×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

RUSH: Downers Grove, Illinois. This is Art, and it’s great to have you here on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Greetings, Rush. I catch your pinkie finger mobster.

RUSH: (laughing) Thank you, sir. The Mob Father.

CALLER: Mob father. I got something, tonight President Obama, who personifies the word tyro, is going to speak tonight. I was just wondering if the Republican response, I suppose it’s going to be headed by Boehner or somebody like that, that they would keep it simple and short like you were saying today, maybe stick with tort reform, portability and the fact that there’s not 40 million, but only 11 million people that are uninsured.

RUSH: Look, even though the White House thinks I am the leader of the Republican Party, I played no role in the selection of who is giving the Republican response. I just saw the name flashed on television, I don’t remember, it’s not Boehner. I’ll find out who it is. I have no clue what he’s going to say, no clue whatsoever. I frankly hope that the central theme of the Republican response tonight is freedom. It’s a marvelous concept that we’re on the verge of losing if Obama wins this thing. Freedom. Liberty. Private sector. You know, start talking about reform, specific reforms, you could do tort reform, you could mention that. You could also mention the portability, cross-border purchase, state border purchase of health insurance.

You know, one of the reasons it’s so screwed up is that every state has its own mandates. If you live in Florida, you want health insurance, you gotta buy it in Florida. What if you like a policy in Missouri? You can buy auto insurance at any auto company insurance in the world, in the country. You can get a personal liability umbrella from Lloyds of London if they’ll insure you. But when it comes to the health insurance you’ve got to buy it within the state because there’s so damn many mandates. You know, it’s a real simple matter. If you get rid of that, the costs would plummet. It’s one of the fastest things you could do to reduce costs. You know why? It would really ramp up competition. If insurance companies throughout the country had the entire population to pitch their policies to, imagine all that competition. Imagine what would happen to prices. Right now you got these mini-monopolies. The insurance companies have to deal with the mandates that the states give ’em, but they can only sell policies to people in those states. It’s so screwy.

I want you to listen to this sound bite. Grab audio sound bite number four. Now, if this question isn’t a plant, I don’t know what is. This is yesterday at a Q&A before Obama gave his speech to the young skulls full of mush at Wakefield High School. He spoke with the ninth graders there. A student named Sean asked this question. Now you tell me if this question isn’t a plant. Question: ‘Hi, Mr. President. My name is Sean, and my question is, currently 36 countries have universal health coverage, including Iraq and Afghanistan, which have it paid for by the United States. Why can’t the United States have universal health coverage?’ Now, where does a high school ninth grader come up with the notion that they have universal health coverage in Afghanistan and Iraq? That’s some kind of leftist drivel that a teacher is pumping into their heads. Can you imagine, the president of the United States asked by a ninth grader, how come our health care is not as good as it is in Afghanistan? How come our health care is not as good as it is in Iraq? As though universal coverage equals good health care? Here’s the president’s answer to this.

OBAMA: What happened is that back in the 1940s and fifties, a lot of — most of the wealthy countries around the world decided to set up health care systems that covered everybody. The United States, for a number of different reasons, organized their health care around employer-based health insurance. What happened was is that the majority of Americans still have health insurance through their job and it’s, you know, most of them are happy with it, but a lot of people fall through the cracks.

RUSH: Good Lord, he just admitted that most people have insurance through their job. And, by the way, the reason that we were organized with health coverage through our employers was because we were strict capitalists back then. The idea of the government doing this was foreign. Well, it wasn’t foreign, and FDR had done what he’d done, but it’s been a slow creep to get government involved to the point that they are. And so Obama says, ‘Well, most people like their coverage. He tells this kid the majority still have health insurance in their job, and most of them are happy with it. So why are you messing with it tonight, then? You know, you get this guy off the teleprompter and it’s a crapshoot. They’re probably, in the White House when he said this, going, ‘Oh, no, gosh, I hope this doesn’t end up on television, oh, no. I know Limbaugh’s gonna get it then our goose is cooked.’ Most people have health insurance and they like it. So why is he doing what he’s doing?


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So a ninth grader stands up and asks Obama at the high school yesterday, ‘Afghanistan and Iraq, they got universal coverage. Why don’t we have it?’ From Reuters, April 21st, 2008: ‘Afghan laborer Chaman traveled a whole day to bring his son to Kabul to have a kidney stone removed after doctors in their home province turned them away because they could not afford the fees. The two-year-old boy, who suffered excruciating pain for three days, finally had the stone removed in a charity hospital funded by Turkey. ‘The private hospitals are only for rich businessmen. Poor people have to use government hospitals and if they can’t help, the children die,’ said the young father from Ghazni province as he unwrapped a piece of paper to show a brown pebble measuring half a centimeter in diameter. Ghazni is southwest of Kabul. Foreign donors have given some $15 billion in aid to Afghanistan since US-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001.’

Now, who’s putting this idea in this little kid’s head that Afghanistan and Iraq have universal coverage? Well you know it’s the damn teachers, it’s the damn teachers and where are they picking it up? Probably from the stupid left wing website that’s run by the Obama White House or something, or maybe from ACORN or whatever. I’ve been to Afghanistan. That notion is more ridiculous than saying Cuba’s got the best health care in the world. I’ve been there. There’s not an American that would live there. There was not one American who would accept the living conditions in Afghanistan. Forget health care. You want to see the food? In Kabul, the capital, you’re driving around, the roads are dirt, dust is raised by the tires of all the cars going by, and there are not that many, but they’re old. And along the roadside is the meat market with raw meat hanging in the sun with the dust circulating and people are standing in line to buy it.

You want to talk about universal health coverage in Afghanistan? Jeez. There is not one of you, there is not one American in poverty, there is not a homeless person in this country who would accept living conditions in Afghanistan. Forget the Taliban. Pile the Taliban onto it and what they’re doing over there and it’s the home base of terrorism, it’s even worse. And we got a planted question about Afghanistan and Iraq have universal coverage and why can’t we? We’re raising these little kids to hate this country and to get the totally wrong idea about it, all for the sake of this guy’s monuments and the advancement of his political objectives? I detest this stuff that’s going on here, and then that phony baloney speech about accepting personal responsibility.

In fact, I got an e-mail from a woman, Katherine Lewis, who disagrees with me. ‘A rare occasion, I disagree with your analysis of Obama’s speech to the kids.’ I said it was a conservative speech and he didn’t believe it but the content was good. ‘I printed that speech Tuesday morning, Rush. I read through some of it, and I gave it to my son, a ninth grader at our local high school. The speech was effectively a call for nationalism a la Hitler. It was less about individual responsibility and more about responsibility to the state, how the kids need to feel an obligation to their community, the state, the nation, and of course Obama himself. I found the speech repugnant because I saw it as insidious and manipulative starting with the poor-me attempt to connect with the kids emotionally when he had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to study. Sounds a bit like some national Labor Party tactics being used. It was full of allusions to things like fighting discrimination and making our nation more fair and more free. Then poor me, my father left my single mother struggle, who hasn’t heard all this over and over, lots of I’s, I’s, I’s.’ So that woman disagreed with me. Anyway, regardless, this is unacceptable, it’s ridiculous, and it’s gotta be stopped. What happened in August cannot stop. It must continue for four years.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Darren in Atlanta. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Great to talk to you Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Just fine, thanks much.

CALLER: I wanted to share with you that I was a physician in Afghanistan with the US military and spent 15 months in Afghanistan, part of the time was spent in the Ghazni province and many other provinces there in Afghanistan, and I can assure your listens without a doubt there is no universal health care coverage in Afghanistan and the health care there is tremendously poor.

RUSH: Even if there were universal coverage, what you just said is the point. Medical care in Afghanistan — when I saw that question from that little student I just knew some teacher had — or either the Obama campaign team planted the question, one of the two, but somebody had to plant that notion that health care in Afghanistan and Iraq are better than in the United States. I’ve been there. I was there for a week and you know better than I do.

CALLER: A third of children die before reaching adulthood in Afghanistan and the average life span for an adult in Afghanistan is lower than any other country. So, you know, to make a comment like that, you know, it’s a shame that that’s what we’re educating our children.


RUSH: Yeah, well, it’s all part of this ‘America sucks’ routine that this administration’s floating out there. He runs around the world apologizing for America, apologizing for things that happened 50 years ago and so forth. I find it detestable.

CALLER: Rush, one other point if I may.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: You talked about the side effects of this health care coverage. And when we talk about rationing, the bill might not directly say rationing, but when you insure all of these people and they don’t take the personal responsibility to go to the doctors and to do preventive medicine, they will utilize emergency rooms and they will utilize other health care facilities more than they do now. The only thing deterring them from using these things too much is the fact that they know they’ll be responsible for paying for it. So when somebody doesn’t want to go to work Monday morning because they’re too tired or too hung over from the weekend, they’ll go to their doctor’s office and ask for a note, and we wind up spending more money on health care than we would if we didn’t do this.

RUSH: Absolutely, yeah, exactly right. Exactly.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This