RUSH: The health care headlines are incredible. This health care business, by the way, I’m fascinated by some of the coverage on this as well, although some of its starting to turn a little negative. The majority of it, the Drive-By Media, they look at it much as they did during the Bush administration, not on the substance of the issue, but, is it going to be a win for Obama, or is it going to be a loss for Obama? As far as the State-Run Media is concerned, health care battles not about the American people or what’s best for the American people, but about Obama and what’s best for him. All day long that is what you read, and that is what you see. The Politico has a story along the same lines. This morning the Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele took to the microphones at the National Press Club and called Obama’s plan to overhaul health care socialism. He accused the president of conducting a risky experiment — that would be ‘speermint for those of you in Rio Linda — that will hurt the committee and force millions to drop their current coverage. I watched a little bit of Steele; Steele was mild mannered.
The AP headline: ‘RNC Chairman Attacks Obama on Health Care.’ He didn’t attack Obama. He disagreed with the plan. And this risky experiment, you know, that’s a recycle of a Democrat phrase that they recycled constantly on Bush ideas, a risky plan, a risky this, a risky that, I mean it goes back to the Clinton administration, Republican plans when they ran the Congress, risky scheme, risky this, so Steele is recycling it because everybody is under the impression that that terminology worked. Now, as you know Obama is just in a full sprint hurry to get this done by August. I don’t see any way he can. The governors are now very worried about it, a bipartisan list of governors are very worried about it. The headlines are all over that Democrats are starting to get a little antsy about the budget, how much it’s going to cost, the deficit’s going to add up, the loss of freedom, what it’s all gonna mean, and so this is causing Obama now to go out and take center stage on this as though he hasn’t been on center stage.
But there aren’t any stories about what’s going on behind the scenes, and I will guarantee you that the enforcer, the consigliere, Rahm Emanuel, has to be burning up the phone lines on these Democrats doing his best to twist their arms or use other measures. Now, in a way of illustrating, ladies and gentlemen, the speed with which Obama and Pelosi are trying to ram this debacle down our throat, I asked Cookie today — you and I are gonna hear this together for the first time, I have not had a chance to preview it — I asked Cookie to take four sound bites today and speed ’em up to almost chipmunk speed to illustrate the hurry Obama and Pelosi are in, and I said don’t speed it up so fast we can’t understand what they’re saying. So here from last Saturday’s White House YouTube channel, President Obama, his weekly address, a portion of his remarks.
OBAMA (sped up): I want to be very clear. I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade, and by helping improve quality and efficiency, the reforms we make will help bring our deficits under control in the long term. Those who oppose reform will also tell you that under our plan you won’t get to choose your doctor, that some bureaucrat will choose for you. That’s also not true. Michelle and I don’t want anyone telling us who our family doctor should be, and no one should decide that for you, either. Under our proposal if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period. End of story.
RUSH: Sorry, Mr. President, none of it’s true, every bit of that is a lie. Betsy McCaughey is back. Remember, she’s the one who read Hillary’s health care plan, got the details out, helped to destroy it. She has read the House plan, essentially the Obama plan, and it’s devastating what’s in this. In fact, not only are you going to lose your insurance package under most scenarios but it is going to be the federal government choosing your doctor. The federal government will choose your doctor based on the plan that they assign you to. And if you don’t have health insurance, you are subject to huge increases in penalties and that the IRS will levy every year when you file your taxes. But the one thing that’s interesting about this, the doctors will still be liable for malpractice even though it’s the government choosing them. The government will escape all liability for this should one of their chosen doctors or mandated doctors make some mistake. But everything in that sound bite is not true. ‘Michelle and I don’t want anybody telling us who our family’s doctor should be and no one should decide that for you, either.’ His plan does that. ‘If you like your doctor, you keep your doctor.’ Maybe for a year, until you either change jobs or your employer shelves his health care coverage for you, then you’re gone, you’re finished, then you have to sign up for the public option. Here’s the second portion of his remarks.
OBAMA (sped up): Opponents of health reform warn that this is all some big plot for socialized medicine or government-run health care with long lines and rationed care. That’s not true, either. I don’t believe that government can or should run health care, but I also don’t think insurance companies should have free rein to do as they please. That’s why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, costs, and track records of a variety of plans, including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest and choose what’s best for your family.
RUSH: This is outrageous, this is blood boiling stuff. There are already over 1,700 options you have available to you across the country in choosing health insurance, and bringing the government into it will not expand competition. What’s one more entry? When the government enters, they don’t have to make a profit. They can print money. They’re going to be competing against private sector insurance companies who have to make a profit to stay in business. You can’t stay in business if your competing against somebody that doesn’t have to make a profit. Everything in this, it is socialized medicine, it is government-run health care. It’s going to have long lines and rationing.
Let me give you an illustration. I’ll get into this in more detail as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today. Many people ask me over the course of my sterling and starring broadcast career if I’m ever upset that I can never win a Pulitzer. No. If I won a Pulitzer I would be embarrassed, I might resign. ‘Well, Rush don’t you think you ought to get a Nobel?’ Yeah, I think I do qualify for a Nobel prize, but I would shelve that if I could be the guy history acknowledges as warning the American people that this health care plan is nothing more than the subprime mortgage debacle ready to happen all over again. We got the government involved in giving people homes who couldn’t afford them, the government mandated that lenders lend money to people who couldn’t qualify, much less pay back. It started under Jimmy Carter, it gained steam under Bill Clinton, it was propped up and aided by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, they tried to shut it down with regulators over the course of the Bush administration and it failed because the Democrats had their hands too deeply inside Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and you know what a debacle that was, and the government was running a plan designed to be wonderful, affordable housing, as Barney Frank calls it. And it’s just not fair that some people could have a house and some people couldn’t so we’re going to find a way to make it all equal. Housing was a right, health care is a right.
The same people that gave us the subprime debacle which is at the root of today’s economic malaise, the same people and the same thinking and the same philosophy are behind this push for government-run health care. It is socialized medicine, I don’t care what the term that you come up with. It’s going to be nothing more than the subprime mortgage mess times ten. Exactly that. This bunch, the government’s not in business to do this kind of thing. They can’t run private — do you know the minimum wage goes up this Friday? Yes, with all the pressures that we face, employment and unemployment, the minimum wage I think is going up, let’s see, $7.25 an hour on Friday, up from $6.55 an hour. That’s the federal minimum wage. Now, according to the US Bureau of Labor Stats, the national unemployment rate’s currently nine-and-a-half percent. The national teenage unemployment rate, which, by the way, is defined or described as teenagers actively seeking full time employment, that number is 24%.
According to Forbes magazine, this is the highest the national teenage unemployment rate has been in 44 years. And a lot of experts agree that the main reason teenagers are not being hired now is because adults are applying for and taking positions that traditionally have been ideal summer jobs for teenagers ’cause there’s nine-and-a-half percent of adults not working. So on top of all of this, these young skulls full of mush out there think raising the minimum wage is something fair and just. It’s gonna add to unemployment. They also think record cold temperatures is evidence of global warming. This is worse than the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. This is the gang that’s trying not to shoot straight. This is the gang that’s purposely missing their announced targets. Here’s Nancy Pelosi, by the way, on Friday, lying about how Obamacare will provide you with choice.
PELOSI: It’s really important for everyone to know that when this bill passes shortly thereafter, preexisting medical conditions will no longer bar people from having health care. If you lose your job, if you change jobs, if you start a new business and if you become self-employed you will continue to have health care. It will lower costs, it will improve quality, it will expand choice and it will give people peace of mind.
RUSH: It does none of this. By the way, if you’re just joining us they’re in such a hurry we’re speeding up Pelosi and Obama today to illustrate the hurry that they are in because they know what a debacle this is, they know that the more you learn about it the more it’s going to be opposed. I could parse this, shortly preexisting medical conditions will no longer bar people from having health care. Sorry. That may not be true if you happen to be of a certain age. If you lose your job, change jobs, you start a new business — there is no portability of health care insurance in the House plan. This is out and out not true. Final bite.
PELOSI: This is legislation that will not increase the deficit. Half of the funds for the bill will come from savings, others from the revenue stream. I hope that we can change that percentage, that we have much more coming from savings. That I believe that all the costs of the health care reform bill can come from squeezing more savings out of the system.
RUSH: Squeezing more savings out of the system. Who’s gonna get squeezed, Madam Pelosi? Who do you think is going to get squeezed? The doctors? The hospitals? The insurance companies? Now, the CBO — this is why they’re panicking in the White House — the CBO has come out, said the deficit is going to rise by $213 billion, and that’s minimal. The plan will not save money. The CBO has just released figures. That’s why Obama wants to ignore them and that’s why he’s not releasing the budget update. It will increase the deficit. They’re just lying through their teeth about this, full-fledged. And that’s what I mentioned at the top of the program, the Drive-By Media, the state-run, they’re not dealing with the substance of this. Can Obama eke out a win? This is his signature issue. Can he eke out a win? They even dragged Senator Kennedy in the Newsweek magazine, 40th anniversary of Chappaquiddick and this is what they get in Newsweek, Senator Kennedy writing about his lifelong cause. So once again, here we have Newsweek talking about the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health care Bill. When I talk about it I get creamed from here to Sunday.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, more than anything else it’s an insult to everybody’s intelligence. Obama and Nancy Pelosi act like we don’t have any idea who they are. They act like they have no record. These are the clowns who forced a stimulus bill on the nation that is a massive waste of money. It has increased unemployment, and that unemployment’s going to go even higher. The stimulus bill is destroying small business. The stimulus bill, the entire Obama economic plan is, by design, destroying the US economy. They’re not interested in finding ‘savings and efficiencies.’ Pelosi runs around talking about savings and efficiencies? This is the bunch that has given us (if you return it out over ten years) a minimum of $12 trillion in deficits, and they’re talking about efficiencies and savings! They are failures at what they’ve already done. There is no reason to invest or grant these people any more power. They’re not doing any of this for you. They’re not trying to make your life simpler. They’re not trying to give you easier and cheaper access to health care. That’s not what they’re trying to do. It’s something far more sinister than that.
And I really do… I want to be known as ‘the man who saved America from subprime health care.’ Subprime health care: blue sky promises ’til you get the bill. They are laughingly promising more affordable health care, until they raise the adjustable rates. Remember how they told you it was an affordable mortgage, until they adjusted the rates? They promised better service in your health care, until you have to wait for treatment. By the way, the story in the stack here today: the foreclosure plan hasn’t worked, either. Saving people from getting kicked out of their homes? They promised prime health care at subprime rates — and that’s until you read the fine print, if they give you time to read the fine print. Most people that vote on this bill are not going to have read it when they vote on it because the details of what’s in it are really not the point in people voting for it or not voting for it. You sit here and this is not the kind of stuff you ever thought would happen in the United States of America — and it is. It’s happening right in front of our eyes, every day.