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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.
Then uh it's Walter Williams sitting in for Rush, in case you in case you just joined us, uh Russia's ill, and uh we're gonna have Roger Hedgecock uh filling in on Monday, President's Day, and hopefully Russia will be back on Tuesday.
Ah, there's one thing I want to talk about this hour.
Actually, there are two things, two or three.
And you know, I I you're listening to uh 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 uh health care, and you find some politicians pointing to Britain, you find some people pointing to uh Canada.
But there's some things the American people don't know about these systems, and uh let me just kind of lay out some of them and that and and you just let me know what you think they're good ideas to for us to make the uh switch.
Uh there's a story in the London uh observer, and it was saying that um uh an unpublished report that shows that some patients have to wait for eight months for treatments for cancers, and when they're first diagnosed for cancer, their cancer is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.
Uh after they wait so long to get surgery or go to the specialist, their cancer becomes incurable.
And uh according to the uh World Health Organization, about 10,000 British people die unnecessarily from cancer uh each year, and that's because of waiting.
Um let's see, there's uh uh another uh academic study showed that the national health care uh uh national health service, that's uh Britain's uh nationalized uh or socialized medical system uh 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 uh uh ongoing uh research and reporting by the uh um Fraser Institute that's in uh British uh Columbia, and you can check them out on the web.
And it has a yearly publication titled Waiting Your Turn.
And the uh and the 2006 edition of Waiting Your Turn gives waiting times in Canada by treatments from the uh 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 uh Walter E. Williams.com, I have a story called brain surgery, and it's only by five minutes, and you might want to check this out.
This guy uh he would have died if he had stayed in Canada.
Let me give you another uh uh statistic from the um waiting your turn.
And that comes out every year.
You know, they the the people at Fraser Institute, they uh give us updates on the uh on the waiting times.
And they point out that the median weight, half above, half below, for a CT scan across Canada was four a little bit over four weeks.
In Prince Edward Island, it's nine weeks.
For an MRI in Canada, the average or the median uh uh wait was ten point three weeks, but in Newfoundland, that's another province of Canada, province of Canada, uh the weight was twenty-eight weeks.
For ultrasound, four weeks.
Uh 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, uh, people who are sick or 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 uh Canadian Medical Association Journal and uh this an article met rather um in the Canadian Association, uh 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 uh a wait from 10 to 28 weeks in Canada can be had in two days at the Olympic uh memorial hospital in Port Angeles, Washington.
And it turns out something else interesting is that Cleveland, Ohio, is the can is Canada's hip replacement center.
That is uh the waiting list is so long in Canada that uh people decide to go to the United States uh for uh uh surgery such as or treatment such or surgery such as uh 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 uh uh Seattle, you go to uh Detroit, you go to uh 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 queue, our cure is to demand less government.
And matter of fact, I challenge anyone to identify a major problem in the health care system in the United States that's not caused by or aggravated by federal, state, and local governments.
Um we need to get government out of the health care business.
Um there's another little uh something that uh I'd like to talk about uh just for a few minutes, is not really a vital thing, such as the health care uh uh problems.
But this has to do with this uh airlines bill of rights that people are pushing for.
Uh let's come back to that a little bit later.
Um, but I think that the way that you handle those kind of problems that uh uh Jet Blue had 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 uh go back there again.
And so those people who who are dissatisfied with the uh the airline service that they uh get, they should just refuse to patronize that airline, and I bet you the 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 uh in to get the February edition of the Limbaugh Letter, and that features uh 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 uh Limbaugh letter by just going to his website, Rush Limbaugh dot 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 uh answered a little bit of what I was gonna ask about with the uh nationalized health care.
But one of the things I I was concerned about the uh 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 they they are a very high tax uh country and uh and Sweden, I don't know that much about the uh other uh Scandinavian countries, but uh Sweden has been uh uh experiencing uh a significant uh economic dis uh difficulties and high unemployment and fairly low uh growth rate.
And what explain the reasons for that?
Well, no, I think that government's uh far too big.
And uh when see see government is an interference in the economy.
That is surely we need government.
We need government to do some limited things.
That is uh the kind of things that government ought to be doing, at least in a f in a relatively free uh economy, uh government should be stopping people from uh violating the property rights of others.
Uh the government sort of be uh fighting uh people engaged in fraud, but government should have no right to interfere with peaceable voluntary exchange.
Now, uh uh the United States is no not a model of this.
That is government has grown far beyond what our our framers uh or the uh founders of our nation intended for government to do.
But uh just some countries have gone far beyond that.
They have much more government.
Is there a system reducing the standard of living there like it has in obviously some of the socialists and communist countries are poor as can be.
They don't think.
Well, I I th yes, I think their standard of living uh uh is is is not what it could be.
Uh we have uh I've been to uh Sweden any number of times.
We have dear friends in Sweden, uh uh a young lady that I went to uh UCLA with, we both uh we both got our doctorate degrees from there.
And when she visits us and you know comes to the United States, uh you know the kind of things that she's sending back home, she's sending back home towels and sweaters.
She goes shopping uh with Mrs. Williams and she looks at our our grocery, our supermarkets like it's Disneyland.
We have uh our average uh supermarket has uh something like sixty thousand uh different items.
You don't find that in in uh Sweden, even though Sweden is a relatively uh wealthy country, you just don't find the kind of variety and the standard of living that we have here.
Moreover, uh uh even poor Americans have more living space than middle class uh Europeans.
Uh poor Americans have uh have car more cars than the average person uh in any of this country.
Matter of fact, uh uh Robert Rector, he's at the Heritage Foundation, and he did a study some years ago, and he said uh people who are defined by the Census Department as poor, somewhere near sixty percent of them own cars, and fourteen percent of them have two or more cars, and they have microwave ovens, they have uh uh sell tel uh cell phones and televisions.
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 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 clinic, 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 uh uh I don't know the I don't know the particulars of your case, but uh price price discrimination has been a widely practiced uh uh uh pricing technique in medicine.
And that's a disappearance.
Yeah, where doctors will charge uh poor people, uh people who have lower ability to pay a lower price than they'll pay uh then they'll uh 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, the 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 five hundred or thirteen hundred every month.
Yeah.
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 actually That's right.
But you know, you you point up something that's very, very important to our medical problem in the United States, and that's the third party player uh payer.
And the the third party payer, that is the uh uh the insurance uh company uh who pays the bill, uh it creates a set of incentives where you are not as price conscious as to uh uh because you pay uh uh I don't know,
uh how it's two hundred dollars a month for a premium, and so uh you know, the when you go to doctor, maybe there's a sure uh uh 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 price that price that they'll charge you uh because he knows that a third party is paying.
Yeah, but kind of think of it in the f in the follow in the uh following way.
Uh suppose you had blue cross blue shield insurance for your automobile.
And uh let's say right now there might be a little scratch on your automobile and you say, uh, heck with it, uh 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 you would go into auto shop for almost anything.
And the auto uh mechanic would charge you any price uh that he wished because uh uh um uh there's a third party paying.
And so that's one of the problems with our system.
I think that um uh there there's a si 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 employ uh insurance.
That is your insurance does not really kick in until you have uh some major uh health problem like a five thousand dollar or ten thousand dollar operation.
I agree, I had that problem last year.
Yeah, right.
You know, I mean, and it did.
And I ended up paying for uh probably my husband's surgery, which was probably a thirty-seven thousand dollar surgery, I only paid eleven hundred.
Yeah.
And I I mean I think that was great.
And it it it and the and and his insurance was uh part of his uh wages.
No, he pays it out of his check every month.
Yeah, that's part of he has blue cross blue shields, yes, I guess it's part of his wages.
Yeah.
We pay probably three hundred dollars a month, but we have a family of six.
And and you and that's another w uh problem in the uh uh in the uh health care business is that uh I don't know, it started during World War II when we had wage and price controls and uh and companies were competing for labor or competing for worker and they could not raise wages, so what they started doing is to 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 uh people think that uh they when they get a job they Should also uh have a 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 uh introduces uh a whole set of problems.
But people are willing, people are willing to have uh insurance uh through their jobs.
Uh the reason why is that it's paid before taxes.
That is, it's not uh tax uh deductible.
And uh that's that's one of the big problems uh that government caused in our society, and we're still living with the effects of it.
So um 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.
Uh on this health care issue, let me ask you a question, and I'd like for uh uh uh a serious answer from somebody.
Do you have a 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 let me uh 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 the 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 a 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 it does not confer an obligation on another.
And or or or you might say, uh would someone say that my right to travel freely requires that the government take somebody else's money to provide me with uh airplane tickets and a hotel and 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 uh when the when the when the government gives one American some money, well, where do you think Congress gets his money from?
You know, is is it the tooth ferry?
Is it Santa Claus that gives them the resources?
No.
The only way the government can give one American citizen one dollar is to first, through intimidation, threats, and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American.
So when you say somebody has the 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 with this whole issue of medical care and with housing and others, they say people have a right to it.
Well, uh we may actually maybe a better uh 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 for for those of us in the audience who are Christians, when 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?
Uh 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, uh uh Walter, uh Walter Williams, uh, 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 this 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?
Uh and if you're saying that, I'm very disappointed as a uh fellow American.
By the way, and and you know, 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 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.
Uh 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.
Uh handouts to farmers, bailouts to businesses, uh handouts to poor people, etc.
etc.
ad nauseum.
Let's go to the phones uh now.
Uh Ryan in California, welcome to show.
Thank you, Dr. Williams.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for taking my call.
Um here's my issue for you, sir.
Um you mentioned that uh 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 and what really Well, you mean if if a you don't mean if they can pay for it, they don't have a right.
Well, what I'm actually talking about is what's going on here in the in the post uh Hurricane Katrina aftermath, where you've got you know supposed Republican governors like Michael Christ requiring insurance companies to write policies they don't want to.
Oh, yeah, I yeah, I I agree with you 100 percent.
I don't think that they should require uh uh insurance companies to write policies uh that they don't want to.
Actually uh what they're really doing is that insurance companies will write any kind of policy that you can think of, but uh but at a certain premium.
Yes, exactly.
There's no Warren Buffett says there's no such thing as a bad risk, there's only bad premium.
That's right.
And I'm uh I'm an insurance company shareholder, and it feels like the government is stealing from me.
Well, well, you know, you know what people should do, and and and uh and I'm I'm saying this as not as a stockholder in their company.
But I think that see, I think that businessmen uh receiving edicts from government, they should just tell the government well, we're just gonna shut down.
But they can't.
Why?
That that's well, Michael Chris told the insurance companies uh 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 it's as if he's hijacking a private business.
And you know, states do that to some degree all the time.
Look at um car insurance in New Jersey.
I mean, they they chase the insurance companies out of there.
But you know what the the broader theme in my opinion is the the rising swell of populism.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's which which is another way, it's an alternative way, the rising contempt for personal liberty in our country.
Well, it's it's you know, uh the commandments is thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife or thy donkey.
That's exactly what what uh socialism is.
Yeah, really it's uh it's it's just it's an immaturity if you think about it.
They they look at someone who has more and says that's not fair.
So they beat them down, you know, with with this type of reaction with with uh a progressive tax code.
I mean, it's it's just a fundamental uh lack of maturity on other people's.
I I agree one hundred percent with you that insurances uh 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, uh there's a lighter side to the news uh today.
Um I don't know how light it is, but um in New Mexico, the uh state transport State Transportation Department officials have begun using talking urinals to remind drinkers not to get the behind the wheel when they're drunk.
And this uh little story says uh the State Transportation Department uh said that it has put five hundred talking deodorizers in bars and restaurants, in restaurants, uh bar and restaurant restrooms rather in the state to remind drivers not to drink and drive.
Now here's what the uh 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 now we older guys, uh, we sometimes have a little hesitation at the urinal.
And I don't think a voice out of the urinal is gonna help things.
I don't think it's going to help the flow of things.
Uh and and also uh when I was reading this piece, I was saying that, well, uh they don't have urinals in the ladies' restaurant.
I mean, the uh in the ladies' restroom.
And so I'm wondering whether they're talking toilets in the ladies' restroom.
Saying, hey, big girl, uh get somebody to drive you home.
Um one day well, maybe uh the g the state, since they're you know, they're they're concerned about people driving drunk, but they're also concerned about uh venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies.
So uh 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 on this.
Does the restaurant owner have a right to refuse the state coming in there saying, put a talking toilet in your uh in your uh bathroom?
Can the owner say tell the uh the state official to go play in the traffic?
I I 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 uh first the no smoking laws in restaurants, then no trans fat laws in restaurant, no fragras in restaurants, so uh or or bar.
So what's coming next?
I'm not sure.
But I anyway, I thought I'd bring you a little update on uh 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 refrausal, or is the gov is the uh state of New Mexico saying, Well, in order to do business, you better have this talking urinal.
Uh I worry about that.
But let's go back to the phones and t and welcome to show Paul from Louisville, Kentucky.
Welcome to show.
Hey, Dr. Williams.
Um my comments.
What do you think?
But by before you I'll let you get to your question.
What do you think about talking toilets and urinals?
Well, for each their own.
They were they were making fun of that earlier on a radio show I was listening to earlier this morning.
Oh, okay.
Okay, but what's your question?
Um 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 a hundred and fifty dollars for an IV bag.
You can't charge forty dollars for uh syringe to give somebody a shot.
In other words, you're seven hundred dollars a day for a room.
Are you c are uh are you calling for government price controls?
I think there should be some type of price control, government price control on um the medical supplies and what it actually costs to stay in the in the hospital.
I mean, you're you look at the hospitals and the hospitals, I know like here in Louisville, we have several hospitals and 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.
Well, when it comes to health care, I think we should have price control.
Okay.
But uh there's um there's a i interesting book that you should read.
It's called uh I think four thousand centuries of price controls, and they've shown and and 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 uh were uh during World War II led to the current uh problems that we're having today uh with uh so-called uh employee uh or employer provided uh health insurance.
We'll be back with the calls after this.
We're back, ladies and gentlemen, and by the way, uh uh Rush has a new item in the EIB store, and that's his Rush for Peace t-shirt uh that celebrates his uh Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
You guys didn't think he would get a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, uh, but there it is, and he has a t-shirt to uh uh celebrate that.
And there's also the uh Rush Babe on board sign that you can put in your car.
Um I might get one.
I might get one myself, uh in case I ever have a rush babe on board.
Okay, let's uh we have time for one more call, I think, uh quick call.
And Ann from Brooklyn, welcome to show.
Dr. Walther E. Williams, I was born before World War II and I've wasted 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 thirty-seven.
Okay.
So uh 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 please every Christmas time for people to donate to the poor and they publish case history.
And you're really up against the clock.
Can can can I hold you over for the next hour?
I would love to.
I surely like to uh uh continue with our conversation, folks.
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