Gov. Mike Braun (R-IN), HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz promote "Make Indiana Healthy Again" reforms.
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00:00Nick Carter
00:14Good morning. My name is Nick Carter. I'm proud to be a fourth generation
00:18Indiana farmer, deeply invested in local food in Indiana, and I'm proud to share
00:22the title of entrepreneur with Indiana's Governor Mike Braun. Governor Braun is a
00:27conservative outsider who spent his career as a main street entrepreneur building a
00:31business, creating thousands of good-paying Hoosier jobs. He's lived an
00:35American dream and now as governor of Indiana he's working to preserve that
00:39same freedom, that same dream and opportunity to achieve prosperity for
00:43future generations of Hoosiers. I happen to be raising three of them so it's that
00:48future is very important to me. The governor and I share similar values, faith,
00:52family and community. Those values have guided governor while growing a
00:58business and raising a family and have inspired his call
01:01to serve fellow Hoosiers throughout the years.
01:05He began his public service as a member of a local school board
01:08for 10 years. Then as a state representative from 2014 to 2017
01:14and in 2018 he was elected to be a conservative voice for Hoosiers
01:18in the U.S. Senate. That's where Governor Braun and I had the pleasure of first
01:23meeting when he invited me to testify about local
01:27food, food access, healthy food and what Hoosier farmers
01:30need before the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee
01:34where he served. Governor Braun and I are both avid outdoorsmen,
01:39enthusiastic Morell mushroom hunters and speaking of which it's
01:42getting to be about that time of year if you're looking for
01:45a neat place to forage that's not too far from the residence. You're always
01:48welcome at our farm in the woods around there.
01:51In addition to entrepreneurship, food, the governor and I both share a passion
01:55for locally produced food and the importance of healthy eating.
01:58So I'm pleased to introduce and welcome Indiana Governor Mike Braun.
02:02Thank you, Nick. What a pleasure to be here talking about a subject that I've
02:19spoken about for years. It goes back to running that hardscrabble business that
02:25finally got to the point where I knew I could scale it and then had to deal with an annual issue
02:33of how lucky I was that my costs were only going up 5 to 10 percent. I remember in that 10th year
02:41where all you could do is raise deductibles, change underwriters, enough was enough.
02:47I think the proudest thing I've done in business or government was sitting in on that HR meeting
02:56to renew or either say enough is enough. And in that one meeting, and I got most of this out of the
03:04insurance companies, they told me what would work that insurance is about indemnification of critical
03:12illness or an accident, not about paying for every scratch and dent, basing it upon expensive remediation
03:24as opposed to wellness and prevention. In that one renewal meeting, become the insurance company,
03:32you reconstruct it completely by not promoting expensive remediation, making health care consumers
03:41out of your employees, basing it on an ounce of preventions worth a pound of cure. I spoke about
03:48that in the Senate on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. And like I told Maureen so often,
03:54it was like talking to the side of our big white barn back home. Everybody gave polite consideration,
04:02nothing happened. President Trump tried to take it on with executive orders, only one stuck. And that's
04:09through the remediation system. What I love about this is we're talking about how to change the culture
04:17of promoting chronic disease through the way we produce our food by not preventing chronic disease
04:27in the first place. So I came out with nine executive orders today, finally to where you can
04:34do something rather than just talk about it. So happy to see an administration that's going to be
04:40entrepreneurial with it as well. So thank you Secretary Kennedy, Administrator Oz for coming in.
04:47You're setting the stage at the federal level. We're going to be your best ally at the state level.
04:54This isn't a usual top-down, one-size-fits-all public health agenda. We're focused on root causes,
05:03transparent information and real results. We're taking on big issues like diet-related chronic illness.
05:12How often do you hear about it? Nothing happens. Children's fitness in our own schools and harmful
05:20additives in our food. Today's first executive order removes candy and soft drinks from taxpayer-funded
05:29SNAP benefits. What do you think about that?
05:40More SNAP money is spent on sugar drinks and candy than on fruits and vegetables. That changes today.
05:50We're kicking off a study of diet-related chronic illness. When I gave a free biometric screening
06:02to every one of my employees after reforming it, number one asymptomatic issue was diabetes. And it's so
06:10easy to nip in the bud and it's very expensive to remediate it. The goal is to empower Hoosiers to
06:18address root causes of chronic illness with preventions, nutrition, physical activity,
06:24and early screening. That is so important, early screening. Hoosiers parents are concerned with
06:30negative effects of food dyes. I share those concerns. Today, our health department kicks off a new study
06:38study on harmful effects from dyes and other food additives as well.
06:51I want to give every Hoosier kid any advantage possible to reach their full potential
06:58and lead a long and healthy life. Today, we're starting the Governor's Fitness Test
07:04and School Fitness Month to encourage exercise and physical activity in school and for our youth as well.
07:19Indiana farms grow world-class nutritious food. Today, we're making it easier to buy direct to consumer food
07:27food from local Indiana farms. We're also focused on the health of Indiana's biggest program, Medicaid.
07:43Study found 28% of Indiana's Medicaid spending, our largest budget line item, was improper spending,
07:52mostly due to eligibility errors. Today, we're taking action to make sure
07:57everyone on Medicaid is eligible for it in the first place.
08:08SNAP is intended to help our neighbors who have fallen on hard times, but we also need to encourage
08:14their long-term self-sufficiency so that they can thrive and benefit in their communities.
08:20Today, we are changing work requirements so the two-thirds of able-bodied SNAP recipients
08:28who don't work are put on a path to filling one of Indiana's 100,000
08:34jobs that need better skills and that if you get your own plant and equipment in great shape
08:41and you know that that's out there, we're going to try to get you into it
08:46and not needing the experience or a college degree. Today's nine executive orders reflect
08:53a new approach to health policy in the state of Indiana focused on empowering everyone to live
09:01a healthier, happier, longer life and today is where we begin.
09:14So when I heard about Maha, make America healthy again, I spent six years there trying to do it
09:23and making Indiana healthy again. I've always been a proponent that the leading states that are
09:32entrepreneurial that find ways to do it will probably be more agile than the place you're working in now
09:40that I did for six years. So I am so excited about being a partner on stuff that is basically common sense
09:47and that takes on big, established, entrenched when it comes to health remediation, insurance, wholesome food
09:56that we need. So it's my honor to introduce Dr. Oz, the Commissioner of CMS and thank you for coming in
10:06and I can't wait to hear from you.
10:16This is a monumental day, not just in Indiana but for this great nation because nine executive orders
10:22addressing Maha initiatives I think breaks the record. Secretary Kennedy, is that right?
10:26By far.
10:29And I want to thank Governor Braun and his staff for so thoughtfully crafting these in support of
10:34President Trump and Secretary Kennedy's commitment to the American people that we will make this great
10:39nation healthy again. Now let me give a little bit of background on why I think this is so important
10:47and it all starts with the word subsidiarity. How many of you know what that word means? It's actually
10:52a number of Catholics here then. Subsidiarity means you push the decision to the person
10:58lowest on the totem pole who can make it correctly. It's the most efficient way to run organizations
11:03in general and in subsidiarity you don't want the federal government making decisions about lifestyle
11:09issues if the state can do it because the governor is capable. He knows his people and you can go down
11:13the path because the most important person in the entire hierarchy is the mom because she knows you'll
11:19win the battle for health in the home, in the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom. That's where the real
11:23battle for health will be won and these executive orders make it easy for moms to do the right thing
11:30for their kids. Now my position as Administrator of CMS is helping to ensure that the nation's health
11:38insurance programs create the right incentives, empower the right people including especially
11:43patients so they now feel like they own a piece of the rock, like they matter, like they have agency
11:48over their future and we want to make sure that we allow all Americans to be able to appreciate how
11:54important these lifestyle changes are and to do that I'm going to do what doctors are sometimes forced
11:59to do which is to give you some news you might not want to hear but once you know it we've got good
12:03news to follow. First bit, the number one line item in the state of India and as it is in almost every state
12:10is Medicaid. That's not actually the most important number because there's a lot of other things you spend
12:15money on but it's the fastest growing as well and that's the part that's most concerning because this
12:21is a commitment we have made to our most vulnerable and if it's doubling as it has I am told in the
12:26last four years then it's not a sustainable program it's one that desperately needs to be saved and
12:31strengthened. To do that we have to deal with another big reality which is that the health care expenses in
12:37this country are increasing up two to three times faster than the economy. Effectively we have now generated
12:45a health care system that has a country attached to it and that's not healthy long term. If we're
12:52spending twice as much as any other country not getting the life expectancy benefits that we
12:56anticipate and 30 years ago we were about equal to Europe now we're about five years behind Europe
13:01we're going in the wrong direction we're not getting value for the money we're putting into it.
13:05Why? Chronic illness. It drives 70 percent, 70 percent of a total health care budget and the kinds of things
13:12that are in these executive orders will help reduce that incidence of chronic disease because it turns
13:18out that about the most patriotic thing you can do these days is to get healthy. It will dramatically
13:24allow our nation to be as healthy as it can be and it feels a heck of a lot better to be healthy than
13:29the alternatives. So how are we going to do this? I wrote down three ideas that came out of the executive
13:34orders. The first is walking. A little little stack to come in handy at dinner tonight. If you walked,
13:38if every American walked 20 minutes, exercised 20 minutes a day, broke a little sweat, it would
13:44probably reduce our health care budget, the part that I'm especially worried about in this at CMS,
13:49by about a hundred billion dollars. These aren't small rounding errors. These are massive ways of
13:53addressing the challenges that we face. The President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition
13:58that I was honored to be a part of in the first Trump administration, actually created by Secretary
14:02Kennedy's uncle, John F. Kennedy, is a good example of how we can do this well. I learned on that
14:08committee that the number one thing we often lack in communities are coaches. It's an action step.
14:13We should make it easier to mentor young people. I'll come back to that theme. Second big topic,
14:17nutrition. Quite a few of these executive orders touch on that reality. I'll give you a little tip
14:22that I learned years of studying nutrition science. It turns out that the most healthiest way to address
14:28food is to eat food that looks the way it looks coming out of the ground. That's like a simple way of
14:33memorizing what makes sense. That's why butter is better than hydrogenated oils, because it doesn't
14:38matter if butter might cause other issues. It's real food. Your body knows what to do with it. It's a home
14:43game. So we need to get everyone to understand the power of food. And to do that, we need to get parents
14:47and teachers and physicians and other health providers to understand it as well. The executive
14:52order that insists that to get credentialed, you have to learn nutrition if you're a doctor is critical.
14:57When I was in medical school, there was no nutrition class. I actually ran for student body president
15:03and won on that campaign promise, and we started one. Today in America, most medical schools do not
15:08teach nutrition. Why does that matter? Because if you go to four years of medical school and bust your
15:12tail and learn everything, and nutrition wasn't on the docket, what is that message to you? It doesn't
15:17matter. It's not important. If it was critical, you would have been taught it, because you learned
15:21everything else you needed to learn in medical school. If nutrition is not on the agenda, not in the
15:25syllabus, it's not really important for you. And I believe that we should empower folks, and the
15:30executive orders will do just that, to be able to navigate nutrition, and we have plans at CMS
15:34to make that easier. Finally, community involvement. The number one driver of an expensive patient
15:41is a patient without another person in their life. I'll say that again. Loneliness ends up driving a lot
15:47of the pathology that we then have to deal with in the healthcare system. The way you deal with that is by
15:52have community groups that work together well. One of the executive orders encourages schools to get
15:58young people to become educated about health, but I'll tell you from personal experience, they also
16:03become activists in a good way when they're healthy. We started a foundation with my wife 20 years ago,
16:10and have done very well across the country touching the lives of millions of young people doing just this.
16:14And when I go into these schools, and I hope many of you will, and you look at the eyes of these young
16:18people, sometimes it looks like the light's gone out. They just want to have a belief that they matter.
16:24And so after having done this a lot, I'm confident this executive order will make a difference because
16:30it'll get young people to believe they have agency over their future. And if they do that, if they have
16:35mentoring programs that support them, that are out there, then we'll have a unique ability to allow this
16:41system to spread like wildfire because young people want to be connected. They want to be in community,
16:46and they're right now being atomized and ostracized. Now our nation is too great for small ideas.
16:53And the ideas that Secretary Kennedy and President Trump are putting forth in rapid fire and now
16:58supported at this level of intensity in the state of Indiana are emblematic of the fact that we have
17:04a generational opportunity to make this country as healthy as it should be. And the person who has
17:11represented this more than any other, Secretary Kennedy, is a dear friend. I've known him for many
17:17years through his foundation work, but I met him on my show. And when he came on the show, many did not
17:23want him to appear because they thought he had far out ideas that were so bad they shouldn't be heard.
17:30And I'll tell you in my mind how you define Maha because it's how you define the next speaker,
17:35Secretary Kennedy. It's defined in three words. The first is curiosity. Are you truly desirous of
17:41learning what needs to be done to improve the life of your fellow man? And if you are truly curious,
17:47and remember 80% of questions are statements in disguise. So if you're truly curious and you really
17:52go in there with questions and you hear stuff that matters, are you then courageous enough to share it
17:57with people around you? Because when you do that, sometimes folks get mad at you, especially with the
18:02current healthcare system that we have. And certainly, Senator Kennedy has faced that.
18:07Secretary Kennedy finally is a compassionate man. And I say that because I think of him like a brother,
18:13but I have never seen him do something mean to anybody else. So if you're curious,
18:17and you're courageous, and you're compassionate in sharing that wisdom, as difficult as it is for
18:22people to hear, that makes you a true healer. Secretary Kennedy, thank you.
18:32Thank you, everybody. Thank you, everybody. I'm really happy to be here today. Very,
18:44very grateful to Governor Baran and to Mehmet Oz. But I've been to a bunch of states to announce Maha
18:52initiatives over the past three or four weeks. And it's always been one at a time. And this is,
18:59this one really broke the bank on nine executive orders, all designed to improve our farms, our
19:08fitness, our food, our education, our health. And, you know, I had the pleasure to meet with many of
19:17the legislatures in the state just now and with Governor Braun. And I was so impressed by the high
19:23caliber of the people there that level of intelligence, the level of thoughtfulness,
19:30a commitment and the idealism in that room. And I have, I have just nothing but optimism for the
19:36state of Indiana because of that leadership. We're in a crisis today, we're about to announce
19:43new autism numbers, new autism numbers, they've, again, gone up dramatically just in two years.
19:51We have, in some states is as low as well, one out of 20 boys having autism, one out of 31 kids.
20:02And when I was in my generation today, the rate of autism is one in 10,000. And this is just one disease.
20:10Our whole, this whole generation of kids is damaged by chronic disease. I, you know, I was talking to
20:17the governor that I walked through an airport and I see these young people who once again have hope
20:24because of what's happening in this administration. But, you know, they're all, you can see the chronic
20:29inflammation, you can see the mitochondrial challenges that they're facing. And this is not,
20:36you know, as the governor mentioned, diabetes is a treatable disease.
20:41Virtually 100% of people with pre, who are pre-diabetic can get rid of that diagnosis
20:47through changes in their diets. And so it's treatable. And if 50% of our adults, when I was a kid,
20:56the typical pediatrician would see one case of diabetes during his lifetime,
21:00during a 40 or 50 year career, juvenile diabetes. Today, one out of every three kids who walks through
21:07his office door is diabetic or pre-diabetic. We just got new numbers from NIH that said 38% of teens
21:14are pre-diabetic. We have 100 million people in this country who are pre-diabetic. This is unknown in
21:20human history. And, you know, obesity crisis, when my uncle was president, 3% of Americans were obese.
21:28Today, it's around 70% are obese or overweight. In Japan, when my uncle was president, 3% of kids were
21:38obese. Today in Japan, 3% of kids are obese. So it's a choice. And it's almost certainly because Japan
21:49has a very, very aggressive school lunch program. Make sure the kids get wholesome foods. And when
22:01you raise these children, as Mehmed said, when you raise them, they become advocates for good food.
22:09They become energized themselves, and they develop lifelong habits. Their taste buds
22:15are altered so that they have a yearning and a hunger for good food and a repulsion towards food
22:23that is making us sick. Today, we're the fourth most obese country in the world. And we have something
22:31that is unique in human history. We have people who are obese who are at the same time malnourished
22:38because the food that we're eating is not nutrient-dense anymore. And I was involved, you know,
22:46in tobacco litigation back in the 1980s, in the late 80s. And the tobacco companies, at that point,
22:54were the most cash-rich companies on earth. And they saw the writing on the wall.
23:01They saw the regulatory headwinds. And their consumers were walking away from their product.
23:09And they decided to diversify. So they started buying up the food companies.
23:15By the mid-1990s, the two biggest food companies in the world were R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris.
23:22And they transferred thousands of scientists that were engaged in making tobacco more addictive
23:26to do the same thing with food. And they developed in the lab all of these chemicals that are unknown in nature
23:37that make food more attractive. But it's not food. It's food-like substances. So they'll put a
23:46strawberry flavor in the food, but there is no nutrients that you'd find in a strawberry.
23:51Your body is craving that, but it doesn't get filled up. And it doesn't give you nutrition,
23:58but you want to eat more and more so you get obese, but at the same time, you get malnourished.
24:04And they put addictive substances like sugar and sodium and others, monosodium, glutinate in our foods,
24:10and make you so that you don't get satiated and that you constantly want to have more.
24:15And they realized at some point through all these, you know, that they could hijack the human brain.
24:24And different, all these nefarious ways, but one of them is that they realized that
24:29one of the ways that your brain tells your stomach that it's full is how many times you chew.
24:36Oh, they began adding food softeners to our food so that your brain would be under the illusion that
24:46you weren't full. You can inhale 20 Twinkies and still want more as you're not chewing them.
24:55And so they figured out all these things and they changed our food system in this country. So it is
25:01poison to us and it is poisoning the American people. My uncle, as Governor Braun said,
25:08launched the presidential council on physical fitness back in 1961. And because he thought,
25:16he saw the healthcare costs increasing, but he also saw more importantly that our country,
25:22you know, Americans, when I was growing up, were regarded as the toughest people in the world.
25:27And, and he associated that beef jerky toughness. I was associated with the American people in the
25:36minds of the rest of the world with the success of our nation. And he didn't want us to get soft.
25:41And when, you know, Governor Braun and I were growing up, we all participated in the presidential
25:47council and the fitness tests. And it was, it was a big aspiration at our schools to do that.
25:53And you know, for me, it, it, it, uh, it imbued me with a lifetime commitment to physical fitness.
26:02And I today, you know, I'm 71 years old and the governor is the same. And he, you know, both of us
26:10feel like we're in our forties or fifties and we have a lot of energy and a higher capacity to enjoy our
26:16lives. And we want, you know, we want that for our children and we all want it. We now have the
26:23sickest country in the world. We spend two to three times for healthcare, what other countries spend.
26:32And we are the sickest nation. We had during COVID the highest death rate of any country in the world.
26:38We had 16% of the COVID deaths in this country, and we only have 4.2% of the world's population.
26:44And, and that's because we have these comorbidities, this chronic disease that the CDC said the average
26:52American who died from COVID had 3.8 chronic diseases. Healthy people were not dying. It was
26:58sick people who were dying. They were already sick. And so if we want to protect our country against
27:04infectious diseases, we need to start by making people healthy again. And President Trump, I'm very,
27:14very grateful for because he's given me this opportunity and given Dr. Oz's opportunity.
27:20He often says that he wants to make America strong again. But we can't be a strong nation if we're not
27:28a strong people. He, he says that he wants to restore the American dream. But a healthy person has a
27:36thousand dreams. And a sick person only has one. And today, 60% of the people in this country have
27:43only one dream. It's, it is threatening our national security. 74% of our kids cannot qualify for military
27:52service. And it's destroying our economy and our national vigor. We're spending one point,
27:59my uncle was president, we spent zero on chronic disease, zero in this country.
28:06We're spending about 1.3 trillion dollars a year. And we can't afford it. And we have to figure out
28:12new ways to make America, to allow Americans to take responsibility and agency for their own health.
28:20And we also need to, we need to give, we need to change our food system in this country so that we
28:28start giving our kids foods that are going to actually make them healthy and imbue them with vigor and
28:34and ambition and, and, and a dream. Oh, I want to thank again, Governor Braun. I also want to take this moment
28:45to encourage governors all over the country to do the, to follow the lead of Indiana and to file with
28:52Brooke Rollins, who's my partner in this, in ma, head of USDA. She is right now at this very moment
29:00in Arkansas with Sarah, Governor Sarah Huckabee, announcing a, um, uh, the application for,
29:11or SNAP waivers for sodas in that state. This is the first state that has had candy, added candy to
29:18the SNAP waivers. I'm very, very proud of you, Governor.
29:22I look at Governor Braun as a really important partner, um, in the, in, in the Maha movement,
29:38and a great leader. And, uh, I'm very, very grateful for you taking the, this very ambitious
29:44steps that you've taken today. And, and not only that, I'll say this, there's a couple of states
29:49that I've been to where we've announced SNAP waivers, but we haven't seen the SNAP waiver
29:55application yet. And the Governor Braun's SNAP waiver already went to USDA today. So thank you very,
30:01very much. Thank you all very much.
30:13So what a pleasure to, uh, have these two come in
30:17and weigh on an issue that's important, not only to Hoosiers, but the rest of the country.
30:22And, uh, we will take a few questions for any one of the three of us about make Indiana healthy again,
30:29or make America healthy again. So.
30:32So that's a shameful statistic for us. Uh, when we've got the highest
30:47health care costs of any state in the country and we sport the worst statistics on infant and maternal
30:56mortality rates. So when we're doing that, it's systemic. So every one of these executive orders
31:04is about changing the underlying issues that we've all got control over. So each one of them
31:11will play into that. And when it comes to something that we hold dear, like that, that is one of the
31:19metrics, if we get it right, we'll see those statistics go the other way.
31:23The SNAP benefits, uh, going into that, you talk a lot about how you're
31:28reducing some of the things that you can purchase with the SNAP benefits, um, but there's a rising cost
31:33of food and rising cost of living. Can you go, do any of these executive orders address the difficulties
31:41with, uh, affording food or affording, um, the ability to, like, have the time to invest in that
31:49or something like that? Can you say your name and what, uh, that you're with? Uh, Abigail Vernon, Indiana Public Broadcasting.
31:55So the whole idea of affordability and accessibility, uh, that is something you can't sidestep.
32:02Because if, in fact, it is going to be more costly to actually eat better, we got to find out
32:09entrepreneurial ways of addressing it through the folks that produce it and not necessarily just
32:16asking for more to get it done. Because even Medicaid, Medicare, which actually are less costly
32:26than the private side of healthcare, begs the question of why is it less costly to remediate
32:33there than going through the private side? All of that weighs in and all I can tell you is you,
32:39if you keep doing more of the same and you're not looking at other approaches, you're guaranteed to keep
32:45going into those bad statistics and saying bad results. That's where I invite the real world
32:51that solves these problems without government being in the way to help figure out how to do it.
32:57Speak to one more question.
33:01Secretary Kennedy, you mentioned that in order to be effective in infectious diseases, we have to
33:06start at the competitive level. We know there is measles outbreak. I mean, how do we start when it
33:12comes to measles? How do we fight if vaccines may or may not be the answer? I just wanted to clarify,
33:17because you said last week that, you know, we do support these vaccines, but at the same time, they
33:21don't have long, they don't last long. I mean, first of all, I would say that CDC, in this case, has
33:33done a very good job at controlling the measles outbreak. We've had about under 700 cases nationally,
33:41and in Europe, they've had 127,000 cases, 37 deaths.
33:47You know, people get measles because they don't vaccinate. They get measles because the vaccine
33:56wanes. The vaccines wane about 4.8 percent per year. And so, you know, it's a leaky vaccine,
34:05and that problem is always going to be around. We need to also make sure that doctors know how to
34:12treat measles and how to treat the associated disease, the pulmonary disease that often come
34:17with them, and bacteriological. And we can't rely simply on the vaccine. We also have to know how
34:24to treat measles. Children shouldn't die of measles. When I was a kid, before the measles vaccine was
34:30introduced, there was a half a million people who got measles, as many as 2 million a year.
34:36And nobody got in the newspapers for that. But the death rate was about 400 people a year, mainly
34:47children who were malnourished. So it's an infection fatality rate of 1 in 1,200 to 1 in 10,000.
34:58Healthy children should not die of measles, and there's no reason they should. If the doctors know
35:03how to treat at the hospital, that will not happen. Any, wait a minute, any other questions for,
35:09any other questions for Dr. Oz or Secretary Kennedy? We'll do about two or three more. Go ahead.
35:15Facial vaccine hesitancy is a big issue right now, and we're seeing that this trend is growing.
35:20One of the important issues with this is informed decision making. Parents do not feel like they have the
35:26ability to make informed decisions about vaccines. VAERS is an epic failure. I'm a massive prepared
35:32registered nurse from Portland. I have done continuing education on VAERS, created it for nurses,
35:37because there is nothing out there. Now, this system is a failure. Nobody knows about it. Nobody knows
35:42how to use it. Indiana is trying to position to do an overhaul using VAERS ESP, electronic support for public
35:50health health use, widely, across the country, to do automated VAERS reporting. We also have the
35:55Indiana Health Information Exchange, which has collected all of our medical records for probably
36:00past 10 to 15 years, along with mandatory reporting within seven days of vaccination. So, we
36:08are trying to do this. Can we start an initiative in Indiana to study the outcomes, the health outcomes,
36:14of vaccination in Indiana, and assist with this initiative? I mean, the issue that you're raising
36:21is absolutely critical, important, and it's outrageous that we don't have a surveillance system
36:25that functions. CDC did a study on its own vaccine. The only surveillance system that has VAERS, really,
36:33and the CDC did a study on it in 2010, and it captures fewer than one percent of vaccine injuries.
36:44So, that's CDC's own study. And they had, on the, they had, at that time, a machine counting system
36:52that they were going to roll out to all the HMOs, and they put it on a shelf, and we are going to roll
36:57that out. Exactly the system that you're talking about, we're going to do, we're going to improve the
37:03surveillance, we're going to get the data sets from everybody we can, we're going to do data sharing
37:09agreements with scientists all over the world with the best scientists, and we're going to find out
37:15what contribution vaccines and everything else, mold, EMF, food, all of these other exposures
37:26began in the late 1980s. Which one of those are the culprits? I suspect we're going to see that there's a
37:32lot of culprits, but we need to know, you're right, people don't have informed consent, and people
37:39don't trust our agency anymore. You know, the, the agency, the trust of the agency is that a historic
37:45nadir, and the way to make it trustworthy, and the way to make people to improve vaccination is to make
37:50the agency trustworthy, and that's what we're going to do.
38:06And this question is for really all of you, I'll address it to Secretary Kennedy, because it
38:13applies at the national level, it applies at the state level. Maha is trying to make a cultural change
38:20using reminders of government. We're talking about human behavior, and things that people see on TV,
38:28and talk about with their friends. How confident are you that you can make this shift that's taken,
38:36in, you said when you were a kid, Secretary Kennedy, so that goes back a number of years, maybe 60.
38:4360, let's say.
38:47How can you make the change that, using government, that is taking the culture this long?
38:52A lot of the negative behavior, the self-destructive behavior, in both the
39:00health, the medical system, how we, you know, pay for medicine, et cetera, how we pay for health care,
39:09and how we eat, is driven by perverse incentives. And what Dr. Oz and I are trying to do is to identify
39:18those perverse incentives, and we're getting a lot of help from Elon, and then eliminating them, so that we
39:24can realign medical choices, both individual and institutional medical choices, with public health.
39:32And it's not aligned. It's totally misaligned today. You know, we have a health care system that
39:39reimburses people for doctors and hospitals for procedures, rather than for health outcomes.
39:46We have to change that, but we also, you know, we're getting, alone we can't do this, but we're
39:54getting tremendous help from the governors, from the grassroots. You see all these warrior moms here
39:59today. They don't want to take this anymore. They want to change. There's a huge, huge movement to
40:05get a change. And then we have extraordinary leaders, like Governor Braun, who are doing this on a state
40:12level. And that helps us extraordinarily. I met with the big food titans a couple of weeks ago,
40:19and they weren't scared of me. They were scared of what's happening in the states.
40:24They don't want a patchwork of regulations where one state bans dyes, and one state bans bromates,
40:29and one state bans titanium dioxide in the food, and now they don't know how to market a national product.
40:37What's happening here in the states is driving this movement, and it's going to drive the kind of
40:41cultural change that you're talking about.