and you can't do this to the working man, the working men, the whole thing. And then they tried to clean things up. But by and large, people who are on the lower end of the economic scale,
right lower middle even you know, middle income people. For example, Hey, you know what, I'm living paycheck Most Americans live paid well, not most, but a lot of Americans live in paycheck to paycheck, especially the younger you are. And so the problem is this, It's like, all right, well, I got to get to work, transmission goes out of my truck. I don't have several thousand dollars laying around. I got
to go to the payday lender. I can't use a credit card, maybe they're maxed out, or maybe the credit card option isn't there. I can't go to a bank and on a collateral. I don't have a choice here to go to a payday lender. So we're back in that game again. And if we've cracked down on pay day lending, does that mean the rise of loan sharks?
So maybe my job someday is like I look at this and go, you know what, I'm just gonna go in the loan shark Business'm gonna put some money out in the street, get a couple of head crackers out there, and you don't pay, I break your leg. Is it going to be that way again?
That's again, that's what we see people doing. When payday lending, it's more foral more name it's called installment lending. When you go after installment lending, when you go after a credit card interest rates through rate caps, Yes, more people are forced out into the so called black market, into scenarios that are far more exploitative and dangerous versus having them in a financial system that is regulated, that is
designed to protect the consumer. This we've seen this happen, and this as an analogy.
When you look.
At you know, I for my church, I traveled to Peru. There is like an insane amount of transactions that happen outside the financial system that is reported to the government. And it's because, well, there's a lot of corruption there.
But here's the thing. We're going to see an increase in that here in the US if the federal government follows some of these states and in strict credit lending, there's going to be even more shifting into the black market, which means less tax revenue because these are transactions that are going to be happening in the shadows.
Yep, yep, yeah, exactly, You're going to create a bigger body. So anytime you prohibit or you know, artificially doctor something in this case it's a it's rate caaps, you're going to create a black market for it, which under minds everything because there's no transparency and it's not secure. It's also extremely dangerous as well. So this is the Trump proposal to cap interest rates on credit cards at ten percent of the annual fee ten percent. That's the worst
case scenario. The best case is, oh yeah, I know, people are going to be able to afford to live again. You know, that doesn't address the core issue in that as affordability. For sure. This kind of plays into it, but it treats the user end and the diagnosis and not really the cause and the symptoms of this whole thing. How many politicians? Where's Congress on this whole thing? Is there bipartisan support for it? Or is it pretty much? Because it seems like he was when you work with
Elizabeth Warren, I think Watson wanted to push this. Gavin Newsoon wanted to push things like this as well too, and they were criticized during the election. And now we're talking about proposing it. So who's forward in Washington.
We're definitely Democrats who are supporting this, including Bernie Sanders in the Senate, and there are some Senate Republicans who are starting.
To go for this.
And I think again we we it's good to acknowledge the intention that good intentions do not equal good outcomes, and we're not over and over. I mean, the whole socialist experiment is good intentions that have disastrous outcomes. So we really need to look at this from you know what, what are the better angels of our nature to solve
the affordability problem for families? And the Trump adminstration is doing amazing things forward that end, and that's those are the things that we need to see more in our economy. For example, in the regulations. Last year, President Trump put in an executive order that if any agency wanted to create one regulation, they had to ten regulations before they could do that. And it's it's phenomenal because it unleashes
competition and unleashes innovation. And you know what's really interesting is that in the United States, for exams, we have such a more dynamic system economically compared to the rest of the world. We hit a stock market high last week. It's fifty thousands for a doubt. The US market capitalization for our companies here in the US, for our publicly
traded companies, it's worth more than seventy trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, the European Union is only fifteen point seven trillions for the entire European Union, China is only eleven trillion. Japan less than seven trillions, So we are orders of magnitudes above any other country in the world when it comes to our economy and our innovation, and a big part of that is through what they call animal spirits in economics, which means competition driving down prices.
And credit card rate caps are the opposite of that. So I think it's important again not to shame anybody for a good intention, but to just really focus on what is working and let's do more of that.
Well, yeah, you know, granted, and you know the idea that the two sides are Trump is the greatest thing ever. He makes no mistakes and if it is, it's somebody else's fault. And the other side is he's evil. He's a manipulative genius at the same time the dumbest man ever to hold the presidency. I don't know how he could be a genius and dumb at the same time. But those are the the tired narratives that they fire
right and the far left. The real reality is is I look at this policy, and you're right, there are policies that he's enacted and more for that matter, that are putting us on the right track. It's not catching up when you do know, the tariff thing, for example, that's a long slow burn. I don't know if we've got the patience for it. I don't know, quite honestly at this point how much more we should pursue it,
because it's driving costs up as well, among other factors. Now, Wall Street and Main Street, as you know, are two different things entirely. But I'm looking at some of these policies. This one just doesn't make any sense to me. It seems counterintuitive and shooting yourself in the foot. It sounds good, but once you scratch the surface, it's terrible.
Yeah, And there are so many other ways. One thing that we are working on at Independent Women's Voice is we are in the process of putting together our Commons drive to support the Trump's Department of Labor because last year President Trump issued in executive order to allow for one case to invest in private equity, which means private real estate deals, startup deals that are private deals that are outside the publicly trained stock market, to allow for
one case, which means private sector workers to be able to access these deals. And we think it's great because it will, as you to your point, tear down that wall between Wall Street and Main Street and have more
ownership by people in the private sector. Because currently these private equity deals they are accessible to public sector pensions, which means we well connected government workers already have access to these deals as well as a credited investors, which are high net worth individuals making above a certain threshold. Trump wants to bring that wall down between Wall Street and Main Street when it comes to private equity, and private equity has a long track record of a higher return.
And when you bring in a different asset crossed into your four one kke, that also improves the safety of it because you have more diversification. And that's one of the first rules investing is to diversify.
Yeah, I mean there's higher risk, but also I mean it's higher reward but also higher risk along that too when you're dealing with private equity. But the buyer has to beware. It's it's my money, and I choose to invest it no matter how conservative or risk averse I am. There's always an alternative that as well. That's how it works. Again. She is Karrie Sheffield over at Independent Women's form of this. Thanks again, care, I appreciate.
It, Thanks for having me.
God bless take care. We got a news update coming up in just minutes on seven hundred WLW the very latest on what's going on with Savannah Guthrie's mom, Nancy Guthrie. That a little bit more evidence. Hopefully that brings us thing to conclusion, and a positive one at that. We'll get full details coming up. Any big warm up continues here in Cincinnati. Added more in news five minutes away seven hundred.
The bells.
Do you hear the bells? It could only mean one thing.
It's real estate time with Michelle Sloane, Remax time agent and proud proprietor of sloan sellshomes dot com. Heed her words or face her wrath on seven hundred wl WI.
Good morning.
Are we going to fight about dishes? I'm ready.
You don't need them because we've got high speed internet, so you don't need a satellite dish.
Shush. Oh my gosh.
You would think after three hundred and seventy years of.
Marriage, no longer than that, there wouldn't be.
There wouldn't be anything for us to really fight about. But there is one issue where we just cannot not agree on, and it's dishes. How to dry dishes if they're not in the dishwasher, right, you will tend to wash them and put them on the right side of the sink to drip dry.
Now, stand by, those aren't dishes, if you notice. When I do the dishes, okay, dishes, oversized pans, cutting boards, things like that, I will put them on the side to just kind of drip dry, and then eventually you just touel them off, get get the stains off, and then you just put them away. You will lay a towel out on the counter and then put them to glasses and everything down. And then what happens is you know, drips seat hold on. I'm giving you my side of it.
Then I want to hear your side. Environment is you put then you put the glass down on the thing. It drips down good, and then that water sits there and then it makes the glass stinky because because it gets kind of moldy and musty, and so you got to clean them all over again.
It's not there that long.
Yeah, they are. I did so my job. I did dishes on Sunday because I cooked meals for you because you're an invalid. And the thanks I get is while they're on that say, if you put them in there, I'm not put them on a way like, oh okay, well, then I'm going to go in and get the fork that I used out of the dish one, I take the dishwasher out. I'm just going to get the things I used and put it. If you want to be roommates,
then separating dishes. Now, some people have separate finances. We have separate dishes because you're a pain in the ass with it.
No, no, seriously, how hard is it though, because when you set let's say you wastle glass, you set it on the side of the counter, on just the counter halfway leaking into the sink, and that glass is going to fall over and break. If it's on a dish towel, My god, what a dish towel is it won't fall over and break as easily.
I ask you a question, now, who leaves bred dishes and glassware around the house? Mir or you?
Oh, that's me. I will totally I will totally totally take you.
Now, when I leave the glass with just a little bit of it over the edge so that so the air can flow and dry the glass out.
Then just put it away.
If it's such a big deal, well it's got to dry first, Oh god, okay, this is this is one of those things, a drip dry, and you should just get a sink rack like your mom had.
See this is where it comes back.
To what you put a towel down. Isn't that the same thing as a sink rack?
Well, why can't you just put it on the towel that and make me happy?
Because it stinks. It the same work all over again, and it's like the same day. You're just like repeating. Labor is like the dishrushers open, but you'll still put bolls and utensils in the sink and I'll pick them up and go, oh, dishrushers.
Well, it's going to get there. Eventually, it'll get where it's going.
Get on my next wife.
Oh sorry, that tell us part maybe, and it may be sooner rather than lay.
Each other, by the way, happy Valentine's Day at what towels? Good?
Thank you.
I'm gonna lay them all over the counters and then I'm gonna put the wet.
This is one right exactly.
Oh, for heaven's sakes, we do have real estates talk about though. I know that doing your dishes is part of real estate sort of kind of not really.
But what if we just want the paper. We're just trying that.
That's the possibility. That's an incredienty We'll just go chinae sold. But a lot of people just eat out every meal. We could do that, I suppose to somebody else's problem. I would now, Yeah, No, I like to cook, so you do like to and I like to eat your food.
I know you do. And she yells at because I'm leaving the stuff up. Anyway, Let's get into real estate related stuff, including the Twenty first Century Act. I know you want to talk about that. What is that?
I do?
Yeah, So there's something new going on how to make housing more affordable. That's been the goal for the last I don't know, twenty years, right, But the House just passed a major bipartisan bill, the Housing for twenty first Century Act. It's pretty comprehensive. What it does is whether it happens or not again is sort of up in the air. It's going to streamline zoning and permitting to make building new homes easier because we have a shortage
of homes. It's going to boost affordability of housing and financing grants, which also could help some development block grants things of that nature in zones that are determined to be ready to be developed, but there's just no money available. Modernizing federal affordability housing programs. That's going to be kind of a nice thing to have as an option for
young buyers especially, and some protections for renters and buyers. Now, I'm always a little bit skeptical when the government gets involved in housing because it's not always been a good thing. I'm not sure that they're asking me my opinion, but it's definitely something that I'm glad that somebody's trying to do something. And I do think that the zoning and permitting,
streamlining some of those actions and activities. Now you've got it at the federal level, but it does have to trickle down to the local level as well.
So all right, so what does it mean for the consumer?
Though?
Okay, this is all good government stuff, but well, you know, speeding up permitting for example, or is reducing zoning. But what does that mean to the consumer?
It means the possibility and again it's not a short term goal. It's the possibility that homes will become more of affordable because there are going to be incentives to build affordable housing, and that's really what it is. But I will say more housing supply will certainly be a benefit to buyers. It's going to reduce the barriers for a lot of builders, speeding up permitting. It's going to cause you know, it's going to create a lot of jobs,
which is a good thing. But you know, in places in Ohio, Cincinnati, Columbus, we've had such tight inventory on those starter homes and having builders because everybody wants to make the most money, it does have to be a group effort to create a home for that is affordable for all. You know, the old Seer's home where you could buy a home for I don't know, ten thousand dollars or something like that. That's never going to happen again. But these federal incentives could be helpful. It still has
to go to the next step. It has to go to the Senate, so we'll keep an eye on that. The other thing that is not in this bill, which we talked about at one point, is the investor restrictions, So it's not included to limit the number of homes that investors are able to purchase. So that's another interesting factor because you know, as I'm sting homes and selling homes. At least one or two offers that I receive are from institutional investors, whether or not they are large that
own more than one hundred properties. Almost every time, if it's an affordable home, it will there will be an opportunity for an investor to buy that property because it's in that sweet spot. So that makes it more difficult for first time home buyers and buyers in a lower income bracket and affordability bracket. It makes it more difficult for them to get it because if a seller sees, here's a cash offer, here's a financed offer, Faha, they're both the exact same price. I can close on the
cash offer in two weeks. It's going to take thirty days plus an inspection, plus maybe some more red tape to get through the one that needs financing. Which one are you going to pick?
Now?
Some sellers will say, I'm not going to sell to an institutional and that is the seller's right to decide. Even if the institutional investor is a higher price point, sellers do not have to accept that offer if they don't want to sell to them. Now, you have to be really careful about why you're choosing. You know, you
got to be careful about fair housing. But if it comes down to it and you make a decision as a homeowner to sell to a person, a real person, and that's that's on you, you can totally do that.
Okay, got it? No, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, you hear the things. I guess on an answer to two things that I think are driving off the cost of housing because there's a barrier to entry with the money. This will reduce it to some degree because you're speeding up the permitting and zoning process and creating more usable land, which I think, quite honestly, the zoning laws have been jacked up for a long time in this country. There's
no doubt about it. Cincinnati is allowing you to you know, and I think it's a good idea to take your freestanding garage, for example, and make that a livable using space. You can rent that out. You know, it's like a small house basically. But the cost of labor and the lack of labor is a huge factory and we always talk about that we need more people in the trades, and people are responding to that, but it's going to
take a long time. For those numbers to catch up, because you know, people in their fifties are leaving the biz, fifties and sixties are leaving the business at greater rates and were replacing those bodies, and we're already behind because of that for the last several at least the last generation, if not too. The other element here is with tariffs and all that other stuff, the cost of materials is
really really expensive too. So does what they're proposing with this twenty first Century Housing Act off set that.
It's gonna only time will tell really if it passes. We're just going to have to wait and see how it affects it. And again, you can't build a house overnight. It's going to take months. And even though you are that red tape is going to you know, they're trying to cut a little bit of that out, so things are going to move a little bit quicker. We'll be able to see the results of this act potentially if it passes, maybe two or three years down the road.
So it's nothing that's going to happen immediately. The other thing that the rising costs of owning a home, and this is really really difficult. It's hard for homeowners to swallow. But did you know that homeowner's insurance now makes up nearly ten percent of the average monthly housing payment ten percent. And so then on top of that, you know, you have your insurance, you have your utilities that we know are going up, the cost of utilities, We know that
your taxes are increasing. Yes, so all of that actually lumped in. That's also part of the housing affordability and the lack thereof. And so these are issues that a lot of new homeowners are like, or young people especially, or like I'm out. You know, you have to you have to spend so much to have a home of your own.
Why not just rent?
And I don't have to be bogged down by all of the extras and if the investors want them again, we're in a bit of a vicious cycle. And just lowering the interest rates, which I know that something President Trump wants to do, and he's talking about lowering you know, lowering rates. Again, that's not going to solve all of the issues that homeowner's face, yes, and so you know, it's one of those things where we talk about it and I know for just the general public it's a
really difficult pain point. But you know, you definitely. If you're buying a home, you have to be really careful because there are so many additional fees on top of the mortgage that will never go down. You know, as long as we've been on this earth, right, have you ever seen truly taxes or utilities decrease?
Well, it makes it up in other areas. Is the problem. I mean, we're fighting the property text battle nowe in Ohio obviously, as you know, yes's funny as you guys you're talking about this. Somebody just DMed me and asked about, well, what about three D printed houses? You know, isn't that a cheaper alternative to this? And that is you know it, You don't need as much labor to do it, and you could put them up pretty quickly and alleviate that.
I think there's some problems. I mean, first, as you mentioned, there's a lot of regulatory and code challenges there. But if you can wipe some of that out, that helps. I know, the construction industry, like any industry that's entrenched,
doesn't really want to give up ground. So you know, you've got local contractors, trade unions, supply chains all built around the way we've always built things right and that is you frame and stick and also too, I think it's too true too in to tell I mean, you know, it sounds cool that you get a video from someplace in Germany where they're putting up a three D printed concrete building, and an.
Oh, I love watching it, if you I mean, I love watching those be built because you know, the concrete is going around and they seem like very stable structures. It's interesting how you're going to insulate that and do all of those things. Again, there's a lot of there's a lot more questions now three D printed homes. We've been talking about that for probably five years or more, yep. And you certainly don't see anything like that in Cincinnati as far as I know.
I know they're doing them in I think in Austin, Texas, for example. But the prize you mentioned though, it's just like, you know, you still need roofers, you still need glaciers to put windows in doors, electrical party elected, kay. And the other thing is, and you probably don't think of this, but you need specialized concrete in order concrete mixtures for that stuff to go in. And there's still you know,
again it's in an infancy. We don't know twenty what the life of these things are twenty thirty years from now, because it's so new what happens over decades of these buildings and so is it like aluminum wiring, you know, you put it all in and then wait a minute, we got a problem. We're going to tear it all out. Well, you can't really do that with a building. And if you're a bank, you're a lender, you're looking at going I can invest in that.
Yeah, I'm not going to touch that, especially with the freezing thal in Ohio. I think a concrete will always crack. That's just one of those mantras that we will say over and over again because people.
Are like, there's a crack in the in the foundation. Yeah right right, yeah, it's just in nature. But anyway, I mean, I throw that out there. So my wife, no, it's interesting, Yeah, my wife, Michelle Stone. It's called the Housing for the Twenty first Century Act. Congress just passed this, the.
House of Representatives have passed it. It's onto the Senate. You know, it's definitely something to keep an eye on. It seems to be bipartisan, meaning maybe it will pass, but then of course there's always somebody that says, well, I want something else in it that's going to benefit me, So we'll keep an eye on it.
All right. So the takeaway from my perspective is to show you just how terrible our government, our leadership and congresses on both sides. We have something called the Housing for the Twenty first Century Act that may or may not pass over a quarter away through the Senate injury. My wife, Michelle Sloan is here from Sloan cells Holmes dot Com and avi ad dishwasher on the show A dishchowl.
I'm I'm pro dishchowel.
I'm just saying, yeah, if you use it, it's not a drying rack. You're a woman. You're supposed to be good at this stuff.
Oh now, oh no, don't you dare.
It's Valentine's Day, son.
It was. Yeah, No matter how nasty and filthy are, I still love you more than anything. So all right, I'll talk to you, l I love you. I here to go.
I get that.
Uh all right, we gotta get to Willie coming up next, Scott Sloan Show. I may be dad, I maynad me back tomorrow. I don't know. We'll find out. Seven hundred ww Cincinnati have a going