Barry Baines
speaker
1,145 appearances
30 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2024
last heard 3 Apr
Barry Baines’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 2.
Appearances
So within that system, I would, you know, the question I would pose to us and to our listening audience is given this is what we have right now. how do we navigate this to make this at least work for us now? While, you know, what do they say? Think globally and act locally, you know? Yeah. Right. We're not going to be able to solve the, you know, the bigger issue.
This has been bandied about for, you know, years, actually since the turn of the, of the 20th century. Yeah. Um, way back, you know, way back when, when actually I believe, uh, There was a movement to have national health insurance like in the late 1890s or 1900s or something like that. But I'll be probably proven wrong on my dates and stuff with that. And then it just got... uh, quashed.
Um, and so, you know, there's just so many, this gets so embroiled in, in politics and legislation and laws and stuff like that, that I, you know, I certainly don't feel that, you know, I have much to offer on that piece, but, but with what we have is a very complicated system. Um, that doesn't mean that it can't be
understood in a way that help that people can get the most out of what we have while we continue to work for making it more equitable. They're just, you know, as we know from other shows we've had, there's so many disparities in health care.
But let's, you know, instead of railing against it all for something that we might not be able to accomplish in the short term, how, you know, how can we do the best we can with what we have now? Yeah, I agree.
Right. Well, ultimately, it gets passed on to all of us in that sense. However, I think that I can't underscore even more the conundrum, the you know, the fear, like I say, of going down, don't fall down the steps, you know, today. You know, Matthew, you or some of the research staff can check on this. So, you know, trust but verify.
I believe that the number one cause of bankruptcy, personal bankruptcy in the United States is from medical, you know, medical debt. Yeah, yeah. I think that's correct. And so, you know, Matthew, you just highlighted, again, the concern and fear of things that could happen to really, you know, when you say it could ruin you, you know.
Yeah, and then, you know, if you have this horrendous medical debt because you never, you know, you didn't have health insurance to take care of things. I mean, it just... you know, snowballs. And then if you have death, then when you start to get, you know, wind up, you know, getting your feet on the ground and in a good way.
You know, doing that, then it hounds you if, let's say, you want to buy a house or you need credit for, you know, for getting a car. I mean, it just has all these ramifications that it's hard to connect all the dots. But it really, that medical catastrophe that could happen is one that could hound people for years and years and years. And again, that's why...
I'm a proponent that we should have at least a system where everybody can be covered to prevent that kind of thing. That's what I have to say about it. My heart goes out to you, Matthew, understanding of some of those really hard decisions. And it's not just for Matthew. There's lots and lots of people that have that. The other point is that in today's
employment environment, people change jobs a lot. A lot. A lot. Like every, they say every year or two on average now, I think something like that. That's just a made up number. I don't know.
I think we were able to display the level of confusion that this creates for our communities. And I'd also getting some feedback from listening audience and questions that they have to help shape the next couple of shows that we have on this, because I think this is an important topic. And if we at Health Chatter can help to
clarify and simplify things so that people understand their options better, I think then that we'd be doing a good thing. And I like to do good things for our community if I can. Amen.
Okay, so I wanna start also with a little story. A friend of mine who is retired a number of years ago had a business where he basically serviced community pharmacies. And not so much from a drug perspective, but you go into the corner drug store, that's where you got your school supplies. Right. And you might have gotten an ice cream cone as well or, you know, a grilled cheese sandwich.
A root beer float. Iowa. And over the years, what he saw happening was the consolidation of a couple of very large pharmacy businesses that we all know who, you know, it's the CVS and Walgreens where You know, they're gigantic businesses. And just like in health care, where there's a lot of consolidation of, you know, of independent practices, the same thing seemed to be happening.
And, you know, if you had a corner drugstore on every five or ten blocks, once a larger pharmacy came in and took that over, it's eliminating the competition. You know, you don't need... one on every 10 blocks. You could just have one that service, you know, quote, services a larger area. But that's from the business perspective.
And I think my perspective on pharmacy deserts is that this consolidation resulted in community members typically having to travel farther and farther to get to a pharmacy, which becomes more and more of a hardship depending on your economic resources, depending on your transportation resources. And so I'm just wondering, Christian, from your perspective, how big a part that plays?
It seems like the PBMs, the pharmacy benefit managers, that whole piece. But on the business, as you said at the beginning, these are businesses. And in our society, businesses... tend to want to grow and eat up all the competition. Until now, it's, I don't want to say it's a monopoly, but, you know, having the independent competitors
pharmacy is just non-existent those were big community players and the big businesses in some ways they try to be i mean you know for sure but it it seems like it's not the same the same thing and i wonder if you could share a perspective from you know from that yeah thanks very no i i really i can share my perspective uh on this um
Good.
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