Solidarity Healthcare President and Co-Founder Chris Faddis joins Bob Sansevere of The BS Show to discuss current healthcare myths in the news and what is the actual reality.

Bob Sansevere (00:00):

We are joined by Christopher Faddis, co-founder and president of the nonprofit Healthcare Sharing Ministry Solidarity HealthShare, which is an ethical, affordable alternative to traditional health insurance and is faithful to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Chris, I want to start off by asking you about President Trump, the new administration. They’ve made headlines galore about all the things, a lot of the executive orders and the things he’s planning to do and has done, but I haven’t seen anything about him doing any kind of an overhaul or even a tweaking to Obamacare or healthcare and his last administration when he was present the first time, that was a big talking point. Has he put it on the back burner? Do you anticipate him not doing anything or at some point he’ll get around to it?

Chris Faddis (00:45):

Yeah, it’s hard to know. I mean, I think for the most part, Republicans really don’t have a lot of stomach for it anymore. I mean, a lot of folks got

(00:55):

Had a lot of trouble because the talking point was they tried to get rid of preexisting condition coverage, and so they’re afraid to touch anything right now just because anything they do to Obamacare is a message to be that they’re going after the poor or whatever, which isn’t necessarily true. I mean, I think they want to improve Obamacare. I think we’ve gotten over the idea that we can repeal and replace at this point, at least from the general body of Republicans. That seems to be the case, but they haven’t done anything yet. They haven’t really said what they’re going to do. I think at some point they will take up price transparency. I think they’ll take up the subsidies right now that are at record highs. The amount that we subsidize for Americans, Affordable Care Act coverage, that’s going to be something that was extended through this year, so that has to be dealt with this year. Whether or not they’re going to extend it or if they’re going to get rid of those subsidies. I think the latest subsidies, if I remember right, I believe that came from the Inflation Reduction Act.

(01:58):

So some of those measures they’ve got to take up, but we just haven’t heard a lot, and I think part of it is I think they’re trying to get the things that they can do when it comes to healthcare. A lot of that is legislative and it’s going to take really a body of people in HHS to handle, and so they’re taking up sort of the low hanging fruit first, and I think some of those other things will start coming about, I would say in the next six months we’ll start to hear more about some of their plans.

Bob Sansevere (02:28):

Alright, and I mean obviously his administration has been busy and one of the things he did, well, let me just give you the headline from Scientific American from just a few days ago. Trump abruptly cancels crucial science reviews at NIH, National Institute of Health, world’s largest public funder of biomedical research. Now, that headline does not say what many headlines say, ‘Trump has canceled cancer research’ because obviously the news media is going to tug at the heartstrings of people, Americans, and thinking that he’s trying to abandon any type of cancer research. My guess is that this is something that he, and I’m not standing up for him, I’m just trying to figure out what he’s doing. He’s just trying to take a pause on this and it is a indefinite suspension, but he wants to know where the money’s going. That’s what I’m presuming. Is there anything more to this, because he’s not doing it just to stop cancer research. It’s to look at maybe an overall haul, and maybe you could explain that a lot better than I just tried.

Chris Faddis (03:31):

Yeah, I think really what he did was the biggest thing was essentially a blackout or a moratorium on publishing of research of articles, of opinion papers. And the reason is that they have very serious concerns about the standards and sort of the vetting of these things. We’ve seen, Bob, and you and I talked about this, the number of things over the last four or five years that have come out that were published one way and people said, wait a minute, that’s not what the research says. And then a few years later they come back, oh yeah, you’re right. Actually, it does cause high risk for myocarditis COVID vaccine or causes high risk for myocarditis. Even though we published the opposite and we said anything otherwise was misinformation. Now we’re coming out and saying this. I think essentially what they want to do is pause, like you said, and get a handle on making sure that we have the right standards in place and we’re publishing things that are actually accurate.

(04:31):

I don’t think they’re actually really stopping research. They’re stopping the publishing of things and they want to make sure that they put the right people in place and the right policies and procedures in place. Just to be fair, we have these policies and procedures, it seems they have not been followed, and so I think that’s really what they’re doing. I don’t think they’re trying to harm research. There is talk about them putting a complete halt to gain of function research, which again is I think most Americans agree with. I think there’s a lot of concerns about gain of function research, and so there’s some of those talks, but I think a lot of this has been blown out of proportion. He’s not stopping cancer research, he’s not stopping things. I think what he’s saying is, Hey, let’s not publish anything else until we know that what we’re publishing is accurate and that we’re following the right peer review processes and quality standards that we need to follow. A lot of things, Bob, the CDC, the NIH, all of these groups, a lot of these things they we’re putting out, were going against actual academic science, and so we’ve got to put a halt to that.

Bob Sansevere (05:40):

 Well, I mean, one of the things that to me, every few months or every year, coffee’s good for you. Coffee’s bad for you, coffee’s good for you, coffee’s bad for you. I mean, it just goes back and forth and say in the coffee with the caffeine caffeine’s good, caffeine’s bad. They just, how about settling it? Let’s be done. Now. The big thing going around now is that the CIA believes in a former WHO advisor that the covid originating in a lab is becoming increasingly clear and that it most likely happened. But meanwhile, China comes out and says it’s extremely unlikely covid came in a lab league. Of course they would because it would’ve been their lab. (Exactly. Exactly.) At this point, it doesn’t matter we had it.

Chris Faddis (06:26):

Right. Right. It doesn’t matter. I mean, I think the other side of that is we want to talk about it with all China. It was apparent it was an American who was doing that research in this Chinese lab and taking NIH grants to this Chinese lab to do it. So there’s a lot of this stuff and even that CIA report that came out that was being held and they finally released it, so it’s not surprising. I think it’s what most of us knew and what’s been said really since the beginning. At the end of the day, the reason it matters is because we need to make sure we solve that problem. Why did this leak and how do we make sure that doesn’t happen again, is, I mean, how many millions of people died across the world? This is important to know and rather than our government hiding that kind of information, we need to actually deal with it. And I hope this is a sign that kind of transparency is coming about.

Bob Sansevere (07:18):

Well, and I do think that your reference presumably was Dr. Fauci with the NIH. That’s another reason why I think he wants a pause or his administration does. They want to know what’s happened and what potentially could happen. And it’s refreshing, and I’m glad that you pointed out that it’s not like cancer research has ended.

Chris Faddis (07:37):

And I think you and I have talked about a few of these stories before, but there’s a lot of evidence over the last four years that much of what was published by these agencies was not written by science or by academic research. It was written by policy people who said, I want to say this, and that’s what we’re going to say. And so there were things that were being put out that the research didn’t actually support, but that was the public message we put out. And I think that’s another piece of this, right?

Bob Sansevere (08:02):

Oh, absolutely.

Chris Faddis (08:03):

For anything else, you want to talk about an executive order, you can put out whatever spin you want, but if we’re talking about reported to the American public, what our government funded science is saying, then that should be what our government science funded science is saying, not what the talking heads and the policy people that we’re appointed by the president or whatever wanted it to say. And that’s again, I think it’s a good reason to halt what’s going on. I also think that there’s a concern that a lot of the old guard, the people that are left at NIH and CDC and all those folks would be publishing things that would be counter to this new administration until they get let go or whatever. And so there’s just an overall, Hey, let’s stop. Let’s get everyone in proper place, get the right leadership in place, and then we’ll get back to publishing.

Bob Sansevere (08:55):

Yes. And now last time when we chatted, we talked about medical bills are leading cause or health bills are leading cause of personal bankruptcy, and I just wanted to put in a plug for Solidarity HealthShare, solidarityhealthshare.org. You’re the co-founder, obviously in president. And I mean, I have had Solidarity for years and I had my family racked up a lot of bills. And your group, you have a third party that does it. They were able to negotiate pricing with where the bills came from. I mean, because you set a fee that you pay and then they come back sometimes and say, well, that’s not enough, but you take care of it. And it’s taken out of my hands and my family’s hands, which is great. And that’s something for people. If you’re looking for a great alternative to traditional health care, check out Solidarity HealthShare at solidarityhealthshare.org because you do a lot of things and you’re doing more things basically just about every day to make it easier and more cost effective for the membership. And that’s really a good thing. So Chris, thank you for that. And we’re going to take a quick break and the BS Show will be right back.

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