RUSH: Let’s flashback, ladies and gentlemen, to two months ago, September 26th. I have an Associated Press story here. The headline of the AP story on September 26th was “Obama Mocks GOP for ‘Crazy’ Obamacare Predictions.” The GOP, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, everyone oriented in that direction were all predicting exactly this. Obama mocked those predictions, and everything’s come to pass.
You know, folks, yesterday and two days ago and a month ago/two months ago, the plan that you liked but you had to get rid of because of the Obamacare law was “substandard.” That’s why you had to get rid of it. It was substandard. It was placing your life at risk. You were just one disease away from bankruptcy or ruination. Notice that you now get to keep your substandard plan. You get to keep your substandard policy.
You get to keep what they were saying yesterday and the day before and last month was a horrible plan that you had to get rid of it. You had to cancel it because it doesn’t work. Well, you liked it nevertheless. So now what was deplorable and substandard and undoable, all of a sudden has been reinstated. But note that while you have the option to go get your old plan, there’s nothing about getting the same premium, was there?
That’s because you’re not going to be able to get the same premium.
See, there’s a problem. The problem is there is something that is the law now, and it’s Obamacare, and it has specific requirements vis-a-vis the insurance industry, and Obama — willy-nilly — is just cherry-picking elements that he wants to change while leaving other aspects of the law intact, which puts what he wants to do willy-nilly in total legal conflict with the other aspects of the law, and nobody is going to know how to reconcile those conflicts.
What was done today of course a purely political move designed to make you think that the president has dictatorial powers to your benefit. He has found out that you like your plan, and so you’re gonna get to keep that plan. But again: Yesterday, the day before, it was substandard, because it didn’t provide for birth control or other forms of contraception. It didn’t provide the mandates that Obamacare requires your policy to have.
So while, on the one hand, those mandates and the requirements the insurance companies have to live by are still in place, Obama has just waived his magic dictator wand and said, “Eh, except for this, for another year, if you want — and if you like your plan now, you’ll be able to keep it for another year.” It’s an absolute mess. Folks, there’s so much wrong with this. I mean, look, it’s one thing for the government to regulate tax policy or subsidizing a particular part of the economy like the home mortgage interest deduction.
I mean, that’s one thing.
But to use the force of law to compel citizens to behave is against the US Constitution? Now, if I understand the chief justice correctly — and I’m not sure I do. By the way, it must be really bad for Obama in the press corps because it took 10 minutes and they started asking about Iran. I mean, if everybody was waiting with bated breath for the president to answer questions of what he’s gonna do with health care, and 10 minutes in they go to Iran and the nuclear program?
The Drive-Bys are bailing him out? It must be that the way he was answering their questions on his new policy change today are really upsetting and they thought that they needed to rescue him. As I understand it, Justice Roberts… If I understand him correctly, Congress… I mean, what was the lesson of Obamacare? You couldn’t just pass a law forcing people to buy health insurance unless it was a tax. Isn’t that what Justice Roberts said?
That’s the way they got around the Commerce Clause. The government cannot compel you to buy something. They just can’t, and Obama did it again today. This is so anti-democratic, what is happening. That’s just the basic that people need to understand, if you can even trust what he’s saying today. So if you can’t be compelled to buy a product, that’s when Chief Justice Roberts said, “Well, but if you call it a tax, then the government can do it.” Okay.
So now that we have Obama — and, sadly, maybe some Republicans — scrambling to make good on the president’s promise, “If you like your plan and your doctor you can keep them,” period. That means the insurance companies are going to be forced to offer specific policies that they were first forced to cancel. The insurance… You weren’t canceled. You didn’t lose the policy you liked simply because the insurance companies hate you and because the insurance companies want you to get sick and die, as many Democrats would like you to believe.
The insurance companies canceled your plan because they had to. Obamacare was the law of the land, and your plan was canceled because it was substandard; it didn’t comply with the law. The insurance companies were powerless. They had to cancel you, in order to be in compliance with Obamacare, and they have spent years working out the details of this so as to both stay in business and stay in compliance.
But something unexpected happened.
The president lied to you and told you that if you liked your plan, you can keep it. Same thing with your doctor. But you couldn’t. You were never going to be able to keep your plan. So people started complaining about it, so much so that the Democrats up for reelection in the Senate actually began talking about revolt, even the 10 or 12 Democrats who had promised the same thing, just like Obama: If you like your plan, you get to keep it. I mean, they all lied to you, folks.
All the Democrats lied to you about this, in order to further this idea of government-run health care. So now, because the Democrat Party as in horrible electoral trouble — and, remember, it was just a month ago that Ted Cruz and the Republicans were guaranteeing that the Republicans were gonna lose the House. It was just a month ago Ted Cruz and the boys, they were embarrassing everybody. They were extremists. They were terrorists! They were hostage takers. They were demanding ransom.
They were racists, sexist bigots! They were extremists. They were liars and all that, everything they said was true. Now, in order for the Democrats to save themselves, the president has ordered the insurance companies to reinstate the plan that his law required them to cancel. So how does that work now? They’re gonna be in violation of the law. How does this square? There is a law. It’s called Obamacare.
They can’t offer you the policy there was canceled by virtue of the law, except the president — playing dictator — has just waved his magic wand in fantasyland and told them they have to. So how do they do it? Are we gonna call what they’re doing a tax in order to make it constitutional? Again, your premiums are necessarily gonna skyrocket if you go back to your old plan because they’ve just blown up the entire universe here with their website, HealthCare.gov.
It doesn’t work.
It’s an absolute, total, obliterated mess.
But all the chaos just fits right in with what the president’s ultimate dream for all of this is, and that’s the government in charge of everything — and the more chaos and the more distress, the better. They just want to get through the 2014 elections. That’s all they want to do — and then, folks, it’s over. Just get through the 2014 elections, because the dream is the Democrats winning the House. That’s what they’ve all got focused on. Now they’re even look at possibly losing the Senate. That’s how mad people are.
It could be 2010 times 10.
So I don’t know how you save insurance contracts and elected politicians who’ve perpetrated a massive fraud, but that’s what they’re trying to do.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s the question. So Obama says to you that if you like your old plan, you can now try to get it back (if you can). “I’m allowing you to try to get your old plan back! I’m allowing the insurance company to make your old plan that’s now illegal available — for one year.”
What are you gonna do a year from now, folks? The election’s over, and you’re right back where you were, and you’re gonna lose it again, and there’s no getting it back then. What are you going to do a year from now? What’s the point, if it’s eventually gonna be taken away from you anyway, and the president today just said, “No matter what, you’re gonna lose your plan. You’re gonna lose your plan. Just not now, but next year,” and that’s why it’s another thing.
If the Republicans help fix this, even for a year, when it ultimately gets taken away from people, the Republicans do not want to have any fingerprints on that. The pitfalls, the pratfalls, the minefield that are out there for the Republicans… (interruption) Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Uh, Snerdley has just inquired — the Official Program Observer wants to know — why did Obama do this today, to avoid being lame duck? Now, they want to win the House in 2014 so that there’s No Lame Duck.
If they win the House in 2014, he will be dictator. There won’t be any pretend about it. Congress is gonna be a rubber stamp if they win the House, 2014 and hold the Senate. Just rubber stamp, rubber stamp whatever he wants. There’s no lame duck. No, this is to save the 2014 elections. That’s all this was today. This save is for Obama. He necessarily has to help the Democrats. Incidentally, he’s not doing this to help the Democrats first. He’s doing this to help himself get two years of authoritarian, unquestioned unstoppable presidency.
You know, most second-term presidents, the last three years are largely inconsequential ’cause everybody starts focusing on the race for the next president. They start to talk about being lame duck, and Obama knows this. He doesn’t want to be a lame duck. Plus he’s not through transforming America. He’s not through fixing the immoral way this nation was founded. He’s not through getting rid of all the evils and the unfairness and the discrimination, mean-spiritedness that this country was founded with.