RUSH: Here’s Richard in St. George, Utah, as we go back to the phones. It’s great to have you with us, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you. Thank you for taking the call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I am a real doctor, not a fake one (chuckles) and I’ve been watching this very closely, trying to understand the public option and everything. My analysis has been basically what the writers in Bloomberg wrote, but today when I heard that Henry Waxman basically requested records for over 50 insurance companies, it just struck me. If this is all about competition and increasing competition, how in the world can they get proprietary knowledge from their competitors?
RUSH: Well, that’s an excellent point. It really is, although I don’t think that’s what Waxman is doing because I don’t think he cares. He knows they can’t compete with him.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: But it’s still an excellent point. Here you have the federal government — and a lot of people are more frightened of their government today than they have ever been — and here Henry Waxman is sending out letters to these insurance companies demanding every bit of information about how they run their business, how the executives are compensated. I want to see in the Constitution where they have that right. The insurance companies are under indictment only because the Democrat Party has made the insurance industry its latest demon, its latest villain. But I don’t know that any federal regulatory agency is investigating the insurance industry as a whole for unfair practices and so forth. So here you have this little power hungry guy sending out these threatening letters. This is all about scaring these people. This is about getting them to go along with the plan.
This is about forcing them by virtue of fear and intimidation. This is the way they did it in Russia, the Soviet Union. This is the way of the world in most places: harassment, intimidation, extortion. But your point is doubly powerful. If they really do mean this business about ‘we just want to provide a public option because we want more competition,’ then they’ve got no business being able to see all the proprietary information of their competitors. So no matter how you look at this, it stinks. Once again: Get out of the way, let ’em do this. They’re showing themselves finally for who and what they are, and they’re paying the price for it, big time, and they don’t care. It doesn’t matter, as long as they get as much as they can ramrod through before 2010 in those elections. They’re governing against the will of the people. They have chosen not only to demonize the American insurance industry, they are now demonizing over half the American people. This is who they are.
This is Tom from Colorado. Nice to have out program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Very well, thank you.
CALLER: I thank you so much for getting the information out there that most people don’t find in the mainstream media. I appreciate you so much. You know, one thing that just terrified me, when Obama says, ‘You get to keep your doctor,’ and I run a medical practice here in Colorado; what I hear him say is, ‘I will take the public option. I will basically have my doctors take that insurance or we’re gonna take our medical license away,’ which just terrifies me. I don’t take Medicaid because we can’t afford to. We can’t see too many patients. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but on average, the private health care insurances pay 26% more than what Medicare does, and Medicaid —
RUSH: You mean the reimbursements?
CALLER: Reimbursements. The reimbursements to the doctors —
RUSH: So the private insurance companies reimburse you 26% higher than Medicaid does?
CALLER: Yes, they do. It varies as far as per city, per state in your region.
RUSH: Well, don’t forget something. Obama has demonized the doctors, too.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: Remember, you guys take out body organs that are not necessary to be taken out. You do it to line your pockets. You chop off diabetics’ feet for 30, 40,000 bucks. This guy has demonized doctors. If you look at what he’s doing, he really wants people to end up hating the doctor, hate the HMO, hate the insurance company; love the government.
CALLER: Yeah, everyone should love the private insurance companies because your local hospital could not make it if they just went with Medicare and Medicaid. I mean, can you imagine if you take a 26% cut out of any business? I mean, how many employees would you have to lay off? People say, ‘Well, I don’t get to spend enough time with the doctor now.’ If you cut 20% off of — I’m not a physician, but I run a practice. But if you cut 20% out of my practice, I’m going to have to cut patient time. I’m going to have to cut quality of product. I’m going to have to cut services, you know?
RUSH: It whittles it down to the point it doesn’t pay you to do your job. It doesn’t pay you.
CALLER: We have a friend who is in California. She was out to visit this weekend, and in our practice as far as dermatology goes we see somewhere in the nature of 37 or 38 patients per day, and primarily — because, you know, Medicare is about 20, 30% of our business. Medicare and Medicaid is somewhere in nature of like 75 or 80% of her business. She sees 65 patients a day. I mean, compared (crosstalk) and who would you rather go see?
RUSH: Wait a second. One doctor, 65 patients a day?
CALLER: In and out in five minutes. It’s dermatology. You see it, you identify it, you fix it, you write the script, you have the nurse do everything for you.
RUSH: Wow. Interesting.
CALLER: If you want that, go ahead —
RUSH: I guess —
CALLER: — to encourage them to support the system. It’s ridiculous. Doctors will find a way.
RUSH: Well, Tom, I gotta run here. I just again noticed the clock. I’m a little long. I want to catch myself here before I go too long. But I appreciate your call.
CALLER: Thank you so much, Rush.
RUSH: Thanks very much.