RUSH: Health care news from the Washington Post: “Per Person Cost of Federal High-Risk Medical Plan Doubles.” Do you know what a high-risk medical plan is? Do you know what that is? That is the preexisting condition. This is what’s in the Obamacare that even some Republicans say, “You know what? A lot of people like this preexisting condition stuff. We gotta be careful! We can’t overturn the whole thing.” Well, it’s not good news, folks. “Medical costs for enrollees in the health-care law’s high-risk insurance pools,” that’s for preexisting conditions, “are expected to more than double initial predictions.” The Obama regime admitted this itself last Thursday in a report at the end of the day. “The health-care law set aside $5 billion for a Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, meant to provide health insurance to those who had been declined coverage by private carriers. Since its launch last summer, nearly 50,000 Americans have enrolled in the program.

“[It] will phase out in 2014, when insurers will be required to accept [everybody] regardless of their health-care status,” and I’m here to tell you that once they have to accept everybody, it’s no longer insurance. It is a welfare plan. And that is by design. That one fact will close down private-sector health insurance. Just shut it down. Now, you know this. We told you all of this throughout the debate on the health bill. You may have forgotten it, but you know this. You know that in 2014… This high-risk thing is just an interim plan right now until 2014 — after Obama’s been reelected and firmly into his last term and has no accountability — when private-sector health “insurers will be required to accept all applicants regardless of their health-care status.” And again, folks: When that happens, insurance companies are no longer insurance companies; they are simply agents of mandated federal welfare.

And they will go out of business.

By design.

This is what the Democrats want.

They want private-sector insurance companies, who are hated, by the way, the regime, the Democrats have spent years ginning up hatred for every private-sector industry they can, except education. But drugs, pharmaceuticals, oil, retail, you name it, they’re hated and despised. They kill their customers. They gouge their customers. They don’t care about their customers. So when the private-sector insurance companies refuse to do business, Obama says, (imitating Obama) “See, I told you, you can never trust ’em. They don’t care about you and they never did care about you. Since we have finally made it clear to them they can’t, uh, uh, make an obscene profit off of you. Well, then they’ve decided to close. Well, that’s okay, because we’ll be here and we’ll provide you insurance.”

And that’s exactly what’s headed our way: Private-sector insurance mandated to cover everybody. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Premiums are gonna go down, $2,500 premiums are gonna drop. Premiums are gonna drop $2,500. This interim program, guess what, 50,000 people have signed up and the premiums have doubled. Uh, I should say they have risen to double the initial projections. Now, the initial projections were low-balled, we’ll have to admit this in order to falsify the total cost as under a trillion dollars to get that magic number so it would pass, but, nevertheless. A question that I always have. The government botches everything it tries like this, and yet way too many Americans still think the government ought to do — although in health care, the numbers are not that anymore. Health care, more and more Americans are suggesting the government should have nothing to do with it.

So here are the details. “Those who have enrolled in the program are projected to have significantly higher medical costs than the government initially expected. Each participant is expected to average $28,994 in medical costs in 2012, according to the report, more than double what government-contracted actuaries predicted in November 2010. Then, the analysts expected that the program would cost $13,026 per enrollee.”
Now it’s $29,000. It’s more than doubled from the initial projection of what it costs. Can you say “debt”? Can you say “deficit”? Can you say “national debt”?

The costs are significantly higher also than those of similar high-risk pools that many states have operated for decades. In other words, states have the same high-risk pools for preexisting conditions, and their prices have not gone up like the federal government’s has. States spend an average of $12,471 per patient. That was in 2008. So there you have it. Preexisting condition costs doubled. “That’s okay, Mr. Limbaugh, it doesn’t matter because it’s free. It’s free to the patient.” No, Mr. New Castrati, it isn’t free. Nothing is free. Not even your condom or your abortion pill, nothing is free. The continually shrinking percentage of people who pay for everything are going to be paying for that.

And here’s this USA Today/Gallup poll again. A poll of the nation’s 12 top battleground states, a clear majority of registered voters call the passage of Obamacare “a bad thing” and support its repeal if a Republican wins the White House in November. Two years after Obama signed it, the president has failed to convince most Americans it was the right thing to do. Well, how about maybe trying to convince them before they vote on it, which wasn’t allowed. So Obama is totally out of touch with the American people, doesn’t care. Governing against the will of the people. Battleground states. That means up for grabs in the 2012 presidential election. It’s a bad thing. Obamacare is a bad thing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No, no, no. I don’t know. It doesn’t say, and because of that it’s gotta be pretty bad. Snerdley wants to know if this USA Today/Gallup poll gives a number to the number of people in the battleground states that oppose the passage of Obamacare. It doesn’t say, just says a clear majority. Now, we got another poll that says 75%. I’m telling you, you don’t see 75% agreement on anything. This number must be pretty bad for them not to publish it. This clear majority’s gotta be well up there for USA Today not to put the number in the story, the number of people in the clear majority who oppose the passage of Obamacare in the battleground states.

Now, the poll also says that that the Obamacare mandate is making independents turn against Obama. Yes, indeed. Among independents who lean to the GOP, 54% say they are much less likely to support Obama as a result of the Obamacare mandate. Seventy-five percent nationwide oppose this. In the battleground states we don’t know what the number is. They’re not using the number for battleground. Seventy-five percent nationwide. In the battleground states it’s gotta be even higher for them not to use it. And here again all you Republicans worried about the social issues, you look at 54% of independents turn away from Obama on this mandate business, contraception mandates, all of them.