RUSH: John Fund today On the Trail, the Wall Street Journal: ‘Beware Obamacare’s Fine Print.’ I referenced this earlier. ‘There’s a reason the Obama health care plan is being rushed through Congress this summer — because the American people would likely never support it if given time to absorb and understand such fine print,’ as the unions being exempt from any tax increase on any health care benefits provided by their boss. ‘If the union carve-out isn’t sufficient to excite public anger, wait till you hear about the version of the Obama plan prepared by Senator Edward Kennedy, which would specifically exempt Members of Congress from many of its provisions. As the US Office of Personnel Management notes, Members of Congress ‘enjoy the widest selection of health plans in the country.’ According to page 114 of the Kennedy bill, a similar array of choices would not be available to other Americans in the future. Instead, they would be shunted into health insurance plans under the straightjacket of whatever the government decides is a ‘basic’ plan.’
So the question that needs to be asked, the only question, really, you need to call your senator and your member of Congress and you need to ask them very simply: Are you going to opt out and forgo your current health care plan in order to join the health care plan provided for most Americans by the Obama government? And what do you think the answer you’re going to get is? The answer’s: Hell, no, I’m not giving up my health care plan, but we can’t provide this kind of health coverage for every American. So members of Congress and the Obama Administration will not be subjected to the health care plan they are going to come up with. This is what the doctor was trying to get at in his question to Obama. Okay. You’re going to come up with a public plan. Your wife or your daughter comes down with an illness that your current plan, the public plan, doesn’t cover. Are you going to opt out of it because you can? And are you going to go get better coverage? He wouldn’t answer the question. The answer to the question is: He is never going to be subjected to the plan that they come up with for everybody else. So you need to, just today, send them an e-mail and call them up and ask them: Are you going to give up your current health care plan and enroll in the new public plan the Obama Administration comes up with? You know damn well they won’t.
It’s over. If members of Congress are not going to join the plan they’re devising for you, you don’t want the plan. You don’t want the plan. And I can tell you right now they’re not going to give up the health care plan they’ve got. And they’re not going to join any piece of garbage plan they come up with for all the rest of us. If they tell you they’ll think about it, they’re not telling you the truth. Obama wouldn’t even answer that question last night. He started talking, (paraphrasing) ‘We’re treating too many people for too many things they shouldn’t be treated for. We’re not focusing on quality of coverage. We’re focusing on quantity.’ That’s obfuscation. Just ask ’em. Are you going to give up your health care plan, Senator So-and-So, and join the public plan with all the rest of us, the plan that you write for us, the plan that you vote on, the plan you might not even read before you vote on it? Just like you didn’t read the stimulus bill, and just like Waxman doesn’t even know what’s in his own cap-and-trade bill because he hasn’t read it. Are you going to opt out of your health care plan that you have now that everybody knows is so great and join us in the public plan you create for everybody else?
If they say no, then the whole thing is off the table. If it’s not good enough for them, it’s not good enough for you. They don’t have, and should not have, the power to determine what you can do taking care of yourself. You should not give up the power that allows them to say they will permit you to do that and to do that but they won’t permit you to do this, as you seek your own health care. If you turn your health care over to the state you’re giving up all control over your health care. You are in a crapshoot. You may as well have walked into a casino. If you think your life is going to improve by giving up control of your own health care, and your family’s, in exchange for some wizards who cannot manage Medicare, cannot manage Medicaid, cannot manage Social Security, cannot manage a DMV, cannot manage the Great Society and the War on Poverty, cannot manage the Porkulus Bill, cannot manage a damn thing they do, you’re going to turn over something as important to you as health care decisions to a bunch of people who will not even enroll in the same plan they’re going to make you enroll in? The answer is no.
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RUSH: Folks, I implore you — and I don’t do this often, I seldom do this. But I want you to ask your senators and your member of Congress, point-blank: ‘Are you going to opt out on the healthcare plan you have to join the public option health plan you are going to write for the rest of us?’ Don’t accept anything other than a yes or no answer. They’ll try to obfuscate. ‘Well, you know, our plan is only for five or six hundred people. It’s much easier to manage. We’re talking about 47 million uninsured Americans,’ blah, blah, blah.
No. If it’s a good plan, it’s a good plan. If they’re going to come up with the best plan for us, it’s the best plan for them. They work for us. It’s very simple: Are you going to opt out on your great healthcare plan and join the public option you’re going to write? That’s the only question that needs to be asked about any of this.
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RUSH: Bruce in Asheville, North Carolina. Great that you waited and welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
CALLER: Yes, how are you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Just fine, sir, thank you.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure and an honor. I’d like to just take your notion or your observation before about if members of the House and the Senate and the government in general had to live under the same rules of health care, I would like to ask Representative Boehner, the minority leader: Look, why don’t you propose that amendment and say you have to live under these rules A and B: The unions are exempt from the tax-exempt, and if that turns (unintelligible) then take your members and walk out of the House and at least make a public stand. You may go down.
RUSH: That’s fine and Boehner may do it. The Republicans in the Senate and the House may come up with some kind of legislation. But don’t leave it up to them. Would you please not leave it up to them?
CALLER: Oh, I’m writing. I am writing.
RUSH: All right. The question is very simple. Are you going to drop your current great health care plan and enroll in the public option you’re going to pass for the rest of us? I think you could probably, all of you lead Boehner and others into proposing such legislation. But the question is: Will they opt out of it?
CALLER: I think they’ll probably exempt themselves out.
RUSH: It’s a golden opportunity for them. It’s a golden opportunity for them. But the proof, see, is in the pudding. How many of these people are going to write this wonderful brilliant public option and are going to want to join it themselves? The answer is zero. Now, zero may be too extreme. There might be some that will do it for the show of it and so forth. But you get the point here. The point is Senator Kennedy’s version of the bill, the Senator Kennedy version, on page 114 of the Kennedy version of the bill exempts members of Congress and the US Senate from the new public plan that’s going to be written. It exempts them along with exempting union members from having their health benefits taxed as income as the rest of us are going to have our health benefits taxed as income. That’s why they’re trying to ramrod this thing through so people don’t find out about this stuff. So it’s already in the bill, page 114 of the Kennedy bill in the Senate. Members of Congress are exempted from he new public plan. They are telling us they want no part of it.
So you just need to ask them. Are you going to opt out of your current plan and join us in the public option if it’s so wonderful, so good, so necessary, we’re going to cut costs, we’re going to save the health care system? Are you going to join us in this? Are you going to give up the plan you have now? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. My friend Professor Hazlett would laugh, heh, heh, heh, heh. No way. They need to be asked that question.