Mentally, Physically and Spiritually sick in America with ex-Trump Advisor Katy Talento

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Invested with purpose, making the most out of your time, talent, and treasures.

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Pull up a seat and join us as we uncover powerful testimonies that are sure to move and inspire

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you.

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Meet Christians from all walks of life and hear their incredible stories that will both

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motivate and challenge the way you view the world.

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These men and women exemplify Christian values and biblical stewardship in areas of mission,

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finance, entertainment, sports, and more.

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Welcome to Invested with Purpose, making the most out of our time, talent, and treasure.

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I'm Cara.

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And I'm Brian.

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And today, Katie Tolento is with us.

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Katie views her faith as a guiding force that has profoundly shaped her professional journey.

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She believes that her commitment to public health and epidemiology is deeply intertwined

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with her values, motivating her to address health care disparities and advocate for holistic

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solutions as the Director of Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries.

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Welcome, Katie.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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I knew I was going to mispronounce that word before we even started.

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It's a tongue twister.

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Say it three times fast.

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Epidemiology.

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All right, Katie, can we begin with you just sharing a little bit about your faith walk

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and how it's influenced your career, particularly in your interest in epidemiology and health

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care?

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Yeah, I think I started many, many moons ago.

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I remember being in college and wishing I could just go join up with Mother Teresa's

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nuns or something because I wanted to do something radical.

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And as I learned sort of what I was good at, what I wasn't good at, and I fell into this

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public health thing, I think I thought I wanted to be a doctor and realized that I don't like

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that.

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So I did not want to be a doctor.

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I wanted the whole population to be my patient, which is what happens in epidemiology.

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And that's what public health is.

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And it was fun because I had worked with churches that worked overseas in various places, and

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I ended up going to Africa and spending some time there in a war, actually, when Southern

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Sudan was a war zone, and hanging out in UN camps.

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But what I found is that I'm a little not diplomatic enough to interact with African

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warlords and try to beg them to let us help people.

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I'm like, I'm going to go back to America and work in the inner city.

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So I came back and worked in the inner city.

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We started a ministry for junior high girls here in the DC area.

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And really, I think working with the least of these, the poorest of the poor, and I was

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really inspired by missionaries who've been killed, like Jim Elliot or Mother Teresa's

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people, and ancient martyrs for the faith.

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And I thought, you know what?

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We really have to prioritize these people that Jesus loves the most.

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And that is when I started working primarily in HIV AIDS with drug users, injection drug

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users, prostitutes, and people who are really enslaved, totally enslaved.

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And we ended up going all over the world, as well as in DC on those issues.

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But that's kind of how I got into public health.

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Wow.

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And you were a nun at one point working in the inner city, correct?

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Yeah, eventually I did.

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I became a Catholic in my 30s, actually.

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I left at sort of the height of my political career and government policy career.

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I like to say that Senator Tom Coburn, who was my boss at the time, drove me to the nunnery.

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He was awesome.

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Anyway, so yeah, I think I fell in love with the church and thought I had to marry the

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church, right?

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And I wanted to be radical.

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And it was a beautiful life.

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I did it for about two years.

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And I realized that God wasn't calling me to stay in that life, and that actually I

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was called to be back in the world, working in government, trying to have that bigger

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population as my patient again.

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The greater good.

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Yeah.

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And you were quoted recently in a Fox News article as saying, America has never been

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sicker, fatter, or more anxious and depressed in our history.

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And I would like to add, spiritually unwell is on top of that.

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What is a first step for Christian families?

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Where can we go from here?

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What can we monitor?

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What can we be doing better?

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Yeah, I think so many of us have focused when we hear that idea of treating our bodies as

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a temple of the Holy Spirit.

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I think that we think about our moral behavior.

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We think about our tongue and whether we use bad language and whether we're engaged in

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drinking and other types of things we associate with morality.

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We don't think about the most important thing we put in our bodies, which is the pounds

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and pounds of food every day and what we drink.

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So I think there's a lot to be said there.

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And if you start to look into, we're very good at looking at the corruption of industries,

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whether it's a sex trafficking industry or all kinds of industries that Christians get

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really jacked up about, tobacco industry, pornography industry.

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But when you start looking at the food industry, it is equally corrupt.

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And also medications, the pharmaceutical industry, extremely corrupt and very tied in with captured

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regulators in government who have been lobbied.

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I mean, the pharmaceutical industry, no one compares with their lobbying efforts in Washington.

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They outpace them by far.

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So they are getting sweetheart deals out of government regulators.

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That has an impact on what you're putting in your precious children's mouths and what's

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helping them to grow.

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And when I think about how much food affects your mental state and your ability to focus,

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your ability to be joyful, our mental health and also our concentration, our ability to

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educate our children, our ability for them to feel peace and stillness and joy.

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This is serious.

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And you look at the autism community, we'll talk about how dramatically diet affects their

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children.

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Absolutely.

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It does.

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Really, it's amazing.

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It's the most important biological influence on us every day.

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So true.

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Katie, I wanted to respond with that too.

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I started down, you can start down the wormhole of these food documentaries.

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And I think the Food Inc. was the first one that I watched.

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And then once you start, it's like, oh, now I need to see all these other ones.

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And you brought up something that as a parent, I had a younger child, he's 14 now.

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But when we had him, we were really cognizant of this.

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Suddenly there was this explosion of early onset diabetes in these young kids.

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And I guess the food pyramid always looked a little wonky to me.

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Can you speak a little bit to that?

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How do they come up with this, what appears to be a food pyramid that should be a recommendation

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for our diet, but seems to be all just confused, I guess is the word.

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Yeah.

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How it comes up is the agricultural lobby.

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So there are reasons why all of our crops are subsidized.

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Sugar is subsidized dramatically in our country.

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And it's probably the thing that's killing us the most is processed and refined wheat

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and sugar.

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And it's not just that, but the pesticides that are put on our food, not just to help

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them grow and to keep weeds away, but actually before wheat is harvested, it's not just

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wheat, but very much wheat, before it's harvested, right before it's put into the mills and

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ground into flour that goes into all our food, it's drenched in glyphosate, which is bound

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up so that it can dry out better.

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It's a good drying agent.

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So we're not just, we're drowning in glyphosate.

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I remember I got my own glyphosate level tested and it was literally off the chart.

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The chart did not measure how much glyphosate was in me.

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And I eat like a normal, throughout my life, I ate like a normal diet.

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I was not an organic food eater until a few years ago, but I ate a normal standard American

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diet, which is killing all of us.

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And glyphosate is an obesogen.

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It causes obesity.

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It causes diabetes and it causes cancer.

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And so this is all our food, if it's not organic, is riddled with glyphosate.

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Many European countries have banned these pesticides.

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They banned a number of additives that are in American foods that are not in their foods.

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I was just in Europe recently and I went around obsessively looking at the ingredients on

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packaged food everywhere I saw it.

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And I would not see the seed oils.

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I would not see the food, yellow number five, red dye number.

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I would not see those things that are riddled in the foods that go into our children everywhere

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here.

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It's really different.

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A box of Froot Loops in Canada is totally different ingredients than the box of Froot

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Loops here in America.

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It's sick.

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These companies can do it differently, but it's cheaper and easier for them to do it

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the way they're doing it.

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And because of the well-funded lobby coming out of the big ag interest, special interest,

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the FDA is captured, USDA is captured, and EPA are captured.

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Katie, that's wildly interesting.

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Just a quick follow up to that.

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So why is there such a difference between Europe and America and Canada and America?

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Like you mentioned the lobby, you mentioned a lot of money, and I'm sure that's a big,

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big part of it.

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But is it because we're such a big country versus a smaller country in Europe?

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Is it regulations?

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Yeah.

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What is it that's making the big difference?

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So anytime someone comes into Congress and wants to pass a bill that would regulate food

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in any way, whether it's requiring labels for GMO, whether it's banning certain additives

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that have been proven to cause cancer or proven to be neurotoxins, whenever that happens,

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when a bill comes in, and I've worked in Congress for 15 years, when a bill comes into Congress,

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it is crushed by the agricultural lobby.

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It is crushed.

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If you want to try to regulate drugs or pharmaceuticals, the pharma lobbyists, there's one pharma lobbyist

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for, I think it's something like five pharma lobbyists for every member of Congress.

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So then they write all the big checks.

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I can't emphasize enough how much special interest money drives our politics.

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Even the most virtuous minded politician has to get elected.

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That's a very expensive proposition.

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So they take money from interests and from companies and from PACs and from bundlers.

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And then those people get, it's not that a corrupt, not every politician is intentionally

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corrupt.

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Right.

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But when someone writes you a big check, they get their phone calls answered and they get

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the meeting.

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And then they come in with their one sided presentation and the academic papers that

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they've paid for to deliver the results they want are put in front of these non-expert

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politicians who are not epidemiologists or not scientists and can't see how flawed and

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ridiculous their studies are.

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And they make a very compelling case.

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That case is not rebutted by anyone else in the room.

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And so then they just walk away.

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It takes a lot of expertise to beat back these interests.

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It's really hard.

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And in Europe and other countries, this type of lobbying, these types of special interests

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are not nearly as powerful.

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That makes a lot of sense.

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You have an extensive background working in policy advisory, including with senators and

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then ultimately President Trump in the White House.

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So what brought you there?

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What were the steps?

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How did you get there?

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And then once there, you ended up becoming a homeopath and looking for more holistic

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health care.

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Tell me a little bit about your journey.

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Yeah.

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So I was, I kind of hated government.

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I thought it wasn't really a force for good, but I worked and I lived on Capitol Hill and

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I went to church on Capitol Hill and I used to see these little Hill staffers walking

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around.

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I thought they were dum-dums and maybe they were.

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And so, but at one point the Congress had just changed hands, the Senate had just changed

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hands and there was a new chairman that needed to staff up on the committee that overseed

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health, that oversaw health.

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And a friend of mine at church said, Hey, you know, they're looking for this type of

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person and little Republican children don't grow up wanting to be public health experts.

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So there just aren't any public health experts that could be, you know, a staffer for public

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health policy on the committee.

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And so I interviewed for the job.

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I remember at the time, like, I don't even know if I want this job, the, the, the, my

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manager who became my manager, wonderful man.

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It was interviewing me.

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He's like, do you even want this job?

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I'm like, I don't know.

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But I think it was God, you know, I got hired for kind of a job I wasn't really qualified

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for and found that I loved it.

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And I worked on that committee for a few years and then for a number of different other committees

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and different senators over the years.

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And then from one Senate office, my friend who was the chief of staff left that office

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to go work on Donald Trump's campaign.

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And I could see that this guy was winning all the primaries.

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He was resonating with the people he was going to win and he was going to be the nominee

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for the Republican Party.

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And I thought, if we don't help him, like bad people are going to help him.

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So, so my friend was the next time I saw my friend, he went and worked for the campaign.

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He was running policy for them.

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And the next time I saw him six weeks later, he was like bedraggled and, you know, bleary

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eyed, chain smoking.

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He hadn't sleep deprived.

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And I'm like, oh, you need some help.

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Can I help you?

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I mean, I can help you with health care, abortion stuff.

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Like what do you need?

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And so that I started volunteering.

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And then I worked on the platform committee that year in 2016 and went into the campaign

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in New York for a few months until the election from there into the transition team and from

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there into the White House.

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That's a very interesting journey.

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And the one that I don't, you know, I like how you said, do I want to do this?

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I think so many get into these things and they're like, do I really, do I really want

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to do this?

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I cannot make a difference.

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It's, it's, it's hard.

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I wanted to transition a little bit and talk to you about your passion with the healthcare

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alliance ministries.

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What do you see as the primary benefit of leaving your traditional insurance company

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in favor of these types of ministries?

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Yeah, well, I think perhaps the most important reason is that in a number of states across

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the country, unfortunately, state laws have mandated that all insurance policies have

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to cover abortion and they have to cover transgender surgeries for children and other procedures

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or so-called therapies that violate our Christian conscience.

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And so Christians will have a very difficult time, if not an impossible time, finding a

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healthcare solution in those states that doesn't violate their conscience.

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And so healthcare sharing ministries, perhaps the most important reason to join them is

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that, you know, it's the only a hundred percent pro-life solution out there for financing

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your healthcare bills.

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And so that, that's one reason.

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I think another reason is that, you know, I've worked in health policy a long time and

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it is a bureaucratic, cold, money-driven, corrupt industry.

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And it's, it's driven by the healthcare industry's interests.

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They put, you know, politics and money before people and patients and, and it's really disgusting.

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And this is the most important service that we will consume in our lives.

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It is life and death.

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It is the time when you don't want disgusting, corrupt influences coming between you and

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your doctor at the most vulnerable time of your life and the scariest time of your life

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or your children, your family's life.

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And that is a time when we need Jesus and we need the body of Christ around us.

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And that is what healthcare sharing ministries are.

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And they will not just, you know, share your medical bills.

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They will pray for you.

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They will send you notes.

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There's one healthcare sharing ministry that sends a care package to every family that

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experiences a miscarriage.

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There's another healthcare sharing ministry that their staff get on a plane and fly to

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a funeral when one of their members passes away and gives a check to help cover funeral

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expenses.

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These are communities of the body of Christ.

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This is how healthcare should be done.

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I also think that there's an increasing movement among healthcare sharing ministries to really

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explore how to bring in natural treatments, whether it's naturopathic doctors like me

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or homeopathy or acupuncture and other types of modalities that increasingly in the post-COVID

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era we're starting to see more and more people drawn to as the trust in the, you know, white

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coat medical enterprise has really been at an all-time low.

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Well, Katie, what you're describing, you know, we do from a totally different angle at Timothy

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Plan, but we have, we're a pro-life, pro-family mutual fund and ETF company.

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And ultimately, you know, when we first set out, we were most keen on how can we not invest

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in any company that we profiting from or promoting abortion.

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And immediately, like you just described, that ruled out all these insurance companies.

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We can't invest in a single one of them because they allow for women to, you know, to have

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abortions, much like companies that fund Planned Parenthood, among other things.

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So yes, it's a big challenge.

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Can something like this work in a corporate level versus just like an individual level,

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these healthcare sharing stuff?

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Yeah, there are religious employers that our healthcare sharing ministries work with.

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So there are lots of religious employers in these states that have a conscience objection

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to subsidizing insurance policies for their people for these reasons I've laid out.

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And also, you know, there's one healthcare sharing ministry that actually went to the Vatican and got a memo written by moral theologians there describing how why no Catholic of good conscience can participate in the American insurance industry, not because of the pro-life problems,

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those are obvious, but because of the financial corruption and the misaligned incentives in that industry.

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So yeah, I mean, what you're dealing with is absolutely real.

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And what corporations have to deal with as employers of good conscience, it's really hard.

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But healthcare sharing ministries will work with religious employers who wish to subsidize

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memberships in healthcare sharing ministries for their employees.

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So that is a possibility.

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It's not a group health plan.

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It's not insurance.

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And it's not underwritten at the group level.

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This is not insurance.

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It's really just providing a subsidy to each individual employee who wants to sign up for

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a healthcare sharing ministry.

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You know, insurance premium pooling.

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This is something that many of those that are investing with with Timothy Plan or those

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like us, biblically responsible investing, they would want to know about this.

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But many do not.

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Can you please explain what is happening when you are paying into your premium and you've

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got that percentage of people that are under a poverty line and there are things that are

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being covered like gender reaffirming care or, you know, drugs that are being used for,

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you know, trans ideologies and then also abortion.

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Can you please explain to our audience how that works and what they may not know?

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Absolutely.

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So there's two kinds of insurance.

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There's group insurance and then there's individual insurance.

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Group insurance.

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There's two types of those types.

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So you can have an employer funds its own insurance, its own group plan, or you can

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have an employer that that basically joins with a bunch of other employers into one giant

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pool in the small group market.

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And in any time you have a pooling of premiums, so every time when you write your premium

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check or your employer writes it for you, they're paying an insurance company.

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That insurance company co-mingles all those funds.

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And so even if your employer, let's say that your state allows your health plan not to

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cover abortion, when you pay into that pool, you're subsidizing the health plans of other

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employers that do cover abortion.

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When you're in the individual market, like the ACA marketplace in your state, that is

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a subsidized abortion pool.

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So every time that you pay into that that insurance pool, they're paying for gender

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treatments, they're paying for abortion and abortion related treatments.

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Now the ACA actually requires that funds be segregated so that you have individuals have

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to buy separate abortion coverage for $2 or whatever it is, so that that pooling doesn't

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happen.

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When I was in the Trump White House, we implemented a regulation to enforce that rule, to enforce

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the law that required that those segregation of funds.

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The Biden administration immediately undid that rule.

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So those funds are co-mingled right now, the abortion coverage that is going on in the

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ACA plans.

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That's anyone who's buying an individual plan on the marketplace.

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It's incredible to think how far we have come in just a few short years where abortion was

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safe, legal, rare on one side of the aisle, on the other side of the aisle.

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We were very pro-life and now we're to the point where safe, legal, and rare is long

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gone.

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Oh yes.

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And speaking of getting a little political here, we're in the season and here in Florida,

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we have an initiative on our ballots.

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It's an amendment that we're fighting to keep what our governor has passed as a six-week

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period where no abortion can occur after that.

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It's hotly contested in this state.

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And now we're seeing also companies that are getting into the world of offering abortifacients

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by mail, companies that you would never suspect that would have done this, are now starting

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to lean into this a little bit.

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What would you recommend we can do to educate ourselves on these kinds of things and how

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can we push back on some of this?

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Yeah.

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I mean, the vast majority of abortions right now are by mail order pills.

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They're being done by medication.

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And that's happened primarily because of great states like Florida that have shut down the

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in-person clinics for Planned Parenthood and others.

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But we just saw some new abortion statistics come out that abortions have actually increased

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by 20% in this past year.

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That's crazy.

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Yeah.

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So we thought that I think the pro-life community wasn't prepared for a post-Roe environment

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where now we're fighting these battles in skirmishes in every community and every state

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across the country and we're losing a lot of them.

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We're winning some.

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I mean, Florida is an example.

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I'm very hopeful that this terrible referendum will be beaten back in Florida.

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Is the referendum to protect the law or is it to undermine the law?

382
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Yeah.

383
00:22:53,880 --> 00:22:55,360
I don't know on the law.

384
00:22:55,360 --> 00:22:56,360
So yeah, it's a...

385
00:22:56,360 --> 00:22:57,360
Oh, okay.

386
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It's a weak word.

387
00:22:58,360 --> 00:22:59,360
Yeah.

388
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Weak word.

389
00:23:00,360 --> 00:23:01,360
Right.

390
00:23:01,360 --> 00:23:02,360
Okay.

391
00:23:02,360 --> 00:23:05,120
So we're seeing these referenda all over the country and I'm very nervous about them.

392
00:23:05,120 --> 00:23:06,120
Yes.

393
00:23:06,120 --> 00:23:08,320
Obviously, we thought Ohio was safe, right?

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Right.

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But it's not.

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Kansas, not.

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So on the other hand, I think we need to acknowledge and meet people where they are.

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We're seeing that we have not won the argument on life begins at conception all the way,

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all nine months of protection for the unborn.

400
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However, you can easily say to somebody that we may not agree on when life begins or about

401
00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:40,560
all abortion policy, but we wanna have some reasonable allowance for our legislature to

402
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:41,560
legislate on this.

403
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So we don't want to tie the hands of future legislatures to provide reasonable regulations

404
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for the safety of women in the future by putting this into our constitution, for instance.

405
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And so there are some ad campaigns that I've seen that I think could be helpful if they

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were funded properly, but I think it's gonna be a dogfight.

407
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And one thing I would say is we're gonna lose in some places and maybe in many places.

408
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:13,480
It doesn't mean that we've lost forever.

409
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I mean, Roe was bad, right?

410
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:20,900
It took two generations, but we won the hearts and minds back.

411
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We won the argument.

412
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It feels like we're dying now in the field ideas in the arena, but we won this argument.

413
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A few years ago, we had won it and they were running from the truth.

414
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The other side was running and they were on the defense.

415
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Things do not always stay the same.

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Our Lord is in the long game and we don't need to get despairing and fearful that we've

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lost forever.

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But in the meantime, little babies are dying.

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Women are feeling desperate and they have no other choices.

420
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And so we definitely need to be reaching out to our neighbors and showing the value of

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the gospel that we actually are not insulated in our little Christian enclaves and we never

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come out of them.

423
00:25:03,080 --> 00:25:10,080
I think it's tempting to do that, obviously, in a time when we feel such persecution and

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censorship and cancellation, but we've got to continue to know our neighbors.

425
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We have to know our kids' schools and the other parents of our kids' friends and just

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show what life as a pro-life Christian really looks like.

427
00:25:23,320 --> 00:25:30,760
We can go back to the Europe argument and we appear to be one of the, at least what

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appears to come from one side is the most liberal use of abortion up until birth, even

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or whatever they may think.

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And then you look over across the sea and Europe has 12 weeks, maybe 15 weeks and here

431
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we are.

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We're getting one side pushing it all the way to birth.

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And then also going over to Europe and looking at, especially in England, which just came

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out and they're saying, no, children should not transition genders and you need to wait

435
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till you're an adult.

436
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:05,640
And over here, we're on the opposite end again.

437
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It seems that, yes, we should not give up the fight because sane people are on our side.

438
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:13,320
Yeah.

439
00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:18,840
And I think legislators, when they're given the chance over time to figure this out, they

440
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:23,040
arrive at positions that I would argue are cognitively dissonant, right?

441
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:27,880
It's either a baby at three months, the same as it's a baby at nine months, but whatever.

442
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:32,400
But they land at these sort of compromised positions that are pretty widely held consensus

443
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in their populations.

444
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:37,800
The problem here in America is that it was not allowed to go to legislators.

445
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It was done by a court.

446
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Now we're in the legislative battles of our lives.

447
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:45,000
I don't think that, and no bill lasts forever.

448
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:49,800
And so you can always fight to change a law, even if it gets passed in a way you don't

449
00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:50,800
like now.

450
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:55,160
The legislative process is what we want, but we're going to have to invest those resources.

451
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:58,820
Well, that leads into another question I have for you.

452
00:26:58,820 --> 00:27:02,920
So in November, if Trump is back in the White House, are you going to be joining him or

453
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,600
is that something or have you moved beyond that?

454
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:08,800
Because I know that I've heard interviews where you did say that, you know, you're enjoying

455
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:10,800
the time with your family now.

456
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:13,880
Yeah, I love the life I have right now.

457
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:17,280
The president, I'm sure, will have lots of great people.

458
00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:21,160
I always stand ready to answer questions or offer help however he needs.

459
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:23,440
But yeah, I love my life.

460
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:28,280
I like, I think my husband would divorce me.

461
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:31,040
A bit stressful on that end, the White House.

462
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:32,040
Yeah.

463
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:38,680
Well, Katie, as we close, where can people find more information about you, about the

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00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,560
healthcare sharing alliances and all that you're involved in?

465
00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:43,560
Yeah.

466
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:44,560
So you can find me on Twitter.

467
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:48,600
I'm at Katie Tolento or LinkedIn at Katie Tolento.

468
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:54,080
And of course, you can reach out about healthcare sharing ministries at our website at AHCSM.org.

469
00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:57,320
That's Alliance of Healthcare Sharing Ministries.org AHCSM.org.

470
00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:02,020
Katie, what is, we're just one last closing question.

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What is your greatest hope and your prayer right now for our country going forward and

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how policy is going to evolve?

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What's your hope?

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I think my greatest hope right now is that in Jesus, we start to recognize that we aligned

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with our creator whose image we're made in, we recognize that we are responsible for our

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health, that we, our spirit, our mind, our choices, our agency, our will, our reason,

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the logos in whose image we are created lives in us, that we are responsible for our health,

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our weight, our disease state.

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Everything about our health is much more spiritual than it is physical.

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And we don't have to outsource all our health decisions and autonomy to white coats or experts

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that we're in charge of it.

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I love it.

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Thank you, Katie, so much for joining us.

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We really appreciate it.

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We really appreciate it.

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Thank you so much for joining us on Invested With Purpose, making the most out of our time,

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talent and treasure.