{"id":33828,"date":"2009-10-29T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T01:45:23","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T01:45:23","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T01:45:23","slug":"the_public_option_won_t_be_free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/10\/29\/the_public_option_won_t_be_free\/","title":{"rendered":"The Public Option Won\u2019t Be Free!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: We\u2019re going to go back to Tuesday on this program where I said this.<\/p>\n

RUSH ARCHIVE: To a lot of people public option means free. Public option is associated with government, and people think what they get from the government is free, the kind of people we\u2019re talking about. Oh, yeah, your food stamps come in, you didn\u2019t pay for them, ‘Yeah, government gave them to me. Obama\u2019s stash.\u2019 The poor people in Detroit, ‘Obama giving me the money, Obama, from reserve funds, or from his stash.\u2019 So you can find people like that and say, ‘You support the public option?\u2019 ‘Is it free?\u2019 ‘Yeah.\u2019 ‘Fine, count me in.\u2019 And then some reputable polling organization puts the news out there.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, as you know the State-Controlled Media has been gunning for Joe Lieberman ever since he said he\u2019d join the filibustering against Dingy Harry\u2019s public option state opt-out, and he\u2019s on Fox News Channel\u2019s newsroom yesterday. Jane Skinner, Mrs. Roger Goodell, by the way, talked to Senator Joe Lieberman, and she said to him, ‘Senator, supporters of this government-run health insurance say that your economic argument really makes no sense because the public option, they say, would actually lower costs because it would exert pressure on private insurance out there.\u2019<\/p>\n

LIEBERMAN: I don\u2019t agree. Premiums will go up. When people hear ‘public option\u2019 I think they think it\u2019s for free. It\u2019s not for free. Somebody\u2019s going to have to pay for it, and you can bet it\u2019s going to be the taxpayers and the people who pay health insurance premiums now.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Bingo. Bingo. I finally figured out this public option. There are enough people in this country who think it means free, and then they hear people come along, ‘Yeah, we\u2019re going to raise taxes on the rich, millionaires out there, gonna raise their taxes, they\u2019re going to be the ones paying for it.\u2019 But, you know, the question here, ‘Some people say that the public option would lower costs because it would exert pressure on private insurance.\u2019 This is the myth that there\u2019s no competition in the private insurance market. There\u2019s 1,700 companies in this country selling health insurance, but there are so many regulations from state to state that a lot of companies cannot put together policy options that they would like to sell because there are state regulations against it. In addition, if you live in Alabama you cannot buy a policy from anywhere but Alabama, and ditto if you live in Missouri, you have to buy insurance from a company in Missouri. <\/p>\n

So the theory is that here comes the government, here comes Obama, and Obama will be the 1,701st, or one, company. So we\u2019re going to add to 1,700 insurance companies by one and that\u2019s going to be the government, and that is going to exert all kinds of competitive pressure. The competitive pressure has already been monkeyed with because of all the state regulations governing the insurance agency, what they can and can\u2019t sell, to whom they can and cannot sell it, for how much they can and cannot charge. I mean it\u2019s already so overregulated, to call it a free market is a little bit of an exaggeration as it is. But the idea that the government\u2019s going to come in and be a competitor and lower costs in private insurance? Folks, when you have a company offering health insurance that does not have to make a profit, competing against companies that do have to make a profit to stay in business, what\u2019s the result? The companies that have to make a profit go out of business. You know why? Because the company that doesn\u2019t have to make a profit can charge as little as it wants — at first. <\/p>\n

If your company provides health coverage for you and let\u2019s say the plan that the company provides for you covers your family for a bunch of services and let\u2019s say it costs the company $7,500 a year to give you your health benefits package. Okay, here comes Obamacare, public option, available for $500 a person, same plan, same coverage. Now, in the private sector, there are regulations to prevent private companies from competing that way. Companies cannot give away the product, they cannot charge below costs and so forth for very long before people come in and say wait a minute, it\u2019s unfair business practice. But the government\u2019s under no such regulation. So if the Obama public option let\u2019s say is $2,000 versus the private coverage you already have at $7,500, what\u2019s going to happen? Your company is going to off-load you to the public option. It\u2019s going to be much cheaper to buy insurance for employees at $2,000 from the government than $7,500 from a company. Even charging $7,500 is only making a profit of two-to-three percent every year. <\/p>\n

So the whole idea that there is competition, or the government\u2019s going to spark competition, it\u2019s another one of those assertions that gets me very close to the string of profanity. The government can run deficits. You can\u2019t. Credit card companies do not punish the government for borrowing too much or not paying back the minimum balance. Credit card companies do not penalize the government for paying off the balance on time. Government can run deficits, they can print money. There is no way that a company that can print money and doesn\u2019t have to worry about making a profit will do anything but destroy its so-called competitors. This is the plan. This is the objective. And that\u2019s how small business people and others are going to end up putting you on the public option. <\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s out there saying if you like your plan, if you like what you\u2019re paying for it, nobody is going to make you change it. Technically nobody may make you change it, but if it\u2019s something that costs you $7,500, same thing you can get for $2,000, what are you going to do? Now, by the way, that $2,000, because that\u2019s going to be priced way below what the actual service you get for it is, it\u2019s going to be priced extraordinarily low, it\u2019s not realistic. At some point that $2,000 is going to rise to even higher than what it was at $7,500 when your employer was getting insurance. It has to. It\u2019s the government involved here. James Clyburn, last night, MSNBC, question: ‘What is the tax side of this bill going to look like when Pelosi unveils it tomorrow?\u2019<\/p>\n

CLYBURN: We will be looking at couples who make more than a million dollars a year and individuals that make more than $500,000 a year, about one-and-a-half percent, I forgot exactly what the percentage is, there will be a small increase in their income taxes which will then take them back a ways, but not as far back as they were before Bush gave them the tax cut. They\u2019ll still be benefiting from part of the Bush tax cuts but not as much.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So there you have it. There\u2019s the new tax increase on the rich, one-and-a-half percent surcharge on individuals at $500 grand a year or couples at $1 million a year.<\/p>\n

Arlington, Texas, Kim, thank you for waiting. You\u2019re next on the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you today?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Fine. Thanks very much.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, I think you got it totally right. I think that what they\u2019re doing is they\u2019re just going to price everybody out of it by calling it a new name in this new bill from the Congress. They\u2019re making it sound so good by calling it something besides price forging, you know, with the health industry. And, you know, just like they\u2019re changing the name from the ‘public option\u2019 to the ‘consumer option,\u2019 they\u2019re making it sound so good by putting a pretty label on it and they\u2019re making it sound so good but they\u2019re basically going to price out all of the private insurers by making it sound so good, and the health industry, you know, Secretary Sebelius, she\u2019s basically going to be that gatekeeper that basically is going to be the regulator for all the private insurers and make sure that all the private insurers end up going out of business —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Eventually. Eventually. This is not going to happen overnight. In the first place, none of this — except the tax increases — none of this is going to get implemented for four years. Tax increases will happen immediately. The increased costs, like on medical devices, which include tampons, by the way — (interruption) yes, it does! You don\u2019t remember me announcing this? You must have been on your honeymoon or something. Tampons are considered a medical device. Condoms are considered a medical device and there\u2019s going to be taxes on these things. And they\u2019ll go into effect as soon as this debacle is passed, but the actual health care practice of spending will not happen for three or four years. Now, the thing about forcing people to buy insurance, that\u2019s another thing here that we need to talk about because that\u2019s in the bill, too, forcing you to buy insurance and if you don\u2019t you pay a fine. Now, again, public option, cheaper than private insurance. Where you gonna go to buy it? In fact, what if they price the fine so low that it makes more sense to pay the fine and not get insurance than to go out and buy a policy even from the public option? It\u2019s such a nightmare. It is such a nightmare. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: We\u2019re going to go back to Tuesday on this program where I said this. RUSH ARCHIVE: To a lot of people public option means free. Public option is associated with government, and people think what they get from the government is free, the kind of people we\u2019re talking about. Oh, yeah, your food stamps […]<\/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":"\nThe Public Option Won't Be Free! - 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\/10\/29\/the_public_option_won_t_be_free\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"The Public Option Won't Be Free! - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: We\u2019re going to go back to Tuesday on this program where I said this. RUSH ARCHIVE: To a lot of people public option means free. 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