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June 22, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
June 22, 2009, Monday, Hour #2
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Yes, this is Mark Stein, your undocumented anchor man sitting in.
America's anchor man is away.
He will be back fighting fit on Wednesday.
Take you through the end of the week.
Mark Davis will be here tomorrow, but we have two more hours of substitute host level excellence in broadcasting to go uh today.
Uh the the Iranian uh situation is uh is moving fast as there's talk now that there may be some splits emerging among the clerics.
So the the trick here, I think, for America isn't to do the trick for the world really is just to keep the pressure on.
The world has an interest in ending this regime, and the trick is just uh not easy uh let just apply the pressure subtly.
Uh it's also a big week for health care, health care.
Health is a fascinating thing to me, by the way, uh because it has somehow become uh it has become the defining uh issue of the nation.
Uh we Obama says we have to do something about health care.
Everybody says we have to do something about health care.
When you actually dig deep into the uh the to the figures, uh there isn't really that big a health care problem.
Uh the uh New York Times had a story uh that began with all the usual things.
The people uh wanted to solve health care, they wanted to cover the uninsured, they were willing to pay more taxes to it, uh, and they wanted to deal with it, deal with it, do with it.
You'd get dig deep into that New York Times story.
And in paragraph nine, uh also it emerges from this poll that seventy-seven percent of people are entirely satisfied with their health care.
They're perfectly fine with the health care they get at the moment.
Um the the overwhelming majority of the American people, according to the New York Times in this story, are satisfied with their health care.
So naturally, in the age of big government, we're going to destroy that system uh in order to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.
Uh it is uh i i i i it is unaffordable, uh and more than that, even if it were affordable, it would still be a disaster because uh government health care changes the relationship between the citizen and the state, and it is in fact, I think, an assault on citizenship.
Uh and so we'll we'll we'll talk about that uh uh in the uh in in the uh in the show.
1-800-282-2882.
The President uh today has announced he's plugging the donut hole.
This isn't, by the way, another visit to the ice cream parlor.
This is despite despite him I mean, obviously presumably this is the CBS White House correspondent, just got the minute of the word donut.
He said, Hey boys, hold hold the front page, pictures at eleven.
We've we've got the president visiting a donut stand now.
Uh is it HR wants to know whether the donut is glazed.
No, uh but your eyes will be after reading the New York Times coverage of the donut story.
Uh but this actually isn't.
This isn't part of the President's policy of restaurant visits.
It's not like his hamburger restaurant visit.
It's not like his visit to get a vanilla frozen custard brownie Sunday.
Uh when he uses the doughut here, it's purely metaphor.
It's a metaphorical donut.
So this may confuse the White House press score.
Uh he said he wants to plug the uh the what they call the hole in the donut.
And under this, uh as I understand it, the uh w w when you get prescription drugs, the government pays for the first five grams.
Uh then if you need another five grams, you pay for that yourself.
Yeah, nothing like that.
And you pay you pay uh it's like your deductible or whatever.
You uh no, no, it's the inverse of it.
It's like an it's like a uh it's like it.
Yeah, it's gov the government pays the first whatever.
Uh then if you need uh like another uh twenty pills on top of that, you pay the next twenty pills, and then uh and then the uh government pays the rest.
So it's like if you go and you get new uh prescription Viagra or whatever, the government will pay for your first five dates.
You might have to pay for the one after that, uh, but then all the action you'll be getting is on the Fed's uh uh entirely entirely free.
That's how it works, isn't it?
So now they're gonna plug that gap because heaven forbid that you should have to pay for five grams of prescription for yourself.
Um the the the uh the the prescription drug plan for seniors, targets, targets, the wealthiest demographic in the United States.
May well be the wealthiest demographic, by the way, in global history.
Because however badly you think your grandparents have it, you're gonna be have it a lot worse by your age, because you'll be having all the problems of old age, plus the debt that your grandparents' generation has piled up under the Obama stimulus package and the multi-trillion dollar deficits and all the rest of it.
So however bad you think your grandparents have it, you're gonna be having it a hundred times worse.
But no, no, never mind all that.
We've still got to do something to plug this little hole in the doughnut for the prescription drug plans for seniors.
Because heaven forbid, heaven forbid that these seniors, these seniors, should have to choose between prescription drugs and uh Tony Danzer doing South Pacific in dinner theater.
We cannot we cannot make them do that.
We cannot we cannot uh put them through that choice.
It's uh mind you, I'm not saying it.
Tony Danzer in uh South Pacific, by the way, if you see it's fantastic.
He plays uh uh it's it's a very touching story.
He plays a uh a Uyghur planter living on this beautiful island uh who falls in love with an American ensign.
A some enchanted evening, you may see a Uyghur.
Anyway, um completely lost my prescription drugs, yeah, that's it.
Heaven forbid we should make seniors choose between uh between uh prescription drugs and uh and all this other stuff.
They're the wealthiest demographic in uh in in the uh in the United States, and maybe, as I said, in global history.
And there simply isn't enough money to make this work.
Obama this is this is what I love about the guy.
Talk about audacity.
He said that we need the reason health care is a priority, we need to, quote, fix health care, is to control costs.
Right now, uh government runs a portion of health care, and every increasing portion of health care, it's actually just under 50 percent at the moment when you when you add up all the various elements of government health care.
But one thing you notice, if you look at Medicare and Medicaid, is that costs rise far, uh they're rising roughly 35% faster uh in govern in the government area of health care than in private health care.
Now, why be surprised at that?
The minute you the minute you uh uh introduce a government bureaucracy in anything, the costs are gonna bear no relation uh to the real costs or the real market value of that transaction.
So if you have the government annex uh the entire operation of the American health care system, the costs are gonna be way out of control.
Uh uh unlike most of the guest hosts on this show, and unlike the host, I believe, I don't believe Russia's ever had the misfortune uh to be treated at the Royal Victoria Hospital uh in uh Montreal or at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in England.
I've I've been treated in socialized hospitals.
And the one thing uh you learn about a socialized health care system very fast is that the only way of controlling costs is by restricting health care for you.
You're the only variable in the system.
Uh on Friday afternoon, uh the health system still has to pay the doctor and the nurse and the janitor.
The only way of re uh of controlling costs is to restrict access to the system uh for you.
Now, if you don't mind that, if you don't mind a system uh in which you become the point at which costs are controlled, then fine, go along with government health care.
Uh what it means, what it means, the essence of a government system, uh, for people who who've never lived under it is waiting.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
You wait for everything.
Uh you wait years for uh operations that in America are routine.
Routine operations, you wait for years.
Uh there was a story in uh Le Jour Le Journal de Montréal uh last week that in the province of Quebec, uh people with severe incontinence, that's to say, people who get up to use the bathroom uh twelve tim a minimum of twelve times a night have to wait three years for a simple half-hour procedure.
Uh now, when people talk about comparative costs of health care, they don't factor in uh, for example, the fact that you've had a sleepless night because you've been getting up to go to the bathroom twelve to times and the consequent impact on your uh work performance every day,
seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year for three years, all those trips to the bathroom, twelve times a night, friends sixty-five nights a year for three years while you're waiting for a simple half-hour procedure uh that you could get at a week's notice if you drove uh an hour south of Montreal to Plattsburgh, New York, or Burlington, Vermont.
The essence of a government system is that you wait and wait and wait, because you you, the patient, are the only point uh at which costs can be controlled.
Uh and one of the one of the great things about uh uh uh uh uh America is that it's health care is still a market here.
Healthcare is still a market.
If you want to be if you if you want to get if you want to get a procedure, you can get a procedure if you're prepared to write a check for it.
Not everybody is uh has uh uh can write a check for it, not everybody has coverage.
But the idea of sacrificing uh a system with which 77 percent of the American people, according to the New York Times are content uh in order to solve a problem that isn't there and that will only add more costs and more time uh and more pain, because that's what it boils down to.
If you're waiting for a hip replacement, if you're waiting three years with severe incontinence for a simple half-hour procedure, uh what that is is human pain.
Uh you control costs by keeping you in more pain.
Uh so I think this is an interesting I think this is an interesting exercise in testing the l limits uh, as it were, of liberal guilt.
Uh, because as we know, uh I think liberals and and in fact a large number of the American people uh have b uh have decided that, okay, it's bad that there are uh whatever it is, 40, 45, 50, who knows what it's up to now.
So many millions of unemployed uh uninsured people.
Surely uh Obama said, Look, we can insure all these people, you can keep your health care coverage, and we're going to control costs.
That is not going to happen.
That is not going to happen.
Of all the of all the variable outcomes in the reforms that are being proposed, the idea that your personal health care will stay unchanged, and the idea uh that uh this will not add any costs and will in fact save uh money, those two things uh you can guarantee are not going to happen.
Uh so we're going to talk about health care.
We're going to talk about the problems with the socialized system, and we're gonna and we'll talk too about the problems with the American system, uh, which is not the problem uh that the uh government and the Congress and the do something now, do something quick, do something big and expensive crowd say it is.
Uh lots more straight ahead, Mark Stein sitting in for rush on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
1800, 282-2882.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
What's the Mark Mark Snyder sitting in for a rush?
I don't know whether what's that, the the uh Uyghur party died on the beach, but I don't know.
That's great.
Mark Snyde sitting in for rush on the EIB network.
Uh we're talking about health care.
The so-called health care crisis, the so-called health care crisis, which is not a crisis.
Uh and uh when people when people say it is a crisis, uh they they they they pick these statistics.
Uh for example, according to the United Nations, life expectancy in the United States is 78, whereas in the United Kingdom it's uh 79.
So like that's great for socialized health care, isn't it?
You get an extra year of life uh under socialized health care in in the UK.
But uh the these life expectancy figures are all but uh meaningless.
I mean, they've basically all gone up in the same direction uh over the years, regardless.
In Albania, for example, in Albania, where the entire population chain smokes and the health care system basically involves swimming to Italy, uh life expectancy is still 71 years, uh about where America was uh a generation or so back.
Basically, once you get childhood mortality under control and you observe basic hygiene and lifestyle precautions, the health system is relatively marginal to that.
You can never obviously you can never spend enough on health care because the outcome is always gonna be a disaster.
You're still gonna die.
We can spend even more trillions and trillions and trillions uh on health care, and you are still gonna die, even under President Obama, even President Obama, he can lower the rise of the oceans, but even President Obama has not found a way yet to eliminate death uh from the American way of life.
So there is never ever going to be a perfect health care system.
And the reality is that all these bits and bobs uh about life expectancy uh rates and all the rest uh uh are marginal.
What is at issue here is liberty.
Uh Once you uh have government health care, it uh licenses the government to do anything in the interests of health care.
Uh for example, in Britain uh they deny uh hip replacements in some parts of the country, they didn't in East Anglia, uh I think it is, they deny hip replacements uh to the overweight on the grounds that uh th they overweight and made their choice to uh uh uh to chow down on Twinkies, and so they're not going to be rewarded uh with a uh government hip, even though they paid for it in their taxes.
In Manchester, uh they will deny you treatment for heart disease if you're a smoker.
You made your choice, you lit your cigarette, uh so even though you paid uh you've paid enough in your taxes for like three chronic illnesses every year, we're not going to treat you for this.
And the health secretary says it's entirely appropriate uh to make uh when you have a government system to ration uh health care on the basis of lifestyle choices.
So that basically means that once you have government health care, uh the government can uh uh ca can impact any other area of your life.
They're now uh f they've installed these security cameras.
You know these things, these uh b uh uh cameras they have uh on the interstates or whatever to check whether you're speed cameras, to check whether you're speeding.
They've now installed super duper cameras that can see inside your car to see if you're eating a cheese sandwich, uh to see if you're eating a donut, uh, because you're no longer allowed to eat in cars in Britain, because if you and for the same basis as they did with the motorcycle helmets, if you have a crash, if you have an accident because uh you're having a cheese uh uh a cheese sandwich in your car, you have to be treated in a government hospital at government expense.
And so that that fact, that simple fact of government health care redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state and enables them to pass a whole bunch of uh uh of other laws uh uh uh in uh in in respect of all kinds of other activities.
That's what that's what's wrong with it.
As I said, these things are all marginal.
Uh and the best thing you can do with health care, the problem with American health care is that essentially we've uh uh allowed too many third parties and and now with the government a massive fourth party to intrude uh in what ought to be a customer-client relationship.
There's a lady doctor I know in uh California, and the Californian health system has been destroyed by illegal immigration and all the rest of it.
So it has particular problems.
It's a good snapshot of what things will be like uh in the rest of the country in some ways.
Uh and she basically uh uh and uh and uh uh some friends of hers have have started running things where they don't take any uh HMOs, they don't take any insurers.
It's a straight cash transaction.
Uh you go to see her because you've stubbed your toe, uh she'll treat you for the stub toe and you write a check.
You go to see her because you've got a headache, you'll she w you write a check for the headache.
A straight customer-supplier relationship.
And you'd be surprised once you simplify health care and return it as much as possible uh to a normal customer-supplier relationship, uh how affordable, how affordable it is.
Uh the problem is, is if you uh is what we've done by uh uh creating an insurance-based system is we're in we're insuring for something that's gonna happen.
We're ensuring for something that is bound to happen.
Most of the things you buy insurance for are highly unlikely to happen.
Um you uh buy insurance for your car uh because it's a remote possibility that you're gonna flip over, uh career across the median, uh roll three times uh off the uh off the highway.
That is uh most unlikely to happen.
That's why you insure against it, uh and that's why the insurance is affordable.
If you insure your house uh against the possibility of it burning down, the likelihood of your house catching fire and burning to the ground is very remote.
Uh but health care is not healthcare is not remote.
We're all going to need something at some time in our life.
So the idea of erecting a vast bureaucracy to insure against the inevitable uh is an absurd basis to account for most health care, for most health care.
It would be entirely reasonable uh to have uh ca insurance for catastrophic health care for rare chronic diseases or whatever, but just insurance for everything.
Uh and Obama wants to make this worse, by the way.
Uh Obama's theory now is preventive health care.
So in other words, he wants to give you checks for everything.
Wouldn't it be great if instead of uh discovering you've got high cholesterol when you keel over from a massive heart attack when you're fifty-eight, if you could be tested every six months to see if you're at risk from high cholesterol from the age of twelve.
Uh And uh in in the in the uh in the big picture, that is marginal.
That will be a marginal benefit to people, uh, but will cost a huge amount of money, uh which is why it's attractive to Obama, because the minute it becomes a huge, unwieldy, expensive government bureaucracy, it's a permanent feature of life, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
And that's why Republicans need to resist this in Congress, because we cross this line, we can never go back.
It fundamentally redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state.
It brings it closer to something like junkie and pusher, uh, and it makes it highly unlikely you can ever have genuinely conservative government uh ever again.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the Rush Limbaugh Show from the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Yes, your undocumented Anchorman here today, Mark Davis in tomorrow rush back uh Wednesday.
Uh we're talking about health care.
Let's go to uh Tracy in uh Warsaw, Indiana.
Tracy, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Hi, Mark, thanks for taking my call.
My pleasure.
I I just have a comment on um the this opinion liberals have about socialized medicine being so much more superior than what we currently have.
Uh the the bleeding hearts kind of like to go on and on and say, the problem is we have a for-profit health care system, and as long as it is for profit, we're uh it's always gonna uh have problems.
Well, here's my situation.
This is this is not in theory, this is actually happening to my family.
My seventeen month old daughter who has Down syndrome is currently getting chemotherapy for um leukemia.
Now, she's seeing two different specialists, a cardiologist who is from India, right, and an oncologist who is from Indonesia.
They are two of the most highly regarded specialists in the entire world, and they are practicing their trade in the United States.
That is because we have a capitalist for-profit health care system.
These men who are the best and brightest in the world come to our country to practice their trade because they can make a fortune here.
They can provide for their families and they can practice in a uh a way that's encumbered only by the insurance companies, which again it's not perfect, but my daughter's prognosis is positive, and she's going to recover from this disease because the best in best health care in the world is being provided to her.
Yes, and and and that's actually uh a very good point about the medical profession.
Uh doctors from all over the you can find in American hospitals doctors uh from all over the world.
And it is uh it is because they can make a good living here.
But it's also uh, I think, Tracy, because when you work in government systems, uh the government has too much control over the people you have to see, the hours you have to work, and in some jurisdictions, even where you practice.
Uh for example, in parts of Canada, in uh in Quebec, uh you can't practice in you might have friends and family in Montreal, but you can't practice in Montreal.
They say, no, you have to go way up north and practice and have a surgery in Lac Saint-Jean.
The government, the c the Quebec government uh tells the doctors which towns to practice in.
Uh that's that's the degree of control.
And you're right that that's why uh talented uh medical professionals come to the United States and in countries where they have advanced socialized systems uh like the United Kingdom, uh medicine ceases to be a middle class profession.
It's no longer attractive to the middle class anymore.
Why would you want to be a government bureaucrat and work in a dingy building for the whole of your life?
It's not something that's attractive to them.
You wouldn't.
And and in theory, if we were already under this uh socialized medical uh kind of uh format, my daughter would be in danger of not even being approved by the bureaucrats to even get treatment because having Down syndrome, she's not someone who is a can be projected out to be a contributor to the system.
Yes, and that happens uh very very frequently that they decide that certain people are not uh uh not a priority for whatever reason and that they're not going to invest uh a lot of money in them.
Those health care, the the di the dis the health care decisions that you can make as a parent, uh more and more of those are taken out of your hands uh when you're when you're in a government system.
Uh thanks thanks very much for your uh for your call, Tracy.
Uh you know, one of the other I think features that uh pe people don't understand is that the the the health system actually becomes a problem uh once it becomes a government system because above anything else the hospitals get dirtier.
They become terrible incubators of disease.
If you look at SARS, for example, which spread because in from rural parts of China, not the Uyghur parts of China, by the way, I should ha I hasten to add.
Non Uyghur areas of China.
Uh people a pig, a pig is a prize.
Obviously, Uyghurs are Muslim, so a pig isn't a prize profession.
But uh in the non-Uyger parts of China, a pig is a prize profession, uh prize possession.
So they uh they sleep with them in the li in the living room.
The pig sleeps in the oh well the maybe the pig gets the master bedroom and the guy sleeps in the living room.
I don't know.
Anyway, they like their pigs, and so the pigs sleep in the house.
And so the this thing SARS jumped from the uh the uh the porcine community to to the uh to the to the human community, and then some cousin goes up to visit his pal in in Hong Kong and uh spreads it to everyone in the elevator and they fly around the world.
What happened in Toronto?
Uh in Toronto it was spread by the medical system.
Uh the person with SARS who went to be treated by SARS was left on a gurney in emergency, coffin and hacking away for I think it was forty-eight, seventy-two hours before he was seen, uh and at that point he'd infected a whole bunch of other people in the room, including visiting Americans, uh uh members of some, I think a charismatic or an evangelical Christian group or something, who then went back to upstate New York and uh and and infected a whole bunch of people in upstate New York.
Essentially uh the uh Scarborough Hospital in Toronto incubated SARS and spread it to the general population.
If you look at uh in the United Kingdom, you go into hospital to be treated for disease A, you will come out with disease B, one of these uh uh these strange uh i infections that now uh uh essentially exist only in hospitals.
If you go into a hospital, you get them.
Uh my father's currently being treated in a uh British hospital, and uh every time he goes in, he comes out with this thing called C. difficile.
C. difficile is essentially a hygiene issue.
And it's because uh socialized hospitals are so decrepit and the staff are so overworked that even basic hygiene procedures are not uh are are not observed.
Another friend of mine miscarried.
Uh she felt herself miscarrying, went to the Royal Victoria Hospital, uh started to bleed all sat there in emergency, bleeding all over the floor, the pool of blood spreading all over the floor to surrounding persons in the room.
Uh eventually a nurse came out and said that you'll still have to wait for the doctor.
By the way, could you stop bleeding?
She said, I can't stop bleeding.
I'm miscarrying.
Uh uh a cleaner comes through with a dirty mop, uh, wipes the blood, streaks the blood up the corridor, past everyone, all the dirty blood, up the corridor, uh into whatever the next ward is.
Uh but she's run her mop over it once, and so that's okay.
Um chlamydia.
If you don't know what chlamydia is, uh consider yourself very lucky.
Labrador, the Labrador healthcare system gave whatever in Labrador, there's nobody in Labrador.
It's like there's uh mosquitoes the size of golf balls uh and a few Inuit, and that's it.
But otherwise nobody in uh nobody in uh nobody in uh uh it's where it's where like your big shot you're you're you're uh really highly skilled fishermen like to go on fishing trips.
Uh it's almost as good as the beaches at Palau.
So maybe we'll see Uyghur fishing tourism in Labrador.
But uh the uh Labrador, uh the hospital there gave chlamydia and as I said, if you don't know what it is, consider yourself grateful.
Uh the consider yourself very lucky.
They they gave it to like a hundred and twenty women in this one hospital because they didn't rinse the spatula or whatever you call it, between between patients.
Because, you know, when you're in a socialized system, you're always short of everything, there's never enough of e anything, there's never enough time.
What happens?
You don't wash your hands between patients.
Uh you have one cleaner with one dirty mop for two floors of the hospital.
You forget to wash the spatula or whatever you call it uh between between uh between patients.
You go into hospital and you come out with a new disease that you didn't that you didn't previously have.
Uh that is the big problem uh with uh that is one of the things uh that happens with socialized health care.
Now here, I love I love it when you go in I love the character of uh uh of American hospitals.
When you g when you go too often when you go to hospitals, uh I've been treated, by the way, I've been treated I hate to make it sound as if I'm this wee sickly little thing.
I've been treated in a lot of hospitals.
I um uh I ha I I've been treated under the Bulgarian health care system, which is an interesting glimpse of how uh you'll be I went on a skiing trip to Bulgaria.
There was a great deal.
And there was a reason it was a great deal, it's because the the the the uh the toe lift broke my uh broke my knee on the first day to because it wasn't it's not like these sophisticated lifts you'd have at Vail or whatever.
So although it only cost thirty-seven bucks, it ended up uh tearing a ligament money.
So put put a big cast on me a big plastic cast, I get back and uh they saw off the cast, and I'm like howling in pain as the guy's doctor sawing it off.
I'm going, ah and he goes, You big sissy, you big fairy, you big girly boy.
What are you screaming for?
Howling in pain.
He gets the cast off my leg.
There's a huge gash from my upper thigh all the way down to my ankle.
He goes, Oh, I guess they use really thin c plaster in Bulgaria.
Uh that is socialized health care.
They save on everything.
There's never enough on everything, and yet the cost of the system, because of the cost of the bureaucracy is just explosive.
Uh we're we're talking about healthcare on the Rush Limbaugh Show, and we will have lots more straight ahead on the EIB network.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush on the EIB network talking about health care.
Here's a here's a headline to treasure on on uh on socialized health care.
Man's broken neck misdiagnosed a severe headache.
I hate it when that happens.
That's uh two days ago, uh Paul Curtis of Carlingford, Australia.
Uh he had a uh chip out of his spine uh but they gave him some uh headache pill.
They told him actually they didn't even give him a headache, they just told him to take a couple of aspirin.
Go home.
Uh let's go to Denise in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, one of uh one of the great uh town names on the U.S. map.
And uh and not just a uh Tow town name, not just a quiz show, but uh in in actual fact uh a good moral lesson in life.
Truth or consequences.
Denise, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Hi, Mark.
I'll say something nice before I tell you how mad I am at you.
Okay.
Um you're the only guest toss we listen to in Rush isn't there.
Oh, that's that's very sweet.
But the other guys are good too.
Listen to Mark Davis tomorrow.
Okay, I take it that's the nice thing.
That's the nice thing.
That uh That's the nice thing.
The other I'm really mad at you.
Are you?
Yes, I'll tell you.
My husband and I are in this donut hole.
Right.
Um I have uh we're both disabled.
Um we're only in our late forties.
We worked hard our whole life.
We've never asked the government for anything.
But I'll tell you, this Donut Hall thing is terrible.
Uh we're on like fifteen medications.
It costs like twenty five hundred dollars for three medications a month.
We've been in a both been in our donor hall since February.
I think you're wrong.
I think it's only twenty seven hundred that's covered.
And then you have to come up with the next five thousand.
Right.
We owe more on medications a month than we bring in.
Yeah.
Now now but j but just let's let's let's uh let's pull back a little and and think about that.
Uh because there's two approaches to that.
Uh you can have a you could ha you and your husband are disabled.
Now the right right from the start, that puts you in a in a relatively unusual category uh in the United States because they're not there aren't and you're in and you're as you say, you're you're in your forties.
So this happened young.
Yeah.
And and so what is the solution to to your situation?
Is the solution uh to develop a vast universal plan for everybody uh that plugs that donut hole, or to do a more targeted one?
And the answer I would say uh is to do something targeted uh rather than do something in which uh in in which relatively uh wealthy people uh can afford who can afford their prescription drugs, have it picked up by the uh the few remaining taxpayers who are our net contributors.
But but I would also say something else, uh Denise, which I think is the case, is that if you take the government out of health care as much as you can, uh Then the cost of a lot of those prescription drugs would actually uh reflect uh the market reality.
Uh and I th I think I think for example, uh I think for example, once you once you have government annex a big demographic in health care, as it does with seniors.
And seniors, generally speaking, need more uh routine health care in the form of prescription drugs than other people.
Well, well one thing that does is it artificially distorts the market.
It's like i i in a sense uh prescription drugs becomes like a company town.
You know, in a company town uh y you you have one big market where there's no if you have a if you have the government, there's no particular accountability for cost or anything.
So in a sense, it's an artificial price that is set for whatever particular pill it is.
It's not a it's not a price for the pill that reflects the market.
It's a price for the pill that reflects the fact uh that it's the tab for it is being picked up in a vast government bureaucracy.
So it would be in your interest, I think.
I think it would be in your interest uh to support the reprivatization of significant portions of American health care uh and that would bring down the cost of the and that would bring down the cost of those drugs.
It's the it's the existing government distortion.
Yeah.
No, I I don't want socialized medicine.
I don't because I am a very sick person, I see a lot of doctors and I'm scared to death that I would have to wait in line or that they would just say, you know what, she's gonna die eventually anyway, forget her, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
You don't want that.
Well, and you you certainly don't want uh you certainly don't want to be in a socialized system where you're waiting longer uh between treatment uh and where as you say they've determined that you're not a priority, so it's not worth spending any money or these strange codes you have, these strange little check marks you see at the end of the bed in socialized hospitals, which are to do with whether it's worth the nurse calling the doctor if something goes wrong with this patient or whether it's just leaving him because you know, we you're not that important, so why bother saving you?
Uh Denise, I I think I think the the solution for your problem uh is not more government more government uh annexation uh to the universal point will only put up the cost of those drugs and give you worse treatment in the in the long run.
But I certainly didn't I certainly didn't mean to uh to insult you, so I hope you'll uh you'll keep listening.
I just think I just think they need to figure out I don't mean that the government has to take over the the donut hall, but somebody has to get rid of it.
Because there's gotta be other people and there's gotta be seniors like me that are living month to month uh on you know what the government gives them.
Well I mean we paid into it uh it's exactly when you but that's the point.
When you say you pay into it, you never get back.
That's that's why government plans never work, because everybody talks about, oh, we paid into it and we never get it back.
That's because there's no s there's no market.
Everything else uh everything else in real terms comes down.
They invent new things and the price comes down.
Uh they invent uh you know, they invent a computer and it's a huge thing uh and no hardly anyone can afford it, and then it becomes routine and it can uh and everybody has it.
That's what happens.
Luxury products become routine products.
Uh when the government takes over things, uh routine products eventually become uh luxury products that you have to wait months and months and years and years for, which is the problem uh with government health care.
But th thanks for your call, Denise.
We've got to run, got to take a break, uh and we will be back because we are one of the few remaining outposts of American life that has not yet been bailed out by the government.
Uh we'll be back with more straight ahead on the EIB network.
Mark Stein sitting in for rush on the EIB network.
You know, my favorite example, the defining example of Canadian uh health care and socialized health care in general, uh is is a story I like about uh a lady called Deborah Cornthwaite, who gave birth to two twin boys at the Royal Alexandria Hospital in Edmonton.
That's in Alberta.
She'd begun the day by going to her local maternity ward at Langley Memorial Hospital, which is in British Columbia.
Her contractions were coming for every four minutes.
They said, uh sorry, we don't have a bed, but here you can call 1800 BC bedline and they will tell you whether there are any beds at any other hospitals.
And there were no hospitals in any other uh hospital in the province of uh no beds at any other hospital in the province of British Columbia.
So after spending seven hours uh doing red tape and paperwork, uh they graciously agree to let her drive to the airport, put her on a chartered twin prop to Edmonton, Alberta.
By that point the contractions were coming every two and a half minutes.
And most Lamar's classes uh don't teach you how to uh time your breathing to turbulence over the Rockies in a twin prop.
Uh how many, how many uh how many Americans want to do that uh on delivery day?
You pack your bag and head to the local hospital in Oakland, and they say, Great news, we got a bed for you in Denver.
That is socialized healthcare, the ten-month wait for the maternity ward.
You really do not want to introduce this system here, America.
Mark Snyder sitting in for rush on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
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