Con Men, Call Centers And Rogue Doctors Elizabeth Chamblee Burch's The Pain Brokers

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Hello and good morning party people.

Hi, era.

How are you fantastic?

Listen to your voice, man.

And how did you get so in tune so early on a Monday?

I get up early.

I have a lot of coffee.

See, that's what it's all about.

That's the secret isn't it?

These people that sleep in man, you know, what they need to do is wake up at six

o'clock in the morning and grab your book.

Oh, I appreciate that.

Yeah, I hope that's right.

Well, don't you think your book is a great way to start off your day?

Either that or or or a moment in your day, where you can say, I need to cut

myself off from the from the the rigmaru of the social media as well as the headlines.

And I need to just listen to somebody who has a message and that's that's you.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to turn off the social media in the mornings or even

in the afternoons, but I'm thrilled to have written this book and I'm super excited

to talk with you about it.

Well, I'm excited to find out how you even came up with this title because you

know the title of a book.

That's where everybody goes to judge the author.

Oh, and then you got to go through the editor first as I go, please, I just need

the journey to get it out there.

Yeah, it's so true.

And you know, the pain brokers was not actually the original title of this book

as you can well imagine.

So I had actually started off with the body shop, but my publishers were worried

that people would get confused.

Is it about automobiles?

Is it about cosmetics?

So we settled on the pain brokers and I think they were absolutely right.

I think it conveys the message really well.

See, it's moments like that that really does remind me of kind of like what a

Mark Twain used to say is that that we want to break it down, break it down, break

it down and simplify everything that we might as well just go back to just going

a hug and they would know what we're saying, right?

Yeah, I can't understand that.

Yeah, but you know, it does.

It brings it in line with some of these, you know, great works by Patrick

Radden, Keith, Empire of Pain and Barry Meyer, Pain Killer, which are both about

the opioid epidemic.

And this isn't about the opioid epidemic, but it is about another mass

toward like the opioid epidemic.

So to have that honesty in this world where you're supposed to be going, oh,

I'm going to look this other way.

You did not Elizabeth look the other way on this subject.

No, I looked straight at it and I've been writing about this for, I mean,

as an academic for 20 some years, but as will not surprise you at all,

nobody really cares about what academics say.

So I wanted to talk about this to a larger audience and I went back to school

and got an MFA and narrative nonfiction and wrote this book along the way so

that I could tell these stories in a way that would really resonate with people.

See, I see that as being a soundtrack to your life because a you're not

getting that time back and B when people say, what were you doing?

Well, here's what I was doing and look at the effects.

That's right.

That's right.

You know, I think, you know, scholars play an important role and

the difficulty in this world that I write in is that the key stakeholders,

the people you're trying to convince to change all have a vested interest

in the status quo.

So if I really wanted to create some sort of change in this world,

then I needed for the general public to understand why this is so problematic.

So what was it like for you to fit inside the bookstore?

Because we're talking about a book that's easily a public service style book,

but at the same time, it's a thriller.

Where does that end up at Barnes and Noble?

You know, that's a good question.

I've only seen it at the Barnes and Noble here in town.

And it was, you know, on the front because I was a local author.

But, you know, I think it's it's somewhere in maybe history.

It's not quite current events because it happened a couple of years ago,

although very much of this is happening still today.

So it could be current events.

It's also true crime.

So, you know, it's, it'll be interesting to see where it lands on the bookshelves.

Yeah, because I mean, my experience with that, when I went in there and founded

in my, my first book in what's called New Age Religion, I went, what?

Well, no, no, no, that's no, no.

And they wouldn't change it out of there.

I said, Oh, God, I guess I have to work with this.

Now, right, right.

Yeah, I mean, I would be interesting to see where it lands.

It's hard for these kinds of narrative, nonfiction books to really find a home

because they're not memoirs.

They're not biographies.

They're kind of history, but not quite history.

And so it's there, they're a little bit of misfits in the bookstores.

This is the style of book.

My wife wants to read because she wants to have that experience of, Oh, my God,

this could really happen.

I mean, that's what she loves in a story like this because it comes

with history.

It gives her a chance to take a break to go look something up that it might

look just like it or it is just like it because I mean, you're talking about

Sharon Barbara and Jerry here, three women who have been targeted, manipulated

and violated.

Now you have the attention of the people.

There's your true crime.

That's right.

That's right.

And this is, you know, it's something this happened in the past and involved

pelvic mesh and some cold calls to Jerry and Sherry, Sharon and Barb telling

them that they had a ticking time bomb in them that they had to have it taken

out immediately.

And you know, the colors had all the information that you would normally

expect to raise your red flag.

So, you know, they're not asking for information about their birthdays or

implant dates.

They already have all that information available at their fingertips through

a data breach in India.

And so it sounded very legitimate.

You know, we're talking about, you woke me up in the way that I'm so tired of

getting these phone calls because, and I work with con artists all the time

because one of my favorite things to do in life is to do jobs that people don't

want to do.

And, and, and so one day I decided I'm going to go work at a grocery store

because I saw it on TV.

These two old guys at a grocery store and they look like that.

They're, their community connected.

And so when I sit here and I read about con men and call centers and, and

rogue doctors, I'm going, I live this every day because they're coming through my store.

Yep.

Yeah, and they're, they're coming through people's lives, you know, there was an

opportunity to, there was, you know, hundreds of thousands of women who started

suing over this product and the lawyers and the doctors and the middlemen

realized that they were sitting on a gold mine.

And if only they could convince women to have the product removed that it

would increase the value of the settlement for them and not necessarily for the

women.

And so the machine started to grind, uh, grind up.

Doesn't this open up the door for people to say I knew it only because when,

when it comes to America's lawsuit factory, when I had my heart attack at 47,

I accused my doctor of faking it because they were just looking for business.

And even more recently when another doctor told me, well, I need you to lose

weight to get your cholesterol down.

And I do it and he says, Oh, there must be a bigger problem.

And I'm going, what the, what are you doing here?

And then I come across you here, America's lawsuit factory.

I'm going, oh my God, am I a victim victim?

And are we victims just like Sharon Barbara and Jerry?

Well, I mean, that's, that's the big question.

And I think a lot of this was based on trust or lack of, you know, maybe,

trust that shouldn't have been placed in these doctors.

Um, one of the reasons that so many women got exploited and this was the,

the doctors were very dismissive of their pelvic pain.

So they would go in and talk to their doctors and say, you know,

something's wrong, something's poking me, something's terrible happening.

And the doctors would just sort of wave their hands and say, everything looks fine to us.

Um, and so when these callers called and said, well, you know, doctors don't

understand they're not on the cutting edge of this.

There are only a few doctors in the country who can do this.

We'll set up an appointment to fly you down to see them.

It resonated with a lot of these people.

Please do not move.

There's more with Elizabeth Shembley Birch coming up next.

The name of her new book, The Pain Brokers, Elizabeth Shembley Birch.

You went through 209,000 pages of evidence.

I don't know how you do it, but, but the thing is, is that I respect you for doing it

because I thought I was a research pig.

And then when I find out about this from you, I'm going, I want to be like Elizabeth.

I want to have that courage and that confidence to say, there's a story here.

And we're going to find it.

Well, it is digging for that needle and a haystack.

And you have these like wonderful, you know, just when you get so discouraged

and you're like, Oh, there's nothing that I can find.

Then you find that thing that you weren't supposed to find.

And it's just these amazing aha moments that happen along the way that keep you

going. And you, you know, you feel a little bit like a detective.

It's really wonderful.

But isn't this con job also involving lawyers as well?

Because how many times have we seen those commercials on TV?

If you've had the hernia mesh, you could be in trouble.

Now I'm going, well, why am I going to the doctor?

If the doctor says you got to do it.

And these guys are saying, well, you're going to screw up if you do it.

I mean, you're, you're caught right in the middle of the corner of walk and don't walk.

Yeah, you really are.

And so much of it falls on us as consumers to try to do the research to figure out

is this the right thing for me?

You know, lawyers were very much involved in this as well.

And there was a kind of a loophole in Washington, DC.

It started because lobbyists, I think wanted to go under the cloak of privilege with lawyers.

But in DC, you can start a law firm with non lawyer partners as long as you have a single

DC lawyer who's willing to be your frontman.

And so there was a call center that created a partnership with a DC law firm.

And instead of selling these quote unquote leads for clients was actually able to get in on the

contingency fees.

Oh, Elizabeth, you have woken up the bear here.

Because I'll tell you what, what it's happened to my wife and I, and you're right about the,

you know, those call centers in the way that it just seems like when doctors see something

that they, that needs to be looked at, why are we getting phone calls from four and five

different businesses?

I mean, to go get an MRI, there must have been

seven or eight phone calls from people saying I can get you in.

I can get you in.

I'm going, is there anybody here that has actually worked with me or talked with me?

I mean, you, you're such an eye opening situation here with the pain brokers.

It really is.

And, you know, the, the troubling part about it was all these sort of side scams that I found

as I was going along.

You know, you have these chiropractic clinics that are trying to, you know, have lawyers

in house next door to the chiropractor and send their, you know, car accident victim

over and some of them are subjected to unnecessary surgeries to do the same sort of thing.

But, you know, you have to pick the story that you can tell and that you can write

about in a coherent way.

And it's, um, it's really disturbing how much of this continues to go on.

Are we a weak people?

And the reason I bring that up is because I was always, I was angry when my parents ended

up at the doctor like almost every day of the week.

I'm going, what are you doing?

Are, are we weak or is it that we just want to feel better?

You know, I think people just want to feel better and, you know, they don't always have

the education.

And so we trust people who are educated and who are supposed to be acting on our behalf.

And there are wonderful doctors out there.

There are wonderful lawyers out there who are very much trying to do good in the world.

And so, you know, the key is finding the right group of doctors and lawyers who can help

you instead of bringing you additional pain.

So as a creative person, as the published author and somebody who's connected to a publishing

company, how do you get somebody like chat GPT to get you on their list because you know

people are going there to get answers.

And, and how do we get the pain brokers up there?

How are you guys working on that?

You mean how are we getting it out into the world?

Because, I mean, because when I go to chat GPT, I want answers.

And so, and I think I think the pain brokers is an answer, but it's like, okay, we can

put it up on TikTok, but where's everybody going?

Obviously, everybody's going to chat GPT because they want to put advertising on it now.

They're not going to do it if the people aren't there.

And so it's like, how do we get Elizabeth out there to where there is something that we

can choose from?

Yeah, I mean, you know, that's the real challenge is to try to break through the noise of things

that are going on every day.

It's one of the reasons I was so excited to talk with you is because, you know, you want

people to be able to hear about it.

You want to get it out into the world.

You want it to be part of the rhythms of the daily life and to come up for people in

their searches and to come up as a reliable source of information.

But it is.

I mean, it is a real challenge to break through everything that's going on horribly in the

world and to try to get people to focus on this for a minute.

Well, my fear has always been the moments after we've all dealt with a doctor Christopher,

because we've all had a doctor Christopher.

Yeah.

Yeah, you all have these, it's just this trusting of your gut and I think, you know, part

of the situation that these women found themselves in is that they were flown, you know, thousands

of miles to kind of an eerie twilight zone chiropractic outpatient clinic in South

Florida.

And then they were, you know, kind of sucked into the machine at that point.

And so it's like, you know, can you stop and say, no, this doesn't feel right to me and

backing out of this.

And I think a lot of the women didn't feel like they could do that at that point.

Oh, I, I had a rotator cuff doctor get so pissed off at me inside the office because

he wanted to do the surgery and I said, no, you're wrong.

If this is my body, I know what I feel.

I'm going to go with what I feel and, and he literally, in lettering, big letters in

his own handwriting said, do not invite this patient back here again.

Wow.

Wow.

I mean, you know, it is very much about trusting your instincts, about standing up

for yourself, you know, just about listening to your gut and saying, this isn't right.

This isn't what I want to do for my body.

How are you going to change the world now?

In other words, is your book is out?

Do you go on a speaking engagement?

How are you?

Are do you go out and teach in some of these universities that are part of not, not only

the educational field of lawyers, but doctors as well?

Absolutely.

You know, it's interesting that we've had the first few events for the pain brokers

last week since the book has been out in the world for just less than a week now.

And I've already been contacted by our med school.

We have a brand new med school here at the University of Georgia that's just starting

up and, you know, thinking about ways that we can partner with them to talk about ethics

and the medical profession.

I, of course, teach a third of our incoming class at the University of Georgia School

of Law to talk to them about taught sensible procedure, and then I teach advanced mass

towards and complex litigation.

And then my hope is that they go out into the world, you know, a lot of them are clerking

for judges and working in these big law firms and, you know, between that and talking with

the public.

I hope that we can slowly start to tip the scales.

God, I would love to see you at UNCC or even, even Queen's College or for that matter,

CPCC with their world and how they're changing people on the community level.

You know, you get into the soul of where the community is and all of a sudden Elizabeth,

you're changing people's lives.

Well, absolutely.

And I'll be up at Davidson at Main Street Books in February.

I don't know.

That's a little bit of a hike for you from Charlotte.

It's just up 45.

It's not that big of a hike.

Yeah.

So I'm excited about that.

I'm talking with the director of writing at Davidson, who's also a professor in gender

studies and, you know, it's open to the public.

We'd love to have people there, particularly from around the Charlotte area.

And just really excited to get this book out there.

You know, I'm not doing a ton of in person, but if people invite me, I'm happy to come.

And if people are doing bookclubs, I'm happy to pop in over Zoom just to kind of do a

quick Q and A if people have questions.

Do me a favor when you go to Davidson.

That is the home of Steph Curry.

You've got to go see.

I know.

Oh my God.

Go see what that man has done to that campus and how it inspires everything beyond today.

I can't wait.

I'm excited.

I went and toured Davidson when I was an undergrad or thinking about going to school.

That was a long, long time ago.

So I'm sure it's changed a whole lot since then.

Well, I don't know how you guys would even pay attention if you were in class with Lake

Norman up there because there's just way too much going on when it comes to mother nature.

I bet.

But yeah, I didn't end up going to Davidson, but it was a beautiful campus and the people

there were just lovely.

So I'm excited to have the chance to go back.

Where can people go to find out more about you and how can we keep this conversation

growing?

This cannot be a.

Oh, January, 2026 kind of a conversation.

No, I hope it'll start, you know, spark beginning of a movement.

So my website is my long and convoluted name.

It's www.Elizabeth Shamble, C-H-A-M, B-L-E-E, Birch, B-U-R-C-H dot com.

And if you just Google the pain brokers, I'll come up as probably easier to remember.

And I'm on Instagram and, you know, all the social media that's out there these days trying

to get out and talk about the book and how it affects everyone.

See, I'm shocked that you're not doing a radio show doing this because I mean, it worked

for Dr. Laura.

It worked for all these other people that would get on there and play the music.

But then you could sit there and say, no, here's something we're going to talk about

today.

Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob.

I just, you've just got that type of personality where it's like, that was a beautiful song,

but now how can we incorporate something into your day?

I love that.

I love that idea.

Maybe I can, I can do that for, you know, the pain brokers 2.0, but for now, I'm just

excited to, to leave that to you and to talk to you about it.

Well, well, you've got to come back to this show anytime in the future.

20 minutes with you is not enough.

Well, I would love that.

I'd love to come back.

There's, you know, there's so much to this story and there's so much to, to mask

towards.

I mean, you know, right now the GLP one litigation is just gearing up all the people who are finding

out that we go via an olympic isn't the dream that they hoped it might be or beginning

to sue.

There's 3,000 of those lawsuits and 250 more being filed every month.

So, you know, I'm worried about what's going to happen there.

You're scaring the bjb's out of that one because in all honesty so that I could keep my life

in order when it comes to diabetes, I'm the one that gives my wife her olympic every

week.

Yeah.

I read about this inside the book and I'm going, oh, for the love of Pete, oh, what's going

on?

What do I need to watch?

Yeah.

And you know, it can be a wonderful drug for many people.

It's just that there are occasional side effects and, you know, there's these questions.

Like we think about, you know, you think back to Finn Finn, which was a massive disaster,

but it was, you know, a hugely popular drug and it was alleged to have caused in large

heart valves and the people who used it.

And then the, you know, the pain brokers came in and there were bands outside of hotels

with echocardiograms in them and people lined up to have their echocardiograms read within

a minute to decide if they were potential plaintiffs in a lawsuit.

Oh, my God.

You have got the courage to march right through this dang mountain.

And because I'm sure there are people that are standing in your way saying, Elizabeth,

don't go there, but I have to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, these are stories that nobody really wants told.

So I'm not the most popular person in the room, but I'm excited to tell the stories and

they're important.

They're important for people to hear.

So I'm grateful for the chance to do that.

Wow.

Well, once again, please come back to the show anytime in the future.

The door is always going to be open for you.

Well, I'm so grateful to you, Erro.

Thanks so much for having me on.

Well, you'll be brilliant today, okay?

All right.

You do the same.

Thank you so much.