Ex-Pharma Rep: Why American Healthcare Is So Broken - Brigham Buhler - #912

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
The number one cause of bankruptcy in America is healthcare costs. 100%.
Why? How did we end up there?

**Brigham Buhler** (0:08)
It's a long, twisted road. One of the things I've talked about a lot is, you know, in medicine, if you're going to understand or treat a disease state, you have to find the root cause. And if we go to find the root cause of the broken healthcare system in America, it runs deep, and it's insidious, and it's widespread. So it's a lot to unpack, but it starts with our food, our diet, our lifestyle, our nutrition, our food sources. What you and I were talking about right before we went on the air is all the contaminants in our food, all the ingredients in our food. You know, a good friend of mine, Bonnie Hari, has been beating the drum on all these media outlets lately, exposing, like in the United States, in the 80s, we had 700 approved ingredients in our food. Now we have 10,000. In Europe, it's still close to 700
Why in America do we have 10,000? One set of ingredients for Americans in the same factory and a different set of ingredients for Canadians, whether it's Froot Loops or whatever it is. But that's one component of the issue. Then we go to the checks and balances. Like if we have a primary care in America that only has six minutes with a patient and they're controlled by what the insurance companies do, the main message that I have for people is it comes down to corporate capture. Like if you show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcomes. And our entire incentive systems in this country are based off monetizing and capitalizing off chronic disease. It's all about quarterly earnings, quarterly profits. Nowhere in anyone's business school or any of these executives is their priority to drive healthspan or to cure chronic disease.

**Chris Williamson** (1:52)
Oddly, it's actually quite an American approach to things. You know, profits first. It's very important to us.

**Brigham Buhler** (1:57)
It is. It's wild.

**Chris Williamson** (1:59)
There's a few areas that we maybe should put profits second or third, perhaps.

**Brigham Buhler** (2:03)
Yeah.
And health care is definitely one of those. And so throughout the system, the checks, the balances, all of that has been ripped out, even with the collusion of our three-letter alphabet organizations. You know, whether we're talking about the FDA, the NIH, the CDC, all of these various entities have also been corporately captured. A lot of their funding, a lot of their goals and initiatives are based off of helping these giant institutions that are monetizing these things.

**Chris Williamson** (2:36)
How recently has it been since saying stuff like this didn't sound like crazy conspiracy theories?

**Brigham Buhler** (2:43)
You know what's wild is I was telling Joe this stuff like five years ago. And one day Rogan's like, come on the podcast. And when I went on there, nobody was talking about some of these things, like especially the insurance part. The insurance is one of these hidden monsters that people just don't know. And even to this day, they don't know. And even after doing some of these bigger platforms like yourself, you know, now the message is getting out and I've had people like Bobby Kennedy reach out and I went and sat down and even a guy who's been in the trenches, who's battled Big Pharma, who's battled these big corporate captured institutions. When I brought up PBMs, he said, I don't, what are you talking about PBM? I don't have a PBM. I have insurance. And that's the feedback most people give me. I don't know. I don't have a PBM. And so I have to like methodically walk them through what a PBM is, how it's hurting America's health. So if we look back to this whole profits first model, we talk so much about Big Pharma, Big Pharma, Big Pharma.
The big five insurance companies made four times the revenue of the biggest five pharmaceutical companies last year. Four X the revenue. They control every surgery, every drug, every treatment, when, where and how you can access health care and treatments and preventative care.

**Chris Williamson** (4:08)
I actually think the United Health CEO shooting for me was a real eye-opening moment because I just thought a guy shoots another guy on the street. Obviously, there's going to be public outcry about this.

**Brigham Buhler** (4:21)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (4:21)
And I didn't realize how strongly the American populace feels against all health care insurance companies.

**Brigham Buhler** (4:30)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (4:30)
It was, it was, I mean, again, I'm an immigrant here. I know you can understand most of the words that I say, but I was just fucking shocked. I come from a country that's got national health service.