RUSH: Here’s Hutch in Bunnell, Florida. Nice to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I appreciate you. Without you, there is nobody. So I need to make —
RUSH: Well, that may be going a little far. I mean, that’s not quite true, ‘without me there’s nobody.’
CALLER: Well, you’re the gutsy guy.
RUSH: I appreciate that.
CALLER: Ditto on Sarah Palin, by the way. Listen, Rush, there’s no way that I support national health care, but I find it real hard to believe that people do not remember President Obama stating during the presidential debates that under his plan all citizens in America would have the same opportunity to the same health care that he has.
RUSH: I just got a link. I can’t listen to it during the program. I’ve gotta send it off somewhere. But I just got a link to the ad that Obama ran accusing McCain of wanting to raise taxes on health care benefits one way or the other, and I’ve gotta send it up to see if it’s what it is. But I need to ask you something, Hutch. Did he actually say that he would have a health care plan that ‘would’ give health care coverage exactly like members of Congress have, or did he say that we ‘should’ have circumstances like that?
CALLER: No, sir. He said, Rush, under his plan, all Americans would have the same opportunity to the same health care as he has.
RUSH: Weeeell… Nah. The word ‘opportunity’ just throws a monkey wrench into that. ‘Opportunity to the same health care’ is not the identical plan.
CALLER: Well, that’s true.
RUSH: The health plan that members of Congress have, I guarantee you Hutch, old buddy, you’re never going to have it unless you go buy it yourself. It’s that good. You’re never going to have it unless you go buy it yourself. And, of course, then it wouldn’t be the health plan they have because they don’t have to buy it. We’re buying their health care plan. Now, what Obama is planning on doing is modeling national health care after Medicare. And what is incredible about that is that Medicare is out of money. In, what, seven or eight years, Medicare is broke? We’re going to have a national health care plan modeled on something that’s going broke! I’m telling you again: they’re going to hook everybody in. They’re going to use Ted Kennedy’s name on this. They’re going to get sympathy votes with Ted Kennedy’s name on the bill, some way, somehow. And they’re going to talk about how the ‘right’ everybody has to health insurance, and we’re going to insure everybody, the ’50 million’ that aren’t. We’re gonna come up with the $90 billion. It’s just immoral that people don’t have health care. It’s not going to be about that. It’s not going to be about providing health coverage because if it were, they wouldn’t do this. Health coverage is going to become less and health treatment is going to get worse. What this is about is being able to raise taxes at every turn in your life, at every step of your life. That’s what this is about.
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RUSH: Here’s Lindsey in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
RUSH: Yes, ma’am.
CALLER: I’ve got a question for you.
RUSH: Yes, ma’am.
CALLER: They say there about 50 million people who are uninsured right now.
RUSH: The number is not correct but that’s what they say.
CALLER: Okay. Right now they need $90 billion, and they want to take away the tax deduction from the companies who currently give their employees health insurance.
RUSH: That’s exactly right. That’s one of the things that’s being tossed around as a possibility.
CALLER: Okay. So if they do that, and more businesses can’t afford to stay in business, and you have more people who are unemployed — or who are unemployed and uninsured. So where are they going to go to come up with the money they need to insure those people?
RUSH: Um, print it!
CALLER: (giggling)
RUSH: Where are they coming up with the money they need to do anything now, Lindsey?
CALLER: That is true.
RUSH: Where are they coming up with the…? So using your scenario, let’s take a phantom business out there — a mythical business that is deducting health care costs, the benefits it gives to its employees — and all of a sudden a new tax comes along and says you can’t deduct it anymore. So those former tax deductions are going to be the cost of doing business. So one of two things will have to happen, maybe both. The business raises the price of its product or service or lays off some workers. Especially in this environment when things are not growing at all. Things are shrinking.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: So people lose their jobs. If they lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance, unless they go COBRA. But that’s going to cost somebody some money. The point is, when all this breaks down and there’s only one option left, guess what the option is going to be?
CALLER: National health care.
RUSH: Governmeeeeeent! Exactly right. The health care line right next to the motor vehicle line.
CALLER: Also, an extension to that is, we’re military, which is already government, pretty much, health care. Would he expect that the military would then have government health care automatically?
RUSH: Well, but let’s look at how that’s being run. I mean, the VA is constantly complaining about lack of funding, inefficiencies and so forth. A lot of veterans are not getting the promised medical care that they were assured. It’s not because nobody wants them to have it. It’s just incompetence. Bureaucracies this big cannot function! It’s already been demonstrated. People are much… This is what’s so frustrating to me. People are so much better off taking care of themselves. They just are! You’re a far better person for doing it. You’re happier. You’re going to be better off if you take care of yourself. But the more people that farm out taking care of themselves to the government because they’re Americans and they’re entitled or whatever, it’s just going to break down.
It’s breaking down everywhere it’s been tried. The Great Society, the war on poverty, it doesn’t and hasn’t worked. Arguably, it has made the cultural decline worse and it has sped it up. The notion of taking care of yourself, assuming responsibility for yourself, that is as controversial today as Miss California saying she believes marriage is between a man and a woman. You go out and say, ‘No, I’d rather provide my own health insurance. I’d rather take care of myself. I don’t want to have to have to go to the government. I don’t want to have to be dependent.’ ‘Well, easy for you to say! Easy for you to say, but not everybody is capable.’ There would be a far greater number of people capable if we inspired and motivated them and taught ’em.
And they’d be happier, and they’d be more fulfilled, and their lives would not be empty if more people were oriented toward taking care of themselves and their families and what have you. But this rat race to make everybody a victim of something and then make them dependent, and then claim the government has an obligation… The ‘government’ is just us, when it comes to money. We all have an obligation to take care of people who don’t take care of themselves. Now, the people who can’t are another matter. We all have compassion for them. But people who can take care of themselves who have been weaned and trained not to, who expect everybody else to take care of them for whatever grievance they’ve got? Way too much of that’s been going on and we’re reaching a tipping point now. It doesn’t work.
You do not have a happy country. You do not have a prosperous country. You do not have a grow economy. You have none of that. All you have is a political party in total control, which is what this bunch of people wants.
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RUSH: Here’s the ad. This is audio sound bite number 28, Mister Broadcast Engineer. Obama health care ad that he ran against Senator McCain last fall.
ANNOUNCER: John McCain talks about a $5,000 tax credit for health care, but here’s what he’s not telling you. McCain would make you pay income tax on your health insurance benefits. Taxing health benefits for the first time ever, and then tax credit, McCain’s own website says it goes straight to the insurance companies, not to you, leaving you on your own to pay McCain’s health insurance tax. Taxing health care instead of fixing it. We can’t afford John McCain.
OBAMA: I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this message.
RUSH: The reason we’re playing this ad for you is because the New York Times has a story today that they are $90 billion short in coming up with a way to pay for Obama care. And one of the ideas being bandied about is to tax health care, or to limit, to remove, to eliminate the tax deductibility of health care benefits given to you by your employer. Right now there’s no tax payment on these benefits. You don’t pay any income tax on them and your employer gets to deduct the benefits. The Obama administration — New York Times says it — they are trying to convince the president we’ve got to do this. The politicians in the White House, ‘We can’t have that ad out there,’ this ad that you just heard, ‘We can’t have that ad running out there.’ So this is where we are. But, folks, ad notwithstanding, there’s no way that these health benefits are not going to be taxed one way or a couple of ways. There’s no way. They’re going to be taxed as income to you, imputed income to you, or they’re gonna eliminate the tax deductibility, and maybe a combination of both. It’s too great a source of money, and they don’t have any. And they want national health care. They’re going to tell everybody only the rich are going to be paying this tax anyway, not you, as they lie to you again.