{"id":33036,"date":"2009-07-23T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:10:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T02:10:03","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:10:03","slug":"this_is_not_about_health_care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/07\/23\/this_is_not_about_health_care\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Not About Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Back to the phones to Chicago. This is Ted. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hello. Thank you for taking my call.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yes, sir.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Okay, just a question. Obama keeps talking about how all these people, they lost their job or they can\u2019t afford their insurance or whatever. Somehow they\u2019re in financial straits. But don\u2019t we already have programs like Medicaid and public aid to cover people who don\u2019t have any money?<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s why… Everybody gets coverage. Everybody gets health care in this country. I had a story yesterday about young people who either got fired, laid-off or part time work and they don\u2019t have health care overage, and oh it was horrible. It was an AP story and it was designed to spur sympathy, and if you read the story, they all got treated nevertheless. It was just tragic they didn\u2019t have any insurance. You\u2019re exactly right. Medicaid is for the poor and Medicare is for the elderly, and the promise is, ‘It\u2019s free for you. You\u2019re poor; it\u2019s free for you.\u2019 Both programs are bankrupt! The Obama plan builds on both of those programs. See, your question, Ted, is exactly why the premise of this whole question is not the right one. You know, I did a long interview on camera with Greta Van Susteren this morning right here at the Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. I was ‘unleashed.\u2019 They\u2019re promoing it that way on Fox. <\/p>\n

I was on fire, and I said, ‘The whole premise here is all wrong. We don\u2019t have anything structurally wrong with our health care. It\u2019s the best in the world. We don\u2019t need to tear it apart and rebuild it. Maybe tweak it around the edges.\u2019 <\/p>\n

And of course Greta was somewhat aghast, ‘You don\u2019t think there\u2019s a crisis?\u2019 <\/p>\n

‘No! Compared to the rest of the world we\u2019ve got the best health care. Nobody leaves this country, Greta, to get treated. They come here,\u2019 and I pointed out to her, and I could see her eyes kind of got wide here. I said, ‘Look, if we really care about the uninsured, we just spent close to a trillion dollars on the stimulus six months ago. I ran the numbers, Greta, and $29 billion would cover the genuinely 12 million poor people in this country that don\u2019t have health insurance. For $29 billion! And then if $29 billion will cover 12 million then you can run the numbers. So we could for one year have covered these people with chump change from the stimulus.\u2019 Now, if it\u2019s so important to cover them with health insurance, why the hell didn\u2019t we? <\/p>\n

Why are we going all out? Ninety percent of the American people have health insurance. What are we talking about here? We\u2019re talking about people\u2019s fear, and that\u2019s why there is insurance. You got a policy, you pay a premium based on the amount of risk that you want to take or that you can afford. Except the problem is, of course, as we know that for 50 years the concept that health care should be free and you have to pay for it has been growing and growing and growing — and don\u2019t forget, folks, that every day we are bombarded with something new that\u2019s going to kill us, from global warming to sharks to scorpions that end up being stowaways on airplanes to the latest food additive or food that could kill you. <\/p>\n

Everybody\u2019s obsessed with health. They\u2019re out there joining health clubs. We got the most obese people in the world that are drinking this and eating that and so forth. We\u2019ve got a population that is inundated. Chinese food\u2019s going to kill you! Trans fats are going to kill you! Secondhand cigarette smoke is gonna kill you! Everybody is thinking they\u2019re going to die;, everybody is thinking they\u2019re going to get sick. They want health insurance. They want catastrophic health insurance. It\u2019s just… All of this stuff is interlinked in order to create the demand for bigger government, which is somehow magically where the solution to everything lies — which, of course, is a lie. There are very few solutions to social problems in big government. Thanks for that question, Ted. We got ten minutes of an answer out of that.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Joe in Key West, Florida. It\u2019s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Rush, let me tell you, it is a pleasure to be calling you from the Democrat Peoples Conch Republic. <\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah. (chuckles)<\/p>\n

CALLER: And, you know, the more you go through this health care, Porkulus bill, the more it stinks! I\u2019m looking at page 1,000, where they have the ‘National Medical Device Registry,\u2019 and it\u2019s just stunning to me that the government would want to know about every Class Two or Class Three medical device that\u2019s life supporting or life sustaining that ‘is or has been used in a patient.\u2019 ‘…is or has been used.\u2019 Not what they\u2019ve paid for, but what anybody has paid for or has ever had placed in them. I\u2019m just waiting for the day that the ACORN representative comes by to tell me I have to register for insurance. And they get paid for that?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, well, you have to register for it.<\/p>\n

CALLER: And if you\u2019re poor and if you\u2019re in a situation where you don\u2019t want to buy insurance and you don\u2019t want to be on Medicaid, you have to go on Medicaid. But this is intrusive.<\/p>\n

RUSH: No, you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Pardon?<\/line> <\/line>RUSH: Or you can pay a fine to the IRS.<\/line><\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, yeah, up to the amount of what your premium would be or $2,500. But for the government to get this intrusive into my life is just stunning to me.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I\u2019m glad you\u2019re reading it. I\u2019m glad you\u2019re seeing these things. I am waving the red flag. I got the sirens going and the lights blinking. This isn\u2019t about health care, and it\u2019s not about these devices you\u2019re talking about. These details illustrate what this is about: Regulating your behavior, the government keeping tabs on what you are doing and whether what you are doing is going to cause problems for you and them with health care expenses. The simplest way to understand this is that it\u2019s not about health care, and that\u2019s why Obama won\u2019t get into any details here. That\u2019s why he\u2019s lying. ‘Oh, yeah! You\u2019re going to get increased coverage and more efficient treatment. It isn\u2019t going to cost you anything! A couple millionaires are gonna pay a higher tax rate and it\u2019s going to be a panacea.\u2019 If you\u2019re a Medicare or Medicaid patient, if you like dealing with it, fine and dandy. You can have it. It\u2019s going to get even worse (sigh) with all the forms. Oh, my.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Back to the phones to Chicago. This is Ted. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. RUSH: Yes, sir. CALLER: Okay, just a question. Obama keeps talking about how all these people, they lost their job or they can\u2019t afford their insurance or whatever. Somehow they\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis is Not About Health Care - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/07\/23\/this_is_not_about_health_care\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"This is Not About Health Care - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Back to the phones to Chicago. This is Ted. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. RUSH: Yes, sir. 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