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Weather today, no problem at all this morning.
Sunshine and we're in the mid 60s.
We'll get up to about 80.
Maybe a little better than that, and we could be enforced some scattered showers and some thunderstorms this afternoon.
This portion of the show brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center, 4706 Cottage Grove Road in Madison.
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their family owned and community focused.
They're helping people change their lives.
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Alright,
Yeah.
Well, this is this is a big deal because of the big bad bill We're looking at cuts to Medicare now.
This is Medicare I know this is an important issue because a lot of people are expecting to get on Medicare They have to get on at at age 65 or be penalized So Medicare is going to be cut 4% each and every year
All right, that's on top of the last cut.
Cut, after cut, after cut.
Now, John and Gordy have been promoting universal health care on this program for a long time.
We've been screaming it at the top of our lungs.
We really want universal health care.
And we even mentioned it to Ben Wickler before he stepped down.
But the thing here is you gotta have universal health care because people are not gonna be able to afford.
healthcare anymore.
And the problem is they're using healthcare as a weapon against us.
So if we don't do certain things, jump through certain hoops, we get healthcare taken away from us while we as taxpayers pay our elected officials
for their health care, which is, I don't understand how we can't frame that in the right way, so people get irritated and mad and angry,
People don't have to worry about it.
Yeah.
So...
We're asking the Democrats to pick up on the health care issue now instead of waiting because people are going to be shocked at the end of this year when their premiums go up if they are in the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, the premiums are going to go right through the roof and a lot of people are not going to be able for that.
They aren't going to be able to get their health care.
And not only that, you can't sign up after that 15-day time to sign up.
for your healthcare.
And that's the crazy part.
So if you say, I can't afford it, and then later on maybe you can, but you can't re-sign up during the year.
You're out of insurance for an attack.
It's sabotage all along the way, okay, and a lot.
10,000 or more people will be dropped from ACA and I'm panicking because my family is on it.
So I'm really worried about it.
I know it's gonna go up two to $300 a month.
for each and every premium, we're already paying about $160,000.
So it's gonna go up beyond that.
I don't know how we are gonna afford $400 a month premiums.
We're getting right back to where we were before the Affordable Care Act.
That's what's happening.
So the CBO has alerted everybody to this.
Medicare is going to get these cuts, and the cuts are going to happen not
to us individually, but it's going to go to doctors, hospitals, and the drugs that you get.
The CBO projects that the big bad bill will trigger automatic reductions, totally nearly $500 billion over the next decade due to the statutory pay as you go act.
When Congress passes something that increases the deficit, they have to make up for it automatically by cutting some other spending elsewhere.
If Congress doesn't step in and change
the rules it says here which they haven't yet, Medicare will be cut automatically by law.
It's not speculation, it's going to happen.
CBO crunched the numbers, Medicare will get hit with a 4% cut every year starting in 2026.
A 4% mandatory cut is to the doctors, hospitals, Medicare Advantage plans and drug coverage providers and when providers get paid less, many will limit the number of Medicare patients they take.
And I've heard that already reduce services or stop accepting Medicare altogether Because the payments aren't there this will reduce access to care for seniors and people with disabilities There it is and that's the end result.
Yeah, so this is bottom line.
This is huge You know, it leaves everybody Wonder where they're gonna go next.
Mm-hmm.
This isn't fear-mongering
It's the law.
It's the way it works.
This has to be done.
And surprise, 63% of Medicare recipients who voted for this.
Well, there you go.
That's it.
You can thank Trump for this.
It's not Biden's fault.
No, not Obama's fault.
As Trump said, Biden set this up.
Not in this case, not
He finally said something I agreed with.
I'm talking about the president.
We don't like him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, I feel exactly like he does about Democrats.
I actually hate him.
But that said, um, uh, this bill too, the other thing that they've done, and I agree totally with you guys, we got to get on it now that Democrats, whether if it's such a great bill, why would you sunset some of it in?
It doesn't kick in until 2027 if you're not trying to hide something.
Yeah.
You know, you bring up a really good point here on this because the ACA is going to end at the end of this year, the extra ability to pay for your monthly premiums.
That ends because it was put in place for COVID and that ends at the end of this year.
That's why I mentioned it because once that goes away, people are going to be shocked and stunned.
But then, of course, the Republicans hedging their bets decided to cut Medicaid after, after.
the midterm elections.
So no one feels that pain yet.
So rather deceptive than I don't know why they had to do that, you know, scratching your head on that one.
All right.
Thank you.
If we didn't have to worry about our health care bills or seeing a doctor or worry about our health or our children's health, imagine how freed up.
In society we would be, we have to go through the shopping experience for healthcare every damn year.
And now this year they limited it to just 15 days and they made sure that you can't sign up again during the year when your situation may change.
You may be making a whole lot of money and it cuts down the amount of premium support that you get.
But you can't report it, well you should report it, but you can't report it because you can't change, you can't do anything about it.
So this is really,
This is something that if we get on board see the Democrats need to get out there ahead of this not act like they're reacting to it.
That's the point
We've got an agenda.
We know what we need to do.
We just need to get out there and tell everybody this is what we're doing, not because suddenly everybody loses their healthcare after the ACA premiums go up, because we're ahead of it.
We know the problem.
We want to solve the problem about healthcare.
No one has to get a surprise bill in the mail.
And plus they don't have to worry about medical bankruptcies, which is, I guess, one of the biggest reasons why people go bankrupt.
of worrying
Well, here we are.
Okay.
Well, we decided to do
know
not one Democrat voted for us And I think we use it in the campaign that's coming up the midterms because we got to beat them But all of the all of the things that we've given and they wouldn't vote only because they hate Trump
But I hate them too, you know that?
So it's sort of, I hate, I really do, I hate them.
I cannot stand them because I really believe they hate our country.
You want to know the
And that has bothered me for a long time.
They make it harder and harder, just like they're making it harder and harder to get Medicaid.
If you're a working person, even if you have two jobs, you still may have trouble making that 80 hours a month limit that they put on.
But they want to make it.
More difficult to vote.
Yeah, and they, yeah, they actually do.
The Department of Justice actually said this.
Almost every voting rule will impose some burden.
But slight inconveniences do not delegitimize the state's interest in preventing fraud or seriously hinder the ability to vote.
Oh, really?
Is that right?
That's a standard.
Seriously, hinder is the standard.
Or it's a slight inconvenience, they say.
I don't know.
I think
This is a very big inconvenience.
Yes,
don't.
I must have been mistaken.
I'm the sound.
I
Well you know Arizona permits overseas citizens to vote if one of their parents is registered as an Arizona voter but the RNC now the Republican Party wants to fight that and kick those people off the rolls because they're normally students of parents who are overseas either serving in the military or on vacation and if
If you're on vacation, you can't vote because that's what the Republican Party wants to put in place, a ban on voting if you're overseas.
Okay, so another another roadblock another thing inconvenience.
It's just a slight inconvenience though.
Just
Hey, you could go to a Cubs Brewers game with us, John and Gordy.
Yes, we have a way that you can go and meet us there at the ballpark at Ampham Field for the game on July 29th.
It's Cubs and Brewers brought to us by our friends at Downerans Distilling.
Find out more, go to our website.
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All right, tiny TVs next.
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723.
It's John and Gordy in the morning and time for us to check in on the weather with Brittany Merlo.
Brittany, good morning.
It's a beautiful day here in Madison.
We've got sunshine.
It's looking pretty nice and temperatures in the mid sixties feeling pretty great out there.
What are we expecting today?
What do you
think?
Lucky ducks.
Oh my gosh.
I'm sitting under clouds.
It's kind of gross.
I just had some rain this morning.
So, soak up that sun while you have it.
It's got
a
low pressure head in our way.
Yep.
chances of some scattered showers.
We've got a little few of them moving north right now towards Baraboo Portage and towards that area.
So pretty dry by you.
But as we go through this afternoon, probably after four or five, we are looking at chances of some pop-up storms.
Now, probably a tenth of an inch to a quarter inch of rainfall with those.
None of them should be severe highs today, about 80 degrees.
Not bad.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
So we just got that warm front moving through now, cold front later, and the high pressure sits over us tomorrow and Thursday.
Nothing but sunshine, still sitting comfortable.
The humidity holds off until Friday, then it starts to ramp up as we go into the weekend, but still looking at chances of some heavy rain on Friday.
So that'll be a soaker.
Otherwise, the weekend looks too good.
It looks good.
weather at the moment.
Nothing too wild.
I'm enjoying
We are too.
It is fantastic.
All right.
Well, except for, you know, fighting off the mosquitoes, other than that.
We've got to complain about something.
You know, Gordy always complained about the fact that when we always have like a 30 or 40% chance of rain, they're just covering their ass, you know?
That's really...
But you know what?
I don't know,
And then it's sunny.
fantastic.
Florida weather, right?
Those three o'clock storms, and then they're gone by the evening.
Yeah, exactly.
All
day.
Thanks, guys.
That's our chief
This portion of the show brought to you by Virlo Mattress.
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Well, I'm sure, you know, they'll give me credit for this, you know, the sudden outpouring of demand for adjustable bed frames.
Okay.
Yeah, it's all due to you.
Not just for hospitals anymore.
I always say.
All right, let's listen to, I came across this.
Wow.
This isn't great.
Remember, we had those little portable TV sets.
Those little tiny
Today I'm toying with the tiny TV that lets you change the channel where the channels are your saved videos.
But it doesn't just play each file from the beginning like a media player, they start in the middle like you're watching a live broadcast.
The tiny TV too keeps track of how much time you've been watching, and whenever you change the channel, it starts the next video at the same time stamp so you can channel surf like a pro.
It even comes with its own tiny IR remote, a tiny 2-hour battery, and 8GB of storage for about 10 hours of video.
You charge and upload videos over USB-C, though you'll have to shrink them first on a desktop.
It's quick, but the app sadly doesn't let you queue up multiple videos at a time.
Oh, and you might want to remove the tiny remote's button battery as it tends to drain even if not in
And you upload the videos
not
It's
I don't know I for mumble
Yeah.
Yeah,
Coming up in a little while, we're going to talk to Jim Lipol from Madison Hearing Aid Center and get the latest there.
He's helped us out and you'll find out how you can help you out too if you have hearing problems.
It's coming up in our next half hour.
It's all coming up on John and Gordy in the morning.
Stay with us.
A beautiful day here.
We've got sunshine and temperatures in the mid sixties this morning.
Low humidity, but that humidity is going to climb.
We could be in for some scattered showers, maybe a thunderstorm popping up a little bit later on midday or early afternoon and highs in the low eighties for today.
But you know, we're talking about healthcare and we've been on this for a long, long time, you know.
begging the Democrats to bring this up make it a major issue part of their campaign And not react to it when everybody starts losing their health care when the Affordable Care Act subsidies start decreasing greatly But I do want to bring up the fact that Jim Carrey comedian Believes in universal health care at
least
Yeah, but he brought this up with Bill Maher
and he was talking about it the other day, well, a little while back anyway.
Can you look for, I guess last month, 218, cut 218, and Jim Carrey will be talking about ours, also have another cut as well, and this would be Trump talking about universal healthcare,
okay?
I grew up in Canada.
Okay, we
socialized medicine and I am here to tell you that this bullshit line that you get on all of the political shows from people is that it's a failure.
The system is a failure in Canada.
It is not a failure in Canada.
I never waited for anything in my life.
I chose my own doctors.
My mother never paid for a prescription.
It was fantastic.
And I just got back from Vancouver.
And I keep hearing this, like, Canadians are so nice.
Canadians are so nice.
They can be nice because they have health care.
Because they
have
a government that cares about them.
It doesn't say, see?
You can swim, pal.
Right.
Or you live in a box.
Okay.
This is an unrepublican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say no no the lower 25% they can't afford private but universal health care I am going to take care of everybody.
I don't care if it costs me votes or not Everybody's going to be taking care of much better than they're taking care of now
the uninsured person right is going to be taking
probably a deal
Universal health care.
That's what you just described.
So that was a long time ago.
Well, I'm surprised I didn't sue 60 minutes at that point.
Yeah, he's talking to Scott Pelley there.
Scott Pelley.
So I wonder if they edited that answer.
You never know.
Never complained about his answers being edited.
All right.
Now, I have a cut here.
This is cut 27, I believe also from last month.
It's a Canadian physician, Dr. Danielle Martin.
and talking about all the myths about universal healthcare in Canada.
And she talks it up.
You don't have that at all?
Not last month.
Okay, well, let's check out this month then, 27.
Check the files there.
All right.
Mad TV song, 27.
No, that's not it.
Hey, you know what?
I'll tell you what.
We'll look for that.
It might be in Mays, but why don't we play the Mad TV thing?
I've been promising this for the last three weeks.
Let's play
it.
All
listen.
words were never spoke or sung.
Hi, I'm Darlene McBride.
You know, I love this country the way it used to be.
Simple minded with simple values for simple people.
But then the big government, the Supreme Court and those bleeding heart liberals just couldn't leave well enough alone.
And now look at it, a big ugly melting pot just boiling over on what used to be a nice white stove.
I decided to launch my Take Back America tour across this great country.
I'll be coming to a city near you singing inspirational songs filled with traditional values.
The Lord loves the NRA.
He told me so the other
it out in bullets in the sky.
He's sitting up in heaven with his AK-47.
effect of illegal immigration on the overburdened health care system.
Well, here's my solution.
Yeah, well man
way
Did I pronounce that correctly?
You did, Gordy.
Thank you.
I practiced all night.
I can tell.
Jim is with Madison Hearing Aid Center.
You hear John and I talking about them.
And they're great service there.
And they're at 4706 Cottage Grove Road in Madison.
They do hearing aids.
And Jim, both John and I
came in for our various appointments with you and you set us up and I'll tell you, it's really been very helpful for me and I know John feels the same way.
We've got those hearing aids and now we don't use them when we're here
on the
Okay, so I'll start out.
I grew up in this field, so to speak.
My dad is a doctor of audiology and he was a professor at UW Eau Claire and we had a family practice and I can remember as a four-year-old kid being a test subject going way back into the early 80s and so
I've seen this field change and grow from screw adjustment hearing aids to hearing aids that amplified sounds but didn't make sounds clearer to now where we're sitting here going, if you've got a complaint, I've got a solution inside of that individual circuit.
So if you're sitting at the restaurant and you can't hear your wife across the table,
I've got a solution for that.
And it's very individualized.
And inside of those circuits, I'm able to adjust and do what I need to do with it so it's not set in stone.
The circuit's not set in stone.
But I got into this field because I love helping people.
And it's in my DNA, I guess, to... I work with my wife, Sarah, who's not with me this morning.
She was kind of under the weather.
But it's really about we look at this and go, how can we help people?
And everybody has a different unique need.
And that person doesn't come to me because they want hearing aids.
They come to me because they want help.
And it's about hearing that grandchild.
It's about hearing their friend at the bar.
It's about hearing their minister at the church.
It's
about
just enjoying the people again.
And oftentimes it's not really about the person.
It's about the spouse, it's about the child, it's about the grandchild, and they realize, you know what, I can't hear, but I'm gonna do this for the people that love me.
And that's really the reason why I've been doing this my whole life.
I took over Madison Hearing Aid Center a few years ago.
I worked with my dad and was trained underneath my dad to do this for a long time, but every person is special.
And that's what makes us different.
Sarah and I take great care of, you know, everybody's coming in for a different reason.
And that is, my job is to understand that reason and how I can help that person, not just on the day that I test them or the day that I fit them with their hearing aids, but for the life of that hearing aid.
And that's really important because when they're out and about and their hearing aid stops working, who's there for them?
me
and
you
everybody has access to Bluetooth through your hearing aid.
And it really has helped dramatically because it's just an easy flow.
You can answer phones, you can listen to a room full of people and hear your friend at the same time.
You can even watch TVs.
If you're in a sports bar and they have different shows, you can focus in on one particular television and ignore your friends at the table.
You can do all those different things.
And it's just an amazing thing with AI helping you out as well.
You know, it's just, it's changed the world of hearing aids into something now that you can wear all the time and be happy with.
Yeah.
It's really, you know, with the, with the apps on the phones, I take that as an individual basis too.
Not everybody is ready for connecting their phones to their hearing aids.
Some people don't want to.
And you don't need the app.
to control the hearing aid.
A lot of the times you've got adjustments on the hearing aids themselves, but I take that as an individual basis.
I look at the app as kind of like a Swiss Army knife for helping a person when they're struggling in that noisy situations.
Not all hearing aids are created equal and I'm not managed by any one of the hearing aid manufacturers.
So I can fit and look at you need this circuit because of this or you need that because of this reason and really take that and say, all right,
this is the direction that we're going to go in with you.
My patients are very successful because of that journey.
Yeah,
Yeah, we'll talk about some of the different hearing aids that you offer and maybe the different situations that you've encountered along the way.
Sounds good.
With your various customers.
And again, we're talking with Jim LePaul from Madison Hearing Aid Center.
We'll continue the conversation with John and Gordy in the morning in just a minute or two.
Stay with us.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Sunshine highs in the 80s and maybe a shower or thunderstorm popping up briefly a little bit later on, but looking great.
this morning.
We're continuing our conversation with Jim Lipold from Madison Hearing Aid Center.
And Jim, we were talking during the break here about some of the, some of your customers that you've had over the years.
And you know, I think a lot of people assume that mainly older people that are coming to you, but you said that's not really the case now.
There's a lot of younger people that are coming to you.
What, why is that?
I
think the perception of hearing aids of the past.
So you
When I was a kid, you'd hear the hearing aids squealing 30 yards away.
And
people didn't want to wear them, because what we talked about before, it amplified the sounds, but it really didn't clarify what you were trying to listen to, and it couldn't separate the speech from the noise.
Well, in the old days, they were big and clunky, too.
Now I'm looking at it going, and I asked somebody in their 30s the other day.
Because they have a lot of patients now in their 30s and their 40s.
And I said, something's changed over my career because I've been doing this long enough now.
The perception, I asked this younger person, why you didn't wait?
She said, why would I wait?
Just like wearing glasses, you want to see the world.
Going down the street, you want to hear things around you.
That's what makes life life.
And she said,
Hearing aids are a really cool tech device now.
It's not like in the past where you just put them on and you struggle with them.
Now it's the world's at your fingertips with the apps and the technology that the manufacturers have put in them is absolutely unbelievable.
The hearing aids in some of the manufacturers are faster than the auditory cortex in your brain.
So the hearing sounds like what you remember when you were a lot younger.
So now these people are sitting there going,
Why would I want to waste my life and struggle with hearing where everybody's frustrating with me when I can do something about it and be excited about it?
And I often do this test where I'm around a lot of noise and my patients hear better and understand better in those noisy situations than I do with normal hearing.
And I
have normal hearing.
So that's one of the reasons why I'm seeing a lot, a lot of younger people come into my office and they've heard good things about me.
they come in a lot of my businesses referrals.
Well, I noticed when I came in, I mean, you spent a lot of time with with me asking a lot of different questions about hearing situations and you know, and it wasn't just filling out a form and doing the doing the audio test.
But there were a lot of questions that I hadn't really thought about where
where I really had problems with hearing, like in restaurants and big crowds and all of that.
So it really took the time to understand where I was coming from and what my experience was.
And you picked the right, you know, I mean, we tried several different types of hearing aids, but boy, I'm really happy with what we have
here,
Right, exactly.
You know, I've used mine to watch movies at home.
Now I have a great beautiful sound system in my house, but I get to listen to the sound system instead of Bluetoothing into the, you know, the hearing aids.
I can hear the sound much better, the vocals much better.
I mean, you can tune it to that.
It's the clarity.
The
It's the clarity of all of this.
easier.
It's not about just making things louder,
it's
making things...
clearer so that you're not struggling and frustrated.
Things shouldn't be too loud, but they should be clear.
It
me.
It's unbelievable when I look at this and I go,
Wow.
Here I'm sitting here and going, well, you have a high frequency loss.
Things still sound a little bit too tinny.
Let's bring that down just a little bit so it's comfortable.
And that's all we need to do.
And then the hearing aids start to self-learn and everything else.
And it just kind of goes from there.
Now, not every hearing aid does that, but certain hearing aids do.
The thing about Sarah and I, we really strive to make this about the patient and the patient's journey from day one until the end of time with us.
When somebody needs something, you can get in to see us.
When you need a test, we try to get you in within a week or two.
So you don't have to, you don't have to wait to get in.
And then after that, it's followups.
If you need a repair or something else, you don't have to wait weeks or months.
Sometimes I'm hearing places going out now, seven months to get
in.
My patients.
can get in when they need to see
a reasonable amount of time.
that you brought it
Yeah.
The younger people are seeing this as, hey, this is cool.
It's a cool tech device.
And they're designed to look beautiful.
Yeah.
Or give us a call.
So wait 249-4077.
Just call us.
If I don't answer, leave a message because I might be with somebody.
We're old school that way.
So we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
John.
Thanks, Gordy.
have a
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