RUSH: We just played the sound bites of Obama ripping into the insurance companies for arbitrarily raising rates. Arbitrarily raising rates is the last place arbitrarily rates go up in the insurance industry. That’s the last place. The insurance company actuarial figures are the most comprehensive statistics kept in any industry for any reason. There’s nothing arbitrary about it. But what’s Obama ever done to lower anybody’s costs? How much have your taxes gone up since the Democrats controlled Congress? How much has the deficit gone up since Obama was elected? How much has home ownership gone down? How much has unemployment gone up? And now he’s going to use all this magic on health care. Let me tell you what this assault on the insurance companies is all about, and this is an important first step. They have to destroy the insurance companies, especially since there’s no public option in the Senate bill. And make no mistake, the public option is what they all want. And the Senate doesn’t have it in their bill because they couldn’t get 60 votes with it in there, and especially now with Scott Brown having been elected. So how they going to get there, then? Because what I told you the last hour is true.
If the House passes the Senate bill, that’s ball game, there is not going to be reconciliation. There isn’t time. But there’s no intention to be a reconciliation anyway. You people in the House, you Democrats who don’t like what’s in the Senate bill, you better be prepared to live with it and for a long time. Obama signs it after you guys vote for it in the House, and that’s the last anybody’s going to be talking about health care for the rest of this year. Then you guys lose the House and the Republicans take over in January and you’re not going to get anything you want added to it. So what you’re going to have to hope for is that Obama’s plan in the Senate destroys private insurance. That’s the only way you’re going to get a public option, the only way. And of course the express purpose of the Senate bill is to destroy private insurance. That’s the only way they can get to single payer with the government being the payer. See, there’s a fine. If you don’t have insurance, there’s a fine. And the most the fine is is $5,000 a year. And that’s for the very rich.
Unless you are in your twenties, your insurance will be a lot more than $5,000. Most people, therefore, will choose to pay the fine rather than pay the premium because Obama’s plan forces the insurance companies to cover it. It’s no longer even insurance when you have to cover preexisting conditions, when you have to cover people from the day they get sick only. That’s not insurance. He’s going to put the private insurance business out of business. He’s going to destroy it. This is why the Democrats are insisting that insurance companies accept people despite whatever their preexisting conditions and to begin health coverage from the day they get sick forward. The pretense, what they’re trying to make you believe here is that with everybody now in the insurance pool, that it won’t be hard on the insurance companies ’cause there are so many people they can spread the premiums out, so many people, the premiums are going to come down. But most of the people who are currently uninsured will choose to pay the fine. I think the fine is like eight or 900 bucks. And the most it is is five grand.
I would pay five grand not to have health insurance. What are these Cadillac plans, 23 grand a year? I’ll just use myself as an example here. If in the Senate bill this is true, if the insurance companies are required to give me a policy to treat whatever happens to me the day it happens, why pay for insurance at 23 to 25 grand a year and the tax on it to boot? It’s throwing money away, so I’ll pay the $5,000 fine as long as there’s no jail time with it. I’ll pay the $5,000 fine and I’ll wait ’til I get sick or I’ll wait ’til something happens, wait ’til the car crash and then I’ll sign up and they have to take me under the Senate bill. Now, why would anybody have insurance? And if you have the to pay a fine of 800 bucks versus a five or $10,000 annual premium, what are you going to do? If the insurance company has to treat you and cover you from the moment you get sick or have an accident going forward why would anybody have insurance? You see, my friends, this is the trick. Nobody will have insurance and the insurance companies then will say, ‘We don’t have any customers,’ and they’ll close up shop. And there’s only one place left to go: the exchanges. (gasping) Single payer. That’s the plan here. That’s the plan.
There is no public option in this, but that’s how they’re going to get there. So the insurance companies will be forced to pay for everybody’s accidents and illnesses from the day it happens to them going forward. That’s the only time you’re going to want insurance, and it’s not insurance at that point obviously. So this will just destroy private insurance as an option, will lead very quickly to government-only insurance, and the money, the $5,000 that I would pay or the 800 bucks everybody else would pay for not having insurance, that’s just a tax. That’s a tax on the uninsured, which we’ll all be! Only idiots would have health insurance under this deal, only blooming idiots. There is literally no reason to have health insurance. None. They say there’s 30 million uninsured now, try 250 million uninsured, and every one of them paying a fine to the government for not having insurance. Think of the tax revenue Obama will be collecting.
By the way, when your company stops providing your health benefits because there’s no need to, don’t think that your salary isn’t going to go down a little bit. Well, theoretically your salary should go up if they don’t have to pay the benefits. But the business will know that most doofus employees think that it’s free. They know it costs, but their paycheck is the net. That’s what they get. They don’t know that there’s an additional 15 to 20 grand above their gross salary for all the benefits and the pensions and the 401(k)s and all that. So businesses, ‘Well, you know what, we’re opting out of the insurance business and so forth,’ or they’ll at least say they can’t give you a raise. It’s amazing. (interruption) Well, companies, if they don’t provide health insurance? Yeah, I think they get fined, too, if they don’t provide health insurance. See, they do, because technically if you have health insurance as a benefit you really don’t have insurance, your company does. You do not have insurance, you have a copayment or whatever deductible, but you are not insured, your business is, you’re part of that plan. So, yeah, they will get fined, too, they’ll throw everybody off. It would be the smart move. Why would anybody have health insurance?
Why would you buy automobile insurance if you didn’t have to have it until a wreck happened? You wouldn’t, would you? If AAA or State Farm had to pay for every expense you incurred in a crash from the moment only of the crash, why have insurance? (laughing) I’m laughing about this because there will be some schlubs who will still insure themselves because they won’t want to pay the fine or whatever. Folks, it’s so devious. I’m going to ask the question again for those of you people in Medicare, Medicaid: Anybody ever denied you a procedure or test or medical device, medicine, Medicare, Medicaid, VA? Do these programs ever deny anybody anything? Or do you get everything you want when you want it in whatever quantity you want? It seems to me I hear constant complaining about Medicare, Medicaid, VA. The answer to the question — of course it’s rhetorical — they don’t provide anything and everything whenever somebody wants it. The government today runs programs which deny people certain procedures, medicines and devices. And Obama never mentions that. Instead he talks about the evil insurance companies that say ‘no’ to certain things for certain people because it’s insurance. It’s not welfare.
So today the Obama administration is denying people certain care. Today the Obama administration serves as the largest insurance company in America and they say ‘no’ all the time. Medicare is an insurance program, Medicaid. Obama runs it. They say ‘no’ to people all the time. Many people seek disability under Social Security. They’re turned away. Does that mean that Social Security should be abolished on the spot? Does Obama demonize Social Security? No. See, Obama acts like the federal government is this tiny entity that doesn’t have a record and is just so philanthropic and so caring, is always there for everybody, for everything. But in truth the federal government is a behemoth, has a long record, decades long. It is inefficient; it is incompetent; it’s wasteful; it is abusive; it is not this perfect entity Obama seeks to portray. Never has been.
Now, what Obama does not explain to us and has no intention of explaining to us is how he intends to make government-run health care different than all the rest of the federal government. That is, how is he going to make health care customer friendly? How is he going to ensure that everybody gets whatever they think they should get while cutting costs? How will he ensure that it doesn’t run up massive debt like Medicare and Medicaid? What exactly will Obama do to make sure that it’s different? He can’t, and he won’t do a damn thing. He is an out-of-control, power-hungry demagogue who attacks anything that is private, promotes anything that is public. He has no intention of fixing anything. His agenda is to nationalize and centralize. He’s accountable, ladies and gentlemen, for nothing, taking responsibility for nothing. He sounds like a fool running around the country, attacking people and enterprises, while pretending he can deliver the impossible. And what’s happened since he took over? Everything is going to hell in a handbasket, and we’re running out of handbaskets.
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RUSH: The employer fine is three grand. If they don’t provide health insurance, it’s $3,000. Everybody’s going to lose their company-provided insurance under the Senate bill if the House passes it and Obama signs it. If you don’t provide health insurance for your employee (this is for firms of 50 employees or more) you have to pay a fine of $3,000. Now, what company wouldn’t pay $3,000 per employee? I don’t even know if it’s per worker. It probably is, but that’s far less than what it’s costing to cover them. So they will leave their private insurance companies and give Washington that much more money. It’s a win-win for the businesses. They off-load their health care costs, they pay a pittance of a fine of $3,000, and it’s a brand-new tax on the uninsured. It’s going to lead to the destruction of private insurance and, ‘Hello, single payer.’ I want to put a question directly to Obama: ‘Mr. President, why do you deny services, prescriptions, and medical devices to people who need them under Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA — and the S-CHIP program, by the way?’
You know the State Children’s Health Insurance Program? Not everybody gets what they want in that program, either. ‘Why, Mr. President, do you deny services and medicine and medical devices to people who need them under Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and the S-CHIP program? Why do you, as the biggest executive of the biggest insurance company, the federal government… Why do you, Mr. Insurance Company Executive, deny needy people what they require to improve their lives?’ My point, ladies and gentlemen, is that Obama is the evil insurance CEO he’s up there creaming! Obama is that guy — and all of his bureaucrats at the VA and Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, are his executives. The government is the biggest insurance company in the world, and they deny people all the time things that they need.
And, by the way, look at what this insurance company pays its doctors. This insurance company, the federal government, pays its doctors so little that they’re opting out of the government’s own program, which is supposedly the most compassionate and the most giving and the fairest of any insurance company in the world. Plus, this insurance company is broke! At least the private insurance companies are showing a meager profit of 2% every year. But Obama’s insurance company is in hock almost to the point of bankruptcy — and, by the way, for those of you who are elderly? Ha! You think this insurance company’s going to give you what you need at your age? They’re already denying coverage to the elderly on the basis of their age and expense. This is the best way I can think of to illustrate the point: He is the guy that he’s up there ripping to shreds in every health care speech, and the biggest insurance company in the world is the US government.
Medicare, Medicaid, VA, S-CHIP. They deny people all the time. Their costs are out of control. The people in those programs constantly complain about the inefficiency, the lack of treatment. He’s promising more of the same.
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RUSH: This is Richard in Naples. Richard, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, welcome from sunny Naples. Two part question for you regarding health care. If the health care bill passes, where would you go for health care yourself? And the second part of that is what happens to the doctors, do they have to participate in the federal program or can they opt out of it?
RUSH: Well, in the first place, none of that’s going to happen for four or five years.
CALLER: I understand that, but if it does, what happens to the doctors? Are they going to be forced into a federal program?
RUSH: Yes! It’s going to be the only people providing insurance.
CALLER: Where, then, would you go for health care?
RUSH: Where would I go for health care?
CALLER: Yeah, if the private doctors have to go into the federal program.
RUSH: My guess is even in Canada and even in the UK, doctors have opted out. They can’t see anybody, Medicare, Medicaid, or what will become the exchanges. They have to have a clientele of private patients that will pay them a retainer, and it’s going to be a very small practice. I don’t know if that has been outlawed in the Senate bill.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this. If this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented, I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.
CALLER: Yeah, you saw on the news where Fidel says you come to this country, you need medical insurance now.
RUSH: Well, I wouldn’t go there anyway, but I mean, the thing is you’re going to have to have health insurance if you visit Cuber.
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RUSH: By the way, you know who the biggest medical claim rejection company is? Medicare. Medicare denied 6.85 percent of claims. The closest is Aetna at 6.80, and the rest are in the fours and twos. The biggest denier of medical insurance claims is Obama’s insurance company, Medicare.
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RUSH: David in Clearwater, Florida. Welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you with us.
CALLER: Thank you for having me, Rush. It’s a pleasure speaking with you.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I just want to make a statement. We do not have in this country, at the present time, ‘health insurance.’ What most people have are ‘health plans.’ They purchase a certain amount either themselves or through their employer and it covers them to X, Y, or Z limits. We haven’t had real private insurance for the majority of people since the mid- to late 1980s, and this whole business of going on is just — if you would — redistributing a limited amount of dollars, and there’s just no way it can be done the way it’s being done. One of the things that I think makes sense would be, you know, you have your car insurance, and you have your homeowners insurance, but you don’t have ‘health insurance.’ You have health coverage, and I think this should be the personal responsibility of the individual.
RUSH: I want to say something. Just a second. Just a second. A lot of people listening to you think, ‘What are you doing, Rush? This guy just nitpicking?’ But he’s exactly right. It’s impossible to insure your health. What you are insuring is against catastrophic loss if you get sick. That’s what you’re insuring. Because no insurance company can guarantee you good health.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: So you’re right. We don’t have health insurance we have health coverage, and most people do not have that. The employer provides it as a benefit, and they might have a copayment or deductible but they’re not buying the policy.
CALLER: That’s correct. To go on further: With the economy being what it is and jobs and whatnot, why not make health insurance a personal responsibility?
RUSH: (busts up laughing)
CALLER: Leave the employer out of it.
RUSH: A personal responsibility?
CALLER: That’s correct, sir.
RUSH: Uhhh.
CALLER: I have a responsibility to myself and to my family.
RUSH: How insensitive can you be?
CALLER: Well (chuckles), I didn’t think I was being insensitive. I thought I was being logical.
RUSH: To illustrate my reaction, I had a story last week. I can’t remember where it came from but it was about a guy who was going to get an organ transplant — for free — and he was going to get three years of post-op coverage at no expense to him. But then after three years he would have to start paying for it, and he was outraged.
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: He was outraged, and the story was replete with examples and illustrations like that. The reason I reacted the way I did is because in health care Democrats among way too big a percentage of people in this country have created the notion that it is a right that shouldn’t cost anybody anything because health is more important than even having a lawyer (which is a constitutional right). So if you’re going to get a lawyer paid for by the state — even if it’s a lousy one — why shouldn’t you get your health coverage? ‘It’s just too important,’ and they’ve created this whole entitlement mentality, and they’ve succeeded because there’s no relationship between the customer’s ability to pay and the medical service provided. If there were, that then all these problems wouldn’t exist, but they do because there have been middlemen inserted into that relationship and the money gets paid regardless of the person’s ability to pay. I can’t remember the last time so many members of my own audience got mad at me, as last January when I got back from Christmas break and told everybody that the little medical scare I had out there, I paid for it myself.
‘Well, shhuh! You’re outta touch.’
‘Oh, of course you can pay for it. I couldn’t.’
‘What are you saying?’
We’ve gotten to a point here where people cite their own acceptance of responsibility for their own actions and they’re considered out of touch and people get mad at you! That’s odd. That’s why I choked. ‘Cause I was frankly stunned that we have very many people left who think like you do.
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RUSH: In Reisterstown, Maryland, this is Lynn. You’re on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, thank you so much for taking my call. I really appreciate it. I’m going to get right to the point because I know you’re running short on time.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Just very briefly, two points. Generally what people are gonna feel, how people will feel the effects of this new health care stuff that’s coming.
RUSH: Yep.
CALLER: For people in general, one, the first thing that’s going to go away is food service. So if people like to have dieticians come around to their room and say, ‘Okay, you can have this, you can have that,’ that’s —
RUSH: Basically it’s going to be the cheap Jell-O that’s not even refrigerated.
CALLER: Well, I’m afraid it’s going to be even worse than that. If you don’t have family or friends to bring you food every day that you’re in the hospital, you don’t eat.
RUSH: Is that the case in Norway?
CALLER: Yes, sir, it is.
RUSH: Yeah. You know, I misread the clock. Once again I’m using an analog here, and I thought I had a minute more than I have. We’re going to get your number, call you back and let you finish tomorrow but I gotta take a break here.