From the K-P-F-K Studios in Southern California,

it's the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

Stand up, stand up.

You've been sitting great to long. Welcome to episode 250 of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co-host David Feldman.

250, that's a nice round number, right David?

And you believe that?

It's a mediocre batting average.

But it's a great round number that means we're approaching five years of the Ralph Nader radio

out. And we also have the man of the hour Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.

Hello, everybody. We've got another great show, of course. We have discussed the topic of health care on this show many many times.

In fact, you could probably design a college level course just using the transcripts of our episodes as the text.

We have spoken to doctors, nurses, scholars, business people,

and advocates of all stripes during the course of the 250 episode history of this show.

Today we're going to add yet another chapter to that textbook.

Our guest today is Dr. Fred Hyde, who is an independent consultant on public health issues with affiliations at

Columbia, Fordham, and Georgetown Universities.

And we're going to focus on Medicare, its recent history and its future.

That's the first half of the show. In the second half we are going to

plow through a whole bunch of our listener questions. We've got a lot to catch up on in our

inbox and in between we have a great halftime show. No, it's not

Beyoncé. It's even better. It's our very own corporate crime reporter Russell

...