Leading out the experts calling on congress to fund billions of dollars in coke about team testing before it can safely reopen the country for bush its stormy and i say Senate Majority leader republican from tennessee and a host of the proud pass a 2nd opinion rethinking American Health is bill frist he joins us from his art farm in virginia god its good to see you again good larry great to be with you appreciate the chance to have this conversation my pleasure tell me about this letter you and 16 other help the actual what do you want the government to do. Well the letter the letter went out last monday and went to the president of the United States into the United States congress and it basically has 3 parts all of which center on the really critical failure that this country has had in the last month but also the opportunity that its all built around testing we have this enemy the us but right now a lot less you have it you have dont who has it and who doesnt but it does infect people even if they sometimes theres a what this letter does it basically says testing testing testing at the federal government through our request and youre sure it should step or make it the number one priority and it puts or takes a Contact Tracings if you test positive if you get in touch with 8 or 9 or 10 other people somebody needs to pick up the phone or identify them through technology to keep them isolated just stop the spread that this. Isnt too soon to reopen the economy now. I dont think so and i spend a lot of time im with the mayor in nashville but are not going are in tennessee states it is on track to open in back next week and i think theres a balance were moving today from this Global Mitigation where you shut everything down and were making that transition in to that individual containment that local containment and its not a matter of looking at Public Health in lives saved versus opening the economy thats the false choice the real choice is how do we open this account of me with what we call affordable containment and that is to like an accord begin to go out open it up if the virus is unleashed at all to close it back that now and the time is right to do it now because people now are about 6 weeks into hunkering down without jobs people pressed into poverty people losing their mortgages and theres a very real cost in terms of debt in terms of quality of life in terms of morbidity of having people without jobs with unemployment going to at highs 30 percent higher than in any time since the Great Depression so now is the time to begin based on science careful attention to analytics and data because at the bars. Raises it ted we are like a settlement according to slow things back now but now is the time to begin now not for everywhere so in some places the bars are still increasing needs to be measured in the bars increasing they should not open issues a shelter down did you see this coming. Yes sadly you and i have talks really for 30 years and before coming to the senate i was in medicine and did heart transplants every week and the enemy there was the virus the virus is smarter than us it moves faster than a this and the enemy there because i do a transplant i would give my patients medicines to push your mutant system down and the barristers would attack so for the last really 35 years ive been biting viruses i went to the senate and we took on the hiv aids virus in a bipartisan way with 3000000 people dying every year we went after it aggressively again bipartisan addressed it and now 20000000 people are alive so we can beat these viruses after we did that in 2003 and i worked with at that time with president bush i worked with the leadership on the other side of the aisle to work with tony felt like we are today we started looking at pandemics and in 2005 and in your opening you mentioned it i gave about 30 speeches around the country predicting a pandemic coming out of asia some time in 10 to 15 years and i did that and put a plan on the table at that point in time because its inevitable in even today 15 years from now were going to have another pandemic equal to the size of this one a less we act and the things that we can do so im very hopeful that we didnt act last time the last 15 years now is the time to act and have our federal government come together with the very best science so we can preempt these pandemics of the future and frankly bill how how are we doing hows the federal government doing. Well it. Really encouraged in certain ways in the discouraged we were late at the starting block and we could have if wed had our global surveillance intact if we had listened 15 years ago to the proposals that i and others put on the table we would have been able to identify this virus earlier the doubling time of this virus is just 3 days and so if you have 100. 00 cases out there today in 3 days itll be 200 and it just grows exponentially over time so number one i think the president has done very well the 1st point i always mention in my original plan from the from 2005 was communication and they president every day has been out there talking air and now were come to the negatives but i think thats very positive number 2 i think having the experts up there people like tony who has been adequate 30 years hes been head of the allergy is to to the National Institute of allergy since 1984 and hes done a great job dr burks so i applaud the president having them up on the stage that the negative side of it i think is weve seen it recently with these hypothetical polls are put out the other conferences go on way too are people people are suffering and they are there and they are anxious and their lives are at stake and they dont need anybody on that stage putting hypothetical things out there that have not been proven and sometimes Dangerous Things and also the communications is minimal to a lot of our biggest failure thats the president our biggest failure has been this lack of testing the lack of impresses on testing the enemy is out there we know it grows exponentially if we we dont slow it down we know what slows it down we know we cant tolerate a total shutdown of this country for a year until we have a back same. And so what we need to do is test test test on it who has it who does not the people who have it do this Contact Tracing quine team them and then we will beat this basques Mitch Mcconnell who now holds the posts you once held some majority of you here publicly stated his reluctance for economically packages going directly to the states you agree with that. Well ive heard him say and i heard the press present it but i havent talked to him about it i didnt think the states are going to need direct shell unlike the federal government then weve spent 2 trillion dollars in the initial bill 3 weeks ago another half a trillion dollars last week and will probably think spend another trillion dollars i think as we do this is not stimulus money because the experiment cant be stimulated cuts is not open today widely why did you leave the same ole area if you recall when i came into the senate i spent 20 years in medicine and health and healing and doing the heart transplants and i came to serve 12 years as an legislate or so coming in i basically said im going to take for 12 years im going to do my best to represent the people of tennessee i didnt know and end up at majority leader at the time but represent the people of this country and then after that 12 years go back home and live under the laws that that i passed or helped to past and then work as a private citizen and do the sort of things were doing now in trying to help policymakers of the future i love love the opportunity to serve and appreciated that and its such a great noble profession but i didnt want to do it forever do you miss it. You know i miss it but ive been able to do some extraordinary things because. When i was there as majority leader it was a lot of politics it was a lot of taking care of and working with 99 other United States senators and since i left ive been able to help Start Companies that address things like hospice and end of life and Palliative Health Care in companies built around telemedicine and tele health and some of that still state in the United States senate would have loved it im sure but it would have the opportunity to contribute in ways that regular citizens and Business People in philanthropy. As an aside and you share with joe biden did you not. At dead of have we were on the Foreign Relations committee as majority leader during the time that he chaired that committee. What do you think of him and what do you think of his chance. Joe had given an a plus to. Do you know him very well i know his wife very well. Traveled with his wife to africa and she wanted to learn more about africa when he was vice president. Respects for his intellect i and a Great Respect im from the opposite party as you well know but joe would do well as president it will be interesting to see the election and as we all know elections in large part are determined by the economy and if you look over the last 110 years 10 times better we have not had a recession the president who is up for reelection would be reelected and of the times in the last 110 years if theres been a recession 4 of those 5 times that president has lost reelection so it looks like were going to be in a recession we are going to be in a recession during this period of time and unemployment is going to higher than its been since the Great Depression because of this and to me so i think it will be. At least based on history or for president to be reelected and theres a good candidate across the aisle so you know i would say 5050 at this point but give me shit if you look back in history you would say the president has an uphill battle well take a break and come right back with former senator bill frist well talk about his party pass right after this. Seemed wrong. But old rules just dont hold. Any new world yet to shape out these days become agitated and engage with equals betrayal. When so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. Youve heard me often speak of the black hole of debt that is where all the debt in the universe now ends up after it leaves a Central Bank Balance sheet and its a cosmic force pulling the g. D. P. Of the world down now or at the white hole of debt as i am a fellow straining with this white piece of cardboard the white dead is on the other side of the black hole of debt and in an era of negative Interest Rates and negative oil prices we have to colorize our concept to death toll from black to white makes sense of course not. 30 years ago the berlin wall fell the cold war had essentially come to an end the fall of this cold war symbol was heralded as a new spring of nations and the end of communism decades on what is the legacy of this historic event the promises of 989. 00 been fulfilled. Time after time called gratian to repeat the same mantra sustainability its very important its accelerate the transition to sustainable prize board sustainability stay in her manner a more equitable and sustainable well. They claim their production is completely harmless followed this lead the. League. Has not listened to it and does not the Prison Companies want us to feel good about buying their products while the damage is being done far away and this is something this must be going to mean and i need money this is the move in unison we didnt dream and im strong theme that may be based on that understood its a good and. Well go read problem checking were talking with bill 1st farmer u. S. Senator majority leader host of the bypass the 2nd opinion rethinking American Health tell me about your part cash out of where you are now does it work. The pod cast is really interesting it larry and its really in the feel that youre in but it was clear to me after i left the United StatesSenate People are getting their information in different ways ive been on the speaking circuit talking health care and hope in the healing and transplants and the washington and then a year ago started about a cast which is on every week its called a 2nd opinion with bill frist you can get away every people get their pod cast and we spend 30 to 45 minutes once a week for the last year and we will over the next year talking to people with a very specific interest in the interest at the intersection of health and healing and medicine all the things that we talked about today in terms of help feeling and that intersection with policy issues and how policy can address them and the 3rd big component is innovation so we look at innovative thought creative thought of people starting businesses and so Something Like the pandemic which were talking a lot of bell will bring policymakers and like Lamar Alexander will bring in tom friedman former head of the c. D. C. Or Jeff Copeland former head of state he said he and it will be talking to Health Specialists in the scientists like marty berry from Johns Hopkins who you see a lot on the code virus or because were oh who ran the Cleveland Clinic and then we bring in elevators this sort of people who are like making back scenes and look good looking to make those any sense so its on every week a 2nd opinion podcast dot com you can go there and look at it as well what do you think few more questions what do you think of obamas Affordable Care act. Well i thought it was really interesting because when he was campaigning he was campaigning on the cost of health care because thats what really people care about and cared about time and then once he got into office he switched to the access if you will get you a huge issue in this country that 20 percent of people dont have care maybe 30000000 people 1215 percent only care today they dont they get the care but they dont have the insurance but people care about cost they will care act is an access bill cover more people did not address cost some people say it a little bit it really didnt so it did a pretty good job out there and the uninsured went from 30000000 down to about 15000000 people but it cost as you know a lot of money and everybodys prices that they had a prick health care went up to get the 1st 1000000 people a horrible access to insurance its good in that part the fact it did not direct did not address cost at all couple but the fact that it was passed in a partisan way and there was no piece of legislation social legislation during my time as majority leader or when i was in the United States senate was passed in a participant way without any democrat but so you put those 2 things together is why it is in the big picture his but there are some really good things and there are vulnerable populations who have access today that they did not have before. You miss doing medicine. Now youre getting close to my heart. The 1st time he. Approached him it was in 1087 and at that time never thought about going into politics and the show that you did was on the heart transplant patient and the the shortage of organ donors and that little 2 year old boy we talked about is now 32 years old and doing well through this miracle of transplantation so yes i miss the opportunity to be able to be a vehicle to bring in life very directly to the individuals. I cant go back to and i continue to a medical mission work for now 20 years after that and im not operating now but at huge respect to those people on the frontline today who are doing lifesaving work so that you and i can sit here and have this conversation youre such a great guest and you come back soon i mean you are about to let it go youre innocent but. Now your great quote of my all Time Favorites one thing i want to ask there are people who are sinking that a lot of people may have heart problems and other things are afraid of or a hospital course in a pandemic what he say to the. 1st of all there youre right remember for the last 5 weeks the hospitals of essentially been closed down except for emergencies no elective procedures doctors appointments not not cancel or canceled not people not even seeing their doctors except to tell a medicine which has been very you know what that means is that people because they dont want to get sick and part are staying home with chest pain and theyre having little minute shorter call and not being treated and having Heart Disease maybe even heart attacks at home so what i do want to say is that hospitals are back on line in tennessee elective surgery yans this week and people can come to hospitals they are safe places to come to now and like 23 weeks ago theres enough of that protective equipment youll go to isolated wards you go to isolated doors so youll be very safe in going back to these hospitals today and i encourage you to do so because the doctors are there to get the Preventive Care and the nurses and the ancillary personnel and just because we have this virus it doesnt mean people stop having a heart attacks and asthma and respiratory and so they do need to get treated very important thank you bill a see again real soon. Thank you larry president trunk continues to say that he inherited a broken response system to pandemics from the Obama Administration dr bob cochair who served in that administration a special assistant to the president for health care and Economic Policy on the National EconomicCouncil Joins me for reaction oh what do you make of trumps taken on. The world health organization. I think there are various nation is doing its best to help the world and endemic and every country america is trying to figure out how to respond to temper 19 out of 5 nerves and how we can Work Together to make a vaccine does the w. H. O. Have a bias toward china. I dont think they have a masters in country what do you make of the president s claim those previous administrations live up to this i think hes out to lunch on that idea. Our ministration. Respond to the h one n one outbreak skillfully and great axeman protected millions of people around the world we set up our Areas Council in the white house that was working on pandemic preparation which they shut down. And so im not sure what hes referring to what what have we done right. I think weve done a good job in america at having the lead and aggressively move faster better government to bow shot down high risk activity used at all the last repair and also to develop Testing Capacity sorrow in california where im sitting some of our hospitals actually have created really effective tests for urban 1000 were manufacturing testing supply reagents the Sample Collection camps we have built our own Distribution Systems to to ramp up these efforts and many states are now in much better positions. What we think that testing re should have been doing really a grappa set of testing earlier and the c. D. C. Should have used the past were already about it from around the world to make sure it can bring this test to america and get going if we contained the impact and more skillfully we wouldnt have as much of the country that shut down as much as it is we know that there was one of. Those who were there quote this here in america well before the National Reports and that we now know that after the act because people. Cant you test negative one day and then positive the next. Like anything in life the way you catch it is the may be able to effect it. Whats great about coming n. T. s think is that p. C. R. Test that we use actually term positive really quickly and so theyre quite good and sensitive it figuring out whos in fact it and give us good information about when we should have people say oh i can the United States open safely sometime soon. I think so i think we have all read a lot about how we can take precautions to be safer in a world with this virus thats. The way i think about it is your risk of in fact it is proportional to the number of people pretty that you come into contact with so workers who have more contacts we have think about how to protect them and how we should test them to make sure that theyre also not spreading the disease but i think weve learned a lot now about how we can more safely reopen the economy based on the history of viruses should summer help. We dont really know and iris that were different in some barristers are seasonal we dont know yet and this virus will behave differently in the summer we can say in a lot of hot humid as theres lots of outbreaks of. But im not very confident that summer is going to make it better not to fall gee for duke so written in the fall do you. I think its likely that theyll be more infections in the fall primarily because the main thing we know is that this virus is very in action and if youre around people with that youll probably catch it and the more we make the economy more like it was before with more people interacting with more other people the odds are is that it will begin to celebrate and we need to do things to continue to suppress it was it worst Case Scenario for the summer. That stayed for a while x. Their guidelines too soon and not have great testing in place and so you have breaks up in a bunch of places where we havent seen covered before as people travel more widely if theyre infected they can bring that problem to wherever theyre going and in the summer we travel a lot in america and so im worried that it will spread this disease and were going to test in a place that will really take hold in a bunch of communities that far havent been affected so i gotta say we should keep stan all in the summer. I think we should give advice to people about how far to travel. It would be better for people to be closer to their homes and in the regions where they live from the containment of the virus perspective i think its not possible to stay home to the degree we are today and so we should make some accommodations so people can enjoy more freedom and have the economy be. Heard again will we attend sporting events this summer i dont think so i think id be very hard to create safe conditions and practice bases so you break my heart here no baseball. They might play baseball and idioms theyre doing that in taiwan and so i hope that there is baseball in that theres other activities entertain ourselves but if we watching them remotely and it said bob thanks so much great having you with us thank you for having me and wish you good health. You too thank you audience for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my Facebook Page or tweet me at kings things and dont forget to use the politicking hash tag and thats all for this edition of politicking. Thank. God i. Thank. This and stop the horse race its like the marathon there are 200. 00 horses. More than 200 participants in this marathon and the question is which take me place to save most lives and companies because its a matter of saving both. Use to do mr pearce or been moved to a supreme being me with. Birth. W mama she said are. Just going to do it. Youre definitely walking into the word all in all we no longer know what were walking into i cant see march. Which is what she needs to break she what about that. To chase possible sense of the. So. As the u. S. Economy was booming growing numbers of people were made homeless. You can work 40 hours d in a week and still not have enough to get housing everybody believes america still is the land of opportunity the reality of it is that were not financially equality and the lack of political housing living minimum wage give many people no choice. Thats been a problem with the city knows turn limits on a police state way out almost. Half the food that there is no its because you know its the requires the resources the most vulnerable are abandoned on the streets to become the invisible cooks. Greetings and salutations here in the United States as we get deeper and deeper into the fight against covert 19 we are seeing more and more news stories and expertly crafted publicity campaigns calling attention to the hundreds of thousands of doctors nurses and other medical workers and support staff who are quite literally on the front lines fighting to treat and save the lives of the more than 800000 u. S. Citizens who are infected by this virus they deserve our thanks our praise and our support new York Governor Andrew Cuomo aptly referred to these workers as quote the troops