RUSH: Now, to show you how the government doesn’t know what it’s talking about. During the ABC Obamamercial for nationalized healthcare, the president said that the congressional budget office, when they’re out there counting all these costs for health care, they’re not counting all the savings that may come from prevention. That’s how he says their costs are way too high. CBO says $1.6 trillion. But the president tried to say on ABC Wednesday night that they’re not counting the savings that might come from prevention. Wait just a second on that. I thought all these smoking bans from around the country would eliminate most of our country’s health problems. Do you remember these promises? We were told that secondhand smoke was a killer. We were told that secondhand smoke caused cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cancer, and birth defects. You name it.
I’ve got the story here from PR Newswire, August 17, 2005: ‘Secondhand smoke imposes significant costs on nonsmokers and society, according to a recent Society of Actuaries (SOA) study that concluded the annual cost of excess medical care, mortality and morbidity from secondhand smoke exposure in the US is approximately $10 billion. This includes approximately $5 billion in direct medical costs and approximately $5 billion in indirect costs, such as lost wages, reduced services and costs associated with disabilities per year.’ Now, Koko, I want you to put this up, too, because we have the suppressed World Health Organization report that says secondhand smoke is not a problem to anybody. It may make them uncomfortable, but it’s not a health risk. They suppressed it. They took it down. We have it. It’s in our essential stack of stuff and we’ll put it up there on the free side so you can see it.
My point here is Obama said Wednesday night: Well, they’re not factoring in all the costs we’re going to save with prevention. Well, we’ve banned smoking in practically every public place, right? Because smoking and secondhand smoke was going to kill people. It was going to cause cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cancer, birth defects, you name it. It was imperative for the nation’s health and welfare that we eliminate secondhand smoke. If we did, we would be practicing preventive healthcare and saving billions of dollars in the process, $50 billion over 10 years in direct medical cost savings. That’s what we were told in order to take away our liberty. We were told that we could save $50 billion in health care costs and untold numbers of lives if we just eliminated secondhand smoke, meaning ban it.
Now, that required taking away somebody’s liberty. Remember, tobacco has not been banned, folks. It’s not an illegal product. They ginned up all this panic and they’ve not saved a dime. It was a pack of lies. We don’t hear about it anymore. Where are these savings? Where are the savings from the banning of secondhand smoke? It’s always promised cost savings with these control freaks. Why haven’t health care costs been reduced by tens of billions of dollars since the nonsmoking laws have gone into effect? Would somebody explain this to me? Because they didn’t exist in the first place! Because you were lied to in the first place about secondhand smoke killing you or making you sick. I realize some of you in your head think it will be, but it won’t. Living under a volcano won’t make you sick, for crying out loud. You’ll recover from it. Live in a place where they don’t let you use DDT, you’re in trouble. I’m serious about this, folks. This is a classic example of how we are lied to in order to give up our liberty and freedom. We’re going to reduce health care costs. We’re going to ban secondhand smoke. The only way to do that is to ban smoking in public places.
I still hear all the complaints about rising health care costs, and I hear all the complaints about increasing cardiovascular disease and so forth. Why haven’t these health care costs been reduced by tens of billions of dollars since all these non-smoking laws have gone into effect? Hmmm? It was a pack of lies to jam these laws down our throats. We’re watching it all over again. Obama is recycling the same lies used by the antismoking Nazis. There is no cost savings. This whole method of reducing overall health care costs because of prevention is just a trick so you will give up your behavioral freedom and allow it to be regulated by autocrats like Barack Obama and the Democrat Party. These are phony promises so we will give the central planners a little more power over us. We will trade away our liberty for what we think is safety, security and our health. It’s all a crock of excrement and the same thing is happening with the energy bill. A bunch of mind-numbed robot promises made up out of thin air that have no relationship to reality in any way, shape, matter or form. Now you’re not saving your life; you’re saving your planet’s life. And to do it you’re being asked to give up way too much of your liberty.
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RUSH: We’ll go to South Florida, somewhere down here. This is Lou. Thanks for the call, sir. Appreciate your patience and welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. They always thought I was a boy in school, too, but that’s okay because I got sent to the gym’s boys room.
RUSH: Not your fault. Snerdley did denote that you were a female up there, I just —
CALLER: Well, once I got there they knew. But, anyway, Rush, I really appreciate you taking my call and top of the afternoon to you and all your listeners. And I’ve been listening to you for a long time and especially today I really got tickled at some of the things and I wrote a few comments down if that’s okay. When you were talking about Obama being in fantasyland, here’s an idea: Why don’t we just send everybody to Disney World. They can set up shop in the pink castle. Nancy Pelosi can wear her little dress and really move her wand around. And then the other thing that you mentioned about pulling the plug in the ocean. Well, when people have Obama fever like they do, they’re brainwashed. So if he was to get up and tell the people that there was a plug in the oceans, you’d have all the brainwashed left-wing people out there on a massive mission to hunt for it.
RUSH: You’re right. He’s already done it in one of his acceptance speeches during the campaign. The guy’s out there saying that he’s gotta go about the business of lowering the sea levels; it’s going to happen because he’s elected. I guarantee you, when I watched his acceptance speech at Grant Park the night he won his presidency, not the acceptance speech, the victory speech, I’m looking at these people in Grant Park and they were pod people, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, pod people. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Oh, I so want him! Jesse Jackson is out there crying. Oprah Winfrey is saying how come I’m not in the special section. It was a mixed bag. But you’re right, people have that view. Still too many do.
Rick in Charleston, South Carolina. Open Line Friday. You’re next. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Fine, sir, thank you.
CALLER: I’d just like to say you’re doing a real good job, and to quote one of your parodies on Dan Rather: Courage. Just keep doing it.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I want to talk about health care. I’m a former Canadian, now an American. I worked in Canada under the National Healthcare Service from its inception until 1984 and then moved to the States.
RUSH: That would mean you’re a doctor.
CALLER: You got it.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: Sorry, I thought I told your screener that. Anyway, yes, I am. And the thing I want to talk to you about more than anything else is this whole concept of Trojan horse. When the Canadian health care system started, it was private. It was started by the medical profession in the province of Ontario and then followed by the health care industry. The government felt that its people weren’t being adequately looked after, so they put in their own parallel plan, and it went broke. So the government decided what we gotta to do then is get more funds. So they took over all private health care.
RUSH: Wait a second. You’re telling me there was a private sector health plan in Ontario?
CALLER: There was. That’s how it started.
RUSH: And government employees thought it wasn’t good enough for them?
CALLER: Right. Oh, no, I’m sorry, they did like it. The government employees themselves, like the firemen and policemen, they took private health care. But it was the less well-off individuals that the government wanted to cover. So they did a mixture of Medicare/Medicaid and started their own personal subscription medical health care service where people could buy insurance from the government. But their plan went broke so they took over the private plans to get those premiums into their hands. And that’s what’s going to happen here with Obama’s parallel plan.
RUSH: Well, however it happens, the private health care plans will evaporate. You can’t compete with an entity that does not have to make a profit — and that is the United States government.