{"id":24299,"date":"2007-01-23T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:05:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T06:05:31","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:05:31","slug":"bush_plan_introduces_market_forces_in_health_care2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/01\/23\/bush_plan_introduces_market_forces_in_health_care2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush Plan Introduces Market Forces in Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: By the way, as far as the State of the Union is concerned, tax increases on your health benefits, ladies and gentlemen. Have you heard about this? Yes, here\u2019s how it\u2019s going to work. The average benefit — and 150 million Americans have health insurance through their employers, and right now that\u2019s a benefit. It\u2019s income that\u2019s not taxed. You don\u2019t see it, but it\u2019s what it costs the employer to pay you, so you\u2019re not taxed on it. I\u2019ve been predicting this. I just didn\u2019t know a Republican would come up with the idea, but I\u2019ve been predicting this for the longest time. Here\u2019s the deal. Average American health care plan, 150 million of you supposedly have your health care paid by your employer, which it\u2019s being paid by you, you just never see it. Bottom line is, there\u2019s $11,500. The tax will be on employee benefits over $15,000, and there are some of those. The average is 11,500. <\/line> So, for example, if it costs your employer $17,000 for your health care plan, you will pay a tax on $2,000. ?Oh, that\u2019s not bad, Rush.? (Laughing.) You know what happened with Social Security when it started out versus where it is. You know what happened to the income tax when it started out versus where it is. It won\u2019t be long before that 15,000 is down to ten, and then down to eight. Once they start increasing taxes, folks, I told you two weeks ago, we are probably living at a moment where our taxes will never, ever be lower than what they are. In addition to that, the president is going to propose a 20% reduction in the use of gasoline. How is this going to happen? Well, they\u2019re going to raise the CAFE standards. We went through that in the nineties with Clinton. Going to raise the CAFE standards and promote conservation and alternative fuels and the like. No mention of the speed limit. Gosh, I hope they don\u2019t do that. And, by the way, I can\u2019t find it, I haven\u2019t seen the text to the whole thing. I can\u2019t find any added impetus to start drilling for our own oil. The Democrats want to prevent that wherever and whenever they can, while claiming that they want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.<\/line>BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Twana in Atlanta, you\u2019re next, welcome to the EIB Network.<\/line>CALLER: Hi, Rush. I just ? (loud phone distortion)<\/line>RUSH: What the hell is going on? Are you being attacked out there?<\/line>CALLER: I\u2019m here.<\/line>RUSH: Where are you?<\/line>CALLER: I\u2019m in Atlanta.<\/line>RUSH: Are you in the men\u2019s room at Hartsfield<\/a>? The noise out there was incredible.<\/line>CALLER: Sorry. Anyway, can you hear me now?<\/line>RUSH: Yeah, I hear you now. Yeah, I don\u2019t even want to know what was going on. It might be obscene.<\/line>CALLER: Sorry.<\/line>RUSH: Yes.<\/line>CALLER: Well, my point is, in light of what the president is planning to talk about tonight and adding yet another element of government roads, you know, Rush, I\u2019ve been a card-carrying Republican since Reagan, and I am simply bamboozled by this guy. I don\u2019t know where he stands on the conservative issues, and to be honest with you, let\u2019s just say that the minority in the Congress and the Senate comes up with a plan to try to win in \u201908. It seems to me they\u2019re going to have Bush to overcome. I\u2019m so irritated by this.<\/line>RUSH: I\u2019m having trouble. If the minority in the Congress and the Senate come up with a plan to try to win in \u201908, you mean the elective office or some piece of legislation?<\/line>CALLER: No, if they try to take back the Senate and the House of Representatives in \u201908, you know, their Republican base is still having to look at what Bush is doing to increase government.<\/line>RUSH: Have you noticed a trend out there, though, Twana? Have you see what\u2019s happening in California with Arnold Schwarzenegger? Do you know how seductive liberalism is? Here\u2019s Arnold Schwarzenegger giving away the state, giving away the farm. Health care benefits and insurance for children of illegals, paid for with tax increases called loans. Of course, the Democrats are out there applauding this. Liberalism is seductive as it can be. When you\u2019re in government, your job is to spend money, and when you have unlimited amounts of it to throw around, it\u2019s a temptation, I guess, that some can\u2019t resist. <\/line>This business of taxing benefits, I\u2019m surprised it\u2019s taken this long to do it. It is on income, and you are not being taxed on it. There are a lot of other circumstances where this kind of thing does result in independent contractors and so forth having to pay tax on it, because it\u2019s treated as income. Like, for example, a gift, the maximum you can gift anybody in a 12-month period I think is now $12,000, maybe 13,000 this year. Anything above that, you pay a tax on. You get an exemption of so much for your life, but if you surpass that, the tax rate on gifts is 49%, something like that. There\u2019s precedent for this. I\u2019m just surprised that it\u2019s taken this long. As for the effect on Republicans and their electoral chances in \u201908, it\u2019s not just the president who has wandered off the reservation on some of these things. <\/line>BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: I feel so bad. I feel so bad. I played a trick on you people. I must now apologize for it. I only told you half the story about the tax increase on health care benefits. I did this on purpose to get your attention, and judging by my e-mail, it has worked. Because I want you to listen, I want you to know what the other half of this is. I don\u2019t like the fact that there\u2019s a tax increase here. With the level of taxation we already face, I\u2019m universally opposed to it. We\u2019ve got so much money being produced by this people of this country, there?s just fraud and waste and redundancy all over this budget. It\u2019s obscene. But that aside, in addition to proposing a tax increase on health care benefits above $15,000 per employee, the president is also going to propose a tax cut for those of you who purchase your own medical insurance, and he would finance that tax cut you\u2019re going to get by buying your own health insurance with an unprecedented tax on a portion of high priced health care plans that workers receive from their employers. <\/line>The initiative, which the president briefly reviewed in his radio address on Saturday, has a dual purpose. It would create a financial incentive for the estimated 46 million to 48 million Americans who lack health insurance to buy it, and it would rein in — wait a second. I thought they didn\u2019t have it because it was so expensive they couldn\u2019t afford it. But, see, they don\u2019t tell you that many of these uninsured are uninsured by choice. They are young and they have no concept of illness, catastrophic or otherwise. They don\u2019t plan on dying tomorrow. They don\u2019t plan on being in a car wreck or any of that, you know how the young people are, so they\u2019re running the risk that they\u2019re not going to need it. They\u2019re looking at the actuarial tables and they\u2019re finding that taking the risk is pretty sound. They\u2019re not the kind of people that spend every day in the doctor\u2019s office and then at the emergency room. I don\u2019t know what percent is, but I\u2019ll bet you close to half, I think I read close to half of these 46 to 48 million estimated uninsured are underestimated or uninsured by choice, on purpose. <\/line>?The president said today the tax code unfairly penalizes people who do not get health insurance through their job. It unwisely encourages workers to choose overly expensive gold-plated plans. The result is that insurance premiums rise and many Americans cannot afford the coverage that they need.? I\u2019m sorry for tricking you on this. But the reason I wanted to do it, the reason I decided to do it is because this is a really robust, and actually it\u2019s like Mitt\u2019s plan in Massachusetts where he\u2019s requiring everybody to have it and buy it. They\u2019ve got to have it like auto insurance, and the incentive is if you buy your own, you\u2019ll end up shopping, and you\u2019ll get better prices, and maybe you won\u2019t buy as much, you won\u2019t go for these gold-plated things so that you don\u2019t have to worry about it, you\u2019ll just buy what you need, and this will introduce market forces into the health care system which we\u2019ve all agreed needed to be done decades ago, and when you introduce market forces, you lower prices. <\/line>For you people who choose not to go out and pay for your own insurance, welcome to tax increases, because you\u2019re going to get soaked if you continue with these gold-plated plans. You\u2019re not going to get soaked actually because the entire amount is not going to be taxed. It\u2019s every dollar over $15,000 annually in your health care benefit package, work will be taxed. Don\u2019t know what the rate is. So it\u2019s ultimately an attempt here to introduce market forces and privatize as much of the health care system as possible or get it started because this is the fix for this, just as it is with Social Security. Now, the libs are going to fight this tooth and nail. I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s No Name-Calling Week or whatever, they are going to go bananas with this. Oh, I know, they\u2019re already saying it\u2019s dead on arrival, but after he does the speech tonight, when most Americans hear it for the first time, wait \u2019til you hear the response and wait \u2019til you hear the Drive-Bys tonight and tomorrow. They are going to go bonkers. ?The only way to fix health care, Rush, is for government to pay for it for everybody, and for you and everybody else, Rush, to be dependent on government, because government cares, and government can do it the best, Mr. Rush Limbaugh.? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. <\/line>So dead on arrival. It\u2019s an attempt to introduce market forces. The thing I don\u2019t like about it, and it\u2019s a small part, this was the trick, it\u2019s one of our guys proposing a tax increase. The way it can be spun, Bush proposes tax increase, period. And it could be just like I did when I tricked you. Again, I\u2019m sorry for that, ladies and gentlemen. It won\u2019t happen too many more times in the future. <\/line>BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: If you are just tuning in and you\u2019re wondering what did I do to trick the audience, I told them that President Bush was going to tax a portion of health care benefits as income, is going to announce it in the State of the Union address tonight. Then I waited for a half hour to drop the other shoe. The other shoe is there is a huge tax cut being offered to people who buy their own health insurance. This is an effort to reduce the price in the cost, because the average health care benefit for an employee today is $11,500. The proposal tonight, which the Democrats have already said is dead on arrival anyway, is that every dollar over $15,000 of health care benefits will be taxed. The purpose here is to try to get people off of employer programs and buy their own, for the express purpose of shopping it. Most people aren\u2019t going to go out and buy $15,000 policies or even 11 or $12,000 policies, every year, not going to do it, especially when most people think that health care is free. <\/line>Let\u2019s face it, most people who have health care as part of their employment, never see the money. You get your card, you get a co-pay, you get whatever, your deductible and this sort of thing, but the overall insurance, you don\u2019t pay for it, you don\u2019t think. You are paying for it. You just never see the money. It\u2019s what the employer has to pay to employ you, and so it goes somewhere before it ever gets to you. Now, what you could do, a movement would be, ?Okay, employer, instead of giving me the insurance, give me what it is it costs and I\u2019ll go buy my own.? I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to happen. So one of the problems here, even if it weren\u2019t dead on arrival, as the Democrats say, and they run the Congress right now, how many people do you think who are under the impression as far as all practicality is concerned, that health insurance is free, it\u2019s a benefit, are going to go out and pay for it, with what? How many families do you know that just have four or five thousand dollars hanging around, not used, to go out and buy health insurance? Probably, if the employer does, if it happened, as it progressed, theoretically, hypothetically, I doubt that the employer would make up in salary what you no longer are going to take as a benefit. But we have to see how that worked itself out. <\/line>So the bottom line is, yeah, it\u2019s theoretically great in the way that it would introduce market forces, but health insurance still isn\u2019t cheap even if you do buy it yourself, and the number of people without vouchers — this is really the voucher program without vouchers, and I\u2019ve been in favor of this for I don\u2019t know how long. You get a voucher for whatever health care coverage you get every year, and then whatever you don\u2019t spend you get to keep. That would encourage people shopping for medical services like they shop for everything else. But it\u2019s all moot, folks, dead on arrival. The Democrats don\u2019t want any part of this. They don\u2019t want any part of market forces, private sector involved in this as little as possible, is what they want. They want the government, they want single pay, they want national health care, Hillary\u2019s going to rev that back up. They want everybody dependent on them for health care. You know how big health care is to people. It\u2019s something that people literally panic over if they don\u2019t have it, other than those who are choosing not to have it. So big brouhaha. <\/line><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: By the way, as far as the State of the Union is concerned, tax increases on your health benefits, ladies and gentlemen. Have you heard about this? Yes, here\u2019s how it\u2019s going to work. The average benefit — and 150 million Americans have health insurance through their employers, and right now that\u2019s a benefit. 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