Gaines for Girls with Riley Gaines - May 15, 2026


I Went Viral For Exposing My Hospital Bills ｜ The Riley Gaines Show

Topics
hospital bills
Hosted by
Riley Gaines
Mentioned
Trump Obama Refi Louis Biden Drop
He Tried to Debunk Conservatives. Then He Switched Sides ft. Xaviaer DuRousseau ｜ The Riley Gaines Show Nicki Minaj, James Charles and the New Rules of Cancel Culture ｜ The Riley Gaines Show

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

176.41

Word count

3,004

Sentence count

209

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Margot turned 7 months old last week, and we are still getting bills in the mail from the hospital for birth, discharge, and other services we didn't know what they were charging us for. What does that even mean?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 frozen lasagna medium power 15 minutes sounds like oh joe time let's play feel the fun with
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00:00:27 I want to share with you guys a video that I shared on X and on TikTok last week that went
00:00:39 viral. Actually, I think on X right now, it has over 12 million views. It was a video I made
00:00:45 talking about hospital price transparency. Maybe rather than explaining it, I'll just play the
00:00:51 clip here. I gave birth to this perfect precious little angel in September of last year. It is
00:00:55 April, nearly May of the next year, and I am getting bills in the mail nearly every single
00:01:00 week. Let's look at them. Okay, this one is a bill for $2,000. The service description literally just
00:01:07 says vaginal birth. Here's another bill for $1,261. What's the description for? Actually,
00:01:16 it doesn't even say. Here's another one for $336. The service description is subsequent hospital
00:01:22 care. What does that mean? Here's another $675 charge for hospital discharge day. What service
00:01:29 is it? You're just charging me for discharge day? It says on this bill that our insurance
00:01:34 information wasn't provided, but our insurance was provided on every other bill. I don't know.
00:01:38 None of it makes sense. My husband just called. He was on the phone for 20 minutes and we got no
00:01:42 answers. They said they could get back to us in the next 90 days. You have to assume that they
00:01:46 just hope people pay these without asking any questions. Since President Trump has signed his
00:01:50 executive order for hospital price transparency. Only one third of hospitals are in compliance.
00:01:55 President Trump has done what he can do. We need legislators to act to rein in these unchecked
00:01:59 practices and to protect patients and taxpayers from a system designed to exploit them. The markups
00:02:05 and the confusion are out of control. Margot turned seven months old last week, which by the way,
00:02:11 kind of sidebar here, it's so true. All the cliches, like every stage is better than the last. 0.68
00:02:16 oh my gosh, the stage she's at now, uh, it's chaotic. It's busy. Like she is so busy. She
00:02:22 wants to pull everything. She wants to rip my hair, rip the necklaces, all the stuff on the 1.00
00:02:26 planes. Uh, I made that video, a podcast, uh, talking about like advice for first time moms 1.00
00:02:32 or moms in general with a newborn on a plane. I thought I had it figured out. Hmm. Let me tell
00:02:36 you, she is a lot busier now. All you experienced moms, you could have told me this, all you seasoned
00:02:41 moms. Um, but it is so much fun. Even when we go to a restaurant and she, you know, there's glasses
00:02:48 on the table, our drinks, and she pulls them down, which happens virtually every time we go to the
00:02:52 restaurant. Um, you can't help, but just like smile and laugh because she really is so cute.
00:02:57 Anyways, we had her seven months ago. Uh, we are still to this day receiving unexplained hospital
00:03:03 bills in the mail. Uh, there's hardly ever an adequate description of the services in the video.
00:03:09 I showed they listed things as vaginal birth, discharge day, subsequent hospital care. What
00:03:14 do these things even mean? On these bills, there's no like phone number to call. If you have any
00:03:20 questions, it literally just gives you a QR code to pay online. It feels intentionally confusing
00:03:26 and difficult, if not impossible to get answers. Maybe if I told them I was an illegal, it would
00:03:32 all be free. I post this because really we want price transparency. And I say we, because I imagine
00:03:39 Well, actually, I know for certain now that I'm not really just speaking for myself when I say this. I recognize the platform that I have, millions of people who follow me on X, on TikTok, on Instagram, the ability, a unique ability to be able to reach people in influential positions, people in Congress, the House, the Senate, both at the federal level and states across the nation who can actually do something about this.
00:04:05 I found in posting this, as I said, I know it's not just me.
00:04:09 I found so many of you, so many people, moms, other people who visited hospitals for, you
00:04:15 know, emergency services, whatever it is, even routine visits, who shared with me similar
00:04:19 experiences.
00:04:20 I'll read you a few.
00:04:21 This guy here says, he says, a year ago, my wife went to the hospital for stomach pain.
00:04:25 They did a CT scan of her abdomen.
00:04:27 Thankfully, didn't find anything serious.
00:04:28 Even still, they got a bill in the mail of $9,117.42.
00:04:33 since he said he spent months talking to insurance hospitals billing appeals he was told that the
00:04:37 claim was still in process the claim was out of the normal service area he was told that it wasn't
00:04:42 clear it was medically necessary or that insurance wasn't valid on the date of service he says they
00:04:46 finally got it handled but it took well over six months from the day of the first bill to the day
00:04:50 they finished the process and paid he says we did everything right we have insurance we pay our
00:04:56 insanely high premiums every single month it is just so frustrating okay in the vein of being
00:05:00 fully transparent with you guys. We have, I think, United Healthcare now. But at the time we gave
00:05:07 birth to Margo, we had Blue Cross Blue Shield. Do you know what we pay, Louis and myself, because
00:05:13 we're both technically self-employed, meaning that I guess technically we're independently
00:05:18 contracted by our employers. Louis has his own construction company. I work for several different
00:05:24 companies, one of those being Fox or Outkick, where you're streaming this podcast. But we're
00:05:30 independently contracted, self-employed, if you will. Do you want to know what we pay for three
00:05:35 people, two self-employed adults and a baby, which I will say we don't use any of the amenities or
00:05:41 resources for Margo because we had an impossible time finding a pediatrician who would accept us 1.00
00:05:47 because she wasn't vaccinated. So we have to pay $175 a month for the pediatrician that we found 0.97
00:05:53 because they wouldn't take our insurance besides the point. Do you want to know what we pay?
00:05:56 It is nearly $1,900 every single month. That is absolutely ridiculous. I actually don't know 0.94
00:06:06 how normal people afford that. Look, I recognize that I'm in a position where both with the
00:06:13 opportunities and career path that I'm on, and of course my husband having his own business that
00:06:17 we're able to, guess what? It's still not comfortable paying $1,900 a month for health
00:06:24 insurance as 26 year old human beings, that is absurd. Normal people cannot afford that. They
00:06:32 cannot do that. Now granted, we have maternity care because I want to get pregnant again. We
00:06:37 want to have more babies. Even still, that is insane. So you pay $1,900 a month for insurance
00:06:43 and even still you're getting billed $2,000, $1,200, $600, $300 here, there, everywhere, every
00:06:49 week we get these bills to our house. I'll read you a few more comments. This person says,
00:06:53 my husband was very sick in 2023 we had hmo coverage and went to an in-network hospital
00:06:58 they sent us to an out-of-network facility for critical tests and procedures all required
00:07:02 insurance pre-approval delaying his care by weeks he died without the treatment he needed we are far
00:07:07 too advanced as a nation to be dealing with these problems here's another person says broke my wrist
00:07:12 went to the er x-ray splint pain shot and zofran one zofran seven thousand dollars cash pay 40
00:07:18 discount surgery yesterday cash pay discount again okay that's another thing that makes zero
00:07:22 of sense to me. You're telling me that if I don't like the price of the procedure or the service
00:07:27 with insurance, I can go in and basically negotiate with the hospital if I pay cash.
00:07:33 Like who sets the price? Who's setting that price that they're not willing to go lower than,
00:07:38 right? Like it just doesn't make sense. And he's right. Oftentimes they'll negotiate it 40,
00:07:44 50% lower than what they were charging you. So that right there feels like an admittance. That
00:07:50 right there proves that they're way overcharging us. I could read to you for hours experiences and
00:07:55 stories that came rolling in in the comments and people who direct messaged me. Another comment
00:08:00 that I got a lot were people who were saying, you know, oh no, the leopard is eating your face,
00:08:06 or people pretending that this only is happening because President Trump is in the Oval Office,
00:08:11 right? Shocker. These are people who are riddled with TDS. Confused again. Are you trying to say
00:08:17 that hospitals were expensive before. Hospital bills were expensive before Trump. They were
00:08:22 expensive under Biden. They were expensive under Obama. The root cause actually traces straight
00:08:27 back to the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, signed in 2010, fully implemented in 2014. That
00:08:33 law, it didn't bend the cost curve down. It bent it up for millions of families in the individual 0.96
00:08:39 and small group markets. You want the data to all you people who are saying, you know,
00:08:44 you get what you voted for. Here's the data. If you want the actual data in the individual
00:08:48 insurance market, which is the one that most people who are buying their own plans have to
00:08:52 deal with, premiums more than doubled between 2013 and 2017. And who was the president during
00:08:58 that timeframe? Yes, of course, it's Obama. An average 105% spike right after ACA or Obamacare
00:09:05 rolls kicked in. By 2019, they were up 151% in deductibles. Guess what? They exploded too.
00:09:12 Your average silver plan deductible went from about $2,400 in 2014 to over $5,300 today, in most cases.
00:09:20 Families saw out-of-pocket costs for a plan for four jump by more than $10,000 annually in some reports.
00:09:26 And why? Why is this? Guess why?
00:09:27 It's because Obamacare forced insurers to cover essential health benefits, many of which you never even use.
00:09:34 They also banned charging based on pre-existing conditions or real risk.
00:09:38 They also imposed age rating limits that made healthy young people like me subsidize everyone else.
00:09:45 That created adverse selection, meaning sicker, higher cost people flooded the pools while younger, healthy people bailed or they paid way more.
00:09:56 That ensures they responded with massive premium hikes to stay solvent.
00:10:00 It's basic economics here.
00:10:02 Narrow networks, surprise billing, hospital consolidation.
00:10:06 All this followed because the law distorted the market instead of actually fixing it.
00:10:11 So pre-Obamacare, yes, costs were rising, right?
00:10:15 Aging population, new technology, innovation all the time in the medical field, chronic
00:10:20 disease, but the individual market, it hadn't seen these kinds of force jumps.
00:10:25 Post-Obamacare studies from places like the Heritage Foundation, which yes, is a conservative
00:10:30 organization, but actually even some left-leaning analyses confirmed the individual market premium
00:10:37 explosion was directly tied to Obamacare and to the law's mandates. And the billing opacity that
00:10:43 I showed you guys in my video, that's the insurance hospital insurer three-way dance on steroids.
00:10:50 Obamacare, it pushed more people into plans with higher deductibles and confusing allowed amounts
00:10:56 while hospital learned that they could bill charge master rates. They could negotiate
00:11:02 secretly with insurers and they could send patients the confusing scraps. That's what I
00:11:09 showed in that video. That means no real price shopping. It means no competition. It means no
00:11:13 transparency. It means you just pay with the QR code or it goes to collections and your credit
00:11:20 is just ruined. All right. I want to talk to you guys about something that I know a lot of people
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00:12:09 that Riley from The Riley Gaines Show sent you. Now, contrast that, the ACA Affordable Care Act
00:12:17 or Obamacare, with what President Trump has actually done, what he is continuing to do.
00:12:22 In his first term, he signed the executive order that required hospitals to post real prices.
00:12:28 These are machine-readable files for every service and consumer-friendly displays for shoppable ones like birth or MRIs or x-rays and deliveries.
00:12:40 He reinforced it again this year, actually, with a new order demanding actual prices, not even estimates, real prices.
00:12:47 That is standardization so that you, the patient, can compare.
00:12:50 My video mentioned it. Only one third of hospitals are fully compliant with this order.
00:12:56 That's on the hospitals dragging their feet and previous administrations for not cracking the whip hard enough.
00:13:02 It is not on President Trump for ignoring the problem. He is doing what he can do.
00:13:06 As I said, we still need Congress to act.
00:13:09 Just to wrap this up, because again, it went viral online.
00:13:11 I felt like I could further unpack it here and address some of the leopard ate your face claims.
00:13:16 We are still getting bills from the delivery in September of 2025 because of the system that Obama created, Obamacare.
00:13:25 It's a system that rewards confusion over clarity.
00:13:29 That is not what President Trump is doing.
00:13:31 His approach empowers patients to shop.
00:13:34 It empowers patients to compare and to hold providers accountable, not to mention protecting the taxpayer, you and me.
00:13:43 Every single day, thousands of women hear the same devastating lie.
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00:14:06 very first time and in that moment that woman realizes that the life growing inside of her
00:14:12 isn't a problem to be solved, but instead it's a life to be protected. Let's be there for that
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00:14:51 biggest baby saving year in history. Take a stand, be bold, be a voice for those who don't yet have
00:14:56 a voice of their own. Call pound 250 and say baby. That is pound 250, say baby. Or you can
00:15:03 visit preborn.com slash Riley, preborn.com slash Riley. President Trump very clearly inherited a
00:15:11 broken system. He is pushing the exact transparency that my family and millions of yours, I would
00:15:18 imagine, desperately needs and wants. So if you want lower bills, I would encourage you to support
00:15:23 enforcing price transparency and increasing competition and repealing the ACA's worst
00:15:29 mandates, not doubling down on the law that supercharged all. Okay. I want to hear y'all's
00:15:36 hospital bill horror story. Drop it in the comments below. Actually, it will be super
00:15:40 helpful for me and having those conversations with legislators. If you want to like even leave
00:15:46 the name of your representative below, this is something that I can hand deliver and show them
00:15:50 that it's affecting their constituents. We are sick of paying blindly. At least I know I am. I
00:15:56 want price transparency. I want a better health care system. America is the most advanced
00:16:01 technologically. We are the most innovative nation in the entire world. We should certainly
00:16:05 have a system that reflects that. Thank you guys for watching the Riley Gaines show. You can
00:16:11 subscribe right here. We have new episodes every single Tuesday and Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern time,
00:16:16 and we are covering everything from pop culture to politics, to deep dives, to motherhood,
00:16:21 sports, all of that and more. We want to hear from you, though. What is it that you want to
00:16:24 here comment down below we can't wait to see you next time feel like you know enough to start your
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