RUSH: Terry in Sisters, Oregon, it’s great to have you with us on the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi, Terry.
CALLER: Hi. Hey thanks for taking my call. I appreciate what you do every day on the forefront for us.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I was watching with Greta Van Susteren last week, and you said something, and I wondered what your thoughts were on your comment. What you said was that you thought the federal government should subsidize or provide catastrophic health care. I was just kind of surprised that you said that.
RUSH: (sigh) You know, I am frankly sitting here as host of the program stunned. You are the only person on my side of the aisle to call here and be critical of anything in that interview. Everybody else has praised me as though I were Obama and the Democrats, love me. Here’s what I meant. I ran by that real fast. There were some things that I just assume, one of the things that I assume, overall, the broad subject here is health care reform. She asked, ‘What would you do?’ Well, the problem with health care is that people are not paying for their own coverage and therefore prices are out of sight, and there’s no end in sight to prices increasing. And most medical care, most medical care, the vast majority — just the kind of stuff that checkups and, you know, you have hangnail, whatever. Let people have their options from the private insurance market to cover just those basics. You know, you go four times a year get a dental checkup have a cavity filled or whatever, pay for that yourself with your own insurance policy. The stuff that scares people to death of losing everything is a major illness or a calamitous accident where tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills are ramped up — and, you know, you can spend the rest of your life paying for it and there goes your kids’ college education. So you have that. On the other side we have the government in the health care business. We want to get the government out of it. We want to limit it. We want to reduce prices. So as just a reform, if the government’s going to do anything let it just, you know, provide insurance for the big ticket stuff.
CALLER: But isn’t that going to be a huge cost?
RUSH: Oh, it would be much less than having them pay for everything. It would be much better than having this Obama obamanation.
CALLER: I agree with you on that —
RUSH: I know what tripped you up. You can’t believe that I, El Rushbo, said government ought to be involved in health care.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Okay. Well, I, El Rushbo, I am realistic. And right now the government is health care, and we’re trying to change it. So if we could get rid of 90% of the government’s involvement in it, do you realize what a great improvement that would be?
CALLER: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
RUSH: We’ve already got a mind-set out there among the American people that somebody else should pay for their health care. That’s going to have to change if there’s going to be real, meaningful reform.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: But the big ticket stuff, that’s a killer. The insurance premiums on that are through the roof, the coverage itself is through the roof. And the fear of having, you know, at age 40 coming down with some kind of disease that’s going to require medical care for the rest of your life, that’s going to be expensive; or have major, major accident. You know, these are the things in our society people can’t afford, and they do have insurance for. That’s where I think, go the insurance route there. But my whole point was, get the government outta everything else.
CALLER: Right. I agree, and I certainly hope that the House does not pass any part of this health care program.
RUSH: Yeah, well, you and me both.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: But as I just said they’re going into the committee in about an hour and they’re going to start the markup on it. They’re going to do their best to get a vote done on this by the end of this week before they leave town.
CALLER: Well, you keep it up, Rush. We’re behind you.
RUSH: Thanks, Terry.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: Appreciate that. I’m actually glad she called and I had a chance to explain that. It’s one of those times where I mistakenly assumed that everybody would understand the givens that were in my mind, and I didn’t take the time to explain all of those things.