RUSH: Bob in San Diego, great to have you. How are you doing, sir? Hello.

CALLER: Great, Rush. Quick comment about health care versus taxes. I’m a physician in my sixties at a children’s hospital, and I can tell you many, many average Americans, maybe not your listeners, but average Americans do not understand that their deductibles are eight or nine thousand dollars. And since they don’t get sick, except for maybe once every eight or nine years, they have no idea how disastrous Obamacare is. So they’re not aware of it.

But taxes are a different breed. I had two texts from, I would suspect Millennial — my colleagues who are now in practice, and they said I just got back from our accountant, and we need to know more about tax shelters. We’re getting killed. And I suspect they were Hillary voters, and they’re really good folks. And it would be, in my mind — we’re at the end of March. Tax season is coming up the 15th of April, a lot of people get extensions into May and June, July. It would be insane to pass up taxes and push them into August or September. Now is a perfect time, and liberals, these young people will know they’re getting money back. The Democrats in the House can’t take that.

RUSH: Here’s the problem. The problem is that everybody, everybody — Trump, Ryan, everybody — on the Republican side said they can’t do tax reform until Obamacare is improved, they can’t do it.

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RUSH: As to the last caller, I disagree somewhat with the fact people don’t know what their deductibles are simply because they don’t have to use them. I think a lot is known about Obamacare. I think that’s why it’s so consistently polls with people opposed to it. I think people know how much it’s cost particularly to people that have entered the exchanges, but I think everybody does.

I mean, there’s not a person in the world in this country who is not aware of the oppressive, out of any scope of normalcy costs and prices associated with it. There’s not anybody not aware of it. And a lot of people now have come to realize that with two things. With premiums so high and deductibles so high, you effectively don’t have coverage. If your deductible is so high you never use it, then I would maintain to you that you actually do not have a policy. You’re paying for one, or you’re being subsidized for one.

You’re paying through the nose for one of these plans. And your premiums are up — you know, I was talking to a guy his premium, family of four, 1999. And this was in the heat — we just finished Hillarycare and defeating that and the health care system was as it was without any intervention on the part of Clinton and Hillary and so forth, and back then people were screaming bloody murder over the costs. And it was only getting worse as we got into the twenty-first century. And in 1999, a guy could insure his family of four for $195 a month with a $1500 deductible. And people were complaining about that.

Today that deductible is as high as five to eight thousand dollars. And in most cases people aren’t gonna use it outside of catastrophic. And if the deductible is so high that you can’t use the policy, then you effectively don’t have insurance. If you can’t use it because you can’t afford it. And that’s where we are now. It’s absurd and it’s ridiculous. A lot more people than our caller realizes think so.

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RUSH: Back to the phones. Robert, Jersey City, New Jersey, great to have you, sir. How are you doing?

CALLER: Great, sir. I’ve been listening since October of 1990 driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. And my thought today is that I feel like the tax [reform] is gonna be a harder thing to get done but it’s gonna be more doable than the health care because I think the health care was kind of like giving somebody a driver on the island green at TPC and tell ’em to make a bogey.

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: But I think that the tax, budget deal is something like playing nine holes and shooting a 27 or a 28. It can be done. But I think that… I think it will involve more, uh —

RUSH: Can I…? Look, I don’t want to… (sigh) I’m not thinking about what you said. I’m getting a little tired, just a little tired. Because we’ve heard it how many years how hard it is to do things in Washington. “It’s really hard, you know.” Everything’s hard! Who gets away with not doing it because it’s hard? Show me the success stories of people who didn’t do it because it was hard, who are considered great achievers. You can’t show me. There isn’t anybody in that group of people. “It’s too hard” does not have people in it who ever achieved greatness.

I understand it’s complex. Health care is very complicated, and the government’s had its tentacles woven deeply into this whole charade for over 50 years. But I don’t understand why it’s this hard that you can’t do anything? It’s the same thing as, “Well, Rush, you know, once an entitlement’s been put into law, Rush, you can’t take it away.” Yes, you can! It’s just you can’t have elected people do it thinking they’ll get reelected if they do it. But you can do it.

“Oh, no, Rush! You get people used to being given things all their lives and take it away…” Don’t take it away overnight, but, for crying out loud, we talk about all this stuff that needs to happen to reorient the direction of the country and the government, and everybody talks a great game, gets all jazzed and all excited about it. And then when the rubber meets the road, “It’s too hard,” or, “We can’t unify,” or, “We can’t do this.” I’m telling you, the answer to this is, there aren’t enough people who really want to do anything about it.

Because if you have the desire, if you really had people with the burning desire to lower taxes, it would be done. We know the Democrats don’t want to do it. We know it’s gonna be a battle. But the Democrats are losing elections, and you damned wouldn’t know that if you follow what happens in Washington! They’ve lost a thousand seats in the last eight or nine years, and it looks like they’re winning every day. It doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make any sense.