RUSH: All right, Obama. I’ve had some people watching the speech. I obviously couldn’t. I didn’t really want to, as I said earlier. It irritates me, but there’s somebody watching it. Apparently one of the primary arguments they had — and of course there were many — but one of the primary arguments that
He wants to put 47 million more people on the rolls, and somehow this is gonna make it cheaper? It reminds me of the Soc. Security debate. Democrats said that any reform would mean ‘less’ than what some Americans are receiving now. Well, the dirty little secret is that Social Security cannot pay what is promised already. Social Security is bankrupt, too! People are going to get less anyway as soon as Social Security starts to go under in ten years or so. This is another typical, false Obama argument. I also read today that Obama was thinking actually of tort reform. I have a newspaper story somewhere, I think it’s the Washington Post but I’m not sure. Tort reform might be part of health care reform. He’s ‘open’ to tort reform. He’s ‘open’ to all this stuff that he’s not open to. He’s open to tort reform, because that would lower medical malpractice insurance, which would lower health care costs. He said he’s open to it. Well, let’s go to the speech. The first of two sound bites here. Here’s number 25. This is typical Obama, too. He tells the doctors he’s going to listen at them.
OBAMA: My signature on a bill is not enough. I need your help, doctors. We listen to you. We trust you. That’s why I will listen to you and work with you to pursue reform that works for you. I recognize that it will be hard to make some of these changes if doctors feel like they’re constantly looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits.
DOCTORS: (applause)
OBAMA: I recognize that.
DOCTORS: (applause)
OBAMA: Don’t get too excited yet.
RUSH: Did you hear that, now? When he laid the ground out here, it’ll ‘be hard to make some of these changes if doctors feel they’re constantly looking over their shoulders for fear of lawsuits.’ They started applauding. They start applauding, and he says, Wait a minute, ‘don’t get too excited yet.’ That’s off script. That was not on the prompter. ‘Don’t get too excited yet,’ because this is what followed.
OBAMA: Just hold onto your horses here guys.
DOCTORS: (laughter)
OBAMA: I — I — I — I want to be honest with you. I’m not advocating, uh, caps on malpractice rules, which I believe, uh — I personally believe can be unfair to people who, uh, have wrongfully harmed. I want to work with the AMA so we can scale back the excessive defensive medicine that reinforces our current system, and shift to a system where we are providing better care rather than simply more treatment.
RUSH: That’s up to the doctors, Dad, not you. So he starts out… This is mean. This is dishonest. He tells these guys he understands that malpractice awards are giving them all kinds of problems. They applaud. ‘Don’t get too excited.’ So after he says he’s gonna listen to them, he needs their help and he teases them with some limit on torts, then the very next sentence is, ‘Screw what I just said! I just want that sound bite for my buds in the State-Run Media to play tonight, because I know they will not play what I say right now about any of this. We’re going to put the notion out there that we’re going to reform.’ This is like Lucy and the football with Charlie Brown. The poor guy after 50 years still hadn’t got the football. She still holds it out there, and Charlie Brown thinks he’s gonna kick it, and he never gets it.
Now, this probably is the smartest group of people he’s ever spoken to, just in terms of education, IQ, and so forth. And they’re already unhappy with what the government’s running especially if they treat Medicare patients. They’re already unhappy with the system and he just wants to expand it. Unless there’s something really earth-shattering, frankly, I don’t want to play any more of this because I’m in a good mood and I just can’t handle this know-it-all, smug, arrogant condescension from this guy. The lying to people. I can’t stand it. I told you Friday I got fired by one of those kind of guys ’cause I confronted him head on. He gave me the biggest line of BS about something and I had been going on… Plus at this time I’m be berated for playing music out of rotation and this guy is going on and on. I didn’t blow up. I said, ‘Look I know this is not true. I know you’re lying to everybody. You didn’t do that. You don’t know this person. You have not been to that state. Your track record…’ I shouldn’t have done it because I threatened this guy’s false identity and his alternative reality so I got fired 20 minutes later on a phone by the owner of the radio station. Obama is that guy. (sigh) I hope I never get invited to the White House, I really do, not for a meeting there. That would be tough. It would be tough. I mean I’d be civil, don’t misunderstand. But it would be tough.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to the phones quickly, to Rigby, Idaho. Jen, nice to have you with us, EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello! I’m just calling about the health care. I was listening and realizing that I might not have a choice in what I do. I got pregnant about a little while — a year or so ago, and I didn’t have insurance. So my husband and I sat down, went over the numbers, and we wouldn’t only save about $500 if we decided to pay for insurance. We were very lucky, very blessed, and I — you know, I was healthy, the baby was healthy, but we had that choice and I would like to keep that choice. I would like to keep my liberties in that and (laughing), you know, I don’t support state-run or federally — federal government-run —
RUSH: I don’t want to be overly dramatic here, Jen. I really don’t here. But your liberty is at risk with Obama in the White House. All of our liberty is at risk. She makes a brilliant point, though. There are a lot of people who have run the numbers. They don’t have health insurance. They only save 500 bucks with it. It’s not worth the hassle. They were lucky. They had the money to pay for it themselves and they did. She’s afraid of losing that option. She will if Obama gets what he wants here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I keep trying to avoid any more Obama sound bites. Maybe I just ought to flood the sound bites to make the libs tired of him like Bill Maher is already get tired of him, but I don’t want to tire you out. But this is an outrage. This is an outrage. What you’re going to hear him say here, he knows is not true.
OBAMA: Let me also address a illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single payer system. Now, I’ll be honest. There are countries where a single payer system works pretty well.
RUSH: Name one.
OBAMA: But I believe — and I’ve taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief —
RUSH: Lieberman.
OBAMA: — that it’s important for our reform efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States.
RUSH: Our mistakes.
OBAMA: So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They’re not telling the truth.
Here’s Rich in Sierra Vista, Arizona, as we go back to the phones. Rich, thank you for waiting. Nice to have you with us, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I have a question for you. You hear this over and over again, especially with the medical thing since it’s up here right now. What are they saying, it’s going to cost $1.2 trillion over ten years? Is that what the fact is, or somewhere around there?
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that’s not the number to look at.
CALLER: Well, yeah. The question I would have is, okay, they say over ten years. And I know that it’s going to cost a lot more than that, I totally agree with you, but they say over ten years, what’s supposed to happen in ten years? Is it this thing just not going to pay for itself anymore? What’s going on with that?
RUSH: George Will made the point yesterday on This Week, every year’s budget is a lie. Every single budget is a lie. Every single year’s budget there’s more spent than what is slated to be spent. They have to go back and get supplementals and they’re lying through their teeth every year and now they’re making the truth in terms of projections ten years out. It’s BS. Your instincts are right. Don’t doubt them. The real number here is not how much they’re going to spend because it’s already outrageous and we don’t have it. We’re already two trillion in debt this year. And the more he takes on, the more he is depleting the private sector economy, the more he’s taking money out of it. He’s trying to nationalize, government-run, the US health care system. It is now one-fifth of the US economy. That number is two-and-a-half trillion dollars. That’s what Obama wants control over. He wants to take two-and-a-half trillion dollars out of the private sector and put his administration in charge of it. Man, follow the money. You always get the answer to most every question. They control two-and-a-half trillion dollars this way whatever they control with the automobile business. This is not good, folks, any way you look at it.
Doug in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I was told today by a friend there’s no traffic in Scottsdale. Hi. How are you?
CALLER: Good. I’ve grown up listening to you my whole life. I’m a senior in college and I’m getting ready to graduate, and I’ve learned more listening to one of your shows than I have in all of my years in school.
RUSH: Well, that’s awfully nice. I don’t doubt that that’s true, either.
CALLER: It’s very true. I’m calling because my father is an orthopedic surgeon and I work at his office, and, you know, government and Medicare, they’re already controlling doctors, and they dictate what they get paid, and now it’s even starting to affect the private sector insurance. You know, not too long ago my father did a surgery, and I sent out the bill to a private insurance company, and they came back and they said we will reimburse you for 15% of what you billed. And they said we’re doing that because that’s what Medicare would do.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: So the private sector is now saying, well, you know, government Medicare, they’re dictating, they’re telling doctors what they can —
RUSH: Exactly. Exactly right. That’s the leverage Obama has over them at the AMA. Medicare already reimburses them. But you know how many people use Medicare. It’s already in as much trouble as Social Security is. But the telling point is Obama’s out there talking about we need a new option, we need more options. There are 1,300 health care options available for people in this country, according to George Will. What’s adding one more gonna mean? In fact, adding the government option will result in a serious decline of the 1,300 private sector options, which is the objective.