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RUSH: So, on the way out here yesterday, I was on EIB 1 and it’s been so long since I’ve watched cable news. I go in cycles with it. I don’t mean to be critical. I’m just sharing with you here my own personal consumption habits, and there’s no reason to watch CNN, there literally isn’t.

MSNBC, there hasn’t been a reason to watch that in I don’t know long. After awhile it gets formulaic, but for some reason Fox News was on, and it was five o’clock, so The Five was on. And I happened to see a picture of me. The sound was not on. Closed-captioning is on. And after they played a clip of me on the Dittocam, they then cut to Beckel, Bob Beckel. So I knew what this was. Beckel was gonna be upset that they’re using another clip of me. He’s been having a cow on that show because all they do is play clips of me and then ask everybody to respond.


That is indeed what happened, and the clip yesterday was my saying that this VA scandal is nothing more than a microcosm for all of us of what we’re all headed for, i.e., single payer with Obamacare. A little bitty snapshot here of where we’re all headed, and I think it’s only a natural conclusion. I don’t even see how that’s arguable. I mean, the VA is single payer. It is what Obama and the Democrats want for Obamacare to ultimately be. Obama has said so. He told the SEIU and other union buddies way back in 2007 when he was toying with the idea of running for president. He’s talking about it and he said it’s not something we’re gonna be able to do overnight. The public is never going to want it.

Which didn’t matter. They want it, so they’re gonna get it whether the public wants it or not. And so since the public didn’t want it Obama’s telling his union guys that what they’re gonna have to do is slowly and surely discredit every other element of health care, from insurance companies to hospitals to doctors, and they’re gonna have to so frustrate the American people that they’re gonna demand simplification, just have the government do it all, like Medicare. That’s a rousing success. Like the VA.

There’s no question that’s where this is headed. I don’t know how anybody can even argue with the idea that what happens at the VA right now, what is going on is an early warning signal for all of us, wait times, death panels, however you want to characterize it, with Obamacare at large. So that’s why I said it. Here’s the actual clip that they used on The Five yesterday, and it was from Monday’s program.

RUSH ARCHIVE: [T]here is rampant incompetence here and inability to run the medical treatment of the Veterans Affairs system. … [W]e still gotta find a way to convince people that this Obamacare can’t work and that everybody’s headed for a similar potential as these deaths in the VA. … [H]ere is a microcosm of what Obamacare is gonna be if it’s fully implemented.

RUSH: Well, that just ticked Mr. Beckel off. He was mad, A, that they played another clip of me for the group to respond to; then he got mad at what I had said. He said paraphrased), “You know what? We haven’t heard Rush Limbaugh for three hours on this network. I wonder why so much time had gone by! Rush Limbaugh! Rush Limbaugh!

“It’s either Rush Limbaugh or Krauthammer. Then we hear some…” He’s always, you know, the short fuse on this. So here is Beckel, and this when I started watching on the way out here yesterday. When he talks “block,” that is inside-broadcast lingo. He means the segment. On Fox, every segment has a letter they call it.

The A block is the first segment, the B block is the second segment, and C block and so forth until you finish the program. There are probably, I don’t know, five or six blocks, maybe eight in a one-hour program. So I’m just cluing you in so you get distracted trying to figure out what he’s talking about. When you hear the word “block,” he just means the segment that they’re in at the moment.

Here’s the reaction…

BECKEL: You know what the crap of this block is? That somehow you’re equating Obamacare with the VA. The VA is owned and operated by the federal government. It is government-operated health care. Obamacare has nothing to do… Not a single hospital will be owned by the government, not a single doctor. It gives you a nice little thing to talk about here in this block. And, by the way, it’s nice to see Rush Limbaugh again. We haven’t seen him on this air for about, what, three hours?

RUSH: Yeah, see? I just want to play that. It’s just so funny when these guys get mad. Of course, that’s why this is the most talked about radio talk show in the country, and I’m the most talked about host in the country. I think one of the reasons… Can we be honest here? One of the reasons they use me is where else are you gonna hear this stuff? I mean, there are other places you hear it, but everybody else is uttering the same formulaic stuff.

Everybody is afraid… Not everybody. A lot of people are afraid to actually say what they really think about this. So his point here is, “The VA is owned and operated by the federal government. It is government-operated health care. Obamacare has nothing to do… Not a single hospital will be owned by the government, not a single doctor.”

Bob, the doctors that remain in Obamacare are gonna be owned and operated, and they’re gonna be totally subservient to whatever the law and the requirements are. The point is the federal government is going to be responsible. They’re gonna be the deciding factor in who gets treatment and what kind. The VA scandal really comes down to rationing, and that is inevitable in any single-payer system.

Rationing is inevitable when you have a command-and-control central authority that determines how much is gonna be spent where. In the private sector, where the government has little say about what’s spent except Medicare and Medicaid — just normal, everyday health care transactions between the patient and doctor — that’s a self-contained transaction. Procedure and the price is dictated by a number of things.


But doctors… I mean, you could say they “ration” by having waiting lists in the office on a particular day and it may be slow. But what we know here is that the VA scandal is about rationing, and rationing is going to be part of Obamacare. Any system where you are underpaying the doctors, you’re going to have to ration health care. “Rationing” is just a nice term for “death panels.”

Some bureaucrat somewhere is gonna decide who gets treated and who won’t be, and that same bureaucrat is gonna decide how much money is spent on whoever is judged worthy of being treated. Obamacare mandates services. Obamacare mandates fees. How is that so different from being operated by the government? You mandate services; you mandate fees. Mandate is pretty final — and if the government’s doing the mandating, how can you say they’re not operating it?

Remember… We’re gonna replay the sound bite of Obama telling a woman, “Your mother? Nah, nah. She’s too old to get a pacemaker. No, no. We’ll just give her a pill and have her enjoy the last of her days.” I mean, what do you think that is? And what do you think he’s assuming his power is going to be once Obamacare is implemented? Can you imagine a citizen of this country having to ask the president whether her mother is going to get medical treatment?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let’s go back to June 24, 2009, primetime, ABC. A member of the audience, Jane Sturm, says to Obama, “My mother is over 105. But at 100 the doctor said to her, ‘I can’t do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.’ I said go for it; she said go for it. The specialist said, ‘No, she’s too old.’ When the other specialist saw her joy of life, her will to live, he said, ‘I’m gonna go for it.’ That was over five years ago.

“My question to you, Mr. President, outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who’s elderly is there any consideration that can be give up for certain spirit, a joy of living, a quality of life, will to live, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?” This is a woman asking if the federal government will consider somebody’s will to live and happiness at age 100 in giving them a pacemaker, and listen to this answer.

OBAMA: I don’t think that we can make judgments based on people’s spirit. That’d be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are gonna provide good quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we’re gonna have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they’re not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they’re being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn’t gonna help. Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.

RUSH: Now, you want to tell me this isn’t rationing? Do you want to tell me this isn’t the federal government determining who gets medical treatment and who doesn’t? And how is that different from the VA? Here’s a woman… Again, folks, this was back in 2009. This is five years ago, and already citizens were conditioned to think they had to ask the president or the government if a family member is gonna get medical care!

What is that, if not rationing?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s Betty in Indianapolis. Hi, Betty. Thank you for waiting. Great to have you on the program.


CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I wanted to tell you that my mother had surgery when she was 95. It was to repair a crushed vertebra. It was a very successful surgery that gave her two more years of mobility and quality of life, and nobody, not the doctor, not the insurance company, no one suggested that she was too old and that it wasn’t worth spending the resources on her. Now, here I am in my late sixties. I’ve never really needed health care and I’ve always looked forward to an old age like my parents, but I won’t have the health care that my parents have, and I have a sense of dread about it. My parents lived in a small town in Indiana and they were always able to get the care they needed, and they didn’t have to wait. But unfortunately, that’s not my future, and I’m pretty sick about it.

RUSH: And what do you think the reason is? Do you think it’s because of Obamacare and rationing, or is it that it’s so expensive you can’t afford it yourself, therefore you’re dependent on third parties to pay it? Is it policy that’s driving this, what is the reason? Why do you think this is gonna manifest itself this way with you?

CALLER: Because of Obamacare, because our current medical structure is being destroyed and —

RUSH: Now, your mother, what year was it that your mother was 95 and got the surgery?

CALLER: Let me see. That would have been about —

RUSH: It’s a long time ago, right?

CALLER: Eight or nine years ago.

RUSH: Yeah, pre-Obama.

CALLER: Yeah, pre-Obamacare. Hm-hm.

RUSH: I think yours is a fear that a lot of people have.

CALLER: Hm-hm. Yeah. And also, Rush, I wanted to say that I heard your interview with your grandfather, who was a hundred years old, and I was so touched by him and by your love and respect for him, and I know that no one in your family thought that he was too old to take care of. I know that you all did everything —

RUSH: No way. That’s exactly right. There was no way that that wasn’t gonna happen.

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