RUSH: This John Edwards story in which he said Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require all Americans go to the doctor for preventive care: Now, I have a question. His universal health care is socialized medicine, and I have a simple question for you people. Under socialized medicine, who is in charge of your health? Do you realize it ain’t going to be you? You will not be in charge of your health under socialized medicine, and some of you may actually like that, which is a scary thing. Some of you may actually relish the fact that somebody’s going to make you go to the doctor, your neighbors are going to pay for it, and you’re going to find out early on whether you’re sick or not. But for me, it’s a frightening concept, because this is government control over everything including what you might get in terms of your health. How many of you go to the doctor when you are not sick? I suspect way too many of you do just for the hell of it. You have nothing else to do but sit around in a waiting room, read some free magazines, see the doctor, see the nurse. You think somebody else is paying for it, your own insurance program.
How many of you go to the doctor when you’re not sick? I don’t go to the doctor when I am sick because I know that I’m going to get over it at some time. Unless I’m really, really sick then I go to the doctor, but I don’t go to the doctor very much at all. I hate going to the doctor. Stand in line, wait for three hours? It’s a waste of time. But many of you people probably go to the doctor when you’re not sick. I don’t want to go to the doctor when I’m not sick, I don’t want to have to go be told what I’m not sick with. But John Edwards is going to require that you go to the doctor every year. You are going to have to go to the doctor for preventive health care. ‘The whole idea is a continuum of care,’ he said, ‘basically from birth to death.’ Now, we’ve talked on this program on several occasions, ladies and gentlemen, about the real point of all of this, and that is control. It’s not your health and it’s not keeping you healthy and all. It’s just control. This is what liberal Democrats are after, and they couch this stuff in terms of trying to help you and your good health and so forth. Who’s going to pay for all this, by the way? How much is all this going to cost, all these people going to the doctor when they don’t have to? Isn’t that one of the problems now, too many people going to the doctor for unnecessary purposes and reasons — hangnails and this sort of thing — and it gets charged to Medicare, Medicaid, or somebody’s health insurance program. Plus, it promotes the idea that we’re all always sick anyway and we’ve gotta go to the doctor and make sure he finds something. We’re all sick. Nobody’s healthy. We’re all going to die. All of us have got something. We all eat wrong; we all behave wrong; we all drive wrong. Something’s going to kill us, and liberals are going to make sure we find out in time by going to the doctor. There’s another story about Edwards that should disqualify John Edwards as a presidential candidate, even more so than the stupid statement he made before I left for vacation, and that is the US poverty rate has declined significantly, and this according to the Census Bureau statistics. This is right in the middle of Edwards’ campaign where he claims poverty is on the rise and we gotta wipe it out.
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RUSH: If John Edwards is going to require every one of us under his universal health care plan, socialized medicine, to go to the doctor all the time — it’s going to be mandatory; the government is going to make us go to the doctor — then I have an idea. I think the government should make every American have access to a lawyer. I think the federal government should take over the whole legal field, just like they’re taking over the whole health care industry. Take over the legal business. Set prices for all services. Set salaries for all attorneys. Everybody should be forced to go to a lawyer for preventive legal care. You must be sent to the lawyer for your will. You must be sent to a lawyer, a government lawyer, for your pre-nup. You must go to a lawyer for your real estate contracts and so forth. No lawyer will be allowed to make more than $200,000 a year, and every lawyer will be assigned an area of the country in which he will work. If we’re going to do this in health care, if John Edwards wants to do this to the medical industry, well, why don’t we just look at the same way of behaving under the legal system in this country and virtually everything else?
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RUSH: Jason in Bremerton, Washington, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Dittos and welcome back.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: My comment was related to the John Edwards mandating doctor visits, and you covered it pretty much with, you know, mentioning the importance of the government factor in it. But what isn’t being brought up is that this is something you’d expect from a repressive or non-freedom based government and not the US. And if it’s implemented, wouldn’t that be considered an invasion of privacy? You know, if so, why aren’t the leftist kooks who rail against the Patriot Act or government surveillance or any database tracking, you know, yelling from the top of the mountains about this? You know, where’s the ACLU? What Edwards wants directly hits what these groups oppose. And, you know, after all, isn’t the government, you need to keep a database of, you know, who made their yearly trip to Dr. Feelgood?
RUSH: You know, there’s a big difference, though, like in the spying program and so forth. That’s to protect the country, and the people you’re talking about, the ACLU and these people, are not protecting-the-country oriented. These are people that resent this country. They have big problems with this country in a lot of ways. The point you’re making about Edwards is exactly right. This is something an oppressive regime would conduct. This is something people would in order to… They’ll come up with whatever reason they want, but the reason here is total control, and nobody is reacting to the loss of freedom here. For example, what or who is going to make sure you go to the doctor? What’s going to happen to you if you don’t?
CALLER: Yeah, they’re going to have doctor police out there, and they’re going to have to build new prisons for all those of us who don’t go to the doctor when we’re told to.
RUSH: Well, they’re going to have to do something. They’re going to have to fine us, penalize us, something. Maybe they’ll give us a colonoscopy, if we don’t go get one on our own, or maybe give us two without any medication to make it tolerable. Who knows?
CALLER: The government does that without trips to the doctor.
RUSH: Excellent. (Laughing.) Don’t make me laugh because it causes coughing spasms. Excellent point.
RUSH: Tina in Chicago, we’ll see if we can squeeze you in before the break. Just say what you want to say. If we don’t get it in, we’ll hold you over later.
CALLER: Dittos, Rush. I promise to try to make you look good. I am so sick and tired of hearing people say you cannot afford health care insurance. I mean, you can get a major medical plan for probably less than a hundred bucks a month for your family. When my husband came to this country, they begged him to get on welfare. They wanted him to get on welfare.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: They wanted to keep him down —
RUSH: Yep.
CALLER: — and today, if we had done that, 20 years later, we would not be taking in a six-figure income, and he tries to tell every single minority or immigrant — and he’s legal — but he tries to tell every single legal immigrant that you need to learn English, you need to get educated, and you —
RUSH: Congratulations.
CALLER: — need to pay for what you get because if you don’t pay for it —
RUSH: I love the passion, but I gotta go, the constraints of time. I’m sorry. You did great. You did great.