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Yes, my friends, he did, and so guess, what I was working for a radio station in Pittsburgh and the management loved it. We’d love to talk about increasing your compensation but, of course, the government has a price freeze on wages. So the wages, the cap on wages, employers are more than happy to observe that, but when you went to the grocery store during that period of time, you found a whole bunch of new stuff that had not been there before the price caps were put in. For example every item supposedly had a price cap on it. You’d go to the store and all of the sudden there would be a new cut of beef, the Delmonico B rib eye, and it was 18 or something dollars a pound or whatever it was. And people said, “What is this Delmonico B rib eye? I never heard of that.” Exactly. Entrepreneurs in the butcher business created a whole new cut that was not covered under the wage and price controls.
Well, the same thing can happen in health care. All they’ve got to do is change the way a service is provided so that it doesn’t fit a current definition. Voila! It’s a new service not covered by the price cap. It never, ever works. The wage controls do because employers are more than happy to make sure the government stays off their back that way, but even people that are controlling the wages they pay people, those businesses still sell something, they’ll find a way to come up with a new way to package the product so that the price they’re charging people for what they’re producing will not be subject to control. They never work, they never have worked, they haven’t been re-instituted since then because it was a boondoggle back then. And so, “Rush, okay, know-it-all, what would you do?” Easy. If we’re ever to have, and I said this earlier and I’ve been saying it for many, many moons here, a little Indian casino lingo there, which is, by the way, going to be the next source of revenue for politicians, keep a sharp eye, Indian casinos, they’re going to go to those guys and say, “Hey, you know what? This plan we had to let you get some of the stuff back that we took from you and all those cowboy wars, well, guess what? Yeah, we’re going to let you sell the cigarettes, we’re going to start taxing them, just a little, a nickel, and casino profits, yeah, we’re going to start taxing those. And you watch. It’s going to happen.”
The only way to control, the only way to even have a chance at controlling the out-of-control spiral upward of health care costs is to put the consumer in charge of paying. Right now you think insurance is covering everything and some of you your insurance coverage is good, some of you your insurance coverage isn’t good. You complain about it regardless. It’s still a hassle. No matter how good a coverage you have it’s still a hassle to use it, but if you think you’re paying no money you’ll use it. And so the image, the impression has been left that health care is free – or at least it doesn’t cost you anything. You’ve got an insurance card, it’s Blue Cross or Kaiser or whatever. So you go to the doctor, get a hangnail fixed, give them the card and you walk out of there. Bamm! You feel good. Well, somebody is paying for it. And the fact that you’re not, means that whoever is, is not as concerned about the price as you are, so the prices are going up. And then this starts to affect businesses. Businesses have been just paying these increased premiums because it’s almost a mandated requirement now that employees have health care packages.
Well, guess what’s happening now? And I have the story here in my stack, but I have the stack memorized, I don’t need to go get the story to tell you what’s in it because I read it because I do show prep because I’m prepared, and the story is this: Employers are now starting to demand that their employees exercise good health behavior. They got to know how much you weigh. You said you had a doctors appointment and you couldn’t come to work the other day, I want to know when you went to the doctor for, what’s the problem? If you have a disease, I want to know about it. I want to know how you’re treating it, and this is starting is to happen now because all these prices have just kept spiraling out of control and the people at the tail end of it, who are paying for it are finally saying wait a minute we can’t anymore and so the government is going, okay, we will, prescription drugs. Well, it all comes back to the taxpayer of this country, whether you think you’re paying for your health coverage or not, you are. And the only way that we’re going to get costs under control is if you pay for it directly.


Imagine, my friends, if we all had hotel insurance coverage. Why, we’d all be staying at the Waldorf Astoria. You couldn’t get a room at a Ritz Carlton. Nobody would be staying at the Motel 6s. That’s what’s happened to health care. Except when get into a hospital room, it may as well be a Motel 6, even though it’s cost you 1200 bucks a day, right? You ever eaten the food in there? Ever called for a nurse? May be two days before you get one. You’re paying 1200 bucks a day for it. You may as well be staying in a Motel 6 At least the Motel 6 you’ve got a towel in the room.

So just look, you know, hotel rooms are priced on what various elements of the economy can afford to pay. That’s why there’s Super 8, Motel 6, Best Western, all the way up to, take your pick. But in health care there’s no concern for whether or not a patient can afford anything, because insurance companies are making the decision what gets paid and how much and so forth. So to fix this, medical savings accounts giving you the equivalent of the money that’s being spent on you in health care, give you that money, let you go shop it with the proviso that you get to keep what you don’t spend. You’ll start shopping, and you’ll start trying to find the lowest price you can for health coverage, just like you do every other phase of your life. Why did this cease to be the case, you’re asking? Because politicians wanted the power, the control over your health care. And now treating health care is as important as a lawyer, health care is almost a God-given right, health care is an entitlement to being a human being, and so somebody ought to pay for your health care, you’re not allowed to suffer, we’re not allowed to suffer here, we shouldn’t, and we’re a compassionate society, we don’t want people to suffer.

But it’s lost all elements of anything to do with a free market. If you look at the health care industry, and if you want to find out what socialism would be like throughout our society, if you want Macy’s to be like health care, vote liberal Democrat. The health care industry in this country is as close to socialism as we can get, and it’s not as bad as it is in full socialist countries like Canada or Britain. Try to get a doctor over there. Try to get a doctor in Canada. Try to get a doctor in Great Britain if you’re over there. Just for an average little thing that you need to go see, it’s a mess, as everybody knows. We’re not that bad, yet but we’re on that road. But compared to the other elements of our free market, the health care business bears no resemblance to it and if they’re ever going to get fix it and get prices down that’s the only way, not capping prices and not new entitlements and all this other stuff. And there might be one other thing, too, and that would to be try to convince people that, you know, you may not need medicine every day to have a happy life. You may not need medicine every day, you may not need to see a doctor every year, especially if you’re 30.
Now, I’m talking about people who are healthy. I know some of you out there are chronic this and chronic that. I’m not talking about you – let’s being intelligent here – I know there’s genuine sickness out there, but we’re not that bad despite the obesity that everybody talks about being out there but there’s this whole cycle here that is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and repeating and repeating and repeating, and at the root of it is this hideous notion that people somehow don’t think that they can be or are responsible for certain aspects of their lives. And one of them is their health.
COMMERCIAL BREAK


RUSH: Sandy, Humboldt County, California, up there near Eureka and the Earth First crowd. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Thanks so much for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Okay, I totally agree with you on the drug program.

RUSH: Okay, and thanks much for the call.

CALLER: Okay no, I have something I need to say. Don’t cut me short, okay? I have lung cancer and I was on chemo for like nine months.

RUSH: How you doing?

CALLER: Well, I’m getting better because I’m now on a pill that’s called Iripa. It’s made in the UK. It cost me $1700 a month for 30 pills.

RUSH: How much, $1700 a month for 30 pills?

CALLER: Yes. The reason that it’s very expensive is because it is kind of a trial thing.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: If I was on welfare or on SSI it would be free. But because I worked for 50 years and I paid some money, not a lot, needless to say, and we do have our own insurance just a supplement to Medicare, but it doesn’t cover any drugs, I’m paying for it myself. But if we were in a socialized country I couldn’t get it because this medicine is made in the UK and they don’t furnish it to their citizens because it’s too expensive.

RUSH: There you go. It’s made in the UK and the Brits can’t get it because their socialized healthcare plan has adjudged it to be too expensive.

CALLER: That’s right. And I called up there to try and get it for a lesser amount than in in California because it’s so expensive. I’ve also checked with Mexico and they don’t have it, either. And what I’m saying is, without this, though, I would probably be dead, okay? And so I’m so grateful and I’m so thankful that we do not have socialized medicine. If they pass this bill – I’m 66 years old, by the way, and I’ve worked for 50 years.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: If they pass this bill, it’s just one stop closer to socialized medicine.

RUSH: Yeah, you know, that, by the way, your case, I’m sure there are a lot of cancer patients that are taking very expensive drugs as well, some of them experimental, some of them approved, some not, but still, once the federal government becomes in charge of the dispensation of prescription drugs, that’s where the price caps are going to come, and the government is going to say that’s too expensive, we can’t, and it’s not going to be available unless you can buy it yourself.

CALLER: That’s right. But like I say, I happen to be fortunate enough, I worked for 50 years, I worked in the real estate business, my husband works in timber and we’re in an area so overrun with Democrats and all these liberals.

RUSH: I know, I’ve been there.

CALLER: We have teachers that are teaching kids how to protest in the sixth grade.

RUSH: I know that. I mean, I was scheduled to speak out there at Humboldt State University, and well, this is way back in the Rush to Excellence Tour, and there were some people at the university who threatened to not allow me to campus.

CALLER: Oh, you wouldn’t believe it.

RUSH: I was too conservative. Denied the use of some lecture hall there.

CALLER: Thank God that Arnie got in.

RUSH: Yeah, well, we’ll keep a sharp eye on that. There’s some stuff about Arnie. I’m glad you reminded me that. We’ve got some stuff to talk about that. Democrats are already trying to, as predicted, sidetrack Arnold. But, look, Sandy, best to you, okay?

CALLER: Thank you so much, and best to you, too, because when I started taking the pill four months ago I was hooked on medicine that I was taking for pain and I don’t have to take it anymore, but it took me over three months to get off of them. It’s a tough situation.

RUSH: Yeah, that’s, I know. I know. That’s a tortuous three months, too.

CALLER: I’m hanging in there and I’ve been on myself and I’m out protesting myself and trying to recall our district attorney here because he’s one of them.

RUSH: One of “them.” Sandy, I got to run here because of constraints of time thanks much and really, keep on. All the best to you.
END TRANSCRIPT

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