#139 Healthcare, Therapy, and the Senate with Dan Osborn

Fixing healthcare is simple: More people need preventative, conservative care earlier.

But getting to this fix is a massively complex web of structural policy choices. The reality is that our modern healthcare system often misaligns incentives, rewarding the management of chronic sickness over the investment in wellness. We've seen a shift toward market consolidation, where vertically integrated monopolies-both in insurance and hospital systems-drive up prices while limiting choice.

It's this playbook-which includes a lack of site-neutrality, high specialist payments, and insufficient transparency-that has allowed consolidated systems to post record revenues, even as:

• Medicaid is cut
• Insurance premiums are up
• Rural hospitals close
• Frontline workers experience burnout and higher suicide rates.
• The US pays the most in the world for healthcare, without the leading outcomes to show for it.

As therapy providers, we have watched as our common-sense bills collect dust. Our care is denied, our expenses are skyrocketing, and our reimbursement is stagnant because Medicare budgets are squeezed and commercial rates are failing to close the gap. We're fighting red tape to provide simple telehealth, while "AI Therapist" expands with a fraction of our professional oversight.

That's why I wanted to have U.S. Senate Candidate Dan Osborn on the podcast. I wanted to talk about therapy in the Senate. Why aren't we making true progress? How do we move our bills forward? And what does it take to tackle these structural failures 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Fixing healthcare is simple. More people need preventative, conservative care earlier. But getting to this fix is a massively complex web of structural policy choices. The reality is that our modern healthcare system often misaligns incentives, rewarding the management of chronic sickness over investment in wellness. We've seen a shift towards market consolidation where vertically integrated monopolies, both in insurance and hospital systems, drive up prices while limiting choice. It's this playbook, which includes a lack of site neutrality, high specialist payments, and a lack of transparency that has allowed these consolidated systems to post record revenues, even as Medicaid is cut, insurance premiums are up, rural hospitals are closing, frontline workers are experiencing burnout and higher suicide rates. And the US pays the most in the world for healthcare without leading outcomes to show for it. As therapy providers, we have watched as our common sense bills collect dust in the Senate. Our care is denied, our expenses are skyrocking, and our reimbursement is stagnant. And on top of all this, we are constantly fighting red tape, for example, to simply provide telehealth to our clients. Meanwhile, quote unquote AI therapists are entering the market with a fraction of our professional oversight. All of this is why I wanted to have U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborne, an independent from Nebraska, on the podcast. I wanted to talk about therapy in the Senate. Why aren't we making true progress? How do we move our bills forward? And what does it take to really tackle these structural failures? We have so much to get to today, so let's dive in. Welcome to the OT Potential Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Lyon, OTRL, and I wanted to let you know that this podcast may qualify as continuing education for you. You are probably listening to this podcast on a free podcast platform, but to gain CEU credit, you will need to be a member of the OT Potential Club, our OT Continuing Education platform. You can go to OTPotential.com to learn more. Okay, here we go. As I mentioned at the top, joining us today is Dan Osborne. Dan is running for U.S. Senate in the state of Nebraska with the goal of bringing Nebraskan values to Washington. Following in his father's footsteps, Dan joined the United States Navy and served for four years aboard the USS Constellation, completing two Western Pacific deployments and two Rim of the Pacific deployments. After his time in the Navy, Dan continued his service in the Army National Guard. To ensure stability for his family, Dan began work as an industrial mechanic at the Kellogg's plant in Omaha in 2004. Working long hours, he made a middle-class living for himself, his wife Megan, and their three children. Dan rose to the presidency of his union there. He led the successful 2021 Kellogg strike in Omaha, defeating efforts to slash benefits and guaranteeing the factory rooming open through 2026. He currently lives in Omaha with his wife and children. So without further ado, I will patch Dan into our live studio. Dan, welcome to OT Potential. It's so great to have you.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

I am so thankful to be having this conversation today. I got to see you at my first town hall ever. I went in Aurora, Nebraska. You were here to visit uh like a month ago. And I was just surprised as I was listening to hear you speak. Like the things you were talking about were actually things that we talk about on the podcast all the time. Like, how do we set policies that um serve just everyday people in healthcare? It just, I feel like we are constantly hitting our head against the wall as therapists. Like we know that we have these like common sense solutions, but the systems um just don't incentivize us a lot of times to provide like the pillars of health. Instead, we see people too late when they're too sick, like the system is just not incentivized the right way. And then the other thing that we have to talk about a lot on the podcast is we have these big corporations that feels like we're always up against. And uh it feels to me like they tend to be bending the rules towards themselves or skipping the rules. Whereas we we as like frontline healthcare workers, like we have to abide by the rules, and it feels like we are constantly losing out. Um, and we are seeing our patients suffer because of that. So those are kind of the big picture things that we'll talk about today. We have a lot of details to talk about. Um, but I just want to start hearing your story again. Um, and as I was sitting in that town hall, I was just feeling I want to like use the word, I want to say like not terrified. I was feeling the power differential of like, you are going up against a candidate that has um a lot of wealth, like 8.2 billion is the family wealth. And I'm like, that is someone 82,000 times wealthier than the average working person. That power differential feels almost scary. Like, what motivates you to uh be in this race to take on that kind of power differential?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

We're doing this because we're trying to give a voice to the voiceless, essentially, right? Less than 2% of our elected officials in both the House and Senate come from, you know, the wage-earning class of people. We're just simply not represented in our own government. And I feel like Congress should reflect its people. Uh, but right now it certainly uh seems to be, well, it is a country club of millionaires that work for billionaires or uh billionaires that work for other billionaires. And uh, you know, uh I'm certainly fed up with it. And the fact that, you know, my daughter, she's 23 years old, and she's like, Dad, I don't think I'm gonna be able to be a homeowner. You know, this was when I was making my decision uh whether I was going to run or not. Uh, you know, because they know this this generation knows the average first-time home buyer is 40 years old, and the the average mean home in the United States is over$400,000. And they have this sense of uh almost financial nihilism. And uh, you know, that's been created by this transfer of wealth that we've seen in this country uh that certainly has been expedited by COVID and now this big, beautiful bill. So uh that's why we're doing it. I've taken on uh millions of dollars before in the form of Kellogg's. I'm I'm not afraid to get out there and fight for what's right for working people.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

We're going to really zoom in on healthcare today, but I just wanted to start high-level, a little zoomed out. Um, and like you said, it just feels like on each issue, big money, the wealth of a few is winning out when I just look at everything and I'm like, this all seems fixable. Like, why can't we close the loopholes in our tax code? Why can't we deliver better health care? I can tell you, we totally know how to deliver bigger healthcare. Why can't we do it? Why am I sitting here worried about uh my kids and their screen time? Like, why do these corporations feel like they get to work around the rules a lot of times? Like, why across the board um is this happening? Why does it feel like we're losing on all fronts to money?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Well, it's a scam. And uh and and this is how the scam works. And this is why, you know, uh Congress is a country club, because uh through Citizens United, that states corporations are people, money is free speech, and you can donate an unlimited amount of money to an independent expenditure of a campaign. That is how uh the billionaires are able to donate$300 million to a campaign, and then they get keys to the White House. You know, this is uh corruption at its finest. And if you want to work in Washington, DC, uh up until this point, and hopefully we can change that in November with an Osborne win, uh, because we don't take corporate PAC money. I don't I don't want to do their bidding, I want to do this the way this was intended 250 years ago in this great American experiment. It's a government buying for the people. And right now it simply is a government for the corporations and and the 1%. And so uh the money interest gets people elected. When it costs a hundred million dollars to run for U.S. Senate in Texas, Montana, Florida, Ohio, just to name a few, you know, this is uh this is what you're left with. And this is the government uh and it's this pay-to-play world. But uh I I the reason why I get up every day is is really to change that. Because when we can change that, then you're gonna be left with candidates who uh can operate based off of principles, not party bosses, and based off of who got them elected there. Uh by that I mean the voters.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

It feels like as voters, there's a lot of us. And it feels like we keep voting for people who um have a lot of money or uh are being paid a lot of money through these campaigns. Why don't we just why do we keep voting that way? Are we being are we being uh tricked or like what's going on? Why are we doing this?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah, you you mentioned the algorithm. The algorithm is very real. And you know, Mark Zuckerberg even said it himself. They they don't even try to operate in the shadows, they do it wide out in the open. They they said, I I we want our kids addicted to our algorithm, you know, you know, speaking in the voice of Mark Zuckerberg. And uh, you know, it's it's very difficult as parents or even as consumers of media ourselves addicted to our phones to break free of said algorithm. And for me, it's it's all about accountability. It's holding AI companies accountable with guardrails, it's it's holding, you know, social media uh algorithm, social media uh driven that uh we all, if you get pulled over, we all live life by rules and we're held accountable for our actions and and they are too. But it all goes back. You can almost that is what's so important about campaign finance is every single issue that we talk about, almost every single issue you can relate back to campaign finance and where the money comes from. And so if uh you know Facebook gives my opponent, you know,$10 million, that's$10 million more in ads you're going to see on TV trying to influence you the way you think. Uh they'll use both negative ads against uh me and then positive ads for the opponent. And hopefully you'll see enough ads where you can get fooled.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Part of our problem is campaign finance. I already had someone say in the live comments, just think of all the people that we could feed with these millions of dollars. That just goes back to like our problems are totally fixable. Uh, and it feels like we just need to decide as a society that we want to fix them. Thinking of uh swinging a little bit towards healthcare, um, I wanted to start with one of the big issues that we are seeing right now. Um, and this is an issue of vertical integration, okay, kind of hand in hand. One, more and more of our healthcare dollars are going towards these administrative middlemen. Um, less and less are going towards actual healthcare workers. I live in a farming community and I also see this this is like a broader story, too. Like less and less of the farming dollar is going to actual farmers. It's going to these middlemen. Uh, these big corporations are just figuring out how to capture more and more of the spend. And they do that through something called vertical integration, where they uh learn to control different parts of healthcare delivery. This feels like a big problem for us. It feels like something I cannot tackle as an individual healthcare provider. It feels like something that we need Congress to be looking at and to making, be making some decisions on. Like, do we want all the power consolidated to these uh middlemen? And I just know from the research, it'd be awesome. I would be, I'm like, I'd be okay if this was happening and it meant we had better healthcare. But no, we do not have as good. It means our health care is not as good. We have less choice and it's more expensive. What are your thoughts on this vertical integration reality and what can be done from thinking of it from a congressional level?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah, I think we have to go back to uh the turn of the century uh in the 1900s and the Teddy Roosevelt style of government uh breaking up monopolies, right? They saw we saw it in the meat packing industries, which were there again. So this isn't the first time we've faced this in the country, uh, but you know, it it does go back to our elections and electing the right people that are going to champion these ideas. And, you know, you mentioned the ag sector farmers uh and ranchers, they have to buy from monopolies, their inputs, they sell to monopolies, uh, the exports, you know, the trucking, uh all the the entire system is uh vertically integrated. So basically, when you go to the grocery store to buy the finished product in uh in the form of a steak, we're seeing what we're seeing now. And then there's just a ridiculous amount of money that it costs to buy beef for your family. Healthcare is absolutely no different. That's exactly what they're doing. They're owning the doctor's offices, uh, the pharmaceutical companies, the hospitals, you know, all the way down to uh remote uh if you if you need a nurse care at your home. Like they're they're owning the entire system. That's not a free market. That's a rigged market. Uh, you know, and and this is uh capitalism and free market. This is a this is an idea, uh an economic idea that works, but it has to favor competition. And right now it's not a free market, it's a rigged market by monopolies. So we're paying the price in so many of our industries, and whether it's agriculture, healthcare, all the way down to youth sports, veterinarian care. I mean, we're seeing it across the board. And Congress could fix this tomorrow if they so chose to. Uh, and so we need to start working together with both Republicans and Democrats and independents, uh, and start fighting for consumer protection issues. And and healthcare, I mean, you could argue, is a consumer protection, right? Uh uh we we have to be protected from from these people who are trying to profit off of just us being sick.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

We uh in healthcare, um, as frontline workers, we feel this squeeze so deeply, the middlemen taking more and more. We have less and less. Um, we are just functioning working class, um, a lot of us living paycheck to paycheck. And then another thing that we have just been devastated about as therapists is our cut to Medicaid. We know that 50% of people who receive Medicaid are children. These are the people on our caseloads. And we've just been devastated about this. Like we have cut so much from Medicaid. Um, and we just feel that. What are your thoughts on cutting these our safety nets as these corporations post these record profits? Why are we letting that happen?

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Yeah, again, it goes back to this pay-to-play world. And it goes back to night, and I think, you know, my opponent, uh Ricketts, he embodies everything that's wrong with politics. He's going to be for the corporations. You know, Robin Williams, the late comedian, said it best that our politicians should be wearing NASCAR jackets, Apaches, their sponsors, so we know how they're going to vote, and we know what kind of legislation they're going to create and get behind. Well, and what we're seeing is uh I'm pretty sure uh occupation therapists aren't listed on these NASCAR jackets anywhere, which they should be, and they'll they'll be listed on mine because this is where we've gotten ourselves into. But we can course correct this. We, you know, again, it starts with elections. I want to keep hounding that, so get out and vote. But yeah, it's uh you shouldn't have to ask yourself, am I sick enough or is my kid sick enough to go to the doctor because I have them am I deductible yet? Uh, and and then you can go into lifelong medical debt. And I know a lot of nurses, and they have some of the worst health care in the in the country, and they're the ones taking care of the rest of us. Like the the whole system is backwards, it's not designed to uh keep us healthy, to have preventative maintenance or medicine that that we can afford being able to get to the doctor or the dentist or your eye doctor. Uh it's it's designed to turn a profit. So it is working. This system is working exactly the way it's designed to work, and that's to turn a profit for United Healthcare CEOs.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and the stats, like I said at the beginning, are really clear. We're paying the most in the world, and we do not have the leading outcomes to show for it. And uh, as people working the system, it is just devastating to see um that happen every day and happen to our caseloads and also to just see how fixable it is. Like there are so many common steps. Feels like there's so much we could do to make the system better. Something that I heard you talk about at the town hall was um what's happening at the VA. Uh, I know for most everyday people, that's probably not where we receive our health care. But I feel like it's a story that we should be paying attention to as a therapist. Like when I hear the VA, I'm just like, ooh, that is where we want to work because we get to work at the top of our license a lot of times. Like we're on, we get to be embedded in these teams. When we're working in private insurance, like insurance really limits what we can do as therapists. Um, we're really constrained there. Whereas the VA, um, we get to do what's right for the patient. We get to spend our time that way. And uh the VA historically has had uh some of the best outcomes in the United States to chauffeur that because they deliver that holistic care. I didn't realize until I heard you speak, like, there's a lot of privatization, though, happening at the VA. Um, and they're starting to see uh worse outcomes because of this privatization. Um, can you just speak a little bit more to that situation there? Like my eyes were opened to it just listening to that town hall, and I would just love to hear you describe what's going on there again.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's messed up. It's you know, Wall Street looking at the VA and uh seeing not seeing the veterans that are receiving care, especially, you know, veterans who are are combat veterans, whether it's mental health care or whether it's burn pit victims. Uh, nobody knows how to treat a veteran like the veterans' affairs. So they're trying to privatize it, they're trying to piecemeal it, similar to what they're trying to do with the post office right now, where they said they pick and choose the pieces that are profitable, and then they'll shove the rest of it into some other government bureaucracy, and then they keep cash in their checks. And then meanwhile, uh veterans are are having to go to other rural hospitals that are already burdened through the cut from Medicaid and Medicare. And we're seeing that across the board. Uh, we're seeing hospitals shut down, we're seeing people have to drive 90 miles for dialysis every day. And, you know, that is the crisis that we're in on healthcare, and it's going to continue to get worse. But Veterans Care is a prime example of how uh an organization can be successful, you know, a lot of people see that as a threat, uh, especially the people that just want to uh profit off other people being sick. And so to me, uh being a veteran myself and knowing a lot of veterans who utilize uh the VA, I was talking to a guy the other day. They cut uh, well, first of all, they cut the contract. For the people that work for the VA. And over 70%, if I'm not mistaken, might be higher of people that work at the VA are veterans themselves. And they came in and they cut their contracts with AFGIA, the federal government workers. And that's a travesty within itself. But I was talking to a veteran who got so much from going to yoga class there because he was able to stretch his body and and move it in a way that you normally wouldn't unless you can get trained in the art of yoga. And they cut that class. And you know, that's what they're that's what they're doing. They're they're gutting it, they're cutting it, they want it to be broken, so then they can privatize it and uh there's nothing anybody can do about it. But this is this is something definitely Congress should be paying attention to because when you ask somebody to sign on the dotted line and potentially pay the ultimate price for the country that they love, then you should absolutely take care of that person and their healthcare needs for the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah, it is such a good example to me of like we know what good healthcare looks like. And we've even had it here in our country at the VA. Um, it's that holistic, it's team-based care and therapy. We're always like, you look at those foundations of health, like, are you sleeping? Are you exercising? Are you able to participate in uh the leisure activities or activities that give you a sense of purpose and social connection? Um, and then on top of that, you layer on your uh kind of condition-specific considerations. And I'm always like, that sounds simple and it's so tempting to cut those things, but those are not easy to deliver. Like well-coordinated foundational care like that truly is amazing. So when we see it being delivered at a place like the VA, it's such just a travesty to see that cut. Um, and they cut what?

SPEAKER_00 24:11

They cut uh non-essential workers. Uh name one single person at a hospital that's non-essential, whether you're doing maintenance on an MRI machine or you're an occupational therapist or you're changing bed sheets. Like every job in that place is absolutely essential. And to, I mean, it it is. It's it's basically an attack on the institution by Wall Street. We've seen this play out in so many industries over and over and over again. And uh it's Congress's job to stop it.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Mm-hmm. Something I always think about with the VA too. Um, in the world of private health care, we have these terrible systems called our EHRs, our electronic health records. And that's what the doctor is staring at the whole time as he's as he's talking to you. And these are built around billing. They are built so the doctor gets paid. And in the VA, you've historically had these EHRs that are built around coordinated care, like they're built for patient care. And then I just read that they're trying to get rid of that old EHR and sub in a private company that the rest of us are like, oh my goodness, no, like we know how terrible that is. So to your point, it just feels like the things we know work are getting cut so certain people can make money.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah. Well, I'm glad to know the doctor was looking at EHR, not just, I thought maybe he was just watching TikTok videos.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

And that. Um okay. I want to spend part of this time just asking your advice as therapists. We play by so many rules, um, which we kind of love like we appreciate the rules, but we have a lot of them. And we have like maybe five to seven, what we think of as like common sense bills that have just been sitting in conference Congress and uh they don't get any traction. I'm just going to say a couple of them out loud. Uh, for if anyone's like interested in digging into this, uh, they can go to our show notes and they can look at these specific bills. I don't want to like get into each bill like uh specifically here, but more just talk about set use this to talk about advocacy. But for example, something we have a bill as therapists that would allow us to consistently provide telehealth. Like right now, telehealth is being approved like cycle by cycle, and we're having lapses. Like when the government shut down as therapists, we were not able to provide telehealth, which is just like we have um businesses built around this. This is how we provide access to rural people. Um, this just makes sense that we should be able to provide telehealth. For us as OTs, we have mental health um training. And but we are constantly getting denied uh our care is denied if the diagnosis is just a mental health diagnosis. So I'm like, there's a ton of lip service being paid to the shortage of mental health care workers. We're like, there's 200,000 of us. Please just let us provide services to people with mental health conditions. That's always getting denied. Uh, we have a bill about that. We recently had a federal loan cap along with other professions. Um, there's always a lot of lip service to concerns about our uh healthcare work care short shortage, but they are capping what we can borrow. I talked to one of my friends who's a program director, and she has multiple students who uh got accepted, were planning to come, and then had to back out because they did not get these federal loans that students in the past have um had. The other thing, there's sorry, I'm just like uh these just all feel important to say. We have another bill that would allow people to uh see it's called opting out of Medicare. A lot of therapists, like if you're private pay right now, you can't opt out of Medicare to see these therapists. It's like this weird rule. Um, and you can do that with other professions, like you could go see a private, um, other private pay professionals, but for some reason in therapy, we can't do that. So we just have this laundry list of common sense bills. We only have like one or two lobbyists, we don't have that much money. We are going up against these one huge healthcare entities, like there's healthcare, and then there's these other just like huge players in the health space. We are not able to get in the ears of senators um based on money. Like we are just losing, losing, losing. How do we advance these common sense issues?

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Yeah, uh, it's just be loud. Uh, you know, I think, and here's how you do it. Like, I I'm sick and tired of politicians draping themselves in the American flag, calling them patriot, calling themselves patriots, and saying, we love our veterans, we love our our our uh servicemen and women, and then they turn around and and put a dagger in their back when it comes to voting on veterans issues, uh not supporting burn pit victims, uh 9-11 firefighters, the list goes on and on. They want us, they uh and you mentioned the word lip service, and they do the same thing with our healthcare professionals. We love our nurses and our healthcare professionals, they're so important to our society. And then they turn around and they still do the same thing over and over again, and that's support uh the CEO of the healthcare companies and and what they want, because it again goes back to this pay-to-play world that we're living in. So uh we do it through our stories and our storytelling. Uh, if you're if you're watching this and you're an OT professional and and you're trying to help somebody in the mental health space, tell their story. Tell them how you you should have been able to help this person and you weren't able to, or how you helped them anyway, uh, you know, regardless of the system that we're stuck in this doom loop in. And and attach yourself to uh other influencers, I suppose, to help get those stories out. Because these are the the the this is how we make it real, is uh whether the story ends in a tragedy or whether it ends in success, we need these stories to be told uh because this is this is real life. And uh a U.S. senator who's in the back pocket of a pharmaceutical company needs to hear this story because maybe, uh, just maybe uh we can put enough pressure by calling their office, emailing uh constantly, telling these stories that uh will get people to start doing the right things uh in in in Congress, in the in the House and the Senate to stop just providing this lip service. And then uh, you know, maybe uh the Jon Stewarts of the world or other influencers that have the ear of the senators can uh, you know, actually get to the halls of power and tell their stories directly to these senators because you're right. Uh, you know, I think I mentioned pharmaceutical companies have three lobbyists for every one person in Congress, over 1,500 lobbyists. And so what do you get if you have that that many lobbyists? Well, you get the you know, you know, the the drug companies making record profits, and then they they pedal their their drugs on TV in the form of commercials that they actually get a tax break for. And that's why we see so many of those commercials. So our our priorities are are backwards with so many uh issues in this country. The fact that in Nebraska, there's people that don't have clean drinking water, they have to buy drinking water from Walmart, and we're spending a billion dollars a day in Iran. That to me, the our priorities are mixed up. And uh this is certainly occupational therapy and healthcare. This certainly falls right in line with what we're seeing over and over again. But we got to tell our stories.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

I always say to therapists, I'm like, together with OTPT, SLP mental health therapists, there's two million of us in this country. And part of this system is uh to make us feel like those individual voices don't matter, but together, I totally think they do. Um I think it's such a good reminder to keep talking. And we do have great stories. Like um, I am amazed every day by the work that therapists are doing um and the complexity that they are tackling. One of the things I wanted to be sure to talk about was a huge, well, one is therapists, we're like fighting in this like complex medical system right now, but there's this huge other thing happening that is brand new in the past couple of years. We in our industry have one of the ways that AI is coming in is that it is presenting itself as like a quote unquote AI therapist. And um, these are like chatbots that are, oh my goodness, chat bots that are online. And for us, that raises so many flags because they are presenting themselves. A therapist is a medical, like that's a medical title. They are using this medical title and they do not have the accountability that we have. Um, there are so many ways that I could get my license taken away, like to the point where it's almost silly how much, how many ways I could have my license taken away. And we see these big corporations that are trying to come in with these AI therapists and do part of our work, but there's no consumer protection built in. How do we like leverage AI, but also provide guardrails and protections? Um, I know this is a cross-industry topic. Um, how are you thinking about that right now?

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yeah, it's uh, well, AI is two parts. Well, and all these giant tech companies, I suppose it's all looped in around data centers too, like the physical data centers is certainly a topic that I hear a lot of going across Nebraska. The dangers to uh the power grid uh as well as our our uh Ogallala aquifer, the water, and then the land it sits on. Uh noise pollution, you know, I've heard I've heard uh a lot of complaints about data centers. But to answer your question specifically, do there's a ton of concerns about or around AI. And, you know, this goes into uh, you know, algorithm-driven social media as well. I like it to a microwave oven that we all have in our kitchen. In order for that microwave oven, which has tiny little nuclear explosions inside of it to heat your food, it goes through a tremendous amount of scrutiny and guardrails. Those are those are put into place to make sure that your kitchen doesn't explode when you're trying to heat up last night's cheeseburger. So those exist in a microwave oven, but yet there's so many dangers to AI and social media, to our children, to ourselves, uh, for the and and and being able to identify the dangers of all these to our society that it creates, and putting those guardrails in place. Again, something Congress could be working on tomorrow and get done fairly quickly if they could just find a way to agree. And then also, but we don't we don't want to stifle the industry either, right? We know AI is here, it's growing. Uh, we're not going to stop it. Uh, nor I don't know that we want to, because there is a lot of advancements that can help human beings. But again, identifying the ways it can be advance humankind, uh as well as putting the guardrails on the stuff that's going to be damaging for us. That's something that needs to happen yesterday because uh it is advancing very quickly. And people are afraid of it. And as well, they they should be. And, you know, especially folks in rural areas that I talk to where these data centers are going up. People live in rural areas because they want to. Teachers want to be teachers because they want to educate children, right? Occupational therapists and nurses and doctors, they would just want to help people. And, you know, that's that's the essence of all of this. But what AI represents to, you know, those those rural folks and a lot of these social media platforms, they represent a way of life that they're they're not into. They, again, they live out there because they want to, they like the slow pace of it, they like the small schools for their children. And AI represents this unknown entity that could change all of it for them overnight if we don't do it right. So we need members of Congress who understand the the dangers of this and they're not going to take uh that money. For example, uh artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency are big outside spenders in my race and they're coming in for rickets, they're gonna run negative ads because they know that uh I'm not gonna play ball with them. I I want guardrails that make sense. I'm I I don't want to, but on the flip side of that coin, I don't want to stifle the industry either because if we over-legislate it, what we're gonna find is well, they're just gonna go operate in China or someplace else. So we want to be leaders of the industry, but again, find a way that uh identify what's gonna be good for us and what's gonna be bad for us, legislate it that way. Common sense should be.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

But it all goes back to the money.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Yep. We totally feel that in healthcare where we're like, oh my goodness, thank goodness there's so much that AI can help us with. Like it can help us with our notewriting, it can help us with our research. Uh, we're really excited about these tools. We want parts of this to advance just as quickly as possible. Like we see how this will help us deliver better care to our patients. Um, but we also want to get rid of or put guardrails on some of the potential sleecey things that are totally going to happen are already.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

And one of the guardrails I I think in your industry is to always have that human element involved. Because the second you take the human beings out of it and you leave it completely up to AI, well, what happens? I got a splinter in my big toe. How do I get it out? And oh, I gotta, I gotta chop it off. That's what it's telling me to do. You know, like there has to be a human being to interfere uh with the artificial intelligence because it's not always right.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Yep. Yeah, and it feels like in a lot of ways, our society is at the point where it's like we have a choice to make about what we want our future to look like. And when we wake up from heaven forbid we have a stroke, do we want a person there or do we want a robot there? Either few we could go in either reality, probably. Uh, and we have a choice to make about do we want, do we continue to want to have a person in the loop in healthcare? And I think a lot of us would say yes. But that's a decision point that we'll probably have in our lifetimes because so many things will become possible, which is pretty mind-bending to think about.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Yeah, yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

Something I wanted to ask on behalf of therapists, like, we are just we're working on the ground, we're seeing that there's only so much that we can do individually, person to person. Like we got into this because we love this work, but we see how much this work is stifled by these systems. And at some point in our careers, we're usually like, wouldn't it be easier to just try to change the system? And I know multiple therapists that are interested in running for public office, whether that's school board, whether that's at the state level, whether that's at the national level. You've been running a campaign as just a working class person. Honestly, lots of the signals tell us that's not possible. As you alluded to, the money that it takes to run in some places. What would you say to therapists who want to run for public office? What's the advice that you would give to them?

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Yeah, well, I would say you got to dive in, you know. Uh I hate jumping into cold water. Uh, but you know, I I know uh once you dive in a few minutes later, you're used to the temperature. It's it's the same thing. It's a scary prospect. Uh, but uh, you know, there's there's not too many uh success stories in in in again, going back to our storytelling in our past in this country, there's not too many success stories that doesn't involve this level of risk. Um, so you have to be willing to take on the risk to be successful. But running for office also, win or lose, is is a temporary thing, you know, in the in the drop of the the bucket of life. You know, if you win, if you if you decide to run and and you lose, you just go back to work and say, hey, I gave it the old college try, or maybe you win. And and that's that's the difference that uh individuals can make, uh, collaps especially collectively, if if an if enough of us start to run. And uh, you know, I'm starting to see that around the country too. A lot of uh people, working class people stepping up like, oh, I saw this Osborne guy doing in Nebraska. Like, this is possible. Uh it's it's certainly uh harder road to take uh if you're not a self-funding billionaire to run for office as your fun little vanity project. You actually want to help people, it is fundamentally uh harder. But uh it it's it's it's also fulfilling in a way, too, right? You get to go out and talk to people and learn about all the different issues that people face, and then and then hopefully uh in November we'll have a win. And then you get to start making decisions that will affect people positively and their lives, and and that's what I'm really excited to go do. But uh those can't be accomplished from the outside and going on uh and complaining in uh chat rooms on the internet. Uh you know, we we we have to change uh our our societies from the inside and and continually prove over and over again with my race or uh uh city council race, whatever it is uh people are interested in doing, that the that the money interests aren't gonna get a the last say in all this. It's it's up to us because there are more voters than there are billionaires. And so people just need to stop ignoring the ads or start ignoring the ads, I suppose. And uh you know, do the research for themselves on candidates and go out and cast your vote. And uh for the people that are are are thinking about running, do it. You know, it it it is it is very fulfilling. It's it can be hard and scary, but at the end of the day, your phone is going to be full of contacts of people that you can help. And that's that's what gets me up uh every day doing this.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

And then uh you know my campaign uh can be re you know reach out to us osbourneforsenna.com reach out to us and see if there's uh a way we can help you know guide through the process I can totally see therapists taking on the logistics of um running uh we're so used to like encountering really complex topics and digging in and being like okay here's this complex topic what's the simplest solution that makes the most sense like I just think we would have a great mind for this um and we're used to we have kind of a broad scope so we're used to like uh looking across issues and conditions and I just think that we would be good at like looking at the wide array of video yeah you're good problem solvers yeah and solving problems pro solving problems in real time uh that are extremely difficult so yeah are you to uh be naturals at it yeah I think one of the things I kind of alluded to this at the beginning and I would just love your advice on it we're used to doing this like in our work setting, you know, at our hospital uh uh we're used to like uh advocating for people, standing up for them, tackling complex problems, but you think about doing that publicly and that just brings a different feel to it. Like I think in my own community even there's things I want to uh stand up for but I don't want my kids to be targeted or I don't know it just feels different when it's public. How do you think of that and uh any advice for people who are thinking about taking this problem solving skill into the public arena?

SPEAKER_00 46:15

Yeah um well I would uh I would challenge people to uh think of an unelected official uh that they don't know personally and be able to name their kids like uh I'm I'm sure Ricketts has kids I don't I don't know their names you know or or yeah like John Bacon I don't know who his wife is or Mike Flood I don't know his family uh you know it's just not common knowledge uh you know I think there are levels to politics where people will play dirty pool and I think my opponent is one of those he's shown that throughout the years that that he has no scruples in going after families and people on a personal level to obtain power that's real and that exists and and that is certainly something very scary uh but you know for me personally it's it's uh this is too important um to my family and to myself and to to the other people that are reliant on us to win to make Nebraska a better place uh and to make the country a better place and to give people restore people's faith in federal government and that's what this is all about so sometimes there's things that are bigger than us and uh you know I'm that's what uh that's what we're doing that's what I'm prepared for. But ultimately yeah I I would just challenge you to think about your favorite politician and name his family or her family. Probably can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

We're getting close to the end of our time and I would just want to zoom us back out um in our last two questions again. And we've talked a lot about the logistics of healthcare today and a lot of the challenges that we're facing I also see just a ton of opportunity for healthcare over the next decade. Like when I think of a future of healthcare I'm just like I want us to have more preventative conservative care earlier ideally delivered by this like primary health team I think that would solve so many problems. I think it would shift the narrative of our outcomes when you think of healthcare over the next decade for Nebraska what's possible and what's your vision there?

SPEAKER_00 48:40

Yeah you know I uh I think about driving down Main Street Nebraska uh and and think about having independent independent uh doctor's offices with independent uh pharmacists uh that you know not not getting these giant corporations out of owning all of it so each each each and every one of these is their own kind of small business if you will uh that people can can go and and and get the very what's the word them intensive care preventative care all the care that they that they need from a doctor and you know whether you need a a specialist or whatever uh it is that you're going to run into in your life whether it's yourself your parents or your children that you're trying to take care of having that accessible and something that you know you're not gonna have to decide whether you're sick enough to go and whether you can afford it and and and if you can't then you're gonna have to be in medical debt for the rest of your life this is one of the most richest abundant countries on the planet and this is very very feasible to do but it starts with breaking up the vertical integration it starts with breaking up the monopolies uh we don't want to put the cart before the horse uh so this is this is where it starts and I think within 10 years we could be there I I agree with you with that yeah oh I totally agree the looking at vertical integral integration that's something the Senate needs to do uh we haven't used the phrase yet this time site neutral payments but that is another way that the system is rigged against independent practices like you're talking about uh hospital systems have figured out a way to make lots of times twice as much on a procedure than one that is done at an independent facility.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

So there I just hope people know like that care that you are describing is totally possible. Like we have awesome healthcare workers we have awesome evidence we know what to do we need Congress to help make it an even playing field again. So I'm so thankful to be having a high level conversation like this today. I think it's so important. I think it's affecting our lives in so many ways. What's the final thought you want to leave us on today?

SPEAKER_00 51:18

We have bounced all over we've talked about so many things uh as we head into our final myth what's like the thing you want to leave with people having top of mind yeah you know I think it's it's what you're gonna get from me versus my opponent is you know I I know what it's like to to have to decide on uh whether you're gonna take your kid to the doctor, uh what bill you're gonna have to pay, whether you're gonna put Christmas on a credit card. And guys like Pete Ricketts uh nothing against him you know you're born how you're born uh but how how how could he possibly make laws for for us when he has no idea what it's like to be us uh his in his world if you don't make the baseball team dad just buys the baseball team for you you know and and and it is what it is uh so that's what you're gonna get from me is you're gonna get somebody based off of uh I'm gonna approach every issue and every policy based off my life experiences of of understanding the struggle and and knowing who's winning in this game and who's losing and the game's rigged and uh you know doesn't seem like anybody's trying to unrig it and that's what it that's exactly what being an independent means to me in a state like Nebraska is is really not having to work for a party boss not having to work for corporations I want to work for the people again the way this was designed 250 years ago buying for the people and uh that's the way I want that's the way I'm gonna operate.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Well Dan I just know how busy you are you are doing uh just a lot right now and I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today to talk about the issues that are close to our hearts not only as healthcare workers but just as all of us as recipients of healthcare. So thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation and to get into the details today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

Yeah thank you and thank you for sharing your ideas with me as well that's one of the things too is I'm I'm constantly learning from the people who are uh the boots on the ground who live that life every day I've spent my life in a factory so I'm not going to pretend I know everything about everything but uh uh I'm you know learning every day more and more and what our Congress should be doing for its people that it's not so I appreciate you as well thank you thank you thank you for joining us on the OT Potential podcast to earn one hour of AOTA approved continuing education for your time today you will need to sign in or sign up at OTpotential.com once you're in the OT Potential Club you will find a five question post course quiz connected to this episode when you pass the quiz with a score of 75% or higher you will be able to download a PDF certificate that certifies your completion of this course.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

Okay I want to thank you for joining us today and we'll see you next time