Gaines for Girls with Riley Gaines - May 15, 2026


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


Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

176.41187

Word count

3,004

Sentence count

197


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 frozen lasagna medium power 15 minutes sounds like oh joe time let's play feel the fun with
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00:00:27.400 I want to share with you guys a video that I shared on X and on TikTok last week that went
00:00:39.780 viral. Actually, I think on X right now, it has over 12 million views. It was a video I made
00:00:45.880 talking about hospital price transparency. Maybe rather than explaining it, I'll just play the
00:00:51.660 clip here. I gave birth to this perfect precious little angel in September of last year. It is
00:00:55.920 April, nearly May of the next year, and I am getting bills in the mail nearly every single
00:01:00.660 week. Let's look at them. Okay, this one is a bill for $2,000. The service description literally just
00:01:07.700 says vaginal birth. Here's another bill for $1,261. What's the description for? Actually,
00:01:16.540 it doesn't even say. Here's another one for $336. The service description is subsequent hospital
00:01:22.660 care. What does that mean? Here's another $675 charge for hospital discharge day. What service
00:01:29.940 is it? You're just charging me for discharge day? It says on this bill that our insurance
00:01:34.300 information wasn't provided, but our insurance was provided on every other bill. I don't know.
00:01:38.420 None of it makes sense. My husband just called. He was on the phone for 20 minutes and we got no
00:01:42.260 answers. They said they could get back to us in the next 90 days. You have to assume that they
00:01:46.120 just hope people pay these without asking any questions. Since President Trump has signed his
00:01:50.080 executive order for hospital price transparency. Only one third of hospitals are in compliance.
00:01:55.100 President Trump has done what he can do. We need legislators to act to rein in these unchecked
00:01:59.000 practices and to protect patients and taxpayers from a system designed to exploit them. The markups
00:02:05.140 and the confusion are out of control. Margot turned seven months old last week, which by the way,
00:02:11.620 kind of sidebar here, it's so true. All the cliches, like every stage is better than the last.
00:02:16.460 oh my gosh, the stage she's at now, uh, it's chaotic. It's busy. Like she is so busy. She
00:02:22.420 wants to pull everything. She wants to rip my hair, rip the necklaces, all the stuff on the
00:02:26.340 planes. Uh, I made that video, a podcast, uh, talking about like advice for first time moms
00:02:32.220 or moms in general with a newborn on a plane. I thought I had it figured out. Hmm. Let me tell
00:02:36.400 you, she is a lot busier now. All you experienced moms, you could have told me this, all you seasoned
00:02:41.900 moms. Um, but it is so much fun. Even when we go to a restaurant and she, you know, there's glasses
00:02:48.620 on the table, our drinks, and she pulls them down, which happens virtually every time we go to the
00:02:52.800 restaurant. Um, you can't help, but just like smile and laugh because she really is so cute.
00:02:57.680 Anyways, we had her seven months ago. Uh, we are still to this day receiving unexplained hospital
00:03:03.820 bills in the mail. Uh, there's hardly ever an adequate description of the services in the video.
00:03:09.300 I showed they listed things as vaginal birth, discharge day, subsequent hospital care. What
00:03:14.200 do these things even mean? On these bills, there's no like phone number to call. If you have any
00:03:20.140 questions, it literally just gives you a QR code to pay online. It feels intentionally confusing
00:03:26.040 and difficult, if not impossible to get answers. Maybe if I told them I was an illegal, it would
00:03:32.540 all be free. I post this because really we want price transparency. And I say we, because I imagine
00:03:39.100 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.
00:04:05.420 I found in posting this, as I said, I know it's not just me.
00:04:09.060 I found so many of you, so many people, moms, other people who visited hospitals for, you
00:04:15.080 know, emergency services, whatever it is, even routine visits, who shared with me similar
00:04:19.860 experiences.
00:04:20.600 I'll read you a few.
00:04:21.900 This guy here says, he says, a year ago, my wife went to the hospital for stomach pain.
00:04:25.960 They did a CT scan of her abdomen.
00:04:27.460 Thankfully, didn't find anything serious.
00:04:28.980 Even still, they got a bill in the mail of $9,117.42.
00:04:33.040 since he said he spent months talking to insurance hospitals billing appeals he was told that the
00:04:37.600 claim was still in process the claim was out of the normal service area he was told that it wasn't
00:04:42.320 clear it was medically necessary or that insurance wasn't valid on the date of service he says they
00:04:46.680 finally got it handled but it took well over six months from the day of the first bill to the day
00:04:50.700 they finished the process and paid he says we did everything right we have insurance we pay our
00:04:56.220 insanely high premiums every single month it is just so frustrating okay in the vein of being
00:05:00.900 fully transparent with you guys. We have, I think, United Healthcare now. But at the time we gave
00:05:07.980 birth to Margo, we had Blue Cross Blue Shield. Do you know what we pay, Louis and myself, because
00:05:13.640 we're both technically self-employed, meaning that I guess technically we're independently
00:05:18.480 contracted by our employers. Louis has his own construction company. I work for several different
00:05:24.880 companies, one of those being Fox or Outkick, where you're streaming this podcast. But we're
00:05:30.780 independently contracted, self-employed, if you will. Do you want to know what we pay for three
00:05:35.800 people, two self-employed adults and a baby, which I will say we don't use any of the amenities or
00:05:41.660 resources for Margo because we had an impossible time finding a pediatrician who would accept us
00:05:47.180 because she wasn't vaccinated. So we have to pay $175 a month for the pediatrician that we found
00:05:53.020 because they wouldn't take our insurance besides the point. Do you want to know what we pay?
00:05:56.900 It is nearly $1,900 every single month. That is absolutely ridiculous. I actually don't know
00:06:06.240 how normal people afford that. Look, I recognize that I'm in a position where both with the
00:06:13.100 opportunities and career path that I'm on, and of course my husband having his own business that
00:06:17.780 we're able to, guess what? It's still not comfortable paying $1,900 a month for health
00:06:24.580 insurance as 26 year old human beings, that is absurd. Normal people cannot afford that. They
00:06:32.580 cannot do that. Now granted, we have maternity care because I want to get pregnant again. We
00:06:37.100 want to have more babies. Even still, that is insane. So you pay $1,900 a month for insurance
00:06:43.740 and even still you're getting billed $2,000, $1,200, $600, $300 here, there, everywhere, every
00:06:49.540 week we get these bills to our house. I'll read you a few more comments. This person says,
00:06:53.980 my husband was very sick in 2023 we had hmo coverage and went to an in-network hospital
00:06:58.440 they sent us to an out-of-network facility for critical tests and procedures all required
00:07:02.820 insurance pre-approval delaying his care by weeks he died without the treatment he needed we are far
00:07:07.940 too advanced as a nation to be dealing with these problems here's another person says broke my wrist
00:07:12.540 went to the er x-ray splint pain shot and zofran one zofran seven thousand dollars cash pay 40
00:07:18.020 discount surgery yesterday cash pay discount again okay that's another thing that makes zero
00:07:22.780 of sense to me. You're telling me that if I don't like the price of the procedure or the service
00:07:27.740 with insurance, I can go in and basically negotiate with the hospital if I pay cash.
00:07:33.320 Like who sets the price? Who's setting that price that they're not willing to go lower than,
00:07:38.560 right? Like it just doesn't make sense. And he's right. Oftentimes they'll negotiate it 40,
00:07:44.080 50% lower than what they were charging you. So that right there feels like an admittance. That
00:07:50.120 right there proves that they're way overcharging us. I could read to you for hours experiences and
00:07:55.560 stories that came rolling in in the comments and people who direct messaged me. Another comment
00:08:00.980 that I got a lot were people who were saying, you know, oh no, the leopard is eating your face,
00:08:06.040 or people pretending that this only is happening because President Trump is in the Oval Office,
00:08:11.840 right? Shocker. These are people who are riddled with TDS. Confused again. Are you trying to say
00:08:17.360 that hospitals were expensive before. Hospital bills were expensive before Trump. They were
00:08:22.520 expensive under Biden. They were expensive under Obama. The root cause actually traces straight
00:08:27.020 back to the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, signed in 2010, fully implemented in 2014. That
00:08:33.240 law, it didn't bend the cost curve down. It bent it up for millions of families in the individual
00:08:39.420 and small group markets. You want the data to all you people who are saying, you know,
00:08:44.040 you get what you voted for. Here's the data. If you want the actual data in the individual
00:08:48.580 insurance market, which is the one that most people who are buying their own plans have to
00:08:52.440 deal with, premiums more than doubled between 2013 and 2017. And who was the president during
00:08:58.680 that timeframe? Yes, of course, it's Obama. An average 105% spike right after ACA or Obamacare
00:09:05.860 rolls kicked in. By 2019, they were up 151% in deductibles. Guess what? They exploded too.
00:09:12.580 Your average silver plan deductible went from about $2,400 in 2014 to over $5,300 today, in most cases.
00:09:20.520 Families saw out-of-pocket costs for a plan for four jump by more than $10,000 annually in some reports.
00:09:26.000 And why? Why is this? Guess why?
00:09:27.860 It's because Obamacare forced insurers to cover essential health benefits, many of which you never even use.
00:09:34.560 They also banned charging based on pre-existing conditions or real risk.
00:09:38.400 They also imposed age rating limits that made healthy young people like me subsidize everyone else.
00:09:45.300 That created adverse selection, meaning sicker, higher cost people flooded the pools while younger, healthy people bailed or they paid way more.
00:09:56.520 That ensures they responded with massive premium hikes to stay solvent.
00:10:00.280 It's basic economics here.
00:10:02.140 Narrow networks, surprise billing, hospital consolidation.
00:10:06.020 All this followed because the law distorted the market instead of actually fixing it.
00:10:11.240 So pre-Obamacare, yes, costs were rising, right?
00:10:15.620 Aging population, new technology, innovation all the time in the medical field, chronic
00:10:20.440 disease, but the individual market, it hadn't seen these kinds of force jumps.
00:10:25.980 Post-Obamacare studies from places like the Heritage Foundation, which yes, is a conservative
00:10:30.860 organization, but actually even some left-leaning analyses confirmed the individual market premium
00:10:37.260 explosion was directly tied to Obamacare and to the law's mandates. And the billing opacity that
00:10:43.580 I showed you guys in my video, that's the insurance hospital insurer three-way dance on steroids.
00:10:50.680 Obamacare, it pushed more people into plans with higher deductibles and confusing allowed amounts
00:10:56.400 while hospital learned that they could bill charge master rates. They could negotiate
00:11:02.660 secretly with insurers and they could send patients the confusing scraps. That's what I
00:11:09.140 showed in that video. That means no real price shopping. It means no competition. It means no
00:11:13.600 transparency. It means you just pay with the QR code or it goes to collections and your credit
00:11:20.020 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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00:12:00.460 help you feel like there was light at the end of the tunnel, you don't want to be weighed down by
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00:12:09.820 that Riley from The Riley Gaines Show sent you. Now, contrast that, the ACA Affordable Care Act
00:12:17.420 or Obamacare, with what President Trump has actually done, what he is continuing to do.
00:12:22.440 In his first term, he signed the executive order that required hospitals to post real prices.
00:12:28.860 These are machine-readable files for every service and consumer-friendly displays for shoppable ones like birth or MRIs or x-rays and deliveries.
00:12:40.420 He reinforced it again this year, actually, with a new order demanding actual prices, not even estimates, real prices.
00:12:47.840 That is standardization so that you, the patient, can compare.
00:12:50.920 My video mentioned it. Only one third of hospitals are fully compliant with this order.
00:12:56.240 That's on the hospitals dragging their feet and previous administrations for not cracking the whip hard enough.
00:13:02.540 It is not on President Trump for ignoring the problem. He is doing what he can do.
00:13:06.500 As I said, we still need Congress to act.
00:13:09.140 Just to wrap this up, because again, it went viral online.
00:13:11.820 I felt like I could further unpack it here and address some of the leopard ate your face claims.
00:13:16.820 We are still getting bills from the delivery in September of 2025 because of the system that Obama created, Obamacare.
00:13:25.380 It's a system that rewards confusion over clarity.
00:13:29.400 That is not what President Trump is doing.
00:13:31.140 His approach empowers patients to shop.
00:13:34.780 It empowers patients to compare and to hold providers accountable, not to mention protecting the taxpayer, you and me.
00:13:43.360 Every single day, thousands of women hear the same devastating lie.
00:13:46.820 that abortion is their only option that they're alone or that there's no hope but everything
00:13:52.020 changes the moment they walk into a pre-born network clinic and that woman sees her baby
00:13:56.820 on an ultrasound that one moment it doubles her chance of choosing life because at that point
00:14:02.340 it's not just an image on a screen anymore it's hearing her baby's heartbeat sometimes for the
00:14:06.740 very first time and in that moment that woman realizes that the life growing inside of her
00:14:12.740 isn't a problem to be solved, but instead it's a life to be protected. Let's be there for that
00:14:18.060 woman in that beautiful moment. Let's be there for her with love and support and prayer. One
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00:14:39.900 chances for life. Actually, I'm being totally transparent and honest here. I do that. I provide
00:14:45.760 $140 a month because you're making a fantastic investment in life this year. Let's make it the
00:14:51.500 biggest baby saving year in history. Take a stand, be bold, be a voice for those who don't yet have
00:14:56.940 a voice of their own. Call pound 250 and say baby. That is pound 250, say baby. Or you can
00:15:03.280 visit preborn.com slash Riley, preborn.com slash Riley. President Trump very clearly inherited a
00:15:11.340 broken system. He is pushing the exact transparency that my family and millions of yours, I would
00:15:18.140 imagine, desperately needs and wants. So if you want lower bills, I would encourage you to support
00:15:23.540 enforcing price transparency and increasing competition and repealing the ACA's worst
00:15:29.200 mandates, not doubling down on the law that supercharged all. Okay. I want to hear y'all's
00:15:36.200 hospital bill horror story. Drop it in the comments below. Actually, it will be super
00:15:40.780 helpful for me and having those conversations with legislators. If you want to like even leave
00:15:46.020 the name of your representative below, this is something that I can hand deliver and show them
00:15:50.580 that it's affecting their constituents. We are sick of paying blindly. At least I know I am. I
00:15:56.900 want price transparency. I want a better health care system. America is the most advanced
00:16:01.180 technologically. We are the most innovative nation in the entire world. We should certainly
00:16:05.660 have a system that reflects that. Thank you guys for watching the Riley Gaines show. You can
00:16:11.300 subscribe right here. We have new episodes every single Tuesday and Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern time,
00:16:16.680 and we are covering everything from pop culture to politics, to deep dives, to motherhood,
00:16:21.360 sports, all of that and more. We want to hear from you, though. What is it that you want to
00:16:24.900 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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