Episode 971: The Hospital Cost Crisis

Newt's World

Gingrich 360

News, Politics

4.6 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Newt talks with Brian Blase, President of the Paragon Health Institute, about their new report, “The Hospital Cost Crisis: How Government Policies Drive Consolidation, Undermine Competition, and Fuel Soaring Prices.” Hospital prices have increased three times faster than inflation and more than twice as fast as worker wages since 2000, making rising hospital prices a major threat to middle-class families. Their discussion highlights that hospital care now totals about $1.6 trillion annually, roughly one-third of national health expenditures, and that large hospital systems deploy substantial lobbying resources, including over $115 million in federal lobbying in 2025 alone, to preserve favorable policies and block reforms. Blase explains how cost-based reimbursement in Medicare historically encouraged hospitals to increase costs, fueling administrative bloat and higher spending, a dynamic that still persists when higher hospital costs trigger higher government payments. He argues that Medicare’s centrally set prices and cost-based methodologies distort the entire healthcare market. Policies that pay more for the same service in a hospital than in a physician’s office further drive consolidation and higher prices. As potential solutions, their conversation emphasizes price transparency.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:08.2	Welcome to Newt Squirrel Podcast on the IHart Podcast Network.
0:13.0	You know, there are a lot of different things happening with artificial intelligence.
0:17.4	Some of them are positive, some of them are negative, and some of them are just plain confusing.
0:22.3	For example, meta is going to cut its staff by 10% while it's pouring billions into artificial
0:29.8	intelligence. They're cutting about 8,000 employees and not filling another 6,000 open roles
0:36.8	because they think artificial intelligence is going to be that much more effective,
0:41.4	or if they actually thought these were not necessary, or alternatively, they need the money.
0:47.2	They're talking about, according to Zuckerberg, they may put between $115 and $135 billion this year alone on artificial intelligence.
0:59.7	Last year, they put in about $72 billion.
1:02.6	So what you're seeing with these really big companies is huge investments, and that's
1:07.3	frankly, I think, making them tighten the belt in other areas just to try to find the cash.
1:13.5	In addition, I've been talking to folks who tell me that if you get a small number of engineers
1:19.9	who really understand how to work with AI, they may be more effective than 20 times that number
1:26.3	who don't know how to work with AI. So you may be
1:29.5	seeing some really big changes coming down the road. Now, parallel to that outside the United States,
1:35.7	the president of the United Arab Emirates has launched a totally new government model. Their goal
1:41.0	within two years is to have 50% of government sectors, services, and operations
1:47.3	running on agenetic AI that make the UAE government the first government in the world to operate
1:55.1	at this scale through autonomous systems. Now, we have no idea we should all keep an eye on it,
2:01.7	because we don't know what the impact of that will be. It could be a total mess. They may have jumped too soon and the technology
	...

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