JD Vance: We got a problem here…

[0:00] What a big show for you today. I sat down for an exclusive interview with Vice President J.D. [0:06] Vance. Our first order of business, the brand new HHS report entitled Wolves in White Coats. [0:13] It examines allegations that doctors and hospitals pushed and potentially profited [0:19] from quote gender medicine for children. The report identified more than $60 million [0:25] in insurance claims for those treatments. It included puberty blockers for kids as young as 13. [0:33] This was all billed between 2015 and 2025. The report also details potentially criminal practices [0:40] inside pediatric gender programs, including allegations that some providers used misleading [0:46] diagnostic and billing codes to get insurers to cover the treatments. And look at the money involved. [0:53] The report says the average health care cost for a minor is roughly $3,000. But for minors [1:01] receiving transgender treatments, that number climbs to $75,000. If that minor elects transition surgery, [1:12] it climbs to $170,000. So the question isn't just what happened, but whether or not anyone broke the [1:21] law. And now Vice President Vance is referring the report to the Department of Justice, calling for [1:26] criminal prosecution of anyone who intentionally misled children in order to get them transgender [1:32] treatment. I spoke with Vice President Vance today about this and the larger issue of fraud. [1:39] Here's our conversation. [1:42] Mr. Vice President, it's good to see you. Thanks for being with us. [1:45] Thanks for having me, Will. Good to see you. [1:49] So, Mr. Vice President, what I'm trying to figure out, and you can tell us with the release of [1:54] Wolves in White Coats, is how much of this movement was driven by mass psychosis or ideology, [2:01] and how much now was driven by premeditated financial windfalls? Was it a scam? [2:10] Yeah. Well, I think, unfortunately, it's a bit of both. I definitely think that what happened at the [2:14] level of parents and some of these young kids, and certainly the doctors, was a kind of mass [2:19] psychosis. This idea that somehow, because a 12-year-old felt like they were born in the wrong [2:23] body, you were going to engage in long-term, very expensive, but very dangerous and underappreciated [2:30] medical procedures. I mean, permanently altering these young kids' bodies in a way that was totally [2:35] irreversible. But I think, unfortunately, that was being fed into by an insurance industry, by some [2:41] physicians and by others who are getting rich from these procedures. If you just look at things like [2:46] endocrine disruptors, these hormone therapies that we're giving to kids, again, a lot of them [2:50] completely irreversible, causing long-term damage to these kids. We know that some of the [2:56] pharmaceutical companies were getting rich by encouraging doctors to prescribe these therapies [3:01] off-label. And one of the things that we've worked on with Bobby Kennedy, obviously, that was just [3:05] announced, I know that you're covering it, and I appreciate it, is that sometimes the doctors and the [3:11] insurers were mislabeling these treatments in order to get financial reward, even though they weren't [3:17] being honest about what they were doing. Because, of course, if they were being honest, if they were [3:20] going to the insurers and saying, well, we're actually butchering these kids, then that might have [3:26] raised some alarm bells in the medical system. Instead, they said that they were treating for [3:30] endocrine disorders or for certain pubescent disorders. And that was allowing them to list [3:36] medical codes in the billing that allowed them to make money off of these kids suffering while [3:43] simultaneously avoiding any real scrutiny. And we really see this, Will, as part of our broader effort [3:48] to fight fraud. There's just so much fraud in our country. But unfortunately, one of the biggest [3:53] purveyors of fraud was the small number of doctors, people who were getting wealthy by actually doing [4:00] these procedures on kids, lying about the medical implications of it, and collecting rewards for it. [4:06] Obviously, not most doctors. I think most physicians, obviously, are good people who want to do right by [4:11] their patients. But we do know, unfortunately, Will, some of these doctors were getting a lot of money by [4:17] performing irreversible and untested therapies on kids. [4:20] So just to follow up, an endocrine disorder is largely a diagnosis for somebody with hyperthyroidism or thyroid [4:28] disease or diabetes. And you're telling me that they were coding many of these gender affirmation [4:34] procedures as endocrine disorders. And do you think in your mind then, and we have the stats on how [4:40] much then that meant for the gender clinic and for the insurance company on what they could get out of [4:46] a patient versus a regular child, something like $3,000 versus $170,000. So that billing, that coding, [4:55] Mr. Vice President, do you think that's evidence then that what we're looking at here is not simply [5:00] ideology, but an actual scam? [5:05] That's exactly right. That's precisely what we think. And that's why Bobby Kennedy and his team [5:09] have done so much work to uncover just how much this mislabeled billing was feeding this gender [5:15] transition madness. I mean, if you think about this, Will, you take a highly controversial, experimental, [5:22] untested medical procedure, like gender transition for a minor, a lot of insurers, a lot of physicians, [5:29] they're not going to support that stuff. They're not going to fund that stuff. And that means there [5:35] isn't any money in it. But if you fraudulently label it as something else as treating an endocrine [5:42] disorder, then you can get a lot of money, even though you're doing something very experimental [5:46] and very untested. And again, this is why I say it really was two things happening simultaneously. [5:51] I mean, you know, we know that there were 12 year old girls, especially because it was more common [5:56] among girls than boys. It happened with both, but it was more common with girls than boys. [6:01] They'd get on social media. They'd say that, you know, they take feelings that were kind of normal [6:07] for any adolescent, a certain discomfort with your body, with the changes that happen [6:10] during adolescence. But then they would be lied to by some in the medical community told that if [6:18] you let us do these procedures, these procedures that are going to make some of the doctors a lot [6:23] of money, then somehow that's going to fix what you're feeling. When in reality, what these kids [6:28] needed is what a lot of adolescents have needed through the generations, which is somebody to listen [6:33] to them, somebody to talk with them, somebody to try to understand them, not somebody to try to get [6:38] rich by doing medical sanctioned butchery, which is exactly what this is. The financial part of this, [6:45] Will, I really do believe it fed the ideology. They fed off of each other. And unfortunately, [6:52] it was a lot of kids who suffered because of it. We're putting a stop to it though, Will, [6:56] and that's the good news. Well, grotesque. This isn't the only fraud that you have been focused on. [7:02] We know in the past, and we've talked to you about the fraud in Medicaid with Somali migrants in [7:08] Minnesota and across the country, Ohio, California. There's also this story. There's a marriage fraud [7:14] scheme that the DOJ has now looked into and is making busts on, and that is over a thousand sham [7:22] Chinese marriages. So with all of these, Mr. Vice President, gender care, Somali fraud, [7:29] Chinese marriage fraud, you have been knee deep. I'm curious, what's the most brazen fraud scam you've [7:36] seen so far? Oh, Will, that's the toughest question I've ever been asked because so many of these things [7:43] are so brazen. I mean, look, I really do think that it's hard to top the Medicaid fraud that we saw [7:51] in the Minneapolis area where you had primarily Somali immigrants who came to the country, some of whom [7:58] who didn't even have children but were billing Medicaid for services provided to autistic children. [8:03] I mean, it's one thing to engage in fraud. It's one thing to lie about a disorder that your child [8:09] has when they actually don't have that disorder. But it's something truly extraordinary to actually [8:16] collect services for children that you don't actually have. So that's got to be at the top [8:21] of my list. But Will, I got to say, man, while it is hard sometimes to put a stop to the fraud, [8:27] it's hard to prevent the money from going out the door. And of course, once it's gone out the door, [8:31] it's very hard to get the money back. Finding fraud, there's just so much of it. I mean, [8:36] you asked about this Chinese marriage scheme. There were thousands of people who were actually [8:42] getting paid money to marry somebody that they had never met before so that that person could get [8:49] access to American citizenship and all the benefits that come from it. There's all the Medicaid fraud. [8:55] There's the food stamps fraud. There's the Small Business Administration fraud. There's this gender [8:59] transition fraud. The unfortunate reality, Will, is that fraud in Washington, D.C. was as common [9:06] as bad weather. And bad weather is very common in Washington. So we got a problem here. We're [9:12] fixing that problem. But it's going to take us a long time to root out all this fraud because there [9:16] was so much allowed to fester during the Biden administration and really beyond that.