WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

Listen in for Kelly Crossley This is like Alex Ross a show. We all know that the Vatican's been rocked by sex scandals. But what has gone under the radar is a story of corruption Central a ridiculously rich conservative secretive scandal plagued order within the Roman Catholic Church. From Mexico to mainstream media its tentacles reach wide and deep. We'll explore the corruption within the order and the Vatican's failure to contain it with a former member of the Legion. From there it's on to Cape Wind about today's story of overpayment for future power regulatory boards. But a forgotten story of a former New Hampshire Congressman who scored a big save for Cape Wind once a conservative of the Teddy Roosevelt. He's reinventing himself by way of Tea Party principles in his run for Congress. We top it off with Dr. handler and the prognosis for health care reform. Up next the church and the dire state of health care. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying U.S. stocks are still down sharply falling now three hundred forty one points.

NPR's Jim Zarroli says investors are still shaken over a debt crisis in Europe. Well what's driving the market is what has been driving it for weeks which is nervousness about the the fiscal situation in Europe. And as a result that's hurting a lot of stocks of American companies that do business in Europe companies. Some big names like Boeing Cisco Caterpillar Chevron but really stocks are down across the board. NPR's Jim Zarroli investors are also reacting to the latest Labor Department numbers. A number of people filing new claims unexpectedly rose last week by the largest amount in three months up 25000 to 470 1000. Lance Armstrong is denying allegations made by disgraced American cyclist Floyd Landis who has admitted to systematic use of performance enhancing drugs. He also was accuses the seven time Tour de France champion of doping. Speaking today in California before the fifth tour of California. Armstrong says it's our word against his word. Scientists are announcing a

milestone toward creating artificial life. They have synthesize DNA in the lab and then inserted that DNA into a cell that started operating according to the instructions in the synthetic DNA. NPR's Joe Palca has more. Scientists have been inserting into cells pieces of DNA made in the lab for decades. These pieces typically include genes that alter a cells behavior but never before have they put all the synthetic DNA containing all the instructions for life into a cell and had that cell grow and multiply. Now scientists from the J Craig Venter Institute have done that as they report in the journal Science. They put together all 1 million letters of DNA that make up the genome of the tiny bacterium and then use that genome to control cells of a different species of bacteria. Now that they've got their system working they hope to alter the DNA thereby creating entirely new life forms. Joe Palca NPR News Washington. One of the three American hikers jailed in Iran says the loneliness of

captivity is the hardest part of her ordeal. Sara shore talks at a Tehran news conference today. It's terrible to be away from my family. And. I we've only received one phone call and it was five minutes long. That was amazing. We waited and prayed for that every day. The mothers of the three hikers are visiting them in Iran to rest assured her boyfriend and friend along the Iraqi border about 10 months ago and accuses them of spying. The U.S. is demanding their release and says the spying charge is absurd. More Americans are expected to head out of town for the long Morial Day weekend than last year. Travel industry groups are places people are likely to spend less. This is NPR. Good afternoon I'm Arnie Arnesen sitting in for Kelly Crossley. This is the Calla Crossley Show when it comes to the endless sex scandals heaped upon the Vatican. One of the most damaging could be the ongoing unfolding story of the Legion of Christ founded by the reverend

C.L.. There ya go. We're take talking the stuff of scandal and secrecy that far surpasses the imagination of The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown. Today we look into the Legion sordid but well-documented history that has roiled under the surface of public attention and reflect on the just completed Vatican investigation of the Legion. Well the reforms ordered by the Pope make a difference or is the Legion just too powerful too insidious to shut down. Joining us to discuss this influential water is Genevieve connec ie an orthodox Catholic who is a member of the Legion's laye movement Regnum Christi for nearly 10 years. She tries to make sense of the church on her blog life after RC. Before I toss to Genevieve However let me start with her own words. Father must yell created a structure that allowed sexual abuse financial fraud and spiritual improprieties to go completely unchecked. Believe me the best and the brightest got

sucked into this scam. I was one. I was an elite bully for Christ. Genevieve joins us from Rhode Island. Welcome to the program. Thank you for the invitation. I almost don't even know where to start and if you have because the story is so insidious as I said and has tentacles everywhere and I was trying to describe how large and prosperous this organization was and numbers like 800 priest 75000 members 22 countries one hundred and twenty seminaries people were like What are you kidding. How could we not have known of this organization. So I guess I'm going to start Tommy about the Legion. How did they become so influential and so powerful and yet so unknown to so many of us. Well first of all those numbers are a double edged sword because all we have to go on with those numbers are the legions boasting about them. We're not really sure how many

priests that they have although the latest visitation may have actually tried to number the priest of seminarians there was a lot of shuffling and moving but perhaps they got a better grasp of that. We're not sure how many members of read and Christi they really are because when you join that you are entered onto the rolls but there's no leaving process. But a lot of us you know find our pictures and our words and our endorsement still on their site. And there's no real way to pull away from that. But one must feel had was a perfect storm in the sense of the confusion in the church in the 20th century and his ability to market himself even from the very beginning. It was a marketing process because the ad and thrown out of two seminaries have had some really sketchy accusations made against him as a teenager and yet privately was ordained without any formation of his own. And then that to work beguiling widows who you know wanted the church to succeed. Again there was persecution in Mexico where he began which meant that

he could just always stay open for poor us. I'm fighting for you I'm fighting for your ability to to live out your faith and perform acts of piety. And so with the confusion of the persecution in that the CO then later the confusion of the Second Vatican Council and the way that it was lived out in the 70s and 80s and a lot of confusion in the church. The fact that. He could put forth these choirboys you know with the parted hair and the absolute order the absolute you know the posture the Filippi and the outward acts of piety and all the sacramental that we yearned for. It was extremely it was a hook. It was an amazing hook. Besides that he had this fund raising ability and then this this personal charm that drew young people to him which is often what pedophiles have that they're very clever manipulative people. And so you put together the outside world and then you put together the situation in the church and then his own private persona. And it was amazing concoction.

But what I'm hearing you say and every time we talk you say Arnie This is not an order it's a cult. This is not an order. This is a cult. And yet this is a cult that they had been aware of since the 50s. This is a cult that has had so many opportunities to be exposed. This is a cult where clearly you see rampant abuse. I mean what is also so scary is not only is there abuse but I wrote something down on a piece of paper about abuse begets abuse because not only did we know that Father Marcial basically sexually abused many young seminarians But those young seminarians then became priests and went on to abuse others. So this is a situation where he was constantly cloning himself. Exactly. He was constantly calling himself and yet people were aware of this and only put give the phone number out it's 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0. Because as you look at the Legion This is a microcosm of this huge global

failure on the part of the church. But in some ways it is so much more insidious because it is so much more powerful because it had the ability to replicate itself because not only did it have its priests and seminaries but it had you kind of you. It had you and you've nailed it when you said he wanted to clone himself. He actually wrote that. Now it's chilling to go back and read his letters because it was all in his letters but we couldn't see it. He said he wanted to multiply himself. And interestingly those ones who were abused and were mortified and horrified in everything and pulled away were shunned very much shunned and maligned for years for decades until the present moment literally whereas the ones who internalized it and passed it on were given positions of leadership and influence over the other young people. Yes he had accessories inside the Vatican all up and down the Curia all up and down the hierarchy and you know what we don't exactly know

where. We have some names that we have you know the that is on it now but very insidiously back in 1956 he went in between the reign of two popes when everything should have been locked and lifted the first visitation against himself concluded that as you know closed and you know gave himself a clean bill of health and put himself back in business he had access to the halls of power. You know it is an institution besides being a mystical bride of Christ. And once you learn to play the system you've got access to those you've got access to sacraments and you've got access to conscience. But one of the reasons why I can and I don't understand but I can understand why the Vatican did not want to investigate this order they did not want to know the truth. And that is this was the fastest growing order in the Catholic Church. If you are desperate for priests that could walk and talk. Guess what Father Marcel was producing them for you Genevieve. I mean I keep going down the. We need to let people know what they were looking for. They were looking for the most handsome the most

articulate young men the most charismatic you know people just like father by Seal. Look what he was attracting in. How do you fight that. That is the most clever marketing and so successful. And not only did he bring members into the church but Janet. Look at the money he was able to bring in. Yes money and vocations but the recruiting and fund raising were the two lynch pins of this group and the people who have left and begun to talk have said yes there was a weeding out process. There was a look that we wanted there was a bearing There was a you know we did out the ones who were either you know overweight or not handsome enough for not winning or didn't have the charismatic smile or couldn't have the you know the access to it was an amazing marketing program that he had. He was telling Catholicism to a church that was thirsty for this. Yes money talk. He grooved raised many many pies. You know whether that's cultural or not we're you know the church never truly the real faith doesn't endorse that sort of thing.

But he played the game. He was brilliant at it and the people who saw him were always marginalized and checkmated by the people he had paid off. This has to stop. The brilliance about this thing is allows us to show what the authentic faith is all about that you don't have to have a lock stock response and this sort of beautiful efficient package orderly elite approved kind of order in order. That's not what Jesus Christ was about. And yet we got we were scammed. I did I was a new convert to the church not new enough that I should have known better. There are no excuses. I simply couldn't read the tea leaves because they had the silver bullet. We are talking. Let me just remind everyone we talked about Genevieve we're talking about the sordid story I'm reading this from from a report the sordid story of the Legion of Christ whose late founder the Reverend Gado was a close ally of Pope John Paul before being forcibly retired by the Vatican in 2006. We're talking about the

scandal. The Vatican has just come down with an investigation and a report. But I guess more. Horton all these things is we now have a pope who has acted. We have Pope Benedict who is under such an assault. But finally he is active for a year ago. They have they pulled together five cardinals they were told to investigate this report was forthcoming. So Genevieve you're looking at the report and then you're looking at the response by the Vatican. Does the Vatican get it. Can the Vatican actually deal with this Legion. I know the founder is dead. But as we said before he was attempting to clone himself. That means that there are many many mosques Yes. And the fact that he is gone doesn't a saloon mean that the Legion doesn't have a head maybe it has multiple heads. You're right about that because somebody had to cover for must feel back in the day. But the visitation wasn't necessarily about the life of Mafia we know that was stored and we know that it was wicked beyond measure. But yes the Vatican does get it the communique that came out the

weekend of May 1st talked about the serious and objective immoral behavior of the founder is that he had a life devoid of scruples and of genuine religious feeling. These are harsh words. It has serious consequences in the life and structure of the Legion. This is what we're dealing with now is that what's called the methodology. This thing that he put in place to perpetuate this system of lies of pressure of manipulation of numbing of conscience of. Domingue the understanding of what authentic Hughton human freedom is all about. The pope says it needs profound re-evaluation. What I think he has done is very kindly set up an opportunity whereby people who need a halfway house and ability to sit and wonder what has happened to them. They have a place they have a roof over their heads and they have you know their priest to deliver it and whatever work they want to do day by day. He's given them the opportunity for choice now for a group that has withheld all choice and authentic human freedoms from them. It's

brilliant that he allows them the ability to pack a bag open up the door and step outside and rather than just dissolving it immediately which again is just yanking them around beyond their control. He allows them to enter into the decision making for their own future which is critical to the life of the calf. So we have this father who actually fathered probably two families who raised millions if not billions of dollars for the Catholic Church who you know raped young seminarians who is at the core of the of the founding of this thing called the Legion of Christ. This is this is the rot that started who was devoid the word is incredible. The void means there was no religious beginning because he was devoid of it. So knowing that is giving them an out anough. Or is it disbanding them. Essential if there are so many thousands in the group that you belong to and left the Regnum Christi and they they started with a core sense of being. But what they find out is that corps was rotten.

How do they continue to the right to exist and how does the pope legitimately continue to embrace it. It's not over Arny. The thing is is that this dramatically he's been dismantling it since he came to power. He had to wait until their gatekeepers were out of Rome which in he removed them within the first year and then he began to give gave them lifeline to gave them the 2006 communique. He's given them a systematic step to show what he thinks of them. Now with this communique he gave them sticks. Absolutely brutal bullet point indicting their founder their order and their methodology and then the last one said I pray that you have the courage to understand what your vocation is all about. They unfortunately grab the seven points that look the pope loves us. Is there any greater honor than to have the Pope himself come in and take care of your order and people on the outside were baffled. But this is understandable. It's just a step. If they cannot reform after this I would say in the next two years yes he will gently pull the

plug. You know either in one or two or three steps. But it will be gone in five years. As you look at this you were a member of the right and Christie for 10 years. You left Regnum Christi. I just need to ask what did they do to invite you in. How could you have been seduced. I'm a writer and a columnist. And they said they were interested in mass media pasta and I had a magazine and I said this is great this will be a really really good hit. I want to evangelize through the written word. They said that's great. Here's a magazine. Whatever whatever you need to do but we need you to work over here and I thought OK this is an opportunity for humiliation or harm humility or what are we going to call it. I will set aside my work and work on what they want me to do knowing full well that in the end we will work on mass media to proselyte together and we never did Year in year out. It never happened. And I said boy if you really need to work on your humility here you must be stuffed full of pride and. And the thing is

they can work on your virtues and vices because they're giving you spiritual direction. And what there's lonely doing is dismantling your your your sense of self. And so that at the end of seven years I said wait a second I haven't done a single thing I wanted to do with this group and they have not used what I thought were my gifts. In fact I'm over here schlepping and fundraising and recruiting and doing all the things they want me to do. But the thing is that they keep teaching you docility. So. And then they have and I've been travelling widely I went to Rome I went to New York City I went different places with spending time even with the holy father who was saying he was counting on us. Well it was a word game actually when he was counting on the Kingdom of Christ. They took it to mean themselves but that's OK. There's a language in the church that you begin to appropriate. And they are masters of that language whereby they dismantle the authentic meaning of words and then they replace that definition with their own definition so that they have told

you if you walk away from this group you are risking the damnation of your own soul because God saw you here from all eternity. And you know if you lose your vocation to this all we are is the church. You walk away from this you're walking away from the church as I let you go. We're talking with the Legion of Christ we're talking about the fact that the Vatican has issued this statement they're seeking some kind of reform. And yet obviously Pope Benedict has known for a long time about this. They forced him to retire. But you know what they never did. They never defrocked him. They knew about the illegitimate families. They knew about the millions they knew about the rape of seminarians. If not this father then who will they ever take the the title of reverend away from. See that's the part that just blows my mind. He never he was retired. How could that be. You make an excellent point and that's part of the scandal a huge part of the scandal and the confusion for the

late baseball. But Benedict doesn't act alone he's trying. He's got enemies he's got friends he's got all kinds of kind of dispassionate observers watching this. It's a complicated process. I trust him in this. But it has been a black eye for the church and the rank and file members have to understand that if they are not successful in dealing with the Legion of Christ well they'd be successful in dealing with the myriad of scandals all over the world that is now haunting this pope at every step. To me I think that this this is the true test the reason why I'm so upset that so many people don't know about it is because it is so complicated and so in some ways almost amorphous that that it's it is a true test but if he can effectively deal with this one where the scandal is so obvious and so nuclear How does he possibly deal with the rest of the problems. Well he has dealt effectively with it. It's going to take a few more steps. But the he has burst the bubble he's pulled the plug on the cult like mechanisms that were

in place. It will implode of its own weight very shortly and then he can move on to the other scandals as they say he's not acting alone he was horrified by the difficulties having with his own rank and file working at cross purposes with the queen. Cleansing of the church that he wanted to do he said before he was elected that he was here to cleanse the church and he was working systematically to do that. I really do trust him. Thank you so much for joining us I really appreciate it. We've been talking about the Legion of Christ with my guest Genevieve connect. She was a member of the Legion's labor movement for nearly 10 years. You can read her thoughts on the church at her blog. Life after RC should have you of. Again thank you so much for joining us. Thank you honey. Coming up a look at a Republican who fought for a Cape Wind. Stay tuned. Yes.

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I am Rhonda gazer the voice of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and I want to invite you to join me in the WGBH learning tours a fabulous trip to the Berkshires this July 4 full days of music theatre and art. Learn more at WGBH daughterboard slash learning tours. Good afternoon I'm Marty Arneson sitting in for Kelly Crossley. Well unlike our last story Cape Wind is all ways in the news. We have swung from suggestions of well-placed influence to kill the project to now well-placed influence to ensure the development of the project. But with every provocative project that divides the wealthy the environmentalists and the politicians there are always fascinating back stories that need to be told. Today we travel back to 2006. Senator Kennedy is very much alive and his goal is to de cap the Cape Wind Project. But much to his surprise a Republican congressman from New Hampshire named Charlie Bass finds a way to rescue Cape Wind. Of course Charley is not just a former Republican congressman but as luck or as that politics would have it.

He is currently in the process of reinventing himself to get his congressional seat back. Joining me to talk about one of the unlikely heroes behind this win for a Noble Energy is Robert Wood. He coauthored with Wendy Williams the book Cape Wind money celebrity class politics and the battle over energy for energy. He's also vice president and editorial page editor of The Providence Journal. Let me welcome Robert. How are you Robert. I'm OK. Nobody's perfect nobody's perfect. You heard the last interview you would be totally depressed. You know as I would in I met a Unitarian or Unitarian that's probably good. I'm I go back to 2006 and I but I before I do I'm laughing because I'm looking at the paper today and you know there are stories about Cape Wind in the news again and this time everyone's angry because now the cards are stacked in favor of Cape Wind where everything you read about especially with your book is that the cards were stacked in the opposite direction the Boston Herald really been going to. I don't know why. Maybe I'll explain.

No it's easy to hate it. They do they do it just to me it's just so interesting to watch the pendulum swing. But the reason I wanted to bring this story back into the forefront is is it Charlie Bass was just unknown you know moderate Republican congressman from New Hampshire in New Hampshire. Exactly exactly. And old fashioned kind of Yankee Republican. And we know that you know Senator Kennedy bigger than life more powerful than one could possibly imagine. And obviously if he's ticked off at something you better be afraid because that thing is probably not going to see the light of day. So I remember when I was interviewing Wendy Williams many many years ago that she started telling me the story of Charlie. Now you know I'm an avid consumer of news and I'm gone blow me away with a feather. How did nobody in the state of New Hampshire know about this and in part knowing that the former congressman is about to reinvent himself to run for Congress this year. I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about what he did really beneath the radar that very few people knew about back in 2006 because it's both the story of. Of having sort of

knowledge and knowing knowing where the power points are within a question a process that really makes you effective. And I'm saying it in part because I want people to understand you know how they only want to throw the bums out. Well sometimes those bombs actually know how to get things done. That's right. That's right so Bo twisting in. Exactly. So can you go back to 2006 and tell us about this fabulous senator named Kennedy and this interesting senator named Stevens. Well basically they're both conspiring with each other to kill Cape Wind and Kennedy and Stevenson known each other of course for many years but he said both been in the Senate since the early Paleolithic. They were doing everything they could using it was sort of you know regulations involving the Coast Guard aviation. And various other things to stop Cape Wind one of their big things was to give the governor of the state the power to veto it and of course the governor Governor Mitt Romney who I personally don't think had had any any

interest in Cape Wind one way or the other anyways summer places up in Lake Winnipesaukee. Oh that's right are many huge campaign contributors from the Cape from especially from that sort of Gold Coast of the Cape Auster Ville Hyannisport including the Egan family who had given just tons millions and millions of dollars to the Republicans and who are now revealed to be tax cheats. How do you know yesterday. Don't burst my bubble you mean. Money and politics and taxes. Again there was a bit of let me oh well it's OK if you go but I think the biggest There are a lot of maneuvers sort of in the in the middle of the night and the back runs the biggest bond over it was to effort. Kennedy and Stevens and some of their pals to give the governor veto power over a cape when of course. You know the governor Governor Romney would have vetoed it. Governor Patrick now in power was a big supporter from. Very much from the pendulum has swung. Yes it has indeed. With every drop of oil.

So so basically basically all these sort of maneuvers in the back rooms to use concerns about you know alleged disruption to aviation and navigation whatever to stop Cape Wind but I think the biggest thing was the idea of giving the governor veto power. Yes. And he would have vetoed it immediately. And Mr. Egan and Mr. Koch and various other people down in that strip of the cape would have been very happy. So now again I don't think Governor Romney himself I doubt very much he had really cared abut it much one way or the other. It wasn't it wasn't only that but one of the things that I recall is is that not only were they going to give it but where the bill was being placed to give this authority to Governor Romney actually makes you scratch your head because you know you keep thinking OK we're talking about Cape Wind Cape Wind is to produce electricity. So this is obviously an energy conversation. And I you find out on no money what are you delusional. This is a joke. How do you post guard. You know my recollection is that the Coast Guard build an army that's not that unusual people are

always the gluing of unconnected elements to the legislation. And it happens all the time especially involving money. Well but the but the but a lot of the earmarks are done. One of the things I think was so interesting is that one of the ways that Charlie was you know able to maneuver and get around these powerful senators Senator Stevens and Senator Kennedy was that he was actually almost playing ego and turf wars because he was able to go to the energy boys and say Do you realize that your you know your cape when you're at this energy project is being put on a transportation Coast Guard bill. This is yours. You own it not them. And I I want people to sort of hear this story because in a way nothing is very sort of simple and obvious it is sausage making. When you're talking about legislation and here as you learn the story of Cape Wind and how this little little representative from New Hampshire was able to maneuver now he was actually playing one big ego after another big ego. Well he signed he got a he got a petition going basically with

some unlikely allies from even from oil and gas states like I recall Joe Barton from Texas. Yes. He actually got together a petition to stop this and to stop its attempt to kill the project and he was threatened quite fiercely by people in both the House and the Senate side but he pressed on. And his big argument was that the New England grid needed this the nation did need to move into renewable energy. And if I what I read yesterday is correct I guess he's been involved in an alternate energy project since he left the house. Yes he has always still involved in this stuff but remember you know there are plenty I know plenty of conserve Republicans who are pretty big on alternate energy if they think you can make money off it. Well you know that but as soon as you look back at this story though you have to be kind of amazed because I just think people need to sort of understand what the process was. But now we're looking at something where today I'm looking at the story in The Boston Globe. A.G. wants to review deal with Cape Wind. Talking about back you know it's going to be cost effective and the only

question I have for you is how cost effective was the BP spill. All right. You know I just I mean it's not like you are one of us 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0 if anyone is doing the math here will someone do the math on how cost effective the BP spill is. And the tricky thing I should let you chime in here the tricky thing is that nobody knows what energy prices especially fossil fuel prices are going to be in five or 10 years. So when you when you approve or disapprove an alternate energy approach try to try to guess what the price of oil will be. Will the Iranians close the state's the Straits of Hormuz the oil price goes up to 250 a barrel. Perfectly good possibility of it. So I'm excluding the environmental factors just the world economic factors which can hugely change the price of fossil fuel in about five minutes. So you know Robert as you as you look at what's happening today in the politics around us the idea of being able to reach across the aisle to come to some positive solution now seems like the anti-Christ.

It just doesn't happen anymore much much less obviously for many years the Republicans basically being the conservative party the Democrats the sort of liberal party the coalition party. But I think because of well-served and in part what we're talking another radio and television so I think that the. It's become much more difficult psychologically and rhetorically difficult to do a deal with the other side I think we shouldn't exaggerate how cosy it was 30 or 40 years ago but it was certainly a lot cozier than it is now and I've been covering stuff in Washington since the late 60s early 70s and it is much more difficult to openly do a deal the idea you know Lyndon Johnson could come down with with Eisenhower and they put together the interstate highway system or do big and they did tons of cooperation really through the mantle of 80s actually the Tax Reform Act in 1986 which was a pretty good bill. But you know because the rise of new media it's become very very difficult.

It's become so incredibly I think for the media I think I kind of you know that's right. I mean they were there. If you do a paper I want to make sure it's the new media that's the problem not the old media that yeah I think yeah buy the new made if you include cable television. Ok I now know that isn't showing much. Well you know the reason I ask this question is if I were telling the story about Charlie and it was he was very active. If you are so he would know and alternative energy you would just you know this should be a billboard but he is about to run for Congress again and the Republican Party is now either being taken over or courted by the Tea Party protesters. They've got passion they've got the power they absent the passion and there they can move people into the voting booth. It's very in Kohut their positions are often incoherent sense but it doesn't matter. Sometimes passion usually trumps you know ration. Well but Robert do you do you use this story about what you did with Cape Wind as part of your part fall you know when you run for Congress. Or is this a liability and not an asset.

I think in New England it's an asset to do what he did for Cape Wind. But I don't think he's talking much about that when your producer called me and told me about this I looked him up I think he's bringing up all the things that the federal government. And he's pretty much rhetorically gone over the tea party people which doesn't make any sense to me I live I went to college in New Hampshire and I'm somewhat many middle many years go by pretty familiar with it. He's taking a rather kind of unknowingly in a New Hampshire. Extreme stance with the Tea Party people I assume because he wanted to go back to Washington I soon was just ambitious. But it doesn't make much psychiatric sense to me because I don't think I can say I know him when he ran into him a few times but having followed him for many years it doesn't make any sense to me except impatience to go back to Washington while Robert psychiatric center. I'm not sure that word was ever used in relationship to politics I would have very hard. All right. Thanks very much. We've been talking about Cape Wind and the Republican turned to you party or

sort of Charlie Bass with my guest Robert Whitcomb He coauthored the book Cape Wind money celebrity class politics and the battle for energy. And of course he did that with Wendy Williams He's also vice president and editorial page editor of The Providence Journal. Robert Whitcomb thank you so much for joining us. Thanks it was a pleasure any time. Coming up we get Dr. Steffie will hand his prognosis for health care reform and her take on health care delivery. Whatever that is. Stay tuned we'll be right back. With. With. With. With. With. With. With the. With. With. With the support for WGBH comes from you and from the New England

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legislation it's my next guest Dr. Steffie will handler since they failed to call on her. Guess what we're picking up that slack and asking her to take on health care reform health care delivery and perhaps the most important health care as a quote business model close quote. Dr. Weil handler is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard and co-director of the Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine fellowship program. She is also a co-founder of Physicians for a national health program. Dr. Weil handler welcome. Thank you I'm actually a full professor at Harvard I did get promoted well. Mazeltov Congratulations. Let me let me tell what inspired me. Two things happened in the course of this week. On Saturday I was in Iowa and I was helping to conduct a sort of health care ethics conversation with a number of professors at Iowa State. And during the course of the conversation there was a business economist who came in Stephanie and the business economists was waxing poetic about waste in health care and about all this horrific waste. And every time he

pointed to waste he pointed to government. And finally I kind of raised my hand and I said I'm sort of curious here. Is it possible that from a private sector perspective that profit is waste in health care. Well profit is waste but also the administrative paperwork that's required to extract that profit means we waste a tremendous amount of money on the paperwork. We're spending almost one out of every three health care dollars on billing related paperwork in a place like Canada they spend one out of every six dollars on administration. And if you think about reducing our administrative burden to a Canadian level through a single payer Medicare for all nonprofit national health insurance type system we could save almost 400 billion dollars a year on paperwork alone and that would give us the money we need to cover all uninsured Americans not just half of them as this health reform will do and to improve the coverage for people who have private coverage

but still have gaps in their coverage like co-payments deductibles uncovered services that force them to take thousands of dollars out of their pockets when they get sick and can force many of them into medical bankruptcy. Yeah but Stephanie the reason I'm I'm asking this question is. So I go to this meeting on Saturday and we raise the question is profit waste in health care and one of the examples I gave was you know a physician who also also owns a testing facility and one of the rationales for over testing is that there they're worried about malpractise they're worried about a lawsuit. And I said but if you own the testing facility guess what honey you're making a lot more money every time you order another test. So you may claim that it's because you're worried about a lawsuit but it turns out that it's you know find him quite lucrative. So so I'm looking at these excuses and saying OK is it that we have embraced a profit model and the profit model by definition doesn't necessarily reinforce a good health care model. And as I say that I noticed the Dartmouth College just this week announced they received 35

million dollars to address health care delivery. So I figure I'm going to call stuffy and say so what. His health care delivery. What does that mean. OK. All right. Well the Dartmouth group and I think you have correctly made the diagnosis that is we currently have a profit driven system that pays doctors and hospitals to do too much. What the Dartmouth group has talked about is it's a terrible treatment and their treatment would be to go to a profit driven system that pays doctors and hospitals to do too little. That's what they have been talking about in terms of delivery system I think can pay doctors and hospitals to do too little. So that if a doctor orders a test the doctor has to pay for it out of her own pocket. The organization the doctor works with loses money if the doctor orders a test that's a profit driven system that says to doctors and hospitals we're going to pay you to give too little care

through capitation through bonuses that will reward doctors and hospitals that do too little. And we need a system that's not profit driven We need doctors and hospitals to make the decisions based on the best interests of the patients and if you pay doctors and hospitals to do too much they do too much. We know that because that's why health care is so expensive in this country. But if you pay doctors and hospitals to do too little you're going to have a whole different set of problems. The patients are not going to get the care they need. One of the things that was pointed out in the healthcare reform bill that was just passed and I guess we need to make sure that it's that health care reform or health insurance reform. But I know that the health insurance companies are really pushing back on one particular provision which really goes to the whole sort of conversation we've been having and that is is that they are very upset about the fact that 85 percent of their premiums need to be invested in medical care. And they are furious with that mouth and you just went to the point that 15 to 20

percent is paperwork. Well they allowed them the 15 percent for profit or paperwork and they are furious that they would actually have to commit 85 percent of my dollar into something I'm hiring them for anyway which is to take care of my health. Right well the market leaders like I like US health care like WellPoint will often have overhead of around 20 percent so telling them they have to cut back to 15 percent. It sounds like it might save money. The problem is the insurance companies have been running around reclassifying administrative costs as clinical costs. They're cooking the books to you know these utilization review personnel whose job is mostly to say no. They're now calling them clinical coordinators so they're going to be playing games in order to get in under that 15 percent limit on administrative costs. You need to understand that when you think about a 15 percent limit that our own U.S. Medicare

program runs for only 3 percent overhead Canada's Medicare for all program which covers everyone cradle to grave runs it overhead of about 1 percent. And here the insurance companies are squawking and cheating to get their overhead down to 15 percent. So we really have not. Dealt with the problem the problem is the private insurance industry dominates health care and unfortunately they dominated the political process in Washington this year. They were able to have their way with us by and large with some very minor restrictions on their behavior. They're still running the health care system. They're still going to be 400 billion dollars in new subsidies to the insurance industry as the taxpayers for pay for these subsidies to purchase private insurance. The mandated private insurance through the exchanges. So they did very very well in the last round of reform because they dominated that process with their campaign donations with their financial power.

So the question I asked on Saturday at this reform discussion we had in Iowa about is profit and health care. Can they can they live together. Can they work together. And I guess that's the question I want to ask you is there the potential for a profit model in health care or are they mutually exclusive and people are afraid. I mean Stephanie there is no question what they say is is that if we don't have profit then we're not going to have the technology that we have today. If we don't have profit that we're not to have the drugs that we have today if we don't have profit then we're not going to have the sophisticated physicians who can do the the operations that we need. And that is profit that drives this excellence. And once you remove profit you remove excellence. How do you how do you answer that. I mean that's one of the things I think that's probably you know to some extent maybe underlie what Dartmouth is trying to do because I think they are still willing to embrace a profit model. OK.

Well you know university professors do a good job and they get paid a salary. Scientists do a good job. They get paid a salary. Nonprofit models are used in other important areas like the scientific establishment like the university establishment. Why do we think that we need to pay doctors bonuses if they do too much like they do now or bonuses if they do too little. As a Dartmouth group is advocating in their new delivery system models. Doctors work 52 hours a week. They deserve to be paid for that. But you don't have to dangle dollars in front of them and say you know you're going to get more money if you order an MRI or you're going to get more money if you don't order an MRI. It's very very hard to make good patient care decisions I've been in clinic all morning and there are complicated decisions every day that I make and those decisions are hard and it does not make decisions easier to dangle

some dollars of bills in front of me and tell them if you decide one way or another you get those dollar bills. We're talking with Dr. Steffie wool handler she is a professor of medicine at Harvard the co-director of the Harvard Medical School general internal medicine are for numbers 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 0. If you are trying to figure out what's real and what's member x in this conversation how do I know what's too much and how do I know what's too little. I'm not in the business of health. I'm in the business of probably getting sick and trying to figure out how not to get sick. So I am looking at these conversations and I'm watching what happened in Washington. I'm watching at the tea party protesters who are you know screaming about death panels and saying you know don't touch my Medicare. I am trying to figure out how do you know where the sort of the right mix Steffy. And I think one of the rationales behind what they're trying to do in Dartmouth is they were there talking about all this interdisciplinary stuff bringing people together trying to figure out you know what the right outcomes are. And yet you just sort of said that they're going to do too

little. Oh my God where do we go. OK there's a lot of good things they're talking about they're talking about coordinating care. That's great they're talking about trying to measure quality that's great. But when people speak of Accountable Care Organizations delivery system reform what they comes down to in the end is changing the way doctors and hospitals are paid. So instead of rewarding him for doing too much we're going to reward them for doing too little. And that's the economic framework that they're talking about for reform. I think we can look at international evidence and see what kind of health care systems work other every other developed country has primarily relied on nonprofit models nonprofit national health insurance models universal models people in other countries live two to three years longer than we do in the United States. They spend on average about half as much as we do on care. So we need to be looking at those international models which are

nonprofit national health insurance. So no I just I mean I for all. And someone someone said to me Wait a minute. Other countries ration. And they said So you heard what you just seem to described suggested that that what the Dartmouth model is you know too little that they're not going to embrace that somehow that this is a form of rationing but don't other countries ration as well. I mean don't they make decisions as to who can get certain care. Let me be honest with you I just brought my 90 year old aunt back from France. Do you know how many medications she was on when she came off the plane. 0 0 0 medication I would like to meet a 90 year old in the United States. That's an 0 medication. But you know what the physician said to me. He said Don't take her to an American doctor. That's what he said. Don't take her to an American doctor he said. She's almost 90 she you're not going to make her younger. You're probably not going to make her healthy. You just need to make her comfortable. Now that sounds almost like you know end of life care death panels rationing but at the same time doesn't it kind of make. It's OK.

Well I'm an internist usban. Most of my morning writing prescriptions for people and managing medical problems drugs can be useful in many situations. But Americans are completely over medicated. We take too many medications including medications we don't need. We're over imaged we're constantly getting C.T. scans and other complex imaging that we don't need. And again I ordered a C.T. scan this morning it's very useful when you need it. And that is reflected in the very high cost that we have but it's also reflected in a shorter life expectancies were spinning the money on over medications over imaging. We're not spending the money on primary and preventive care. And when you have a national health program you're able to set up a system where the doctor's decision is not influenced by money they can't make any more or any less based on what they order. If they want to earn more money they got to work more

hours. That's what a lot of the international systems are based on. And that's the best way to get to good decisions. Now the other thing in international systems is they're based on primary care. I'm a big supporter of primary care and the Dartmouth group has supported primary care as well and I agree with them on that. I just don't agree with them that somehow if you have a profit driven system that pays doctors to do too little that's going to fix things it's a profit driven system dominated by the insurance industry the drug industry and for profit businesses associated with hospitals that's causing our problems. We need to go to a nonprofit model like every other developed country has done. So you have been fighting for single payer for decades. We have this health care reform bill that was trumpeted you were never really asked to sit down at the table in fact both the single payer option and the public option were you know quickly evaporated. We are now in the new world of the Obama health care reform. We also are now in the

new world of Citizens United the recent Supreme Court decision that said that basically corporations could spend unlimited money and political in the political arena. And we know how financially successful pharmaceutical companies are how financially successful insurance companies are. And they're actually in some ways just maybe even more financially successful because of the Obama health care reform. So. Are you basically sort of retiring. I'm going to let you go but you're single payer badge and just don't hang it up because it looks like the mountain has just gotten that much higher. Or do you think that the fact that finances will ultimately bring people back to talking to you they have solved nothing with this bill. They have solved nothing with this bill even if it works as planned which is fairly doubtful given the expense. If they implement the whole thing they come up with the money to implement. There will still be 23 million people uninsured in the year 2019. There will still be tens of millions of Americans who get sick have insurance and find they still can't afford the

care they need. So very quickly the American people are going to be right back at the same point of saying we have solved nothing we need to fix a health care system. Hopefully we'll have a better understanding of how corporations are dominating our political process and undermining American democracy. But you know all too minutely the people the electorate can take the politicians and hold their feet to the fire if they're doing the work of corporations rather than the work of their constituents. We need to vote them out and we need to put candidates in place who are willing to stand up to corporate power in the interests of their constituents. We think. I just it's on the other day that when it comes to government we all become Libertarians and Independents and we want government off our backs when it comes to corporation we all become like sheep and we sort of follow them when we met a direction they want to go. I'm trying to figure out exactly how we learn the lesson in order to get what we need which is quality health care and it's going to be very very fascinating to watch what happens over the course of the next couple of years.

But I have a funny feeling that WGBH will bring you back. Thank you so much. My pleasure. We've been talking with Dr. Steffie wool handler. She is an Associate Press professor know a professor of medicine at Harvard and co-director of the Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine fellowship program. She is also a co-founder of Physicians for a national health program. Again Dr. Will Hunter thank you for joining us. I'm Arnie Arnesen sitting in for Kelly Crossley. This is the Kelly Crossley Show. Today's program was engineered by Jane pick and produced by Chelsea murders our production assistant is Anna white knuckle where production of the bee GBH and Boston's NPR station for news and culture. With. Us.