Episode 37- Contemplation after a month of Covid-19 Lockdown

Rich offers up an assemblage of topics related to the end of Week Four of the Corona Virus lockdown.

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[inaudible] .

Brian Kruger 0:05

Welcome to the podcast, the common bridge with Richard Helppie. Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health and finance space. He and his wife, Leslie, are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, but with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children. My name is Brian Kruger , and from time to time I'll be the moderator and host of this podcast. All right, rich. Hey, welcome to the common bridge. Everyone rich, I'm glad you're, I'm glad you're around. I miss being in a studio with you though. Um, but we're kind of getting used to this remote thing. How are you doing?

Rich Helppie 0:41

Actually doing really well. And the remote work is a area that I'm very comfortable with and getting really adept with zoom and go to meeting and conference calls, which is been kind of my life anyway. So it's , I'm really pleased the way I see most citizens responding. People are being responsible in terms of the, u m, stay a t home, stay safe, u h, being very responsible in terms of social distancing and being cognizant that it with this particular pandemic, people that are going out a nd risking exposure aren't really taking the risk on for themselves, but they're taking that risk on, on behalf of unknowing other people. Again, there's always the bell s haped curve that people that don't understand what we're dealing with here. But, u h, that's the human condition. What can you do?

Brian Kruger 1:37

Yeah. What can you do? Hey dude , you know , um , I think it was yesterday and that happened around the, around the country. I was wondering if you can just reflect on this. Um, there, there has been a little backlash and kind of waiting for that to happen and I think as it gets warmer, we might see more of it when it's more comfortable to be outside, but we saw it in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, I think North Carolina where there's been a little bit of a , of pushback on some of the local gubernatorial , um, uh, limitations that they're putting on folks. What do you think about that? Uh , regionally. And do you think it's, I don't know , I don't want to use the word smart, but what are your thoughts about that?

Rich Helppie 2:09

Well, I , I think it's symptomatic of this absolutism and partisanship that we've seen. It can't be all off or all on and there's, it's a continuum and as I said in the recent podcast that, and I'm glad to see governors doing this, what they need to do is have a broad panel of representation that could look at where are we today based on the public health risk and what might be safe to open back up and go about it gradually. And when I looked at the four phases that came out of the white house and couple that with what some of the governors are, because each of their situations are a little different. I was encouraged but I was discouraged by partisans on both sides. Taking an absolute view that those, that they oppose politically are absolutely all wrong and those that they favor are absolutely all right. Again, people have to understand that we're in this together and there are a range of things that can be done. And they also need to accept the fact that it is going to pivot around the best judgment at the time. And that we will undoubtedly make mistakes. We will make mistakes as a society based on , uh , over killing , uh , or on being under-prepared . And one of the natures of , of pandemics is that prior any type of preparation looks alarmist or paranoid even. And then after the fact it all looks like it wasn't taken seriously enough. And that is the arc of most public health matters that are similar to this. And of course this is different than anything that we've dealt with before, but there's no absolutes. And I think when this all gets sorted out that we're going to learn something and I hope people can get out of this simplistic, you know, villain hero, a way of thinking and understand that we're, we will have done some things well and there are some things we wish we could have done better enrich the smells too . When you founded the common bridge last year, you said that the right answer is rarely in one corner or the other. It's almost always somewhere in the middle of the ring and I'm absolutely, yeah, absolutely. That's very insightful. It's hugely insightful. Now as we move into the finger pointing stage of , uh, of coven 19 and I think we're , look , let's , let's just take a minute on the coven. 19 broadly. It's this, there's way more unknown's today than there are notes . And so first of all, the origins of how this virus King to be is subject to more than one theory. The timelines are murky. How the virus affects people, that people may carry the actual virus before and after displaying symptoms. Our statistics are very incomplete. As you know, it's a national policy today that every death that involves Corona virus is considered a death due to Corona virus. That's tough. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, you've got count some way and there'll be time to refine it. And then also because we can't test the entire population, we don't know exactly how many people have been exposed. So the rates of infection are unknown. The efficacy of treatments are not warm yet even there's some discussion on whether ventilators are good idea or not. In recent days, some promise for a drug by Gilead sciences that was effective against Ebola. It was effective in a hospital in Chicago, but there was no control group to say that a similarly defined patient cohort was going to be experienced in a different outcome. We don't know the effect of the antibodies yet and we don't know with all these unknowns how to get an effective vaccine. I mean, you've got to have a target that you're aiming at in order to make the vaccine work. Look from all evidence , it looks like that the stay at home orders have helped flatten the curve and somewhat arrested the spread of infection, you know, less hosts available less places for the virus to land. That seems to be working there is, that doesn't mean it's gone by the way. Uh , and that flattening the curve , uh , means that the healthcare system has the capacity to handle the outbreaks. So we're still going to have infection and it hopefully will stay at a level that we can treat people and treat them effectively. And there also seems to be a consensus that we're going to get another round of this at some point. And I've seen from very learned people talking about the end of 2021 as being maybe the first time that there's a a clear off ramp and at other points, you know, between now and then. So make no mistake, we're going into a very different world than what we've experienced thus far. Yeah, yeah. Tell me a little bit more about what you saw in those.

Brian Kruger 8:23

Yeah, right. Just just for some background, I till I told you rich a while back that I had seen some interesting photos from a new Delhi and around the world that the air quality had changed dramatically and it was before even it had come over to the U S well now we're seeing a lot more of it. So I looked around online and I saw that NASA had their air pollution index photos, their satellite photos, and just really dramatic changes because essentially, as you know, that industry is a generally shut down and people aren't driving around. But I look at those and I smile like, Oh, well this is cool. It shows that we can, you know , maybe turn this around. But I know that

Rich Helppie 8:56

when it starts up again, things are going to change. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, can we hang on to some of the quality improvements that we've made environmentally or is this just a, just a snapshot? Well, I hope to cover that in more detail in future episodes. I've reached out already to a couple of sources looking for environmental scientists that can talk about, let's not go back to that same level of pollution. And I also think there's some things in this country that we can do different. And bear in mind that our country, the United States of America is in a different place than China and India and other rising economies explain that. Um , well our consumption of oil and gas, our consumption of kilowatt hours are much greater per capita than those two very populous countries. And we built our economy and we built the per capita income that our citizens enjoy on fossil fuels. And on frankly, you know, the least cost thing that perhaps was more damaging to the environment. So now if you're one of those countries and you're being told, listen you , you can't do that. There's a somewhat, this is oversimplifying it, but you know, wait a minute, it's kind of our turn to get our economy up and then we'll worry about the environmental effects. So I do think we need to lend them our technology. I do think that we need to unite as a world around, you know, things like scrubbers on exhaust and good ways to clean industrial waste so it doesn't end up in the water supply in the light. And then if you look at our country, I think we can do an even better job. And I think that we've , we are approaching the end of the personal car era anyway . Do you think coven accelerates that? I think it can . And I say it because of this. There's many people we now know that are working at home. And you know, it's a much more productive world than sitting in a crowded highway with an internal combustion engine going the whole time. And when you think about cars, they're garage more than they're used. And even though they're sitting there, they have to be insured and cleaned and maintained. And today we have, you know, apps like Uber and Lyft and we are quickly developing driverless cars. And why wouldn't a vehicle be an on demand service and powered by something other than an internal combustion engine? And you know, when you think about the two, the personal automobile, it's basically the same model as horses. I mean, horses, you had a stable for your horse, you're gonna garage your car, you had to put feed in the horse and, and you have to , uh , you put fuel in your car. I guess the cleanup behind the horses exhaust was a little bit more immediate, if you will. But they are also resources of , uh , pollution and, and disease. And you went out on a road with your horse. So I think we can do better than this as a , uh, as a human race and um , and look at this as perhaps as an opportunity to , uh , to move off .

Brian Kruger 12:20

Yeah. Well that model, I think you and I were talking last year, I thought this was fascinating and I really have been thinking about this ever since that the whole , it said something about the whole idea of going to the office is very, very last century because you'd gather in a place that had telephones and later on copy machines and things like that that you couldn't afford at home. So the office made sense and now it doesn't make sense as much sense anymore because you can do it at home and with virtual, like you'd mentioned earlier in the episode, zoom and things like that, you can have meetings face to face, just not in the same room. So it really does change the commercial real estate argument a little.

Rich Helppie 12:54

Yeah. And look, there's going to be less demand for air travel if people can get together instantly versus flying. I mean there, there won't be ever a time, I think when there'll be a substitute for the face to face meeting, but the, let's fly into town and let's all have dinner someplace. I think we're going to pause before before we do that, and Brian, I'm not sure you're aware, but I built one of the first travel companies and there wasn't one doing this that I'm aware of, but there could have been, give us some background on that. When was it ? 1984 I founded a consulting business and at that time the business model was have a local office and you have one in Detroit and one in Tampa and one in Washington and one in Scottsdale or wherever. Well, as a startup entrepreneur with no money, we weren't able to do that. So we literally built the company from the computers up and we were the only people in the airport carrying around our technology. And we were able to hire people and say, you don't have to relocate as long as you can get to an airport and a telephone, which is what we use to communicate with the computers, going over the telephone lines. And we built up a company with no offices and just, and just being able to aggregate our specialty teams at a client's site. Our teams might originate in eight different cities, but we would arrive with that cadre of expertise and backed up by a unified computer system.

Brian Kruger 14:33

Very, very cutting edge for 1984 and for now. But that's really cool. That's 84

Rich Helppie 14:39

yeah. And but again, it was brought about not by any great vision. It was a bootstrap operation and didn't have money to invest in offices. I'd find another way around it. And it worked pretty well. But anyway, I do think this is an opportunity for the end of an era and we also have to really look at education. And I am very passionate about K through 12 education.

Brian Kruger 15:05

Yes , you are . And I know that, but, but what do you, what do you see , uh, with education? What do you see Covance major punch to education that might change when we get to the other side of this? How will education be different?

Rich Helppie 15:18

Well, we've exposed even more of the disparities in education. More affluent districts, more private schools have been able to pivot immediately to online learning and in some respects not missed a beat. And other districts, students are now deprived of the only safe place that they know that being the school building and they don't have access to reliable internet or a device and they're not getting the opportunities to learn. Now as a policy matter, we can have a robust discussion about how to make sure that public education is resourced and accountable to make sure that they can deliver in a pandemic. Or we can talk about, you know , the other end of, maybe it's school choice with schools competing to say they can offer education during a pandemic. And we go to that model that says there's a voucher for everyone and pick the schools. I don't want to open that can of worms today, but, but the need is clearly there and we can't walk away from it. And imagine if this risk does go through the end of calendar 2021. Now we're talking about , uh , you know, a very long period of time that these students will be away from the classroom about a year and two thirds roughly. That's a long time in a 12 year education cycle. We need to make sure that that gets addressed. But that's probably a topic for another day. Brian , he told me you had some kind of re reactions or quick hitter .

Brian Kruger 17:04

I did. And so if this takes you off guard, you can , uh , you know, throw the punch over the phone, over the phone and it would be funny. But , um , but what can you tell us about , uh, we've heard some of this with healthcare lately about the age tax. Um, I'm gonna , I'm gonna throw some buzzwords out that people aren't going to necessarily know what they are. So school is on and what it is and tell us why it's important. Let's start with age tax on healthcare.

Rich Helppie 17:26

All right . So when the affordable care act officially known as the patient protection and affordable care act, I'm also referred to as Obamacare was developed, one of the concerns was that the premiums for older people were going to be higher because people use more healthcare than a younger person. And so there was a clause put in the law that said you can't charge an older person more than three times what you charge a younger person for the premium. And the idea was to make sure that you didn't price the seniors out of the market. Well, what's happened in practice is that the cost for that younger, healthier person you want in the pool is the cost of that individual is too high. So there's been modifications proposed to say three is probably not enough. Let's say you can't charge a older person more than five times what you charge a younger person or looking at it the other way, the younger person instead of having to pay a third of what an older person pays only pays a fifth as a way of making it affordable for the younger person to get into the pool and buy the insurance.

Brian Kruger 19:01

Right. And it not now, but how does, how does the uh , a bubble of, of an age group effect that? Like we've got baby boomers now for the next, hopefully 20 years getting older. Does that impact the same model and are we at three to one right now? Is that about right? Three times. That's the law today is that

Rich Helppie 19:21

a younger person has to pay one third of what a person like me has to pay. And the proposal to get that care more affordable to the younger person is to say, you know what? They have to pay a fifth of what I pay. I see . And, and that actually helps the whole system because if you have more younger, generally healthier people in, they're going to be paying in yet consuming a disproportionately lower portion of the healthcare spend. I see. So it's, again, it's used as a, as a punchline and an attack point, but that's the,

Brian Kruger 20:06

all right . So I'm not gonna let you get too far down each one of these summer. Bring another one up. Tell us about the salt cap on income tax. Okay. The salt S a L T, that is a , an

Rich Helppie 20:17

acronym that stands for state and local taxes. And the way that things worked on your federal tax prior to the tax reforms of this administration was that a person could write off from their federal income tax, whatever they pay for their local property taxes, sales taxes, and income taxes. And so let me give you an example. In California, the top marginal tax rate for income is 13.5% right? Which is just a pretty steep rate. So let's take a person that had $1 million of income that, you know, they're in real estate, they own a company, they were, you know, movie producer or actor or whatever. Okay. The high-income Silicon Valley person, that person would have to pay $135,000 , um , that income to the state of California, but they could then take that 135,000 and duct it from their federal tax obligation, meaning that Washington would receive less money. And guess who subsidizes that? It's the, you know, working person in Maco , Michigan, what the tax reform did cap the state and local taxes that could be deducted at $10,000. It doesn't affect most people, but it really affects high income people. And that's why you hear this great protest about that , uh , on the, you know, particularly from the coast, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California that have high tax burdens in the state, but they've been able to finance part of that tax burden by having it deductible on the federal income tax. And that practice has been eliminated under current tax law. I see. Okay. Well done. I feel schooled. I'm going to jump a little bit here with the stimulus bill and stimulus bills that have come out. I think there's another one being written now. There seems to be a lot of packing in of of issues while we're getting this thing out. Let's put a bunch of stuff in it now and it's really rang a , it's really rankled a lot of people like, look, get this out first. Don't put your, you know, your own issues in there. Can you speak to that at all? Like if does that group need just to get this stuff out or do you think it's prudent for them to take the opportunity to put their own pork into some of these bills? You know, the way I , I'd like to answer that is this. People that we elect are human beings. They're part of a system that incense them to do certain things and they will do the things that we encourage them to do and that we allow them, and you've heard my theme ad nauseum. As long as we keep rewarding the partisan divide, we will get more people in elected office who will have a well honed skillset to attack the other party. The best of government I think that we've seen come out during this crisis is you know, first of all recognition that the income model has changed. That it's not just a person working for a wage and getting a w two income, but there are W2 workers that are full time. There are gig workers, there are business, and when I saw the response that the administration through the treasury and the house of representatives in the Senate came together, I thought they did a pretty good job in terms of addressing where the pain is. Yeah, I did too . Maybe the amount wasn't enough. It seems to have run out of money, but I think the intent was right. I agree with you. It looked dope and they said at the onset that that would need to be calibrated and nobody knew the extent of the pain because it's a multiplier based on time. Right. If you knew this was going to be over in three weeks, you can fix the cost. If you knew it was going to be over in three months, you could fix the cost. Nobody knows. But again, I give them, you know , high marks for liquefying the country where the pain is, which is at household level. Now. That's what I think has been the best of government. And when I think about the worst of government that's stuffing unrelated items into the relief bills . Right. Okay . So that's what we're talking about. Right. Okay. And that's, and look at that. That's a time I would like to say time honored , not , not honorable, but that's been been a thing to uh, attach a pet project to a bill that has to be signed. And then, you know, whoever the president is at the time, you know, probably from the beginning of the country say, well, the president wouldn't sign a bill to give relief to workers. And the presidents, you know, was saying, Hey, I'm not signing this bill because it's got a, B and C in it. And you know, we've had the debate about the line item veto, you know, for, you know, going back 30 plus years. So you know, we were running at a pretty breakneck speed as a country and we were going to events and concerts in the light . Now we've been, you know, cooped up, jigsaw puzzles are selling well, people are sleeping more. Frontline workers of course are not enjoying that. But you know, when this is over, are people going to rush to fill stadiums? I know. I'm going to ask you though , what do you think? I mean, like I say, you're, you're a season ticket holder. You're a good fan. Okay . You're going to be okay just watching TV or will you go back? I'm going down. I'm going to go down a little seat . Watch the runway , man . Yeah . You know, it's , it's my happy place. Yeah, but you don't look the, the other thing that I'm surprised you haven't asked about, because you mentioned it before, we turn on the Weiss today, but our governor here in Michigan floated the idea that let's have a special enrollment for the accountable care plan. I've spoken at length about how badly our health care system financing methods are relative to the job at hand. What I don't believe our governor understands is that you can't have a person that's out of work. No way to calendar when they get back to work. That watches to see if the enhanced unemployment benefits are going to be available that maybe hasn't been able to get unemployment flowing yet because they can't get on the system. Now they're thrown off and I said, this is the last podcast, 16 million Americans are going to find out what a bad idea it is to have a sleep illogical connection between employment and health insurance. So now the governor says, well they let's let him roll in an accountable care plan and the problem is that they can't afford the premiums and the deductibles are so high, six seven $8,000 plus it's with limited resources. It's not affordable. You wouldn't spend your money for that. Yeah . I don't know why they call it healthcare plan cause it's a not, some people would just struggle with that. You know, again, even to his credit bill Clinton when this was going to be passed, you can always like shaking the second goes, this is the craziest thing. You're taking people in middle America and you're going to make them pay more and you're going to make them pay more when they actually need to get care. This is exactly what's play played out. Exactly. But anyway, the the right answer and I if we can't get to the broader reforms that that I've talked about and other people have talked about the short term, you could lift the requirements for Medicaid right alongside the unemployment. If you're out of work today because of coven and you're eligible for that extra unemployment, you're also automatically eligible for Medicaid. Medicaid doesn't pay a lot but it does pay some. And similarly, and I believe one of the senators floated this but dropped the age of Medicare by some measure, I believe the proposal was drop it to 50 and you know, medic buy into Medicare right now. But you liked that idea too cause you said that's something you could do right now that would benefit everybody right now. Exactly. And it would also have the boiling effect of breaking this absolutely illogical connection between employment and health insurance. You've got a lot of positive responses on that with the podcast. We did a while back on that. That you're right. It's silly that we do that. Yeah , it's a, it's an artifact from an earlier era. And uh , my grandfather who worked for over 40 years of Chrysler corporation, for him to get his health insurance from Chrysler kind of made sense, but for my grandchildren who are going to work in industries that haven't even been invented yet, much less the jobs and companies formed, it makes zero sense. Uh , and you know, even today they say a 20 year old is going to have seven or eight different jobs prior to exiting the workforce. So that's the pace of change. Yeah . Yeah . That's fascinating. Um, so we've talked about a lot of things today. Is there anything that that you'd like to mention before we roll out? Well, the only thing would be I do appreciate the feedback that folks have. If there's topics you'd like us to cover, I will try to go find an expert and I think that we've demonstrated that we have more in common like staying healthy and avoiding a virus. I doing the right thing, washing our hands, supporting our frontline people, and if you don't need to go out, don't go out. That tells me that if we have a good government and an honest news system, we can address the issues of the day and we can seize the opportunities that this great country has. If we can get there and off of the partisan pole positions. I think we've got great promise. Well said. I just want to tell the listening audience out there. Thank you. There's a lot, lot more of you now. We've really grown this in the last a couple of months and I'm really glad to have you and as we said before, go to Richard helpy.com and give us some thoughts on who you might want us to talk to or what you want to , what you want to hear about, what you'd like to have rich talk about and that would be great. Anyway, rich, we'll see you next time and thanks a lot for spending time with us again, Brian , always great talking to you. You have been listening to Richard healthy's common bridge podcast recording and post-production provided by stunt three multimedia. All rights are reserved by Richard helpy . For more information, visit Richard helpy.com .