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April 25, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
April 25, 2006, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Thanks, Johnny Donovan.
It is a pleasure.
I it's a drag I know when Rush isn't here.
The good news is he's back tomorrow.
So he will be here.
He had the today off to take care of some things.
Uh and it is a privilege and a pleasure to be here.
I am merely uh a fellow student of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
And I I I like to say I'm kind of like a teaching uh assistant, and as been pointed out to me uh I might say rudely by H.R. Kitt uh Carson.
He said, Yeah, but you can't get tenure.
Well, that's thanks for making me feel uh so secure here.
Uh and also uh I promise this, I'm actually a TA who will never go on strike, or threaten to.
And uh nice to be here too with Mike Maymon, and we go back even uh our history goes back to ABC many, many years ago.
And I saw your your fabulous uh retirement uh plaque over there with Mickey Mouse, uh with Mickey giving them kind of a a salute of congratulations for w twenty years, twenty years with the company.
Good uh good for you.
And uh and we are uh thrilled to have with us uh for just a short period of time.
Well, wait a minute, that sounded bad.
Uh uh Governor Mitt Romney, I'd I'd love to spend whoops.
That doesn't sound very good.
Well, that doesn't sound very good at all, does it?
Does somebody have a cell phone on somewhere?
Uh me.
I'm checking mine.
Whoops.
No, mine's not on.
Mine is not on.
Who's uh anyway, uh uh I didn't mean to say I'm happy we just have you for a short period of time.
What I meant was I'm happy we have you, but it's for just a short period of time.
I wanted to make that clear.
Um you do have a sense of humor about the case.
I do have a sense of humor, and I'm happy to be with you, Paul W. All right, Mitt, I'm glad to have you with us too.
Now you have uh done some uh uh a landmark health care legislation that is uh it's i it is eye-opening to a lot of us, because when you have the New York Times saying good things about it, you know you're a little frightened.
Then you have the Wall Street Journal, they don't particularly like it.
Uh they they a couple of times they've taken shots at it, mitz market, misfire, et cetera, et cetera.
But it can't be denied, and and after you leave, we're gonna talk to folks from the Heritage Foundation.
You brought the Heritage Foundation, which we trust is a very conservative think tank, uh together with uh people like uh Ted Kennedy, and you got this done.
Well, it's really amazing.
I I must admit, uh uh I you know, I set off to to deal with a a real problem in my state, and that is we got a lot of people in our state that don't have health insurance, and those people, if they get sick, go to the hospital, go to the emergency room, and get care paid for by somebody else.
And they're not paying their fair share.
Some people call that free riding.
And we said, you know, we've got to find some way to get everybody in the system, everybody to pay their fair share to make sure that everybody has health insurance, that nobody's getting a free ride on everybody else.
And we came up with a plan that in fact gets everybody health insurance.
But first we had to get the cost of health insurance down so some people who hadn't bought policies could afford them.
Then we had to find a way to help people who couldn't afford uh uh buying insurance entirely themselves, we had to give them some help.
And then finally we had to say, you know what, everybody now can afford to get health insurance, and we're gonna insist on everybody in our state having the kind of insurance that makes sure nobody's getting uh the chance to pass along their cost of getting coverage on to everybody else.
The idea that you may have put together a plan, and we still don't know because this is brand new, uh, but that you may have put together a a landmark health care legislation that could in fact be copied by other states and all of these United States is pretty exciting.
Well, you know, it really is something that that I think surprised a lot of my democratic friends.
Uh and because the Democrats have been saying for years uh that that having so many people uninsured is a national uh uh embarrassment.
We have thirty to forty million Americans without insurance.
But what what they don't go on to say is that most of these Americans get free care if they get sick.
Because if they get ill, if they have a heart attack or they break an arm or a leg, they show up at the emergency room and they get treated.
And that cost is passed on to everybody else.
So a lot of people are getting coverage without having to pay anything whatsoever, and that's wrong.
And so we took a Republican conservative approach to dealing with a problem that Democrats and Republicans agree on, and that is that we got a lot of people without insurance and we want to get them covered.
Well, in fact, uh because you and I have had conversations about this before, Governor Mitt Romney with us from Massachusetts.
Uh the the fact of the matter is it's financed largely with those millions, uh that money that you've uh mentioned that the state is already spending on uncompensated medical care for poor people.
Meaning if it was costing you uh a billion dollars just to take care of these people anyway, you found a way to spend maybe six hundred million to insure them.
Paul W. You are so well informed, it is that is absolutely true.
What the the big surprise to us was by insisting that everybody pay what they could afford, we're able to make sure that everybody is able to get insurance, even those that need a little help from government, without us having to raise taxes.
There's no reason for us to go get new pools of money.
Instead, we can rely on people's own contributions as w as well as the money we've been spending giving out free care, and that allows us to get everybody insured.
It's uh it's basically the application of the personal responsibility principle.
You pay what you can afford to pay.
For most people, they can buy their entire premiums themselves, their policy themselves.
If you can't buy it yourself, we'll help you.
And the money to finance that comes from the money we've been spending giving out free care in the past.
It's uh it's a better way of getting people health care too, Paul W. Because we uh uh we we find that people are able to use preventative care and primary care and prescription drugs to care to take care of their long term uh uh chronic problems, and that we don't have as many people showing up in the hospital with serious conditions.
All right.
Explain to me, Governor Mitt Romney, then from your point of view why the Wall Street Journal has taken you to task a couple of times and and give us uh tell us what they're not understanding or the way you see it that they're not understanding.
For example, they say in one of their uh April twelfth editorials, uh they say the core flaw is that the plan forces individuals to buy health insurance and penalizes businesses that don't provide it.
They also talk in another editorial, I think this was yesterday, uh talking about uh the Massachusetts insurance regulations are so onerous that that's uh driven up the cost of insurance anyway in your state.
Well, first of all, we've we've removed uh many of the insurance mandates and regulations, but you know, don't forget I got an eighty five percent democratic legislature.
I can't get everything through I want to get done.
Right.
You've got to make progress that that you could possibly.
Yeah, let's face it, it's Ted Kennedy's state for goodness sakes, and he got this done with the Heritage Foundation involved.
I mean, we have to accept that you you've uh you may have pulled off a miraculous thing.
Time will tell.
Yeah, and you're you're you're absolutely right, which is that that uh you know I know that that some writers and and they're conservative say, gosh, we don't like the idea of people being told they have to get health insurance.
And and I'm saying, yeah yeah, I understand why you don't like that.
But don't forget that the alternative is that if they get sick that we have to pay for their health care.
And that's that's just not American.
If people have the ability to buy their own health insurance plan or to pay for their own health care, that's what ought to happen, rather than than them showing up at the hospital expecting someone else to pay for them.
And you know, this is just a a little disagreement between uh uh us and the and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
We got uh uh you know, I got the err the Heritage Foundation and my side on this, and uh and we're gonna have a good experiment, of course.
We're gonna see how well this works, but I'll tell you one thing.
Just sitting back and watching health insurance premiums go up and up and up, and more and more people uh lose insurance, that's not the answer either.
The way I've approached it is to say I want people to take responsibility to buy a policy they can afford.
We're gonna get the cost of policies much lower, and we're gonna see if we can't solve this problem once and for all.
All right, and and we're gonna open the phone lines uh in just a bit.
We only have you for a few minutes because of some other commitments we appreciate you giving us some time to talk about this, and uh some of the heavy lifting will be uh handled by the Heritage Foundation's Dr. Robert E. Moffat.
He is their director for the Center of Health Policy Studies, and he says that uh the the people who don't agree with this plan probably don't understand the plan.
But he's gonna explain it to us, and we're gonna let our Rush Limbaugh uh listeners uh weigh in on two at 1 eight hundred two eight two uh two eight eighty two, one eight hundred two eight two twenty eight eighty two.
But before I let you go, uh Governor Mitt Romney, a couple of other quick things.
Uh you chose to be governor for one term.
That's it.
I know that in fact you grew up in Michigan.
Your father was Governor Romney and uh beloved by many, and you thought uh one day you would do what he did, which was run an auto company.
I I don't think you would have chosen Massachusetts to get into politics being a Republican, etc.
etc.
But now you've chosen to just be there for one term.
You announced right away you weren't running for another term.
So there's all kinds of Speculation about what you're going to be doing with your future.
And when when I find that just this weekend you went to Guantanamo, I'm thinking this guy is trying to set himself up for a big picture like running for the presidency.
Well, I'll keep that option open.
I know there are a lot of Republicans and probably a lot of Democrats doing the same thing.
And uh keeping the option open of running in 08 is uh is not a a a passive thing.
You've got to be a little active and and uh uh be involved in in international and national issues, and you've also got to be raising uh uh your profile and putting together a a financial network and so forth, as all that that's going on.
Uh actually my trip to Guantanamo uh is is uh is just like that for other governors.
All I got uh governors are receiving an invitation to go and take a look there, in part to provide uh advice through their Department of Corrections on how we can do a better job there, but also to see our own troops there.
We got some people that are going through some pretty tough times uh managing that extraordinarily uh dangerous population there.
And uh down the road, who knows what the future holds.
We got we got some great Republican candidates.
I'm convinced that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic candidate, and therefore I'm absolutely convinced that we got to make sure that we beat her.
Uh very quickly, in uh one of the newspaper stories I was Googling looking for things to uh to bring up to you is and this one caught my attention, and I I I liked it.
The governor's abstinence ed plan rankles foes, good for you, but tell us what your healthy futures program is.
Well, uh we have now introduced a program in my state that allows local school districts, if they choose, to include a program in their school that encourages kids not to have sex until they're married, not to have sex until they're out of high school.
We got too many kids being born out of wedlock in my state and in this country.
And we want to encourage people to wait until they have kids until they're married.
And that's something which uh which this program How dare you suggest something like that, Governor?
Who do you think you are promoting abstinence until marriage?
Well, that's something we've got, you know, it's getting close to forty percent of of Americans are uh are being born in in single family homes these days, and it places in many cases it places our kids at an enormous disadvantage in terms of their education and their development.
And we're saying, look, let's have more kids born to to couples, to married couples.
Let's let couples get married first.
Certainly let's not have active sexual activity in high school where where kids are are not emotionally prepared for it and where the kids uh are are going to be bringing kids into the world that won't have two parents.
It's a it's a huge mistake, and we want to make sure that those school districts who want to teach their kids abstinence have the funding and capability to do so.
All right.
Uh, Governor, thanks very much.
Uh do you uh do you feel the American Spectator March 2006 uh issue did a good job on you?
Is that something I could recommend to our uh listeners to read to get more on you, or is there something in there that you don't like?
Oh, I'm I'm happy with any article that uh that lays things up pretty well.
The American Spectator, the Weekly Standard, uh and others have written uh some terrif terrific articles, a good one in the uh Atlantic Monthly a few months back.
Uh uh a good chance for people to get to know me and and uh and I appreciate the chance to get to know people across my state.
Governor, nice talking with you again.
Good luck to you.
Thanks, Paul W. Governor Mitt Romney from Massachusetts.
The uh the headline, by the way, in the uh American Spectator, March 2006, story I hold in my hand by Sean Macumber.
Mighty Mitt Romney, if a Mormon Republican chief executive could survive and even thrive in Massachusetts, who's to say he can't become president?
Your calls on whatever's on your mind at 1800-282-2882, 1-800-282-2882, and rush limbaugh.com coming up.
You probably have questions about what they're doing in Massachusetts.
I do, uh if you'd like to weigh in, we have an expert on the subject at 1-800-282-2882-1-800-282-2882 or rush limbaugh.com.
Uh I'm Paul W. Smith, InfoRush, by the way.
Robert E. Moffitt, uh Dr. Moffitt, PhD, is uh uh senior policy analyst in the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, and we welcome him to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi, I'm Paul W. Smith.
Nice to meet you, sir.
Hi, Paul.
How are you?
I'm fine.
And uh you know it caught our attention when you start to put uh the Heritage Foundation together with uh people like uh Mr. Kennedy and others, and uh and in a s in a uh uh very liberal democratic state like Massachusetts, uh, and you were able to to pound out something that obviously everybody hopes is gonna work for uh basically universal health care.
What is it that some people uh m don't understand or that you th f maybe feel you have to clarify for us so that we do understand it and embrace it.
Right.
Well, this is very, very new.
It's very different.
There's nothing quite like it anywhere else else in the country.
What the bill did is it created a new market for health insurance.
So for employees, primarily in small businesses.
There is a single market for health insurance.
Uh it's they have i it's called an exchange or a connector.
I guess the best way to think about it, Paul, is it's kind of like uh a stock exchange.
You know, the stock exchange is the single place where you get stocks, bonds, mutual funds, securities, equities, and so on.
Well, here what you've got is basically a single market for health insurance.
Um what makes the Massachusetts law different is that employees in the uh in this system uh who work for a small business, they can buy the kind of health insurance they want.
The employer can designate the connector or the health insurance exchange as the employer-based plan.
It's kind of an employer saying, well, the stock market is going to be your pension plan, and to the extent to which that the employer makes a contribution, because it's an employer plan, the defined contribution to the plan is tax free.
So basically what you have then is employees can buy and own their own health insurance policies, private plans, just like their auto insurance policies or their homeowners insurance policy or a life insurance policy, and they can take it with them from from job to job.
That is radically different.
There is nothing like this anywhere else in the United States.
Well, conservatives say uh Wall Street Journal uh paraphrasing said, well, i i you guys say it's like car insurance, but you don't make people who don't drive a car buy car insurance.
Uh you to talk about it being home insurance, homeowners insurance, you don't people who don't own a home don't buy homeowners insurance.
Uh and conservatives uh bristle at at forced participation in any government run plan in a health care plan.
And and how does Heritage Foundation square that being a conservative foundation?
Well, that's true.
I mean, the the final bill created uh an individual mandate to to buy health insurance.
Um and uh and and the problem though i is real.
Right now, as you know, every American in the United States has a legal right to health care.
When you need medical attention, you can walk into any hospital in the United States and get care, regardless of your financial capacity to pay for it.
Uh now that's federal law.
The taxpayers today mostly pick up the tab.
So what Governor Romney did is put this proposition on the table, which is this.
You you should buy health insurance for yourself and your family.
Uh if you don't have the money to afford it, uh we will help you buy it.
But if you don't want to buy the health insurance, okay, that's fine.
Uh and you want to self-insure, you can do that too.
But if that's w the way you want to go, you must be prepared to pay for any future hospital bill.
And what Romney proposed is if somebody doesn't want get want to get health insurance, they could post a ten thousand b dollar bond to cover any future hospital cost.
If you don't want to buy health insurance and you don't want to post the bond, then what Romney is saying, okay, fine, you have a personal tax exemption, uh, but you're not going to have that now.
The amount of that tax exemption will be used to offset a l at least a part of the uncompensated care that you may end up getting, courtesy of the taxpayer.
What you don't have a right to do, and which too many people do today, is to go to the hospital, get very expensive care, walk out and leave the taxpayer holding the bill.
Now, the so the governor basically said you have to be responsible for your own health care.
You have to exercise personal responsibility.
Now the Massachusetts legislature didn't quite go along with Romney on that.
They they used a blunter instrument.
They said either you buy health insurance or you pay a fine.
That was not Romney's original proposal.
But there is a fundamental problem in this country with people who use the system and then force the rest of us to pay for it.
And there's nothing conservative about sticking somebody else with the bill.
No, that you're absolutely right about that.
Uh many questions come to mind.
Uh is there any and we we don't have time in this segment for you to answer them, but just mull this over and and also our Rush Limbaugh show uh listeners have questions and they will be uh offering those to us in just a moment.
But for example, uh is there is there any encouragement for especially newly enrolled people to hold down costs, for example.
Uh is this the government run health care that Democrats uh have pushed for and that they would like and if so why did they pass this i if or rather if not why do they pass this and how do regulations add the health care costs and are they different between the states?
So there are a variety of questions many more than uh than the ones I just mentioned and we'll get more at 1 eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two as we continue with Paul W. Smith in for Rush Limbaugh.
You know I love coming here because I uh the uh the Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies here the East Coast Office because I I get to pick up uh past issues of the Limbaugh letter.
And you saw me did you see me Mike?
Or was it Kit?
Did one of you saw me I was there I was just picking through the stack there.
Check the security tape.
Oh boy but anyway, of course the Limbaugh Letter America's number one political newsletter from America's number one truth detector, Rush Limbaugh.
We're spending some time with Dr. Robert E. Moffitt, senior policy analyst in the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, talking about what we spoke with the Governor Mitt Romney about at the uh top of the hour this universal health care.
And I want to get to your calls at 1 800 28282 1800 28282.
But first uh very quickly, Doctor, uh is there any encouragement as uh for especially newly enrolled people to hold down costs.
Sure.
Uh Massachusetts as you probably know has a very heavily heavily regulated health care system.
Uh the pleasant surprise in the new law is that it actually actually allows some significant deregulation of the health insurance market.
This seems to have been overlooked.
For example, one of the key concessions that Romney was able to wring out of the Democratic legislature was the uh a radical reduction in state health benefit mandates for health plans sold to young people.
Uh if you know anything about the health insurance market, you know young people mainly between the ages of eighteen and thirty four are very high high heavily concentrated among the uninsured and they can't afford these policies which are loaded up with all kinds of mandates.
Well what Romney was able to do is basically erase most of the mandates in state m in in Massachusetts state law for young adults who want to buy health insurance.
Well that makes it much more affordable for young people.
A second thing that he did, he was able to get the legislature to agree to a two year moratorium on any new additions of mandates on health insurance.
He did that plus he added more flexibility in the insurance market.
The government of Massachusetts now estimates that the average premium uh for uh for individuals in Massachusetts will decline from roughly three hundred dollars to about a hundred and ninety four dollars uh per month now that is a big change.
Maybe you ought to meet with I I I so respect the Wall Street Journal and their editorial board, but they've been against this.
They've been uh they've been against uh Romney care as they've called it and uh MIT's market misfire but you you are addressing some of the things that apparently they weren't not as aware of when you Well their editorial yesterday talked about the fact that eHealth insurance which is the individual uh health insurance uh uh broker in the country it's one of the best in the country you know finds that they don't deal with uh that Romney Romney was insufficient uh insufficiently persuasive of a Massachusetts legislature to reduce guaranteed issue.
So they don't even sell insurance in that market.
That's right.
And and and you know and they're right.
I mean Massachusetts like uh New York and Vermont and Maine have guaranteed issue requirements.
Even uh states that are more red states like Iowa and Idaho have some guaranteed issue requirements.
I think some conservative critics of Romney seem to be saying in effect that at the end of the day he should have been more successful in persuading liberal majorities in the Massachusetts legislature to reduce sharply the number of of rules on private health insurance or junk a number of these existing uh rules on insurance.
Well in an ideal world of course uh there that wouldn't be a problem.
I mean in in an ideal world the Massachusetts legislature uh would be a robust champion of smaller governments you know and and uh and and a r and a robust free market but that's not the world in which Governor Romney lives or we live we can only deal with reality as well.
Well we have to remember where it would be right we have to remember where he got this done.
That's right.
And and I'm gonna guess and just short answer if you would, because I do want to get to our callers is this the government run health care that the Democrats would like no I I mean very frankly I mean the Democrats wanted a single payer system uh that has not gone anywhere in Massachusetts.
Then they had an employer mandate pro program a few years ago uh in that was being proposed by Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts that actually fell apart.
Uh some critics have said well this looks like the Clinton plan well I know a lot about the Clinton plan.
I was the heritage lead uh analyst on the Clinton plan.
Um it is not the Clinton plan.
It is very, very different.
Uh it uh it basically deregulates the health insurance system in Massachusetts beyond where it is today and it adds new options for individuals to own and control their own health insurance policies once again just like other types of health insurance where they can take it with them from job to job.
That's revolutionary.
And frankly governor's Governor Romney's achievement in this area is is revolutionary.
No state official has done anything quite like this anywhere else in the United States.
That is simply a raw fact.
Let's go to our callers at 1 eight hundred two eight two eight eight two Chris is in Melbourne, Florida.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show I'm Paul W. Smith and this is uh Dr. Robert E. Moffat What's on your mind, Chris?
Yeah good afternoon gentlemen well I'm a uh a traditional Catholic down here in Florida and I'm really uh liking uh Mitt Romney and especially at 08.
But my my question is is that usually when government gets involved uh prices go up.
If they're gonna subsidize people ability to pay their premium uh that's not going to drive the cost of health insurance for everybody up it just seems to me that that would be the natural outcome well I think Chris you've asked a very very good question and let me answer it because I've you know dealt with the governor staff when we were working through this some months ago right now Chris we have billions of dollars that are going from government agencies to hospitals,
clinics and other healthcare institutions to help pay the cost of caring for the uninsured.
On a national level, Chris, we spend about 40 billion dollars a year on the uninsured.
In Massachusetts they had hundreds of millions of dollars of state and federal money that were being channeled into these institutions, mostly hospitals but not exclusively what Romney was able to accomplish was to basically turn all of these subsidies upside down.
Instead of going to big institutions, they now would go to the uninsured the individuals and families who in fact need the help in getting the coverage.
So he set up in effect premium assistance for low-income families to buy private insurance not Medicaid, not government programs, but private insurance.
So the government money to pay for the cost of the uninsured is now being channeled directly to the uninsured themselves to buy health plans in the private market.
Now this approach is very similar to what President Bush and conservatives in Congress have pushed which is a health care individual tax credit or voucher programs for people to buy private health insurance.
The big difference is that unlike what's being promoted in Congress this is being accomplished by using the existing government funding the current government funding to accomplish the same objective and Chris frankly this is a revolutionary change in health care financing and from my point of view as a heritage analyst it's a great thing.
Appreciate your call, Chris.
Let's go to another part of Florida, Tampa.
And Susan, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Susan?
Hello.
Hi.
I am an owner of a private health insurance policy because where my husband works, the family coverage is, the price is prohibited due to being a small employer.
Shopping and purchasing private health insurance is difficult for an individual because underwriting is so strict.
You have one small condition, even minor, you will either be substandardly rated, you'll be rejected, or, the condition will be excluded and you'll have to take the coverage but yet the condition you need treatment for will be excluded.
How are these people and a lot of them if they're going to emergency rooms, I'm assuming have a health condition, how are you going to get the private insurers to accept these people with their underwriting procedures and get them coverage?
Well, I think that's a good question.
In Massachusetts, you must remember one of the points, in fact, that some of the conservative critics make is uh Massachusetts has a very heavily regulated insurance market.
So the rating rules are very liberal in the sense that you know people can get, you know, health insurance, and in fact what they say is that they give you a guaranteed issue requirement.
That is to say that uh you get health insurance coverage uh under any circumstance.
It's uh it's the law in Massachusetts that you get health insurance coverage.
Now, some of the conservatives criticize the governor because he was he he didn't abolish any of this.
But if you're in Massachusetts, you can get health insurance.
The problem is it's not affordable.
Where Romney made a big change is if you're buying health insurance in the individual market, which I I presume that you are, you have to buy your individual health insurance with uh after tax dollars.
Now what that means is you pay roughly thirty-five or forty percent more for the same package of benefits that you would have gotten if you got your health insurance through uh a firm or or a corporation.
What he has done is in creating the connector or this new health insurance stock exchange in effect, is he's created an opportunity for people to get health insurance uh with a contribution from employers.
Uh uh and there's no mandatory uh level, but if if the employer contributes anything, it becomes an effect uh tax free.
So he's making it much easier for individuals and families to get health insurance in uh Massachusetts than it is in any other state of the Union.
Senior policy analyst, the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, we're talking about what Governor Mitt Romney talked with us about at the start of the hour.
Universal health care in Massachusetts.
Will it spread to other states and to these all of these United States?
We're continuing to talk about it and taking your calls at 1800, 282-2882.
Paul W. Smith into Rush Limbaugh.
Understanding key parts of the Massachusetts health plan and uh doing that uh with Robert Moffitt, who is a senior policy analyst in the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
He was you were there at the signing, were you not?
Oh yeah, I was invited, sure.
And well you should be, and you're doing a nice job answering our questions and a good one coming in to us from Wooster Mass from uh John.
John, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Um my question is how do you uh how does the individual get rated on paying this?
For instance, I I was without insurance last year, and they and I went to the hospital and they uh uh uh calculated my ability to pay on my income of la uh of the year before.
But that does not necessarily mean what I'm making at the present time, if I can afford to pay for it or not.
What's that calculation like?
Oh, well, I'm not sure what the exact calculation would would be like in your case, John, but uh the the way it works is that there would be a sliding scale of subsidies or uh premium assistance for individuals depending upon their income.
So in other words, uh it really depended upon your income and uh they would make available to you uh health insurance more cheaply depending upon where you were in the income scale.
Um the so you know i it's uh it's a complicated formula, but I uh the the uh the idea here is is that and it it's an important one, uh they will give you direct assistance to purchase the plan of your choice through the through the uh health care exchange or the connector.
Uh so you won't have to have a situation where you're you'll be, you know, fumbling around trying to figure out how you're gonna get your care.
Yeah, and a quick question uh on uh a topic near and dear to the listeners of this program's hearts uh on uh immigration and illegal immigrants with the service costs associated with the illegal immigrants.
Is there any citizenship or legal status requirement in this plan in Massachusetts?
I as I understand it, uh the you know the residency requirement applies in Massachusetts for this as it does in every other uh in every other uh healthcare uh situation.
Right.
So you know that I'm you know the it's it's the standard residence requirement.
John is calling from the home of Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
John, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
And as a as a Wolverine, it was difficult for me to say that, but I said it anyway.
Well, thank you very much.
Um I call in today because I don't think there's any conservative about making people buy a product enter into a contract with a private company and buy a product, uh, which is what health insurance is today.
It's actually a very bad deal.
Um the health the industry burns up a very significant percentage of the premiums.
And the uh health care industry has to burn up more money to shake the insurance tree to get their get their payment.
So I I object to this plan.
Well, just let me say uh once again, I think the governor put it, you know, the proposition right.
Uh, you know, if you don't want to buy health insurance, uh you shouldn't.
But at the same time, you don't uh you don't uh walk into a hospital or and you uh and don't uh you don't uh uh get expensive care and then walk away and leave the rest of us holding the had to do something about it, John.
What how what would you do about that?
John.
Get back in the habit of paying for their health care.
Um I was talking to the screener about uh the the un the uncomely um site of somebody with a ma major, major illness, and I I can see uh the government providing some sort of catastrophic care or uh floor.
But to per to make people buy um private insurance uh presumes that that that that's a good uh that that's a good idea.
That's a good buy, it's a good value.
And actually it's distorted the health care industry to such an extent that that it's it's almost unimaginable.
You know, the the insurance company set the uh reimbursement rates for every procedure, every professional service there is.
And the only services people get are those that can be delivered out of profit.
And the services that are that are priced too low, people can hardly get them.
So I think it's had a profoundly negative influence.
All right.
Well, I appreciate that.
I wish you would have called earlier, John, and we would have gotten you on earlier because that's going to take a longer answer than the time we have left.
I think you've done a nice job.
Is there some place people can log on and get more information about this?
Yeah, you can contact uh the Heritage Foundation at WWHeritage.org.
And uh and we have published a couple of pieces uh on the Romney Healthcare Plan.
Excellent.
Dr. Moffat, thanks for joining us today.
We appreciate it.
We continue on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Last time I had the pleasure and privilege of uh sitting in this chair in for rush.
I I read something off the internet uh regarding uh immigration or loving this country or whatever, and people, thousands of people wanted it.
I couldn't get them get it to them.
Here's one that you can get yourself at Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge or FFVF.org if you like it.
And with all the talk about various rights some people think illegal immigrants deserve, nobody talks about the responsibilities that we all have.
We have the bill of rights, but there should be a bill of responsibilities.
That's what they put together at the Freedoms Foundation.
Freedom and responsibility are mutual and inseparable.
We can ensure enjoyment of the one only by exercising the other.
Freedom for all of us depends on responsibility by each of us.
To secure and expand our liberties, therefore, we accept these responsibilities as individual members of a free society.
One to be fully responsible for our own actions and for the consequences of those actions.
Freedom to choose carries with it the responsibility of our choices.
To respect the rights and beliefs of others in a free society, diversity flourishes.
Courtesy and consideration toward others are measured of a civilized society.
Number three, to give sympathy, understanding, and help to others, as we hope others will help us when we are in need.
We should help others when they're in need.
Number four, to do our best to meet our own and our families' needs.
There is no personal freedom without economic freedom.
By helping ourselves and those closest to us to become productive members of society, we contribute to the strength of the nation.
Number five, to respect and obey the laws.
Laws are mutually accepted rules by which together we maintain a free society.
Number six, to respect the property of others, both private and public.
No one has a right to what is not his or hers.
Number seven, to share with Others, our appreciation of the benefits and obligations of freedom.
Freedom shared is freedom strengthened.
Number eight, to participate constructively in the nation's political life.
Number nine, to help freedom survive by assuming personal responsibility for its defense.
And number ten, to respect the rights and to meet the responsibilities on which our liberty rests and our democracy depends.
This is the essence of freedom.
Maintaining it requires our common effort all together and each individually.
FFVF.org is where you can find it from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.
Been an honor and a pleasure to be with Kit Carson, Mike McMoneon.
Go on, I'll make it a great day.
Tomorrow rushes back.
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