RUSH: The Wall Street Journal, interesting story today: ‘Why the Health Care Rush?’ It is an editorial. It turns out, ladies and gentlemen, that the Democrats had a Democrat-only meeting yesterday with Obama on nationalized health care. The Democrats want to ram this down everybody’s throat just like they did TARP and just like they did the stimulus bill. They don’t want any public hearings, and no Republicans were in that meeting. ‘Democrats are trying to rush the largest entitlement expansion since LBJ into law with a truncated debate and as little public scrutiny as possible.’ Why? One reason. People find out about it, and they won’t support it. It will not stand public inspection. The Wall Street Journal says here: ‘The reality is that Democrats are contemplating the most sweeping restructuring of the health markets since Medicare in 1965, and they don’t want to let the details slow them down,’ just like they didn’t want the details of amnesty. Remember last summer, two summers, they didn’t want anybody knowing what was in the immigration reform bill. Sorry, (doing McCain impression) ‘Comprehensive immigration reform bill, Limbaugh.’ Right.
Tom Daschle has spelled out this strategy before he was bounced out of the Senate. This hearkens back to the old days when the Democrats ran the House for 40 years, the Republicans had like 120 or 135 members, and they were shut out of committee meetings, when Bob Michel was the Republican leader. And they didn’t care. They had no business being in there. They couldn’t stop anything. I’m going to tell you why this is a bad deal, folks. One of the things that’s in this bill is taxing health care benefits. Employer provided health care benefits are going to be taxed. The Washington Post even has a story today: ”President Pivots on Taxing Benefits. — Obama willing to consider move to gain health care reform.’ It’s by Ceci Connolly. ‘President Obama, in a pivot from some of his harshest campaign rhetoric, told Democratic senators yesterday –‘ no Republicans in the meeting ‘– that he is willing to consider taxing employer-sponsored health benefits to help pay for a broad expansion of coverage. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Obama expressed a willingness to consider changing the existing tax exclusion. The decision would probably anger liberal supporters such as labor unions, but such a tax change would raise enormous sums of money as Congress and the White House are struggling to find the estimated $1.2 trillion needed to pay for,’ nationalized medicine.
Let’s remember in the campaign last September, Obama said this about Senator McCain: ‘For the first time in American history, he wants to tax your health benefits. Apparently Senator McCain doesn’t think it’s enough that your health premiums have doubled. He thinks you should have to pay taxes on them, too.’ And now Obama is willing to do this. Your health care — I predicted this a long time ago — your health care coverage provided by your employer is gonna be taxed, and it’s not going to be cheap, folks. If your health care package costs your employer $12, $15,000, whatever it is, you’re gonna add that to your salary, to your gross, and your take-home pay is going to go way, way down because you’re gonna get a raise, in effect. You’re never going to see the money, but you’re going to 
pay taxes on it. Here’s the real problem with nationalized health care, and I made a big point of this in my interview today with Sean Hannity, which was about 40 minutes. It’s going to air two parts tonight and tomorrow on his Fox News Channel show at 9PM ET. If the Democrats get national health care, the concept of individual freedom and liberty will have been obliterated.
Washington, government, state and local, will be able to regulate every facet of our behavior under the guise that it has some kind of a cost impact on health care. For example, the kind of car you drive will be regulated, the kind of food that you eat, and you may not be prevented from eating certain things, but you’ll be taxed if you do because of the impact on the health care system. So imagine you want popcorn in the theater, there might be a tax added to it. Folks, it’s impossible to exaggerate this. Think of virtually any activity you engage in with your kids that might put them at risk. You take them outside and play. You drive on a snowy road without chains. You fly in an airplane. Anything that could risk injury, which is practically everything you do, could be regulated or taxed because of the impact your behavior will have on the cost of health care. After that takes place, the actual quality of health care we all get is going to hit the sewer.
Look at the office, the Department of Motor Vehicles. That’s the only place you can go, and do they care a whit about making you happy or satisfying you? If it’s coffee break time, or some other break time, or if they don’t like the way you look or whatever, they can make your life miserable. Now, imagine that when you go to the doctor. This is something everybody’s going to have to really think about, and it’s going to have to be called to everybody’s attention. Here’s an example. This is a story from Health Day News. There’s a new illness, or a new sickness, a new problem. Cell phone elbow. ‘First came Nintendo thumb. Then, Guitar Hero wrist. Now, for the latest affliction of the wired age, it’s cell phone elbow. Medically known as cubital tunnel syndrome, cell phone elbow is numbness, tingling and pain in the forearm and hand caused by compression of the ulnar nerve, which passes along the bony bump on the inside of the elbow. … Prolonged flexing of the elbow, such as when you hold a cell phone to your ear while closing sales, talking to your mother or keeping tabs on your teens while you’re at work, puts tension on the ulnar nerve. In susceptible people, holding the bent-elbow position for extended periods can lead to decreased blood flow, inflammation and compression of the nerve.’
So, they diagnose cell phone elbow. I’m just using this as an example. Cell phone elbow has to be treated. It will be treated under the government sponsored health care plan, and a lot of people are going to have it. Maybe they can regulate your use of the phone and fine you if you are caught using the phone with your arm bent or whatever. Think of the most illogical, irrational example and it could come true. Cell phone elbow. You know what my reaction to this was? Makes me wonder how our forefathers and mothers plowed with mules and lived to tell about it. They churned butter. Do you know what that is, Brian? Do you know what churning butter is? You know what milking a cow is? You know what it is to hoe a garden? H-o-e, hoe a garden. Do you know what it is to go down to the creek and haul water back to the house? Do you know what it is to get up at four, Dawn, and follow a mule or a horse and plow a field before you go to school? How did they survive? And now we’re actually going to get upset over cell phone elbow? What a bunch of wusses the left wants to turn us into.