RUSH: I want to grab a phone call here first. It is Emily in Guntersville, Alabama. Hi, Emily. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thank you so much. How are you today?
RUSH: Very well. Thanks.
CALLER: I have one good question for you.
RUSH: Yeah. I can answer it I’m sure.
CALLER: It’s about health care. Why are we not hearing the big insurance companies like Blue Cross and Blue Shield? Why aren’t they running ads and screaming and yelling about this?
RUSH: I am so glad you asked that question because there is an answer to this. By the way, Blue Cross just laid off 650 people. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois is losing 650 jobs. ‘Preparing for the future under health care reform, the parent of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois will [can] 650 jobs amid the economic downturn that has caused its employer customers to reduce employees and a demand from Congress and President Obama to reduce administrative costs.’ So that’s just a little side statistic about Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois. Emily, here’s the answer to the question. All of these companies being demonized — the Big Pharmaceutical, Big Insurance — they’re out there.
What they’re trying to do right now is work with their lobbyists and members of Congress to shape a bill that is favorable to them. They understand what’s going on in Washington. They have to operate under the premise that there’s going to be a bill. In servicing premise, they have their lobbyists behind the scenes doing everything they can to shape that bill so it’s most advantageous or the least damages to them. As always, there is a plan B, and that is: If they begin to see it falling apart and if they begin to see these protests and this civic unrest as really leading to serious trouble with the bill’s passage, then they will join. They will join the effort with TV ads to try to kill it at that point. But right now, they don’t want to make enemies of the White House.
You gotta understand: Everybody’s scared to death of this guy. They see what he’s doing with health care. They see that he wants to take over life-and-death decisions. He wants to take ’em from Congress. He wants the White House and the executive branch to be able to do this. This is a man who fired the CEO of General Motors after taking over the company. This is a man who has a ‘pay czar’ who is determining today what executive compensation is going to be at seven firms on Wall Street. There are members of the White House economic roundtable who have been called by Rahm Emanuel: ‘You embarrassed the president with that question. You don’t do this.’ They’re living in fear. Right now they’re playing a protection game.
They’re not going to run ads to defeat this until they think there’s a chance it can be defeated. Because if they run ads right now, Emily, they are just putting a big bull’s-eye, front and back, on their clothes, on their bodies. But there are starting to be some signs here. The Chamber of Commerce yesterday launched a multimillion-dollar ad buy criticizing Democrat reform plans for raising taxes and expanding government control over health care, but they didn’t come out and oppose the plan. They just criticized elements of the plan. But there is more and more opposition — and believe me, behind the scenes these people are planning their ad buys and their campaigns right now to come out and kill this thing if they think it can happen.
‘A veteran…’ This is from The Politico today: ‘A veteran Republican lobbyist suggests that groups hang on as long as possible because the real deal-making, he said, doesn’t happen until a House-Senate conference committee hashes out a final bill, and that’s when groups will have the most leverage,’ and that’s another reason why they’re waiting. The House has got its bill; the Senate’s got a number of them. But when they go to conference and put together the real bill, that’s when the lobbying starts. If there’s a chance to kill it, that’s when the ads to do so will start. But they’re not going to do it now. It’s just they’re keeping their powder dry. But I guarantee you the insurance companies are fuming.
They are sitting there fuming. Much of what they do is dictated by government already. We had numerous calls from insurance agents. They would love to be able to sell policies to individuals that the government will not let them sell. Believe me, they’re seething out there, individual agents, executives at companies and company-wide. Nobody wants to see what this guy’s doing, but if he’s going to get it done, they want to find a way to make it as harmless to them or as least damaging as possible. You know, one of the things that frustrates people like you and me, Emily, and the rest of us, is we look at Washington and we look at this. I mean, this health care to me is a zero-sum game. There is no compromise on this to me. This plan that’s out there doesn’t have anything in it I want to compromise on.
But Washington is a town of compromise, so we’ve got the leaders, the party that runs the place is the Democrats. They’ve got this plan out there and Obama is out there pushing it in generalities. The Republicans don’t have the votes to stop it. So you and I look at this and say, ‘Kill it. It is bad. It will destroy the private sector. It’s bad for freedom. It’s bad for liberty.’ In Washington, with the lobbyists and the politicians, it is more a compromise game. The premise has been accepted: health care reform. So you think that the insurance companies that are being demonized would be just like we are. ‘Kill it. It’s rotten. We don’t want to be part of it,’ but they are already regulated by government, and they have got to make sure that when this is all over, they still have some friends there.
They don’t want to all be Bill Gates and Microsoft with the Justice Department coming after them with business-ending anti-trust lawsuits or who knows what else. The doctors are seething, too. Obama’s out there denigrating them, accusing them — and he’s just firing from the hip. I’ve talked to a lot of doctors and I’ve heard from a lot of doctors. There’s no such thing as a 30 or 40 or $50,000 reimbursement for an amputation. A thousand dollars in one case I heard, $650 for amputation of a leg. There’s no 30 or $40,000 a doctor is reimbursed for amputating a foot of a diabetic. He’s just throwing these numbers out. He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about and he doesn’t even care. The details don’t matter to him.
That’s why he’s not getting into details, and there are other reasons why he’s not getting into details as well. Folks, let me say something. We conservatives, we are not against driving down costs. But the way you drive down costs is by expanding competition. You create a financial relationship between a patient and the doctor through direct purchasing of policies; through health savings accounts, controlled by the individual. You don’t do it by some kind of government edict. And let’s never forget… This is a premise, I think, that would serve us all well remembering: Health care is not for the healthy. Health care is to take care of the sick. Health care is to take care of those who become unhealthy in some way. You don’t save costs on the healthy!
The healthy running around exercising and not eating trans fats is not going to save you a dime. It’s all BS. All of this is an attempt to regulate your behavior, make you feel guilty for enjoying yourself, essentially. If you’re enjoying yourself they’re gonna find a way to make you feel guilty and tax you for it and say, ‘You enjoying yourself is leading to higher health care costs and the election of Republicans, and we’re not going to have either.’ So what we have to do if we’re going to save money, we don’t spend money on the healthy. Who do we spend money on? We spend money on the unhealthy — and to save money, you have to cut spending on those who are being treated. It’s just that simple. If the objective is to cut spending, or to make it cheaper — and it is — we’re not spending any money on the healthy.
So all of you who fear death panels or denial of service? Hello! Your instincts are exactly right, but when you get sick, not when you’re healthy. When you get sick, that’s where all the money is spent in our health care system particularly beyond a certain age, end-of-life. Where the hell do you think the savings going to come from? This notion that there’s no rationing? Obama is lying through his teeth about this. Every Democrat is saying that all these rumors and myths are not true is lying through their teeth. There’s only one way to save money in our current health care system, and that’s: Stop spending as much money on the sick, because we don’t spend any money on the healthy. Now, if Obama’s daughters became ill, he would look for the best doctors at the best hospitals. He would demand the best treatment and medicines.
He would not tell the provider to cut costs. He would not tell the provider to cut tests. He would not tell the provider to cut procedures. No loving parent would. Yet Obama is demanding that the rest of us do so. Our families mean just as much to us as his does to him, or any member of Congress. We want the best we can get. That’s what America is. He is going to deny us the best we can get — not just in health care, but in any number of things — by forcing us into systems and products that he wants us to have. Systems and products that he will exempt himself from, as will every member of Congress. We all want the best we can get. The issue is how we pay for it. We all don’t get the best and we never have all gotten the best, depending on how you define it.
We all can’t afford the same kind of car. We all can’t afford the same kind of house. We all can’t afford the same kind of vacation. But we all want the best of what we can get for what we can pay for. What needs to be reformed is how we pay to get the best we can when it comes to the health care, but Obama wants to decide that. Obama wants to decide who gets what. He wants to play doctor. Obama ultimately wants to play God. This messianic complex of his is genuine. Pelosi wants to play God. Harry Reid wants to play God. Barney Frank wants to play Godette. And that’s the key difference. We conservatives don’t pretend to know what treatments or medicines should be offered in every situation. I wouldn’t have the chutzpah to stand up and tell 300 million people that I know what’s best for you in anything, particularly health care.
I mean, the hubris, the ego, the arrogance, and the conceit of a guy whose career spans all of five minutes, with zilch, zero, nada executive experience! It’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s off that teleprompter. Yet he’s got the audacity to go out and tell a woman, ‘I don’t think your hundred-year-old mother should get anything but a pain pill.’ Who the hell is he, and who does he think he is? There isn’t one member of the conservative movement, leadership or rank-and-file, that would dare assume to know this kind of thing: What’s best for you in terms of health care. We don’t pretend to know what treatments. We don’t pretend to know what medicines ought to be offered in every situation. We don’t pretend to know what tests should be taken. We believe this must be left to individuals and the highly trained specialists in the field who have gone to school to learn about this, and I don’t think Obama’s ever been to med school and, if he has, we’ll never see the records. We know the financing of health care requires reform. Market reforms, not a government takeover.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me just shoot straight on, ladies and gentlemen. Barack Obama is a serial liar. He’s out there saying all these doctors cut off feet and limbs for a 30, 40, $50,000 reimbursement. Not true. He says that doctors — pediatricians — take out tonsils to line their pockets. The guy’s a serial liar. He is campaigning all over the place for a House bill that he has not himself said he will support as is. How crazy is this? He doesn’t have a plan. He has not put together a plan. There’s a reason for this. All Obama wants is the government to steal the health care industry. He just wants to steal it and control it. So he’s out on the stump. He shoots from the hip because he believes he has ‘a gift.’ He told Harry Reid, ‘Harry, I have a gift,’ meaning his ‘eloquence,’ his ability to persuade simply by the power of his presence.
Well, that’s gone. He thinks he can talk his way around anything. But by not getting specific, by not having a plan, he can rhetorically deny supporting something that is unpopular or support something he thinks may be popular. This is Axelrod’s strategy: Don’t make any firm commitments about any specific thing. Speak in generalities, speak philosophical. When somebody says that they take your health insurance say, ‘No, I’ll never support that. Dah, dah, dah.’ They’ll be accountable for nothing is the plan here. Be accountable for nothing negative. Take credit for everything that might be positive. I don’t think his own party members get it. I think he’s sending them out there to take all the arrows. They’re the ones going out there getting the grief at the town halls.
He stacks and stages his where he gets all these minions going, ‘Yes, we can! Yes, we can!’ But the Democrat Party is out there getting its ass whipped by average Americans, and Obama is sitting there in comfort on Air Force One or in the Oval Office or surrounded by a bunch of paid lackeys giving him a false impression of security. He’s prepared to leave them high and dry. He has already thrown them under the bus. They’re the ones taking heat for his idea. Now, I know the health care plan in the House is something that Pelosi and Henry Waxman have been dreaming about for years, and they probably just had to pull it out of a drawer. It’s probably been written years ago in anticipation of this day. But it’s all about Obama, in Obama’s mind.
It’s not about his party. It’s not about his country. It’s about him. He doesn’t really give a rat’s rear end about the Democrat Party, either. It’s about him. He’s bigger than any of it. ‘Oh, come on, Rush. You’re a little over the top.’ Oh, really? Obama doesn’t give a damn about his own stepbrother still living in a hut in Kenya, a six-by-nine-foot hut! Less than $20 would double this guy’s annual income. George Obongo Obango Odingo Obama or whatever his name is, is still living in a hut. Obama hasn’t even sent him a sign to put inside: ‘Hut, Sweet Hut.’ Hut! Hut! His aunt in this country is facing deportation. He doesn’t care! He won’t give his brother a nickel, a dime or whatever — and his poor aunt in Boston, may be here illegally and is facing deportation.
What makes these Democrat hacks in Congress think Obama gives a damn about them? They’re only useful to him as long as they’re doing his bidding. Otherwise, he doesn’t care. Let me ask you something. If you were president of the United States and the news hit that you had a half-brother living in squalor — living in a hut, a six-square-foot hut with a dirt floor with no air-conditioning — would you do something about it? Would you at least dispatch the Meals on Wheels program? He hasn’t done diddly-squat! He was in Africa, wasn’t he? He’s been in Africa. I know he didn’t have time to visit. He didn’t want the photo-op. If I had a brother living in a hut, I’d take care of it before I became president of the United States just on humane principles. For crying out loud, he doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about the Democrat Party.