Joe Rogan Experience #2461 - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

   Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

2. SPSpeaker0:04

   The Joe Rogan Experience.

3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

   Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat rock music] I like them, but if it's just me wearing them, it feels stupid.

4. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.0:15

   Why do you wear them?

5. JRJoe Rogan0:16

   I like it because it locks me in. Just locks me in. The only thing I hear is that person's voice, and I, I can't hear Jamie's chair moving. I, I can't hear anything else. And it just, like, makes me really, like, focused on the conversation only.

6. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.0:33

   I have ADHD. I was-- had 11 siblings, and I have seven kids, so I can work.

7. JRJoe Rogan0:39

   [laughs]

8. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.0:40

   I can focus.

9. JRJoe Rogan0:41

   No matter what?

10. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.0:42

    No matter what.

11. JRJoe Rogan0:43

    It's a skill. It's a thing to learn.

12. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.0:46

    [laughs]

13. JRJoe Rogan0:46

    You know, if you, if you're the person that can focus without distraction, you're in a good-

14. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.0:51

    I am

15. JRJoe Rogan0:51

    ... you're a good person to be in the job you're at. [laughs]

16. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.0:54

    Yeah.

17. JRJoe Rogan0:55

    What is it like? So since you've been appointed, I, I haven't talked to you-

18. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.0:59

    Um

19. JRJoe Rogan1:00

    ... uh, on a podcast since.

20. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.1:01

    I know. [laughs]

21. JRJoe Rogan1:02

    Yeah.

22. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.1:03

    Um, it, it's the best job I could ever have. I, I feel like I was designed for the job, and I just have so much fun. I mean, it's a, it's a target-rich environment, so there's so many ways that you can effective and, be effective and improve people's lives every single day. And part of that is because the agency was just such a mess. You know, it was, it wasn't doing healthcare. It was doing sick care and just managing the, you know, all of these perverse incentives and have us spending $5 trillion a year on two to three times per capita what any other nation spends, and we have the sickest population in the world. We have the highest chronic disease burden in the world, and you, we're the best at medicine in this country, but that's when people get sick. You'd rather get sick here than any place in the world, um, but you're more likely to be sick here than any place in the world.

23. JRJoe Rogan2:03

    [laughs]

24. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.2:04

    And, you know, and then it was just a big political patronage, um, operation, and it still is. And, you know, we're putting an end to that now. I mean, the tr- the amount of fraud that goes through that place, we lose just in Medicaid and Medicare $100 billion a year, and it's all just this really, you know, shocking, blatant fraud where... that's become industrialized. I mean, there, there's foreign nations like Russia, everybody's heard of Somalia, but also Cuba, has this operation in Florida where it's, um, where they open up these little, um... they open up, um, these, these PO boxes for durable medical equipment, as like knee braces and wheelchairs, and then they don't have any knee bl- brace or wheelchairs, but they have patient identification numbers, so they just claim to be shipping them to people. And we found one hotel, it had like 129 rooms, and every one was a different company that was selling durable medical equipment. And we go in and shut them down, and they immediately go back to Cuba, and the whole thing is apparently run by the Cuban government. But Russia's doing the same thing with hospices in-

25. JRJoe Rogan3:30

    Where do they get the patient ID numbers?

26. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.3:32

    They get-- They can buy those numbers, you know, they, on the black market.

27. JRJoe Rogan3:37

    Really?

28. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.3:37

    Yeah. And Russia does the same thing, um, in Los Angeles with hospice care. So there's, [laughs] there's more hospice care in Los Angeles than the entire rest of the country combined. It's all fraudulent, and we're just pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into these fraudulent operations, the same thing that the Somalis did in, in Ethiopia, and a lot of that money was going back to Boko Haram and, you know, terror groups over there. But they were... y- it was, a lot of it it was based... The Medicare stuff is different, and we're, we're able to... We're gonna be able to catch almost all of that now because we're using AI to do it. It was never used before. There was no effort at pro-program integrity. In fact, the Biden administration deliberately, purposely ordered them. They ended the Program Integrity office, so they went from hundreds of people to six people, and they said, "We don't want you doing program integrity. We just want you doing enrollments." And, um, and so we got all this fraud. It was-- Most of it came from these waivers that the states got. All the states got them for home care and community care. So, you know, 30 years ago, Medicaid and Medicare played... If you got a hernia operation, y- we paid for that. And you could tell somebody got the hernia operation because they had the scar. They used a licensed nurse. They used a licensed doctor. It was all documented. Then they, some of the states said, "You know, we're sending a whole lot of people to the hospital, and if, and we don't have home care providers. So if you, if we, if you let us pay family members to do home care, the patient won't have to go to the hospital. They won't have to go to the emergency room, and we'll save a lot of money." So it was well-intentioned, but then what happened is people immediately started abusing it. So today, if you, um, y- these are services that are n-normally played by family members, m- performed by family members. Buying groceries for your grandmother and bringing them home, you now get paid for that. Balancing your grandmother's checkbook... driving her to a ho- to a, a medical visit. So, um, so then you had this, you know, organized fraud where, and this is what happened in Minnesota, is, um, these organized crime companies would come in and say, "You designate this family, this fa- you designate all your children have autism now," even if they didn't. "And we're gonna now pay providers for each of them, and we'll give you a few thousand dollars to do it." But then they would collect all the money, and that's what was happening. It's happening all over the country because there was no ... It, it's very, very difficult. There's, the guardrails on that system were very pervious, and anybody can defraud it. If you are inclined to do fraud, this was the, uh, you know, this was a, a, an irresistible opportunity.

29. JRJoe Rogan6:56

    How long was this going on for? Like, when did this fraud begin, do you believe?

30. RJRobert F. Kennedy Jr.7:00

    It really accelerated during the Biden administration. We expected to pay for the, for the Minnesota program just for autism care for kids who have autism. The kids need the care because, you know, they go to maybe a special school, but then they come home from school and the parents aren't there 'cause they're working. So who's gonna take care of them? Um, so i- in legitimate circumstances, you would want to pay for that. But what happened is they just started this wholesale fraud. We expected the cost of that program to be about $3 million a year in Minnesota, in Minneapolis. It got up in, over a three-year period, it got up to $400 million a year.

Episode duration: 2:26:17