This is Gordon in Lakeland, Florida. Nice to have you on the program, sir, hello.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my phone call. I’m a conservative like you and socialized anything scares me. So when I did some research and found that the Japanese health care system which is socialized has people living longer, having less cancer, and it costs about half as much as ours, I got confused. My gut feeling is saying socialized anything is bad, but my academics are saying that it’s good. You’re very knowledgeable on this matter, and I’d like to see if you can help me out.
RUSH: Well, I might have to look into this because I was not aware of the total socialization of the Japanese health care system.
CALLER: It’s not totally socialized. The doctors offices are privately run but the hospitals are socialized. And if you need to make some time to look into this, I’m not going to make fun of you at all. Because if I need help then I’m not going to make fun of you for not knowing it.
RUSH: You can make fun of me. I don’t care.
CALLER: No, no, no, no. I’m not going to make fun of you at all.
RUSH: You can call me an ignoramus if want. I can take it because I am ignorant about this. I am going to have to read up on it. I will not tell you I know something that I don’t.
CALLER: That’s one real reason why I really respect you, because you’re honest enough to step up and say, ‘I know about this but I don’t know about that.’
RUSH: Now, the hospitals are ‘socialized,’ meaning government runs them?
CALLER: Well, from my research indicates that the government runs the hospitals but not the doctors’ offices.
RUSH: Well, that’s a key distinction.
CALLER: Right. (unintelligible)
RUSH: Let me tell you something. I have to tell you this about Japan. Forget health care. Let’s look at our overall economy. Japan was in, in the eighties… How old are you, Gordon?
CALLER: I’m 43.
RUSH: So you probably remember back in the early eighties, the mid-eighties the Japanese were flush with cash and they were buying up things in Los Angeles.
RUSH: They had a good market back then.
CALLER: And they bought up the Rockefeller trust in New York and everybody said, ‘Oh, my God, the Japanese owning 30 Rock! Oh, what, are they going to bring their culture over here? Oh, my God. Oh, my God,’ and then something happened and they went into a deep, deep, deep recession.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: And they formed an organization called ‘Japan, Inc.,’ and it was an alliance between the Japanese government and Japanese private sector business.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: That resulted in a 20-year recession. I don’t know the current status of their economic plight right now.
CALLER: Well, from what my research indicates, they take 6.6% off the top of the person’s — I think it’s the gross income. Now, a few things. They do have a healthier diet, they have less illegal immigration, and there are some things that can kind of partly explain why some of their mortality figures might be calculated differently.
RUSH: Well, that’s true. I was just going to mention to you that. Now, the ‘experts,’ again, we’re talking about media reports. I don’t believe anything anymore. But the media experts are telling us, or they’re citing health experts saying the reason that the Japanese life expectancy is longer, it’s attributed to their healthy diet — well, not healthy, it’s just the Japanese diet. But they are complaining now the more Western diet is being adopted and they’re seeing (they’re saying) that there are more long-term health problems that are popping into their society and in their culture.
CALLER: They’ve Americanized some of their diet. Before I forget about it I want to bring to your attention that Sean Hannity has spoken out about chiropractors being very good and I’m very glad about that because I see a chiropractor and I think you have, too, and if you haven’t I would hope that you did. And a vegetarian diet has a lot of positive benefits.
RUSH: Ahhhhhhh! A planned call. You are good. You are good. You strung me along! You don’t give a rat’s rear end about the Japanese health care system. You are a militant vegetarian and (laughing) You are good, Gordon. You are really good! (laughing) Hannity spends a lot of time and knows about chiropractors? (laughing) Reminds me, you know, when anybody tells me that their back is bothering them, I always say: ‘Stay off of it.’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Japanese health care system, eh? Try this headline from Tokyo, February 4th of this year: ‘Injured Man Dies After Rejection by 14 Hospitals.’ We don’t know whether he was a vegetarian or a chiropractor, but nevertheless he died after being rejected by 14 hospitals. Washington Post, September 7th this year, they do cite the low cost of the Japanese system, but there are specialist shortages, longer hospital stays. The bottom line is Obama and Gibbs have been asked to cite a country they want to emulate health care, and they can’t name one, so we’re not going to include Japan in this. Nothing against Japanese. We love Japanese people here.