RUSH: This Obama! We mentioned this earlier in the program. (laughing) He stunned members of the AARP by telling everybody that the AARP supports his plan when they haven’t done it, and there was a deluge of phone calls to the AARP — which, as I said, are just MoveOn.org members with false teeth. And they were inundated by their rank-and-file members because they haven’t come out officially for it but Obama yesterday in Portsmouth talking about his plan and the AARP.
OBAMA: We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors!
OBAMA: The A-A-AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare.
RUSH: Now, they haven’t publicly endorsed it. We know that they do! We know. As I say, they’re out-of-work union people with false teeth, MoveOn.org with false teeth, 1960s Vietnam War protesters with false teeth. They haven’t officially done it because they don’t want their rank and file to know they’re on board. Now the rank and file know because Obama, off prompter, let the cat out of the bag. AARP is being inundated now with calls from rank-and-file members saying, ‘What the hell?’ and I’m sure when you call, if you’re an AARP member and you call your local office, they’re probably going to tell you what a member of Congress is telling us at town halls. ‘No! You didn’t hear that right. Obama didn’t say that. You’re an idiot! You gotta listen better.’ Here is Obama at the town hall once again attacking doctors. Remember, he accused pediatricians — who are not surgeons, by definition — of doing unnecessary tonsillectomies to line their pockets.
OBAMA: If a family care physician works with his or her patient to help them lose weight, modify diet, monitors whether they’re taking their medications in a timely fashion, they might get reimbursed a pittance. But if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that’s 30,000, 40, $50,000 immediately the surgeon is reimbursed. But why not make sure that we’re also reimbursing the care that prevents the amputation? Right? That will save us money.
RUSH: Thirty to 40 to $50,000 for every diabetic’s foot you cut off. Now, we have a couple of guests here watching the program today whose father is an orthopedic surgeon. What is the statistic you guys gave me at the top of the hour? What was the…? (interruption) Yeah. What’s the number you gave me? (interruption) Now, your dad’s an orthopedic surgeon? Does your dad do amputations? (interruption) He does. And it’s a thousand bucks? He gets reimbursed a thousand dollars for amputating what? (interruption) Just for the… The hospital bill could be more but the doctor just gets a thousand dollars. It includes three months aftercare. So it’s not that profitable to chop somebody’s foot off? (interruption) No. We have experts here. We have… (interruption)
Unless you’re into volume, yeah. You’d have to get 30 feet chopped off to get anywhere near Obama’s price or claim. Thousand just for the doctor. The hospital may charge more than that, and that thousand dollars includes the three months of aftercare. Right. Stunning facts once you talk to people who are actually in the business. So $30,000 to amputate a foot. I wonder what they get for an addadictomy in San Francisco. You know, I think I’ll send a question in to Obama’s health care website: ‘What do you do get for an addadictomy?’ (interruption) How do you prevent an amputation, in case of diabetics? Well, I’m not a doctor. I’m not a doctor, Snerdley. There are different kinds of diabetes. There’s type 1 and there’s type 2, and type 2 is adult onset. That can sometimes, if you catch it early, be controlled with diet and exercise, which it does help in diabetes, lowering blood sugar.
Now, type 1 is a different matter. Type 1, that’s bad. I know people that have been shooting up insulin since they were eight years old on type 1, and be sometimes there’s nothing you can do. Depends. Everybody is different, see, but the problem is that Obamacare would turn everybody into a statistic. There wouldn’t be any personal evaluation or very little personal evaluation. Let’s go back so we don’t forget this. July 22nd at the White House, primetime press conference and a McClatchy reporter asked Obama a question. It’s a long question here. ‘Can you guarantee that the legislation will lock in and say the government will never deny any services, that that’s going to be decided by the doctor and the patient and the government will not deny any coverage? Secondly, can you as a symbolic gesture say that you and the Congress will abide by the same benefits in the public option?’
OBAMA: Right now doctors a lot of times are forced to make decisions based on the fee payment schedule that’s out there. So if they’re looking and — and you come in and you’ve got a bad sore throat or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, ‘You know, what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.’
RUSH: This guy has got… I would love to use the street term for it. I will not. But this guy’s got a thing for doctors. He’s got a thing for the insurance companies. Anybody who’s successful they’ve gotta be cheating the system! They’ve gotta be stealing it from somebody. This guy’s got a chip on his shoulder about that. Tonsillectomies. Unnecessary tonsillectomies to get the reimbursement. You know, the whole notion of ‘reimbursements’ is one glaring illustration of what’s wrong with this whole system. You know, if somebody told me starting next year, ‘Rush, your radio show, we’re going to sell advertising and we’re he going to do this and that, and we’re going to discuss your reimbursement schedule,’ I’d say, ‘What do you mean my ‘reimbursement schedule’? The advertisers pay, we give them the service. What reimbursement?’
‘Well, no, the government’s going to act as a middleman and the government is going to determine how much that you should be reimbursed based on what it costs for you to provide the service.’ ‘Why? Why are you getting involved in my payment schedule and what I charge and what people who do business with me are willing to pay?’ ‘Well, because not everybody can afford to advertise on your program and we need to make it so that everybody can. We need Rush insurance. All of your advertisers do really well but not everybody can afford it so we’re going to step in here. We’ll reimburse you two or three months a portion of what you make.’ This whole notion of reimbursement! Imagine if you’re the doctors. Imagine if you’re in a business where you have to wait around for a government ‘reimbursement’ for your income. There’s so much wrong about this structurally. We do need reform, but we don’t need to amplify the problems that exist in the name of solving them.