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RUSH: Chris in Cincinnati, great to have you on the program, sir, hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos from Cincinnati.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I’m a physician in the Cincinnati area, emergency physician. I asked questions for a couple years now from people who can’t give me the answer. I thought maybe you had it. When did health care become a right in the Constitution or in any of the amendments?

RUSH: It isn’t a right. It cannot be a right.

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: You cannot insure good health. Nobody can insure good health. That’s not what health insurance is about. Health insurance is insurance against catastrophic injury, costs a lot of money. Basically you’re calculating risk. It’s risk-reward. There’s no way that health care is a right. Now, the whole notion of health care being a right, you can probably trace it back to FDR with his attempt to have a second Bill of Rights, which also said that everybody is entitled to a house and everybody’s entitled to a job and everybody is entitled to a living wage, a livable wage. I mean these are leftists’ dreams of a utopia that have been tried and failed. Now, it became popularized, the whole notion in the modern era — and Kucinich opened his press conference today by saying, ‘I believe health care is a basic human right.’ Now, Kucinich is an idiot, he is mental midget, he is a socialist utopian who has no concrete sense of reality at all. But the modern era of health care as a right concept I would trace to a candidate for the Senate who won in 1992 in Pennsylvania, Harris Wofford. Harris Wofford ran on the notion that health care is a right, and he said if the Constitution provides you a lawyer, the Constitution ought to provide you a doctor. And if you can’t pay for the doctor, we should pay for the doctor for you. Just like if you can’t afford a lawyer, we’ll give you one and pay for him, the public defender, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then the Clintons picked up on that in the campaign, it was all part of an orchestrated, coordinated effort. But it’s been a liberal dream since FDR, to have this. And just saying health care is a right is simply a sales technique.

CALLER: Right. And I think unfortunately a lot of my patients are buying into that, and many people don’t realize, they talk about access to care, but as you found out in Hawaii, if you’re sick and you go to an emergency department we have to see you and take care of you before we even ask insurance questions and, you know, if you can’t pay for it, then the hospital eats that bill, or the physician eats that bill and they try to get reimbursed by the government anyway. So in that sense we already have some form of health care provided by the government.

RUSH: Well, I know, this is why we always say that everybody gets health care in this country because what you just said is the law of the land, you gotta be treated in an emergency situation, and they deal with getting paid later, either making a deal with the patient, pay it back in increments or some other way. Now, I meant to get to this, I’ve got a Stack of Stuff I haven’t gotten to this week that’s getting pretty big, and I’m not going to be able to find it right now. But it was a great piece earlier this week by Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post, and he explodes this emergency room myth. The emergency room myth, if I recall what he said, and give me the opportunity to be a little bit wrong on this until I refresh my memory looking at it, the emergency room myth is that it is overrun with uninsured people. And the fact is it isn’t. Eighty-three percent of all emergency room treatments are made to people who have health insurance. It’s pretty much consistent with every other form of treatment. It’s not being overrun, is what his point is. Don’t look at this as a negative. He’s exploding a popular myth here that’s being used to sell universal health care. I’m going to dig this up and I’m going to find it here because it’s an interesting point. I skimmed over it real fast, I had it in the stack to explore later and the way this issue is happening all week, it’s exploding by the minute here and just keeping up with it currently is an ongoing challenge. Anyway I appreciate the call very much. That was Chris.

David in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. You’re next. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Appreciate your taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: I hope you agree with me. I think you are completely right in that if they pass health care and we have a overwhelming win in November, it will not be enough to rewrite the health care bill because Obama would veto it.

RUSH: Well —

CALLER: We would not have enough to overrun his veto.

RUSH: Well, we probably won’t have enough to override a veto. But before we even get to that point, here’s the danger, and I have alluded to this, I’m going to couple it with what our emergency room doctor just said. He comes in contact with a lot of people, and a lot of people believe their health care is a right, that they shouldn’t have to pay for it, we’ve had them call this show, they think the government should pay for it, they listen to Democrats make these promises and they think it’s great. They buy this notion that they’re just one doctor visit away from bankruptcy and so forth, and they think the government should pay for it. It’s a right, it should be paid for. Now, it’s not a majority of people who think this or otherwise there would be massive support for this bill, and there isn’t. We do not have a lot of time here, but we have an opportunity to turn this back. Here’s what happens if it becomes law. The Republicans will initiate a campaign theme called repeal. But, folks, the dirty little secret is that once this becomes law, to campaign against repealing it is almost a death wish. I know this doesn’t sound like it makes any sense. ‘Why, Rush, so many people oppose it.’ Once it becomes law, once it gets implemented, the Republicans are what? Campaigning to take your health care away. That’s what the Democrats would say. Just like they wanted to take your Social Security away, the Republicans want to take your health care away.

You have to understand what’s going to happen if this passes. The most massive PR effort and party and celebration you’ve ever seen is gonna take place in Washington. And it’s going to consist of one thing: America now joins the rest of the world with universal health care. You will never, ever have a health care worry the rest of your life. This is what the nation’s going to be told with the best PR flacks and hacks in the world writing the message, there will be parties and celebrations. The one benefit here is that all the so-called benefits don’t trigger for four years. The taxes and stuff start immediately. But if this thing sets in for five years, then I think the odds of overturning it dwindle down to zero. At that point you’re not going to have a politician brave enough after five years of it to campaign on taking it away. It’s just the way entitlements work. I wish I could give you examples here. I can, I just don’t dare say them. But to people who rely on entitlements, you know, I’ve had an addiction problem, it’s an addiction. There’s no reason or rationality to it. It becomes an addiction and taking it away, they’re not going to let you do it. This is a very, very grave situation. All the talk here about repealing it, we don’t even want to have to think about that. All of the effort needs to be focused on defeating it and making sure they don’t get their votes.

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