Interview Summary:

Solidarity President and Co-Founder Chris Faddis joins Chris DeSimone of Wake Up, Tucson on KVOI Radio to talk about the importance of faith-based hospitals in America now more than ever.

Interview Audio:

Chris DeSimone (00:00):

Let’s go to the phone. Seven nine zero twenty forty is the phone number. Got our good friend Chris el presidente at solidarityhealthshare.org. What’s up, my friend?

Chris Faddis (00:14):

Hey, man, I got to say when I broke onto the, when I got placed in queue here and then I heard Whitney Houston, I thought that song was for me. I didn’t realize it was for AOC, but I got emotional for a minute. I know it’s been a while since we’ve talked.

Chris DeSimone (00:29):

You know what’s great about that song- it’s for both of you.

Chris Faddis (00:34):

I will always love you.

Chris DeSimone (00:38):

So we were just talking to our friend Joanne, who does a lot of, she breaks down Pima County stuff, and of course the county is going to blow about a hundred million dollars for the illegals blowing through the border. And they admitted over the last year or so they’ve had, you got to love this, 66,000 have been by visual and asking Covid. Then they tested them afterwards, right? And I’m sitting there going, doesn’t Pima County to get paid? They want everyone to have Covid, right? That’s still got to be the higher price thing they get money for

Chris Faddis (01:14):

Maybe. Yeah. I mean, most likely, especially if they’re getting it from the administration, but yeah,

Chris DeSimone (01:21):

Yeah

Chris Faddis (01:21):

All the money, it’s a lot of people coming over.

Chris DeSimone (01:23):

That was the bad joke. I was running as poor Joanne’s trying to do her job. The guy comes over, he obviously has a broken arm, right? It’s just dangling, right? And he goes, oh, goes, I broke my arm. He goes, no, you have Covid. We don’t get paid crap for a broken arm. So let’s get to this story from America Magazine, “Ethics of Catholic Hospitals Beyond Abortion and Contraception.” And my new phrase that I’m going to start using more and more that the pro-life side needs to use between now and election day is ‘Stop voting for infanticide.’

Chris Faddis (02:08):

Right?

Chris DeSimone (02:09):

We’ve got to start using the I word more.

Chris Faddis (02:12):

Yeah.

(02:13):

It’s interesting what’s happening right now, Chris, and this is something that this article’s kind helping to combat is the left is on this information campaign really since Dobbs, but it’s really picked up this last six months of going after Catholic hospitals with articles saying these hospitals are limiting care. People are not getting lifesaving care, they’re harming patients and all of these things. And the reality is actually the complete opposite. I mean, one of the stories that they ran, there’s a group called Kaiser Family Foundation. So let me just tell you, Kaiser Family Foundation, while they claim no ties to the Kaiser Permanente health system, they were founded by the same guy who spent billions of dollars to found Kaiser Permanente. And they’re all related to the family trust of all those things. So the Kaiser Family Foundation is out there putting out stories and publishing stories and asking for people, how are you harmed?

(03:09):

And one of the things they’re doing is telling, saying, well, this woman came in and her water broke early, and the Catholic hospital wouldn’t let her terminate, which meant Catholic hospitals waiting for the baby to actually die and let the baby be born naturally or whatever other interventions they could do. And the reality is, Chris, that what we’ve actually seen in real life is that the Catholic hospitals are the ones who actually try to do more for the child. They’re the ones, I mean, when we have secular systems, even here in Arizona where they won’t help save the life of the baby when they’re pre viability, and yet we call the Catholic Hospital and they’ll take a transfer and fight for the life of the baby. And a lot of times these secular hospitals then say, oh, nevermind. We’ll do what you want us to do because they obviously want that revenue. And so it’s an interesting world that we live in where we’re going after these guys. And the reality is, a recent report noted that 16% of all hospital births occur in Catholic facilities. And some states like Oregon and Missouri, 35, 33% and 61% in Washington of all births take place in Catholic Hospital. So they’re actually doing a great service. They’re the largest provider of Medicare and Medicaid services, largest of provider of healthcare to the poor, and yet the left because of abortion, they’re going after ’em to try to shut ’em down.

Chris DeSimone (04:29):

So here’s those magic questions. How Catholic are Catholic hospitals?

Chris Faddis (04:32):

Well, that’s a whole other problem, right? That’s one of the issues. So on the one hand-

Chris DeSimone (04:42):

I asked the same question about Catholic Bishops, but keep going.

Chris Faddis (04:47):

Well, different. That’s Chris and Chris after dark. (Thank you.) So yeah, no, it’s a real issue. And I think it’s one of the reasons why we have to push for our Catholic hospitals to remain faithful and to follow the teachings they proclaim to uphold because they’re going to lose their identity one way or another if they don’t stay faithful. But we are seeing in large part, most of them are at least doing these things. There’s certainly things we need to fight for and push against. I mean, there’s all issues we’ve talked about with gender procedures and all of that and some of these hospitals. So that’s the big question. Is faith-based healthcare, is it going to get shut down by what’s being pushed for right now? Or even their own hidden agenda, which is a problem.

Chris DeSimone (05:36):

So a listener just messaged me. She wants to know, how do you know, is there some place to go online that will reliably tell you if a Catholic hospital is actually Catholic in relation to how it does its work?

Chris Faddis (05:53):

That’s a great question. And in fact, I’ve been asked that question many times. There’s really not. There’s not a great list unfortunately. And we can certainly say that most of them, I mean all of them I believe as far as when it comes to abortion and those things, they’re holding the line. The issues come in to some of the gender issues and all of that. What I tell people is to go to their website and look at what’s there. When you look and you see rainbow flags all over the place, you kind of know

(06:24):

The one thing that I will say is unfortunately sort of like politics in a way, we have to choose the better of the goods. And what I do see is that the Catholic hospitals are pretty faithfully, not the ones that will try to prematurely end your life. They will go the extra mile to keep you alive if you want to keep staying alive if something’s going on. And those issues are upheld well. And so if you’re choosing the lesser of evils, I would say these faith-based hospitals, and this is the same with Christian hospitals, I think some of the Lutheran systems and other systems around the country, I don’t know that we have very many of those here in Arizona, but those are also typically more likely to fight for you and do the go the extra mile.

Chris DeSimone (07:11):

All right, let’s go to break, Matt. We’re going to visit some great sponsors. We’re talking to Chris Faddis, president of solidarityhealthshare.org. Better way to pay for your healthcare costs. Hey, look, money, a lot of this comes down money. This is from our listeners, Jamie and John Davenport, solidarityhealthshare.org. Learn how to pay less for your healthcare costs in a moral way. And when we come back, we’re going to talk about facility fees in your routine healthcare bills. It feels like the hospitals figured out how resorts do the resort fee for that newspaper. You don’t read anymore. You’re on Wake up, Tucson 10 30, the voice local news and talk 8 48 47 in the morning jumping in Tucson, coming up with Dr. Ed Ackley, him and Sixto Mo talking to some folks about campus security and very interesting conversation, I think we got coming up. Absolutely. So check that out at 9 0 6. We’re hanging out with Chris Faddis from solidarityhealthshare.org. And again, thanks to John and Jamie for the playlist. We’re still waiting for the Chris Faddis 18 death metal songs to remember. So coming up soon, Christopher, welcome back. So I love making him laugh, guiltily. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

Chris Faddis (08:39):

I’ve dumbfounded over here.

(08:41):

Go ahead, keep talking

Chris DeSimone (08:42):

After I ask him about how Catholic Catholic Bishops are. Now, let’s see. Here we go. So I saw this story in the Wall Street Journal. Hospitals are adding billions in facility fees for routine care. And as I said, on our way out, it feels like the resort fees from when you stay at the hotel.

Chris Faddis (09:02):

Yeah, I got one of those in Manhattan last week. I got a destination charge. Yeah, that’s a new one. That’s a new one.

Chris DeSimone (09:11):

Give ’em a Christopher. Walkin on that please. For this one. It’s one of our new sound. Robs, let’s go. Here we go. Here we go. It’s coming. (You got me leaning away from first base here. Sorry.) That’s okay. (Hang on a second.) You got a destination charge on his hotel bill in New York, Christopher. Wow, thank you. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

Chris Faddis (09:32):

Perfect

Chris DeSimone (09:33):

There. Do you remember the rough percentage of a fee?

Chris Faddis (09:40):

Well, I’m trying to think of what, yeah, as the percentage. It was probably 15%. (Yeah, 100.) No, no, 10%. 10%. The total was 15% if you had it. Yeah, it was 10%. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. I’ve never seen that one.

Chris DeSimone (09:57):

Yeah, so so-

Chris Faddis (09:58):

I got it back.

Chris DeSimone (09:59):

You complained?

Chris Faddis (10:01):

Oh yeah, yeah. This was ridiculous. I’m a Hilton Diamond member. I was. So they made me pay for checking my bags the last day. I was like, this is Disneyland for hotels. It’s ridiculous.

Chris DeSimone (10:14):

So what was their excuse for the justification for a destination fee?

Chris Faddis (10:25):

I don’t know. But the way they said it when I checked in was like, you know, have this charge. And I was just like, what? Yeah, because you’re in Manhattan. I was like, so I don’t know if it’s a Manhattan thing. I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it before. So I was in Manhattan nine months ago and it didn’t get charged it. So it must be new.

Chris DeSimone (10:42):

I like this one. This is from a Nerd Wallet thing about it says ‘a lower base rate might peak a customer’s interest that they may not otherwise have considered. Then the hotel makes up the difference in revenue by charging a destination.’ Well, thank you.

Chris Faddis (10:56):

That makes a lot of sense. Maybe that’s what the hospitals are doing.

Chris DeSimone (11:00):

So when I see facility fee, are they taking out their overhead costs? They’re saying and putting it on a facility fee?

Chris Faddis (11:08):

It’s a strange thing because there is, in medical billing, there’s always been a facility fee. There’s always been facility charges kind of bundled in, and there’s place of service codes and all these things. So the way that works is if you get, let’s say you get stitches in your doctor’s office versus getting stitches in the hospital or maybe a small in-office procedure, they need to take your toenail out, which is technically a surgical procedure. They can do that in office and it’ll cost X, but if they do it in a surgical center or hospital, it cost Y or Z. So that’s typical. But this is a new thing where they’re adding this add-on service. And it’s not just for hospitals or surgical centers, it’s actually even for doctor’s offices. So the story that Wall Street Journal did talked about a family who had, they were in an Ohio clinic for a specialist $348, and then they also got a bill for the use of the office space at $645. So I dunno if this is how they’re financing, doctors can’t get a lease on their building. So they’re like, listen, if you let us bill all your patients, we’ll let you lease the space. I don’t understand it.

Chris DeSimone (12:15):

It’s very strange. It just feels like just another way to club it on there for you. And I’ve noticed this, I’ve been seeing a lot of doctors with a family member over the last so many months and everything. Everyone is billing their codes and I’ve never seen them make so much money, Chris, just by filling out the same questionnaire over and over again.

Chris Faddis (12:41):

Exactly. Yeah. It’s all a mess. It’s all a mess. And this is what’s so strange is the thing is about these bills is most insurers and most payers follow the guidelines of CMS Center for Medicare Services, which is who publishes the billing codes and who sort of sets the baseline rates. We use it for lots of things. And that based on CMS guidelines and industry practice, extra charges for facilities have never been paid. So they’ve started doing this, and even as apparently Medicare says that consumers on Medicare overpaid by 6 billion in 2021 because Medicare wasn’t paying the fees and the providers were going after the individual and they felt obligated to pay the fee. So they paid it. And so what I’ll tell people is don’t pay it, fight it. They’re not going to let you fight it, but fight it. We fight these for our members all day long and we just cancel ’em out of the bill and don’t look back, but that we know how to do it. So it’s a real problem. We already have this cost that we’re dealing with in healthcare, and then you add things like this

Chris DeSimone (13:51):

And to take my mom to her Medicare annual wellness checkup and they wait her, they took her blood pressure twice, even though her blood pressure was great the first time, but the physician’s assistant thought she really felt like she really had to make it look like she did something. And then they asked the questionnaire, and it’s the questionnaire of they asked her the loneliness questionnaire. I also, do you belong to any clubs or organizations? I’m like, what are we doing?

Chris Faddis (14:26):

And then she got charged for a wellness check or a welfare check or something.

Chris DeSimone (14:29):

Yeah, and you’re like, what just happened here? Are you people insane? And so the other thing I guess I’m learning, I think we’ve talked about it before, the hospital system’s gobbling up the doctor’s practices and then basically they assign a value to each doctor just for how many of those people they can see for every 15 minutes and jam for whatever the charge is. And that’s why your healthcare keeps getting worse and worse.

Chris Faddis (15:00):

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I almost wonder if they’re doing this because of the No Surprises Act. I mean, when that came out, hospitals were forced to publish their pricing and on several things and also give you good faith estimates. So I don’t know if this allows them to add a charge, like they’re like, well, we better hide that extra cost that we were bloating in there and charge you on the end. But I know our members often will get those good faith estimates and we’re not seeing these facility fees on there. Whether or not they’re disclosing them to people is another question. And it sounds like they’re not.

Chris DeSimone (15:33):

So when we’ve seen this abuse of doctors and nurses that have driven a bunch of them out of the healthcare field, and then it seems we have less doctors than ever with what’s going on. Do you see any, we know that trying to pay for it, what you guys are doing at Solidarity is amazingly important, but on the care side, what do you see as some kind little shining lights out there that people should pay attention to more to finding better healthcare than just being a zombie and going to the PCP practice they’ve been going to the last 90 years?

Chris Faddis (16:12):

Here’s the two things. One is I think all the craziness since Covid, I think finally woke a lot of physicians up, and so many of them are trying to get their way back out of the healthcare system. They’re having a hard time doing it, but a lot of them are. And while some are leaving completely, I think some are trying to be entrepreneurial and figure out how to go back on their own. The other side of that is being in Arizona, Chris, we have a huge benefit of a whole suite and level of integrative and alternative care in this state because we have full licensure for naturopaths and other doctors. And so we allow, there’s a lot of opportunity for finding really good pediatricians, really good family practice and internist type doctors that will take better care of you. And they are medically trained. So because it’s full licensure in Arizona, they do get medical training in addition to naturopathic training and all of that. And that is a huge, huge opportunity to find independent practices that aren’t owned by the hospital system where you’re going to get time with your doctor.

Chris DeSimone (17:20):

So how do you find them, Chris? How do you find those people?

Chris Faddis (17:25):

I mean, I think you just got to look it up in your area. Look for integrative doctors and naturopath, those kind of things. You certainly look at the reviews and do those things. Our family has a pediatrician that all of our kids go to who’s a naturopath. It’s fantastic. I mean, I’m never worried about them getting the right kind of care or being asked the crazy questions because she actually cares about them and she’s not Catholic, but she respects our values and she’s very understanding of that. So it’s a really important piece, but definitely look those things up. You can find, oh, I wish I remembered the name of the local association here. But anyway, there’s lots of information online for these guys.

Chris DeSimone (18:05):

I’m telling since Covid and all of the breakdown in medicine, I have found three, all three of them are physician’s assistants who are really into practicing medicine instead of coding. I’ve had more success in better healthcare from the PAs than I have MDs over the last four years.

Chris Faddis (18:28):

Yeah, fair enough. There’s a lot more of them and they have more time.

Chris DeSimone (18:29):

 Truly, truly practicing medicine. Yeah. Yeah. I got one that does house calls on my side of town, plus office visits, and I can do this crazy. And with all three of them, I can text them and I got a quick question for something. I’m not going through the voicemail from hell thing.

Chris Faddis (18:46):

Right, right. Yeah, which is amazing. Yeah, I mean, that’s how I get most of my care. I rarely go to the doctor. I just get in touch with the doc and ask the questions and the kids go more. But in general, we’re too busy to be there all the time. Right.

Chris DeSimone (19:02):

Well,-

Chris Faddis (19:03):

I think it’s important to find those people, and obviously there’s times when you’re going to need a specialist and you’re going to end up in a hospital group and there’s good doctors there. It’s not to say there’s not good doctors. The hard part is they’re just not allowed to do what they do Well, most of the time.

Chris DeSimone (19:16):

Chris Faddis, thanks for the great conversation as always, my friend.

Chris Faddis (19:21):

Good talking to you.

Chris DeSimone (19:21):

All right. Have a good day. That’s solidarityhealthshare.org. Our good friend Chris Faddis.

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