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Feb. 16, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:16
February 16, 2007, Friday, Hour #2
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That is absolutely right.
And it's Walter Williams sitting in for Rush, in case you just joined us, Rush is ill.
And we're going to have Roger Hedgecock filling in on Monday, President's Day, and hopefully Rush will be back on Tuesday.
There's one thing I want to talk about this hour.
Actually, there are two things, two or three.
And, you know, you're listening to congressmen and you listen to many American people and they're seeing problems with our health care system and they're calling for a single payer system or they're calling for nationalized or socialized health care.
And you find some politicians pointing to Britain.
You find some people pointing to Canada.
But there's some things the American people don't know about these systems.
And let me just kind of lay out some of them and you just let me know what you think they're good ideas for us to make the switch.
There's a story in the London Observer and it was saying that an unpublished report shows that some patients have to wait for eight months for treatments for cancers.
And when they're first diagnosed for cancer, their cancer is curable.
After they wait so long to get surgery or go to the specialist, their cancer becomes incurable.
And according to the World Health Organization, about 10,000 British people die unnecessarily from cancer each year.
And that's because of waiting.
Let's see, there's another academic study showed that the National Health Care, National Health Service, that's Britain's nationalized or socialized medical system, shows that delays in bowel cancer treatment are so great that in one in five cases, a cancer that was curable at the time of diagnosis became incurable at the time of treatment.
Now, the story is not much better in Canada with Canada's national health care system.
And there's ongoing research and reporting by the Fraser Institute that's in British Columbia.
And you can check them out on the web.
And it has a yearly publication titled, Waiting Your Turn.
And the 2006 edition of Waiting Your Turn gives waiting times in Canada by treatments from the person's referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist.
Now, the shortest waiting time in Canada was for oncology, that's cancer, and that was 4.9 weeks.
The longest waiting time was for orthopedic surgery, and that was 40.3 weeks.
Plastic surgery was 35 weeks, and neurosurgery, 31 weeks.
And by the way, on my website of walterewilliams.com, I have a story called Brain Surgery, and it's only about five minutes, and you might want to check this out.
This guy, he would have died if he had stayed in Canada.
Let me give you another statistic from the Waiting Your Turn.
And that comes out every year.
The people at Fraser Institute, they give us updates on the waiting times.
And they point out that the median weight, half above, half below, for a CT scan across Canada was a little bit over four weeks.
In Prince Edward Island, it's nine weeks.
For an MRI in Canada, the average or the median weight was 10.3 weeks.
But in Newfoundland, that's another province of Canada, province of Canada, the weight was 28 weeks.
For ultrasound, four weeks.
But in Manitoba, it was eight weeks.
Now, despite these waiting times, it's against the law, Canadian law, for Canadians to receive private treatment.
Or that is, private clinics are not legally allowed to provide services that are covered by the Canadian Health Act.
But however, there's some help for the Canadian patients.
And this is why Canadian patients, people who are sick, who think they're going to be sick, are probably the strongest critics of the people in the United States who call for a system like Canada because they won't have anywhere to go.
And this is shown in a Canadian Medical Association Journal.
And this article in the Canadian Association, Canadian Medical Association Journal, it's 2000.
And it says that U.S. hospitals use waiting list woes to woo Canadians.
And it goes on to say that Canadian patients fed up with waiting lists are being wooed by hospitals in Washington State and they're offered package deals.
Another hospital is advertising in Canada.
And one of the attractions is that an MRI that can take from a wait from 10 to 28 weeks in Canada can be had in two days at the Olympic Memorial Hospital in Port Angeles, Washington.
And it turns out something else interesting is that Cleveland, Ohio is Canada's hip replacement center.
That is, the waiting list is so long in Canada that people decide to go to the United States for surgery such as or treatment such or surgery such as hip replacement and other kinds of ills.
And it's very interesting if you go along the border with Canada, if you go to places like Seattle, you go to Detroit, you go to other Minneapolis, you see many Canadian patients in those hospitals, but you see relatively few Americans in Canadian hospitals.
Now, what does that tell you?
Now, yes, we do have problems with our medical system, but I'll tell you the cure for our health care problems.
The cure is not to demand more government.
Our cue, our cure is to demand less government.
And matter of fact, I challenge anyone to identify a major problem in the healthcare system in the United States that's not caused by or aggravated by federal, state, and local governments.
So we need to get government out of the healthcare business.
There's another little something that I'd like to talk about just for a few minutes.
It's not really a vital thing, such as the healthcare problems.
But this has to do with this airline's Bill of Rights that people are pushing for.
Let's come back to that a little bit later.
But I think that the way that you handle those kind of problems that JetBlue had is just fire the airline.
That is, that's what I do when I go to a restaurant.
If I don't like the service, I don't call up some congressman saying, I want a bill of rights for restaurants.
I just fire the restaurant.
Know how I fire them?
It's just not go back there again.
And so those people who are dissatisfied with the airline service that they get, they just refuse to patronize that airline.
And I bet you that airline will get its act together.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Walter Williams here, holding forth, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And by the way, it's still time to get the February edition of the Limbaugh Letter.
And that features Russia's interview with the National Review's Andrew McCarty, and he's talking about the war on terror.
And you can subscribe to the Rush Limbaugh letter by just going to his website, rushlimbaugh.com.
Okay, let's go back to the phones, and let's talk to Scott in Austin, Texas.
Welcome to the show, Scott.
Yeah, hi, Dr. Williams.
You answered a little bit of what I was going to ask about with the nationalized health care.
But one of the things I was concerned about the Scandinavian countries.
I always hear people talking about how things are so wonderful there.
They tax people really high, but they provide a lot of services, health care, and a lot of other things.
What is the truth about that?
Well, they are a very high-tax country.
And Sweden, I don't know that much about the other Scandinavian countries, but Sweden has been experiencing significant economic difficulties and high unemployment and fairly low growth rate.
And explain the reasons for that.
Well, I think that government's far too big.
And see, government is an interference in the economy.
That is, surely we need government.
We need government to do some limited things.
That is, the kind of things that government ought to be doing, at least in a relatively free economy, government should be stopping people from violating the property rights of others.
The government ought to be fighting people engaged in fraud.
But government should have no right to interfere with peaceable voluntary exchange.
Now, the United States is not a model of this.
That is, government has grown far beyond what our framers or the founders of our nation intended for government to do.
But just some countries have gone far beyond that.
They have much more government.
Is our system reducing the standard of living there like it has in obviously some of the socialist and communist countries?
They're poor as can be.
They don't think that's a good thing.
Well, I think their standard of living is not what it could be.
I've been to Sweden any number of times.
We have dear friends in Sweden, a young lady that I went to UCLA with.
We both got our doctorate degrees from there.
And when she visits us and comes to the United States, the kind of things that she's sending back home, she's sending back home towels and sweaters.
She goes shopping with Mrs. Williams, and she looks at our grocery, our supermarkets like it's Disneyland.
Our average supermarket has something like 60,000 different items.
You don't find that in Sweden, even though Sweden is a relatively wealthy country.
You just don't find the kind of variety and the standard of living that we have here.
Moreover, even poor Americans have more living space than middle-class Europeans.
Poor Americans have more cars than the average person in any of this country.
Matter of fact, Robert Rector, he's at the Heritage Foundation, and he did a study some years ago, and he said people who are defined by the Census Department as poor, somewhere near 60% of them own cars, and 14% of them have two or more cars.
And they have microwave ovens.
They have cell phones and television.
Matter of fact, I've often said that if I were an unborn spirit and God said, Williams, I condemn you to a life of poverty, but I will allow you to choose the country that you want to be poor in.
I would say the United States of America.
That is, our poor people are the most well-off poor in the world.
Let's go to, let's take another call and let's go to Shelley in Bellevue, Kansas.
Welcome to the show.
Hello.
Hi.
How are you?
Okay.
Okay, here's my deal on this health care issue.
Now, I'm not sure how much this really has to do with our government, but as I go to the doctor and I pay regular health, my insurance pays what they pay.
I go in there and then there's another person in there that has no insurance and they get a lesser rate.
They get the hospital, the clinics, the doctors don't take what our insurance company gives them and says that's good enough.
They still demand more from me.
But the person next to me who has no insurance gets less.
They get the same quality of service I get, but they don't pay what I have to pay.
How is that right?
Well, I mean, I don't know the particulars of your case, but price discrimination has been a widely practiced pricing technique in medicine.
And that's another thing.
Where doctors will charge poor people, people who have lower ability to pay, a lower price than they'll charge higher income people.
And the reason why they do it, because they can get more money out of higher income people than poor people.
But wouldn't it make more sense to say, okay, if you have insurance, what the insurance company pays you is it?
Because we have to pay our deductible every month, whether if it's $150 every month or every paycheck or $500 or $1,300 every month.
Because people choose to buy their own insurance because it saves them money.
But actually, if you think about it, if you're poor and you have no insurance, it would be just a lot better not to have insurance because you won't have to pay the same amount of money as I have.
That's right.
But you point up something that's very, very important to our medical problem in the United States, and that's the third-party payer.
And the third-party payer, that is the insurance company who pays the bill, it creates a set of incentives where you are not as price conscious as to, because you pay, I don't know, it's $200 a month for a premium.
And so when you go to a doctor, maybe there's a small copay that you have to pay, but you're not as sensitive to price as you otherwise would be if you're paying it out of your own pocket.
And a doctor is not as sensitive to that price that they'll charge you because he knows that a third party is paying.
Kind of think of it in the following way.
Suppose you had Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance for your automobile.
And let's say right now there might be a little scratch on your automobile and you say, ah, heck with it.
I'll just live with it.
But if there were a third party payer that would pay everything, then you would take that scratch in.
You would go into auto shop for almost anything.
And the auto mechanic would charge you any price that he wished because there's a third party paying.
And so that's one of the problems with our system.
I think that there's a severe problem.
I think that the kind of insurance system that we should have, or the kind of insurance that there should be, I think is catastrophic insurance.
That is, your insurance does not really kick in until you have some major health problem, like a $5,000 or $10,000 operation.
I agree.
I had that problem last year.
Yeah, right.
You know, I mean, and it did.
And I ended up paying for probably my husband's surgery, which was probably a $37,000 surgery.
I only paid $1,100.
And I mean, I think that was great.
And his insurance was part of his wages?
No, he pays it out of his check every month.
Yeah, that's part of it.
He has Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Yes, I guess it's part of his wages.
We pay probably $300 a month, but we have a family of six.
And that's another problem in the healthcare business is that, I don't know, it started during World War II when we had wage and price controls.
And companies were competing for labor or competing for worker and they could not raise wages.
So what they started doing is making in-kind benefits, and health insurance was one of those.
And I think that was a very, very serious mistake.
And we're living with the effects of that today.
That is, people think that when they get a job, they should also have health insurance.
And people wouldn't make the same argument.
They say, well, I want my employer to pay for my house insurance or my car insurance.
And I think that introduces a whole set of problems.
But people are willing.
People are willing to have insurance through their jobs.
The reason why is that it's paid before taxes.
That is, it's not tax deductible.
And that's one of the big problems that government caused in our society.
And we're still living with the effects of it.
So I don't know what to do.
I think that what we should do is that employers should pay your full salary and let you decide what kind of insurance you want to get.
We're back, and the number is 800-282-2882.
On this healthcare issue, let me ask you a question.
And I'd like for a serious answer from somebody.
Does a person have a right to health treatments even if he cannot afford it?
Does he have a right to it?
Now, let me kind of give you an idea of my understanding of rights.
A right is something that exists simultaneously among people.
For example, my right to free speech does not confer any obligation on anybody else.
That is, maybe you can call an obligation is that you don't have the right to interfere with me.
My right to freedom of movement to go from here to California does not lessen any rights of yours.
That is, you just don't interfere with me.
Now, when people say people have a right to medical care, even if they can't afford it, Well, that's the same as saying that someone else does not have a right to what he produces.
You know, let's go back again.
I mean, it's kind of like saying my right to free speech requires you to supply me with a microphone and auditorium.
That is, a right is something that exists simultaneously among people.
That is, it does not confer an obligation on another.
Or you might say, would someone say that my right to travel freely requires that the government take somebody else's money to provide me with airplane tickets and a hotel and money, etc., etc.
And so when we talk about somebody has a right to something that he can't afford, or he has a right to something that he did not produce, well, that means that somebody else must be denied his right to something that he did produce.
See, keep in mind, like, when the government gives one American some money, well, where do you think Congress gets his money from?
I mean, is it the tooth fairy?
Is it Santa Claus that gives them the resources?
No.
The only way the government can give one American citizen $1 is to first, through intimidation, threats, and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American.
So when you say somebody has a right to something that he didn't produce, then that's the same as saying somebody else does not have a right to what he produced.
And what's moral about that?
Or you don't care about morality.
Now, don't misunderstand me.
I believe in helping my fellow man.
I believe that charity is noble.
I believe that reaching into one's own pockets to help his fellow man in need, I think is praiseworthy and is laudable.
I think that reaching in somebody else's pocket to help one's fellow man is despicable and worthy of condemnation.
And so a lot of people just with this whole issue of medical care and we're with housing and others, they say people have a right to it.
Well, we may actually maybe a better way of saying it is that I wish everybody had good medical care.
And indeed I do.
I wish everybody had decent housing.
I wish everybody had nutritious meals.
But that's not the same as saying that they have a right to it.
And for those of us in the audience who are Christians, When God gave Moses the commandment that thou shalt not steal, I'm sure that he did not mean that thou shalt not steal unless you got a majority vote in Congress.
Moreover, if you were to ask God, he did not put this in the commandments, but if you were to ask God, well, God, is it okay to be a recipient of stolen property?
I believe he would deem that a sin as well.
And so when we talk about these basic needs, these crying needs, I would like to depend on charity.
Now, some people say, well, Walter, Walter Williams, there's not enough charity to go around.
Well, look, first of all, I would say that Americans are the most generous people on the face of the earth.
That is, we do the bulk of all world giving.
But even if that were not the case, are you then telling me if I don't voluntarily help my fellow man get some medical care or some food or some housing, if I don't voluntarily do this, then the government should force me to do it.
And if I don't agree with the government, put me in jail.
Are you saying that?
And if you're saying that, I'm very disappointed as a fellow American.
By the way, can you imagine anybody winning political office?
Some people talk about, well, Walter, why don't you run for the presidency?
Can you imagine anybody winning political office talking like I did?
Now, as a matter of fact, talking like the framers of the Constitution did, because they said the same things that I said.
They said that charity is not the business of government.
Madison, the father of the Constitution, he said that there is nothing in the Constitution that allows Congress to take the money of their constituents for the purposes of benevolence.
And ladies and gentlemen, most of what the federal government spends on today is for the purposes of benevolence.
Handouts to farmers, bailouts to businesses, handouts to poor people, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Let's go to the phones now.
Ryan in California, welcome to show.
Thank you, Dr. Williams.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for taking my call.
Here's my issue for you, sir.
You mentioned that people don't have the right to health insurance.
I'm calling because I don't think people have the right to property and casualty insurance and what really...
You don't mean if they can pay for it, they don't have the right?
Well, what I'm actually talking about is what's going on here in the post-Hurricane Katrina aftermath, where you've got supposed Republican governors like Michael Crist requiring insurance companies to write policies they don't want to.
Oh, yeah, I agree with you 100%.
I don't think that they should require insurance companies to write policies that they don't want to.
Actually, what they're really doing is that insurance companies will write any kind of policy that you can think of, but at a certain premium.
Yes, exactly.
Warren Buffett says there's no such thing as a bad risk.
There's only bad premiums.
That's right.
And I'm an insurance company shareholder, and it feels like the government is stealing from me.
Well, you know what people should do, And I'm saying this as not as a stockholder in their company.
But I think that, see, I think that businessmen receiving edicts from government, they should just tell the government, well, we're just going to shut down.
But they can't.
Why?
Well, Michael Crist told the insurance companies that you cannot cease writing policies.
He is forcing them to continue to write policies.
And again, this guy is supposed to be.
Oh, no, no, no.
The insurance company, I believe they can go out of business if they want to.
Well, they could at some point, but in the short term, it's as if he's hijacking a private business.
And, you know, states do that to some degree all the time.
Look at car insurance in New Jersey.
I mean, they chase the insurance companies out of there.
But, you know, the broader theme, in my opinion, is the rising swell of populism.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
Which is another way, it's an alternative way, the rising contempt for personal liberty in our country.
Well, it's, you know, the commandment says, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife or thy donkey.
That's exactly what socialism is.
Really, it's just an immaturity if you think about it.
They look at someone who has more and says, that's not fair.
So they beat them down, you know, with this type of reaction, with a progressive tax code.
I mean, it's just a fundamental lack of maturity on other people's.
I agree 100% with you that insurance companies should not be required to underwrite risks that they don't want to write at the particular price that government allows them to charge.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Hey, folks, there's a lighter side to the news today.
I don't know how light it is, but in New Mexico, the State Transportation Department officials have begun using talking urinals to remind drinkers not to get behind the wheel when they're drunk.
And this little story says the State Transportation Department said that it has put 500 talking deodorizers in bars and restaurants, in restaurants, bar and restaurant restrooms, rather, in the state, to remind drivers not to drink and drive.
Now, here's what the urinal says: It says, Hey, big guy, having a few drinks, then listen up.
Think you've had one too many?
Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home.
Ah, boy, this worries me.
What the world comes at?
Now, we older guys, we sometimes have a little hesitation at the urinal.
And I don't think a voice out of the urinal is going to help things.
I don't think it's going to help the flow of things.
And also, when I was reading this piece, I was saying that, well, they don't have urinals in the ladies' restaurant.
I mean, in the ladies' restroom.
And so I'm wondering whether they're talking toilets in the ladies' restaurant.
Saying, hey, big girl, get somebody to drive you home.
And one day, well, maybe the state, since they're concerned about people driving drunk, but they're also concerned about venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies.
So maybe the condom machines should say they should put a turn the lights on before you take her home.
Now I'm wondering, Now, I'm wondering, does the, I need some research on, I need some help on this.
Does the restaurant owner have a right to refuse the state coming in there saying, put a talking toilet in your bathroom?
Can the owner say, tell the state official to go play in the traffic?
I don't know.
He might not because, see, there are all kinds of laws that you people push on restaurants.
You know, like you have first no smoking laws in restaurants, then no trans fat laws in restaurants, no fragras in restaurants or bar.
So what's coming next?
I'm not sure.
But anyway, I thought I'd bring you a little update on that bit of news.
And if somebody from New Mexico can call in and just tell me, does the restaurant owner have a right to refrusal?
Or is the state of New Mexico saying, well, in order to do business, you better have this talking urinal?
I worry about that.
But let's go back to the phones and welcome to show Paul from Louisville, Kentucky.
Welcome to show.
Hey, Dr. Williams.
My comment.
What do you think?
Before I'll let you get to your question, what do you think about talking toilets and urinals?
Well, for each their own.
They were making fun of that earlier on a radio show I was listening to earlier this morning.
Okay.
Okay, but what's your question?
Well, it's not really a question.
It's just that I recently spent some time in the hospital, and I kind of think that the insurance companies are getting hosed by the medical profession on what they charge for things.
I think that maybe the federal government ought to step in and say, okay, you can't charge $150 for an IV bag.
You can't charge $40 for a syringe to give somebody a shot.
In other words, you're $700 a day for a room.
Are you calling for government price controls?
I think there should be some type of price control, government price control on the medical supplies and what it actually costs to stay in the hospital.
I mean, you look at the hospitals and the hospitals.
I know, like here in Louisville, we have several hospitals, and they make a tremendous amount of money.
You know, I mean, how much money is too much money?
And I know we're a capitalist society, and I agree with all that.
But, you know, you can't agree with a capitalist society if you're for price controls.
And by the way, I'm for price controls on certain things.
When it comes to health care, I think we should have price controls.
Okay.
But there's an interesting book that you should read.
It's called, I think, 4,000 Centuries of Price Controls.
And they've shown, and the author shows in the book that wherever they've been enacted, it has led to a disaster.
And as I said earlier in the show, the price and wage controls were, during World War II, led to the current problems that we're having today with so-called employee or employer-provide health insurance.
We'll be back at the calls after this.
We're back, ladies and gentlemen.
And by the way, Rush has a new item in the EIB store, and that's his Rush for Peace t-shirt that celebrates his Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
You guys didn't think he would get a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, but there it is, and he has a t-shirt to celebrate that.
And there's also the Rush Babe on Board sign that you can put in your car.
I might get one.
I might get one myself in case I ever have a Rush Babe on board.
Okay, we have time for one more call, I think.
Quick call.
And Ann from Brooklyn, welcome to show.
Dr. Walter E. Williams, I was born before World War II, and I've waited most of my life waiting for somebody like you to say what you're saying.
Well, thank you.
I was born before World War II, too.
Then we can talk eye to eye.
In 1936.
I was 37.
Okay.
So the Constitution, as I understand it, gives you only the right to the pursuit of happiness.
And when I was a child, the Los Angeles Times carried columns by Ayn Rand.
And the New York Times published pleas every Christmastime for people to donate to the poor.
And they published case history.
And we're really up against the clock.
Can I hold you over for the next hour?
I would love it.
I'd surely like to continue with our conversation, folks.
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