Jim in Phoenix, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?

RUSH: Good. Thank you.

CALLER: I love the show. I’m calling regarding health care plans and preexisting conditions. My son is 1-1/2 and he has a preexisting condition. It’s a heart defect. My wife and I received a letter this week that his cardiologist group is getting dropped from our health care provider on November 1st, and my comment to you is: I really think that this is a way for the insurance company to sidestep the preexisting conditions that are being forced upon them by Obamacare.

RUSH: Well, when you say “sidestep,” what do you mean?

CALLER: Well, I mean, if they don’t want to have to pay for patients with preexisting conditions — and we’ll figure, let’s say, 90% of those are heart patients — if you eliminate a doctors group where all those patients are going through the specialists, then you’re not actually denying anybody preexisting conditions. But they can’t actually get access to that health care unless they go out of network.

RUSH: All right, now, this takes me back to something that happened yesterday in the hearings. Sebelius kept harping on this. She kept harping on the good things of Obamacare, like the non-denial for pre-existing conditions, and kids on their parents’ policies until they’re 26 and so forth. The one thing that I didn’t hear any Republican say in reaction… This is an example of how frustrated I got. So here she is, she’s singing the praises of Obamacare.

How your kids can stay on your policy until they’re 26, and how Obamacare mandates and makes sure that the people with preexisting conditions are covered. But nobody — nobody — on the Republican side said, “Yeah, and that’s why costs are exploding.” This is not how the market works. This whole preexisting condition thing… You know, I understand it in an emotional sense, but it isn’t insurance, and this is why people are dropping out of it.

You talk about the doctors. Doctors are dropping out, specifically because they’re not gonna earn any money in Obamacare. Doctors, cardiologists, are giving up. I’ve got a couple stories in the Stack today. Every day there’s a story about more and more doctors opting out of this because they’re not getting paid. They’re not being paid, compensated in a timely fashion, and certainly not even to 100%. It’s even less of the work they’re doing.

This is not the market. This is people that have no idea what they’re doing forcing things on the market that the market otherwise wouldn’t do, and the reaction to it is one of two things. You either comply and go broke and go out of business, or you opt out. This is the one thing that the left never calculates, and that’s the dynamism of people in the market. The left thinks all they’ve gotta do is slap a 10% tax increase on people, and people are just gonna sit there and pay it. No.

People are gonna start trying to find ways around it, or have some way of not being affected by it. And it’s the same thing here. You can’t have what Obama’s promising, $2,500 premium reductions, and if you like your policy, you get to keep it. If you’re gonna add things like this and if you’re gonna add breast pumps and if you’re gonna add birth control pills, you cannot start throwing things in here that are mandated coverage and have prices go down. The only thing that can happen is what is happening: Prices are going through the roof. Premium prices are exploding, because of that and subsidizing people who can’t pay for what is being mandated.

It’s one thing if you mandate that people have insurance, and you mandate it at a level that many can’t afford, “Okay, don’t worry, we’ll subsidize.” Well, who’s subsidizing? The government isn’t subsidizing anything. The government doesn’t have any money ’til it takes it from somebody first. So the only thing that can happen here is prices go up. Now, preexisting conditions, the analogy that a lot of people use is, you do not have homeowners insurance, none. One day your house catches fire and in the middle of the fire, 30% of your house is gone, you call State Farm and say, “I want homeowners insurance.” And they say, “Now, your house is on fire?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, we’re not selling it.”

Well, Obamacare comes along and says, “They’re gonna have to now.” Well, that isn’t insurance. It’s something else, but it isn’t insurance. If Obama is gonna come along, somebody that doesn’t have any idea what he’s doing, is not using his own money, never has used his own money, is gonna start mandating people pay for all this, it’s gonna have to come from somewhere. It’s being taken from doctors, it’s being taken from taxpayers, and it’s just destroying what was the greatest health care system in the world. It’s an abject shame.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s a reminder to Jim in Phoenix that we mentioned a couple of days ago that the vast, if not all, of the Obamacare plans do not pay for any doctors or treatments out of network. Let me tell you how this manifests itself. You’re on the operating table. There’s a team there working on you. You got the surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists or the anesthetist, any number of people. If one of those doctors is not in the network, i.e., in the Obamacare system, you could end up being charged by that one specialist an amount of money that you’d be shocked that you would be charged. And a lot of doctors are pulling out of the network because they don’t want anything to do with it.

The New York Post has a story, it’s just the latest one. “Seventy-seven percent of New York state doctors may opt out of Obamacare.” Seventy-seven percent. From the article. “New York doctors are treating Obamacare like the plague, a new survey reveals. A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nationÂ’s new health-care plan. Another 33 percent say theyÂ’re still not sure whether to become ObamaCare providers. Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said theyÂ’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges.” Only 23%.

Now, there’s a reason for this, and it’s not because doctors are bad people, and it’s not because doctors are rich and don’t care about you. It’s not for any of the reasons that the left would want you to believe about rich people not caring about the poor. It is they can’t make a living in Obamacare. It’s just that simple. It makes no economic sense to be in Obamacare, as they’ve sized up their situation.

It’s no different from the way you would react if Obama decided to regulate the business you’re in and mandate that you do it under circumstances where you only got paid half of what you were used to being paid. Why would you stick around? To be a good neighbor? To provide health care and treatment for your community? It’s not how markets work. It wasn’t perfect, but I’m telling you, people don’t like what they’re finding that this has become and is becoming.