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RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. I’ve talked a couple of times today about the Ron Fournier piece where he says “Why I’m Getting Sick of Defending Obamacare.” That is, I think, an umbrella piece for a lot of allies of Obama. They’re just getting fed up with this. I mean, their reputations are on the line, too. Don’t forget all these media people have been from the get-go selling this thing right along with Obama as the great panacea and utopia that he told ’em it was. They have been doing everything they can to make everybody think that that’s exactly what it is. And it isn’t. And it’s paramountly obvious now that it’s a disaster.


Everybody was misled and lied to about it. And some of these media people are at their wits’ end over this, ’cause you have to understand, they wanted it to work. It’s like Fournier says (imitating Fournier), “I wanted it to work. I want it to work because, as Charles Lane wrote for the Washington Post, the link between work and insurance needs to be broken. I want it to work!” All these media types, they really wanted it to work because it’s Obama’s and they want everything to go well for him, but this is key here: We need the link between work and insurance to be broken. What does that mean?

It means that these leftists think that it’s unfair that you should have to work in order to have health care. That the only people who have it are people who are employed, who have it as an employee benefit, and that isn’t fair. (crying) It’s not fair. People ought to be able to get it without having to work. Uh, they can. It’s just a choice. You can get health care if you don’t work. It’s called buying a policy. “But Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Limbaugh, it’s so expensive.” Well, okay, then maybe if you really want it then you get rid of something else you can’t afford at the same time. “Oh, that’s easy for you to say, Mr. Limbaugh.” No, no, no. I mean, it’s the way we used to live with every other thing.

I mean, there was a time in my life I couldn’t afford a house. I couldn’t have it. There was a time in my life I couldn’t really afford the car that I wanted. I didn’t run around bellyaching about how unfair it is that some people had the car they wanted and I didn’t, and I didn’t run around demanding the federal government come up with a plan or policy to enable me to get a car without having to work.

What is this, “Break the link between work and insurance”? Well, why don’t you break the link between work and everything. Why should anybody have to work to have food? Why do people work anyway? Since I’m filled with questions today, let me throw that out there. Why do people work? Why is it unfair to have to work in order to have health insurance? Why is it unfair to have to work to have a car? Shouldn’t we break that link, too? Why don’t we break the link between work and cars? And when we break that link, then let’s break the link between work and shelter. Why should we have to work in order to have shelter? Isn’t shelter as much of a God-given right as health care is? No, in these people’s minds, why should we have to work to have food?

For crying out loud, we cannot live without food. Why in the world should we have to work for something that we can’t get along without? Where is the justice in having to work to eat? You talk about discrimination, you talk about unfairness, you talk about injustice. We need to break the link between work and cars, and food and shelter, and health insurance, and that’s why we support Obama. Why should there be a link from work to anything. All work is is a lack of choice. All work is is some punitive situation that society forces you into and you end up in something called job lock.

Now, let’s go to the audio sound bites. Here is Obama. This is from the joint press conference this afternoon with the French President Hollande, and in the Q&A a reporter said to Obama, “Yesterday your administration again delayed the employer mandate for mid-size companies. Last week your economic adviser Jason Furman talked about the new choices that people have to find health care outside the workplace. I wonder if you could first explain the delay and also talk about whether over the long term you see a future where health insurance is less tied to the workplace.”

So you see, this is conventional wisdom now. This is the new mantra in the Drive-By Media. What is this business of having to work to have health care? We need to break that link. And so here we have this unidentified reporter, “Would you talk about whether over the long term you see a future where health insurance isn’t tied to the workplace?”

OBAMA: What we did yesterday was simply to make a(n) adjustment in terms of their compliance because, for many of these companies, just the process of complying… You know, they’re mid-size, between 50 and, uh, a hundred folks. Uh, it may take them some time even if they’re operating in good faith, and we want to make sure that, uh, the purpose of the law is not to punish them.

RUSH: Oh, man. Do you realize what we just heard here? Let me go back. “You know, there are mid-size, between 50 and hundred folks. It may take them some time even if they’re operating in good faith,” which means he thinks most are not. But even the ones who are operating in good faith — meaning “even the ones who are complying with my demand” — maybe, you know, we need to give them some time.

They’ve only had three years to get ready for it, and it looks like they need more, and “the purpose of the law isn’t to punish them”? Oh, that’s not the purpose of the law? It punishes everybody! What is a fine or potential jail time if you don’t follow this mandate? No, we’re not gonna punish anybody here. But compliance is punishment — and since punishment would not work well before the election, we’re going to delay the punishment. They say they’re delaying the compliance, but they’re delaying the punishment.

Now, this is what he said about “breaking the link between work and health care.”

OBAMA: We have a unique system compared to many parts of the world, including France, uh, where partly because of historical accident and some decisions that FDR made during wartime back in World War II, our health care has been much more tied to employers. That’s not the case in most other developed countries. I don’t think that an employer-based system is gonna be or should be replaced any time soon, but what the Affordable Care Act does do is it gives people some flexibility!

RUSH: What flexibility?

What “flexibility” does the Affordable Care Act give anybody?

The only flexibility they have is when he comes along and delays it, and then they don’t have to comply. But here he’s trashing FDR. “Well, you know, FDR and GM screwed it up. You know, World War II, that’s where this all went wrong, because we attached health care as an employee benefit in order to attract workers.” By the way, that’s where income tax withholding started, too, folks, is World War II, just to simplify everything.

We’re not gonna really separate from the employer-based system, but the Drive-Bys are demanding it. The Drive-Bys say we gotta break this link between work and insurance. We gotta break that link. So Obama let ’em down with that answer. Now, he wasn’t through here. Here’s how the Affordable Care Act… I want you to listen very carefully to this, now, because he just said, “What the Affordable Care Act does is give people some flexibility,” and in the next sound bite, he explains that.

Here is how you are given “flexibility” by virtue of Obamacare…

OBAMA: It says if I’m working at a big company like IBM or Google and I decide I want to start my own company, that I’m not gonna be inhibited from starting a new company because I’m worried about keepin’ health insurance for myself and my family. I can go make that move. If I’m a — a woman whose — whose husband’s a farmer and I’d really like to work with him on the farm but we can’t afford health insurance on our own, so I’ve been working at the county clerk’s office for the last 10 years, now maybe I’ve got the opportunity to no longer work in a different job and instead work on that farm, uh, and increase the likelihood of economic success for my family.

RUSH: How in the hell does this guy see women? Milking cows out on the farm if they’re not in the county clerk’s office? So there’s the flexibility, ladies! If your husband’s a farmer, working with manure and pig slop all day, and you want to join him, Obamacare will let you do it. If you don’t like working in the county clerk’s office, you can get out of there. You can head to the farm.

And, somehow, you’ll be able to keep your health insurance. And if you’re working at IBM or Google and you want to be an entrepreneur and you want to start your own company out there, but you’re afraid to do it because you won’t have health care? Well, the Affordable Care Act fixes that! But nobody knows how it does that. Nobody knows anything about how this works, because it isn’t working.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, Obama’s out there at this press conference with Hollande, and he’s talking about, “Okay, you work at Google or you work at IBM, but you want to leave. You want to start your own company. But you don’t because you might be the not be able to have health care. You want to take it with you, portability or whatever. Well, we want to fix that with Obamacare.”

Look, when we’re getting to the point that health care stops people from moving around, we’re doing everything back-asswards. Up until Obama got involved in this, most employers offered it — and in boom economic times, the benefits got better. It was part of the competitive the nature for finding the best employees. You offer the best benefits package. The market works. Businesses, most employers offered health care just as they offered, you know, bathrooms and water faucets.


Then Obamacare comes along, and that’s when they started canceling it. Businesses were not getting rid of health care before Obamacare came along, except those who anticipated what Obamacare was gonna mean for them. But before Obamacare was even a thought and a dream in a socialist’s eye (I’m going back 10 years), most employers offered health care and there was no problem and there was no fear.

You know, there were complaints about how expensive it was and all that. It wasn’t a panacea. But my point is that you moved around because in a robust economy, jobs are being created. It makes mobility more possible. In a robust economy, employers have to compete for good employees, offering good benefits packages. The government doesn’t need to be involved in this.

They can’t be.

All they can do is mess this up, which they’ve done. Only since Obamacare is when people are losing their health insurance. Now, Obama and the Democrats want you to believe that it’s evil, mean, big, greedy businesspeople (and evil, mean, medium-sized businesspeople) who want all the money for themselves, and so they’re reducing you to 29 hours, and they’re getting rid of your health package.

And they’re cutting your wages ’cause they’re greedy SOBs. They’re only doing this because Obama was elected. The only reason… Well, not the only ’cause there are gonna be exceptions to everything. The vast majority of people losing their health insurance are losing it because Obama and the Democrats have taken over health care. That’s really all anybody needs to realize.

How many of you really feared losing your health insurance back in the nineties and back in the 2000s? I mean, you might have worried about losing it if you were gonna switch jobs and you had to start at the bottom and work your way up the ladder and have probationary status and all that. But, I mean, how many of you worried that the next day, next month, next year, your company was gonna eliminate it?

There might have been a little bit of that based on the health of the individual company. But culturally, societally, this is not something people woke up and were afraid of every day. It’s now the law of the land, practically. It’s only because of Obamacare that this mass cancellation of policies is taking place. If you strip away all the minutia, that remains the simplest way to understand what’s going on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, one other thing here on this business of “breaking the link between work and health care.” You know, folks, I gotta tell you something: It really frosts me what’s happening here with work and the Democrat Party. Since when is forcing people out of work to be celebrated? That’s what they’re trying to do. This is one of the biggest frauds in modern history. The Democrat Party is a fraud. The Democrat Party kills jobs and businesses, and then argues that this is “mobility,” and this opens up all kinds of artistry in people.

If you’re a hobo, it’s mobile, but since when is joblessness mobility? Since when is destroying private insurance mobility? You think Medicaid creates poets? Does Medicaid create entrepreneurs? None of the welfare state does. Individual initiative does and the benefits that come from it — and here now, we’re faced with the Democrat Party celebrating people losing their jobs. It’s outrageous, if you ask me, and it’s tough to put up with.

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