RUSH: Just as I predicted — and I was not the only one — remember Obama and the Democrats have repeatedly promised for over a year that Americans, if you like your health plan, if you like your doctor, you won’t lose your current coverage, you won’t be forced to switch plans under Obama’s health care plan. And they shoved that plan down our throats despite the fact that 80% of Americans were satisfied with their current plan. ‘In a stunning revelation Wednesday, several top US corporations are seriously considering dropping employee health insurance coverage in light of what they see as the inevitable consequence of Obamacare–skyrocketing costs.’ Now, stick with me on this because we’ve got a sound bite of Christina Romer coming up that’s just delectable given this data. ‘The companies state that after their legal experts poured over the thousands of pages in the new law, it will cost them less to pay the fines for not providing healthcare coverage for employees than continuing to provide employer-paid health insurance benefits.’
Duh! That’s exactly what we forecast on this program because this is the intent. The fines are very cheap compared to the cost of coverage. The whole point is to get rid of private insurance, to knock it outta business, send everybody to Obama’s government for health insurance. They want single payer, this is their first route to do it. ‘As a side-note to the announcement, the companies maintain that Obamacare will result in a dramatic increase in expenses for providing employee coverage, with added costs skyrocketing to multi-billions of dollars. According to Business Record: Additionally, the penalties to businesses for not offering coverage are less expensive than the cost of providing insurance, but for those that aren’t providing coverage now, this is a huge burden to them. And for employers that have a lot of employees working 30 hours (the threshold to be considered full-time), you may have a lot of businesses cutting them back to 29 hours.’ So, top companies consider dropping employee health coverage, costs are going to skyrocket, it will be cheaper to pay the fine.
Let’s go to the audio sound bites. This morning on the Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company, Stuart Varney talked to the Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer. Stuart Varney said, ‘The European model seems to be broken. Very big entitlement programs, very high taxation, that model seems to be broken, and yet we in America are going more like Europe all the time. Do you have any comment on that?’
ROMER: In terms of — of the United States, I think you should draw some real confidence from the fact of how we have dealt with this crisis, how we’re growing again, and we are doing the — you know, all of our policies in a very responsible way. Think about what we did in health care reform, if you look at the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, that is in fact one of the biggest fiscal improvements that we’ve seen in a very long time, that it is being done in such a fiscally responsible way, it’s actually going to reduce the deficit by some $1 trillion over the next 20 years.
RUSH: Devoid of reality here, the people in the private sector have looked at the law and said we’re going to pay the fine, we can’t afford this, we’re going to be dumping our coverage and here’s Christina Romer, ‘Oh, it’s going to save a trillion dollars off the deficit over 20 years.’ Right. Stuart Varney said, ‘Look, with respect, there are very few economists who really believe that health care reform is going to cut the deficit because that relies on a doctors fix, which is not going to be in the accounts, and it relies on a half trillion dollars being cut outta Medicare, which is more likely to happen.’
ROMER: I really disagree completely. You’re talking to one economist that did a very careful study of what the bill is going to do. We absolutely believe it’s going to slow the growth rate of costs by one percentage point a year.
RUSH: Okay. So we’re not Greece. She’s basically saying we’re not Greece. Greece, ladies and gentlemen, is going to hell, soon to be followed by Portugal and Spain and more, perhaps even the UK. Our debt is outta control. We don’t have any money. Unemployment is at about 10%. Obama is out there today taking credit for how well things are, how swell things are going. This is what dictators do. This is how they try to control their images and public opinion. Ignore the facts, ignore what you see, Obama’s reality is our reality, Christina Romer, ‘We’re going to reduce that deficit by a trillion dollars over 20 years, economists say so, unemployment, 9.9%, that’s because more people are entering the workforce.’ It’s not. We’ve got record highs of people unable to find jobs. All of this is pure spin.
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RUSH: Now, you might be asking, ‘Rush, who are these businesses that say they’re going to cancel health insurance and pay the fine?’ They’re the same people who looked at the bill when it came out and said, ‘Oops, we have to take a $1 billion charge to our bottom line because we found something in here that’s gonna change the way our entitlements are paid, our drug benefits are parceled out.’ Remember Henry Waxman said, ‘You can’t do that, what do you mean? Everybody knows that health care is going to reduce costs.’ He sent out a letter, which is essentially a subpoena, ‘You get yourselves up here! You get yourselves to my committee, me and Mr. Stupak, you get up here and you bring all your e-mails, and I want you to bring all of your books, I want to see this.’ And so they said, ‘Okay.’ And shortly thereafter, chairman Waxman canceled the hearings. He didn’t want the news to get out that the Obamacare legislation is going to drastically raise prices. He didn’t want that to get out.
So it’s the same businesses who took this charge. They have looked at the bill, and they have figured out how much it’s gonna cost ’em, and they’re gonna just get rid of it. We predicted it. They’re just going to off-load their health care benefits to the government, to these exchanges or pay the fine. What happens then? What happens then is very predictable. Greece. See what’s happening in Greece? What happens then is everybody working for a business that drops their health care coverage, everybody who loses it has a fit, anti-business fit. They will not understand that the company is dropping them because the costs are going through the roof because of Obama. They will be told that the companies are greedy and selfish. Obama has even lowered costs and yet look what they’re doing, and the regime will be out there, this is made to order for Obama, Obama will be out there ripping these businesses, ‘See, I told you, I told you this is what would happen. This is why we need bigger government to take care of this. This is why I need more power. The private sector is out to screw you. We passed a piece of legislation here that reduces costs, that reduces premiums, and look what business did. They just dropped your coverage.’
It’s all coming. It’s all part of the plan. It’s in the recipe. Folks, we warned you about this. Everything is very predictable. All you have to do is understand dictators. All you have to do is understand leftists and liberals and statists. If you understand that then you understand that they lie and manipulate to ultimately get what they want. They can’t get what they want telling you up front. They can’t say, ‘We want to be single payer. We want to be where you have to go to get health coverage and insurance.’ They’re going to make it impossible for you to go anywhere else to get it.
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RUSH: Indianapolis. John, you’re next on Open Line Friday. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Happy Friday. Take a nap, will you?
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: All right. Hey, what’s the scoop on all the states repeal? That kind of fell off the radar. What do you know?
RUSH: On the health care?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: In fact, let me find the story here. They’re still doing it. Even more have joined it. Two more states have joined this effort to try to repeal it, to claim it’s unconstitutional. I wish I could remember the states, but it’s still ongoing. You haven’t heard about it because what’s happening right now is all of the attorneys general are meeting trying to figure out the strategery and the best way to go legal-wise on this to make it happen. But it’s still very much in the works.
CALLER: Hmm. Well, you know, it just concerns me because of all this other rigamarole going on, you know, I think it goes back to Mao and what he said, you know, to get rid of the people with the knowledge and they’re trying to instinct a whole voting bloc of people. What do you think?
RUSH: Well, this is a common practice of dictatorial regimes is to try to rid a society of the people who have knowledge of history. In this case, for example, get rid of people who have knowledge of the truth of the Reagan years. That’s the one period of time in our country that shows the antidote to what’s happening now works. And the left is scared to death that more and more people — that’s why they constantly revise history about it, lie about the Reagan years and Reagan himself. But fear not, the effort is underway here, more states are joining this whole effort. ‘Oklahoma, Georgia Send Health Care Freedom Act to Governor’s Desk.’ Oklahoma and Georgia have basically said that they are exempt from Obamacare on a constitutional basis. So it’s still percolating there.
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RUSH: Let me repeat myself from earlier today since we had a call: ‘What are the states doing about health care?’ We had a story today that many businesses are gonna drop health care coverage for their employees or they’re going to reduce the number of full time employees because that’s one of the ways you can exempt yourself from forced coverage. But they’ve read the bill, and they found that paying the fine for not providing coverage is cheaper than providing the insurance policy. Well, we predicted this. This is what’s going to happen. It’s by design, individuals and businesses will pay the fine because it’s cheaper than having insurance because you can access the insurance when the accident happens or when you get sick, they have to cover you. So what this is going to do is force private insurance out of business eventually and force everybody to the government, exchanges, eventually single payer. So the states are trying to stop this, they’re trying to say that they’re either exempt from it or they are going to sue the federal government.
By the way, let me tell you what’s going to happen when this does happen, because this is all part of the regime’s strategy. When big business — ah, business period — when all this goes into effect by 2012 to 2014, when they start actually cutting benefits for people, health insurance and paying the fine, that will be exactly what Obama wants. Obama will then be able to call a national TV address and say, ‘What did I tell you? You can’t trust these people. They’re looking out for themselves. We passed this bill, reduced costs, reduced your premium, $2,500 a year, you keep the coverage you want, we promised you that, look what happened. They’re dropping you. They don’t care about you, they care about their profits. That’s all they care about. They don’t even want to cover you, they don’t even want to buy insurance, they gonna pay the fine, they don’t care about you.’ So he’ll be able to malign the private sector again. He’ll be able to say if it weren’t for me, if it weren’t for us in government, you wouldn’t have any health insurance. He’ll welcome people to the government option, the public option. This is all part of the way it was designed.
The Democrats in the November elections and in the 2012 election, the Democrats are going to run just as they do against the Republicans on Social Security: Republicans want to cut your Social Security, want to take it away from you. They’re going to say that about health care. And they’re going to have TV spots with Republican leaders saying, ‘Repeal, repeal health care.’ They’re going to try to convince the American people the Republican Party wants to try to take away your health care. Now, they think this is gonna work. I don’t know. The percentages of people who don’t want this health care plan continues to rise. The Democrat Party does not represent a majority of thinking in this country. They are a minority of thought. But they have a media on their side that projects an impression that they are the majority, but they really aren’t in any way, shape, manner, or form.