{"id":10261,"date":"2014-01-31T19:23:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T19:23:21","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2014-01-31T19:23:21","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T19:23:21","slug":"a_gay_former_liberal_who_has_been_punished_by_obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2014\/01\/31\/a_gay_former_liberal_who_has_been_punished_by_obamacare\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gay, Former Liberal Who Has Been Punished by Obamacare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: Here\u2019s Sonia in Tennessee. Great to have you. How are you, Sonia?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Good. Thank you. How about you?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Good. Thanks for the call.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I am so excited to be talking to you, first of all.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Wow.<\/p>\n

CALLER: You have absolutely changed my life, and real quick, before I get to the real thing, is that I was at one point a bleeding heart liberal. I am female. I am gay. And I\u2019m in my fifties, not your normal fan, but I will tell you, I absolutely, absolutely love you. You\u2019ve changed my political beliefs. I am now a very, very conservative Republican. And so, anyway. Okay.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, let me just tell you something, since you have described yourself that way. I just want to take the occasion of your call to tell you how happy I am that you\u2019re in the audience. In fact, even if you had not undergone a conversion, if you were just a conservative gay woman, 50 years, everything else you said demographically true, I\u2019d still be thrilled that you\u2019re in the audience. I think it\u2019s great, and I really appreciate you telling me.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, and I do encourage a lot of my friends that maybe have listened to your views on being gay, I encourage them to listen to you and be educated to realize that, hey, wait a minute, he\u2019s not a gay basher. You know, he does have some opinions that maybe you don\u2019t agree with, but at least give the chance. Anyway, but I want to get to the real reason I called.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I have worked very, very, very hard my whole entire life. I lived in California, South Lake Tahoe, California, very near to your Sacramento adopted state, where you started. I ended up moving to Tennessee at the end of June to take care of my ailing grandmother, who exists on Social Security.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Okay.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I was hired to go to work — I\u2019m a chef by trade — hired to go to work at a very prestigious private school here in Memphis, Tennessee. I didn\u2019t realize at the time the reason I was hired was so that everybody else\u2019s hours would be lowered to 29 1\/2 hours so that nobody would get insurance.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Wait a minute. Why was hiring you gonna make that happen?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Because by bringing on that extra person, everybody was cut one day a week, and —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Oh, so by bringing in an additional person, bringing in one more human being of labor, they could —<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: — get the same output, same production from all of you by cutting your hours and escaping Obamacare?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Correct. Okay. So we\u2019re now all below 30 hours, we work 29 and a half hours, which for the very first time in my whole entire working life, I find myself with no insurance. So a couple of weeks ago I go online because I feel like I need insurance, I want to be insured, to sign up for Obamacare. <\/p>\n

RUSH: I need to ask you a question here \u2019cause you admit that you\u2019ve been listening and you like what you hear here.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Yes.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So you\u2019ve obviously heard things about Obamacare and the website that should have dissuaded you from thinking it was gonna work.<\/line><\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, it should have, but the bottom line is, at my age —<\/p>\n

RUSH: You had no alternative.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Literally no alternative.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And that\u2019s the design, folks. <\/p>\n

CALLER: Right. <\/p>\n

RUSH: That was the only place. You got cancelled, and you didn\u2019t qualify, then, when you got the new job.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Correct.<\/p>\n

RUSH: It was the only place you could go.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right. And I\u2019m worried about getting a catastrophic illness.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Right. Well, how has it worked out for you, Sonia?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, let me tell you. They say that it\u2019s affordable, and I\u2019m used to making at least $80,000 a year.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Because I was forced to move here to take care of my grandmother, I make $800 a month.<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s quite a come-down, \u2019cause you\u2019re only working 29 and a half hours.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right. Right. So I take the very minimum, which is called their bronze level.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Oh, yes, the Obamacare bronze plan. Yes, we\u2019re very familiar with that plan.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right, $289 a month is my portion, and that I get a $6,000 deductible —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Did you say $289 a month?<\/p>\n

CALLER: A month out of my $800 a month take home.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So $1,200 a year.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right. Okay. Okay. But the saddest part about it is —<\/p>\n

<\/a>RUSH: You thought it was gonna be cheaper?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, not only cheaper, but a $6,000 deductible?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Oh, yeah. And wait \u2019til you see the the out-of-pocket copays.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, and then, after you meet your deductible, it\u2019s only 50% of the bills. It\u2019s crazy!<\/p>\n

RUSH: Did you look into a subsidized plan?<\/p>\n

CALLER: You know what? It didn\u2019t say, and I don\u2019t know if I went and got some professional help to walk me through it, but I didn\u2019t qualify —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yeah, you probably earn too much to qualify —<\/p>\n

CALLER: — for any of the subsidies, which was even crazier than that.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I know. What you have to do is reduce your income even more. It all depends on what\u2019s important to you, Sonia.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Exactly. So those out there that are thinking that this Obamacare, because I gotta tell you, a lot of my family members are bleeding heart liberals, Obama\u2019s going to save us. Guess what? No, it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You know, I\u2019ll tell you something: This burns me. I mean, I\u2019m frosted that Democrats get all of this credit for the compassion and big-heartedness. Look at what\u2019s happening. She\u2019s one example. Millions are running into this, I hope you understand me when I say the Democrats have really, I think, made people look at their health insurance and health care as one of the most important things in life. The Democrats are constantly scaring people. <\/p>\n

“You\u2019re just one illness away from bankruptcy!” <\/p>\n

They made this — having a health insurance policy, treatment — be the most important things. It\u2019s as important, if not more so, than food to people, and therefore when something goes wrong in it, when they can\u2019t afford it and they get cancelled or they can\u2019t have it, it is a major upheaval. People are discovering from all walks of life and all political persuasions are discovering this, and the people on the left, some of them, are vowing it\u2019s not Obama\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still the Republicans\u2019 fault. They still are able to be talked into that. Other people, if you look at the polling data, Obama\u2019s losing every bit of goodwill he had built up, or the vast majority of it because of this, but that\u2019s of secondary import. What this policy, what this plan, what this whole thing is doing to the best health care system in the world — what it is doing to people that he lied to about you can keep your doctor if you like it, keep your plan if you like it — what he\u2019s doing to people? This, to me, is unconscionable, folks, and it\u2019s all done. <\/p>\n

The whole beneficiaries here are the Democrat Party way down the road.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Our last caller, Sonia, you heard her. She\u2019s gay. She\u2019s 50-plus. She, in her own estimation, is the furthest thing from what somebody would think of the profile of somebody listening to this program.<\/p>\n

Yet she\u2019s here. She\u2019s a convert. She\u2019s a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.” But now she\u2019s here. Either earlier in this hour or in the previous hour we were discussing immigration, and the thing that frustrates us conservative is we do not want anybody to be victims, and we certainly don\u2019t want to victimize anybody. We don\u2019t even look at people and put them in groups and then decide what their political value is. <\/p>\n

Some conservatives do as a defensive measure trying to get them, but it\u2019s not our way. Our actual orientation is to see human beings. We see human beings. We see Americans. We see all sizes and all shapes and all religions and all sexes, races. You name it, we want \u2019em all, we want every American to benefit from being an American. We want everybody to love this country. We want everybody to be taught and to understand glorious golden opportunity they have by virtue of being born American. <\/p>\n

We want them to have an active appreciation for it. <\/p>\n

We don\u2019t care… I\u2019ll speak for myself. I don\u2019t care what somebody\u2019s sexual orientation is, I don\u2019t care what their race is, and I do not group people that way. Nor do I want to take advantage of people by making them groups or victims. I want everybody to be as self-reliant as they can be, be as educated as they can be, \u2019cause that\u2019s how we\u2019re gonna have a great country. Now, I oppose liberals wherever you find \u2019em. <\/p>\n

Black, gay, straight, fat, thin, agnostic, religious. If you\u2019re a liberal, I oppose you \u2019cause I think you are an obstacle to everything I believe in. Pure and simple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Here\u2019s Sonia in Tennessee. Great to have you. How are you, Sonia? CALLER: Good. Thank you. How about you? RUSH: Good. Thanks for the call. CALLER: I am so excited to be talking to you, first of all. RUSH: Wow. 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