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Aug. 18, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:49
August 18, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Hey, great to be with you.
America's Anchorman is off today, so this is your undocumented anchor man sitting in.
Uh Rush is out in Los Angeles filming uh not filming, we got into all this last day voicing his animated performance uh on the family guy.
Uh and uh he'll he'll be back tomorrow to take you through the end of the week.
Don't worry, don't worry, this isn't just an interim stage before he does the full Tom Delay and signs up with dancing uh dancing with the stars.
He's not gonna be doing that.
Tom DeLay is going head to head with uh Donnie Osmond on dancing with the stars.
They uh the hammer takes the uh the dance floor.
Don't know why, don't know why.
There's got to be some reason for it.
Tom Delay, the hammer has been put away.
Uh so he's now uh gonna be he's tangling across the floor on dancing with the stars.
But no way, Rush is just he's just doing a bit of uh voice uh voice part on the family guy.
He's singing a bit.
Uh no dancing is involved, as uh he's not doing uh the Chacho or the Marengay.
Nun none HR denies there's none of that.
So he'll be back uh here tomorrow to take you uh to take you through the end of the week.
Uh which we can talk about health care, because this is I think what people realize is that uh this is a huge gamble.
Uh and uh th obviously the question then is, is it worth taking this huge gamble?
And is it worth letting uh a handful of fellas who've never really run anything, never generated any wealth, never created any wealth, never uh uh had to make payroll on even a small business, uh uh put uh letting them annex one sixth of the US economy.
Uh and I think it's very hard to say that that is a gamble worth taking.
Uh but it's what is striking about other countries is that when they go down this road, they always uh put it in moral terms.
They say, Essentially we are morally obligated uh to do this.
Uh that that's for was what uh Roy Romano, who is the uh big Canadian politician in charge of the uh last health care reform up in Canada.
Uh he he defended the government control of health care on the grounds that uh as he put it uh uh quote Canadians view Medicare as a moral enterprise, not as a business venture, unquote.
You know, because if it was a business venture, uh they'd say, Wow, you've got stomach pains, great, we'll sign you up for surgery, we'll operate now, you'll be out of here, uh, and uh you'll be cured of it, and we'll send you the bill and we'll make money because this is a business venture.
Uh but instead uh they say no, it's a moral enterprise, not a business venture.
So in order that there's an equality of awfulness, you all have to sit around waiting.
That's the theory.
That is the theory.
Uh in fact, uh and it was exactly on the same basis that they introduced national health care in Britain.
The uh Nye Bevan, the British health minister, in 1948, when he inaugurated the National Health Service, uh he said, quote, Britain now has the moral leadership of the world, because what they objected to was that there were different health uh outcomes according to your status in society.
If you were a big wealthy guy, uh you could afford to buy the best health care treatment in the world and you would live till 80.
Uh whereas if you were just uh uh a working stiff, you wouldn't be able to buy the b best health care treatment in the world, and so you'd keel over and die fifteen years younger.
And they were concerned about that.
And they wanted to equalize health care outcomes.
Yeah, and and and you would think as H.R. pointed out, the fair thing would be that we all die at sixty-five.
Nobody lives till eighty.
It's the equality of awfulness.
But instead, what's actually happened is that since 1948, the health care disparity in Britain has widened.
Uh you've got now neighborhoods in Glasgow, neighborhoods in Glasgow, which is the biggest city in Scotland, where male life expectancy is 53.
53.
That's below Russia.
Uh it's not just below Russia, it's heading down to West African standards.
Uh that is worse.
The health care disparities uh have worsened since 1948.
So so much for the big uh moral uh moral uh venture of government health care.
Uh th there's almost an incidentally, by the way, just on a philosophical point.
I don't see what's so moral about uh saying to freeborn citizens, uh no, you know are no longer uh have control of your own health care.
I think it's actually immoral uh to say to uh adult citizens, no, you're a child, uh, and the big government nanny has to make these uh decisions uh to you uh for you.
But anyway, that but that that was the thing.
Uh you you know, we may be uh feeling sicker longer, hanging around in dirtier waiting rooms, but but our disease-ridden bodies will be warmed by the glow of knowing we did the right thing for everybody.
That was the thesis in Canada, that was the uh thesis in Britain.
Uh that's the basis on which uh government health care is introduced uh everywhere around uh uh around the world.
And it is not true.
Uh what happens is uh that either the uh statistics diverge in alarming ways, as in Britain, or more covertly, as in Canada, uh, where people come south of the border to get treated, uh, where cabinet ministers and big time hockey players can access quietly access higher levels of uh government health care just like they used to do in the Soviet Union.
Uh but the but the moral basis for health care uh is always the pitch that's that's made.
Now you think about it.
There people keep going on about this uh this uh life expectancy figure, because there are a few a few months more that you get in the European Union.
Uh if you take the European Union average, uh you get about six more months of of life expectancy at birth than you do in the United States.
Now there are reasons for that.
Uh the the uh people who are pushing Obamacare want us to believe that the reason is that uh whatever it is, 45, 50 million Americans uh have no health insurance in the United States.
Now you look at that.
That's one sixth of the population.
And if if it was true that one sixth of the population uh is basically vulnerable and dying in the streets, there would be a much greater disparity in life expectancy uh than a mere six months between between uh the United States and the European Union uh average.
Uh the the r the the reality is that treatment uh is actually uh very easy to secure in America.
You know, if you if you walk in into an emergency room bleeding, uh they have to they have to treat you.
That's nothing to do with government systems or insurance or anything.
That's the Hippocratic Oath.
If you're sick, if you're bleeding and you stagger into uh the hospital, you have to be treated.
Health care, health care is uh is a slightly different uh business uh w uh and it's true that that normally involves getting a doctor who'll want to know certain things about your uh ability to pay or your insurer or whatever.
Uh but at the same time, uh that's n that's not impossible either.
Uh the idea that there are 50 million people who are who are unhealthy because they can't get treated for their medical problems is false.
And by the way, if you want to know the difference between health care and health treatment, I had an elderly British visitor uh this month, and uh she goes to see the doctor every month uh at her surgery over in uh in in the United Kingdom.
Because it's easy to do.
Uh you you make the appointment, you go and you go and see them, and he sits with her.
She's got a recurring problem with her left hand.
And uh he he can't use her left hand, so he's given up driving and all the rest of it.
Uh can hardly dress herself all the rest of it.
So she goes see the doctor every month, and he says, uh, well, you've got to get used to diminished mobility at your age, so why don't you take uh a couple of paracetamol and rest up.
Paracetamol is like uh the British version of uh Tylenol, and it's a kind of strong aspirin.
So she goes to see him every month uh with this arm for the best part of ten years now.
She comes to to stay with us in New Hampshire, her arm swells up alarmingly, and I'm thinking, wow, I wonder if she's about to have a stroke or something, uh because our whole uh left arm is getting stiff.
So we take her to this like broken down, no account, no frills, no nothing, undistinguished hospital in rural northern New Hampshire.
Uh and in a couple of hours they give her a CAT scan, uh they uh give her x-rays, they do blood work, the whole lot.
They give her all the stuff that the uh the socialized health care system in Britain that she's paid into her entire adult life uh won't give her.
And they find out uh that she's got gout, they diagnose her with the gout, and they give her a prescription to deal with the gout, which is a long term illness, a long term illness that this doctor she goes to see every month uh in her own country somehow uh unaccountably missed.
Because he can't sign her up for the tests.
Because the tests are regulated by what Sarah Palin would call a death panel.
Uh the tests are expensive, they have to be rationed.
Uh and so the Sarah Palin death panel uh says, no, uh you'd have to wait for this one, you can't have that one, you need so many references for this one, you've got to do this for that, that, blah, blah, blah, and you never get it.
What you get is to chat with the doctor who listens sympathetically and then tells you to take a couple of Tylenol.
Uh in a couple of hours, in a in a nothing tiny minimal uh rural northern New Hampshire hospital, uh, she was diagnosed with what had been ailing her for years and given something to deal with it.
And that's the difference between care and treatment.
Care, health care is is fine if you just want to go and chit-chat uh with uh with uh with somebody in a white coat uh in in a uh uh in a clinical look in office to no purpose, month in, month out for years.
Health treatment, when it comes to health treatment, uh the United States is the best country in the world, which is why all the innovative health uh procedures in the world start here, which is why all the drugs are developed uh here.
You take out, you take out the uh the free market portion, the life-saving drugs, the new procedures, you uh you governmentalize all that uh and you will have the same situation as you have in the United Kingdom where the up-to-date procedures, the up-to-date procedures, the latest technologies are not available to the ordinary citizen.
1-800-282-2882 Markstein Inforush, talking healthcare on the EIB network.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein Inforush.
Let's go to Gail in Chandler, Arizona.
Gail, thank you for waiting.
Thanks for joining us on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hey Mark, how fun it is to be able to talk with you today.
First of all, I have to say I love your accent.
Oh, it's very hard keeping it up for three hours, believe me.
I would uh I would have picked a much easier one to do if I'd known the show was this long.
And your sense of humor and your laugh.
I also like what you say too.
But that comes a distant third.
Oh, well, that's that's okay, I'll take that.
Hey, well, what I want to talk about today is uh this whole Washington mentality that we have to do something, that the status quo isn't quite good enough.
And what people don't even dream of is that what the government does w might actually make things worse than they are now.
Now, my 91-year-old mother told me yesterday that all the Congress people are in hiding.
So if they're all in hiding, what I propose is a permanent paid vacation.
Now think think about it, Mark.
Think about it.
Don't you think I'd be a lot cheaper to do that than to implement health care reform?
Oh, no, absolutely.
The best thing you could do for to solve the problem of the debt and the deficits and everything else is to say to Congress, look, we sent these uh four Uyghurs from Gitmo to Bermuda.
We're gonna do the same for you for two years.
We're gonna pay you for two years to sit on the beach at Bermuda.
You don't have to do any legislating, just enjoy the sun, the sea, the beautiful women, uh just sit there on the beach.
That would so that would do more to solve America's problems uh than getting them to actually legislate these twelve hundred page unread bills that they pass every week.
You're you're absolutely right there.
That's an inspired uh that's that's an inspired notion.
Uh you'd have to probably have to do it as a constitutional amendment.
Um I'm not sure it would get past Justice uh Sotomayor, so you might you might have problems with that.
But it it that you're you're right.
The the basic the the line, don't just do something, stand there.
There's a lot of truth in that.
A lot of the problems that um the the the United States has comes from legislating in a hurry.
Uh and uh if you look at the Sarbane's Oxley, for example, the the response to the Enron uh collapse when suddenly they said, Oh, these companies are unregulated, we've got to do this, we've got to do that.
If you notice now, we don't have these IPOs we used to have.
In the nineties, they used to have these uh these public offerings that would come up for companies as they went public.
Uh and it used to be a big thing, people would talk about the initial share price and all the rest of it, it would be in the papers.
It was it was like a fashion of the time.
And they passed Sarbanes Oxley, and that went away because they made the costs of going public too high, uh, and they made it easier uh to go public uh on the the London Stock Exchange or the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, uh and and uh they they raised the bar so high that actually getting listed on Wall Street was no longer worth it.
That's a classic example of how uh a a hasty legislative uh congressional solution to a problem that would have gone away naturally uh became chiseled in granite in perpetuity uh by careless legislation and that's exactly the same uh as will happen with health care and cap and trade and all the rest.
If you keep distorting uh the natural processes, the ebb and flow of the market, you're only going to make things worse.
So Gail, you're you're right and we should pass the hat around.
I mean if we can't start with all congressmen, I think we should at least pick a a top ten that could join the Uyghurs on the beach in Bermuda.
Uh you know, maybe with Barney Frank and uh a uh Congressman Waxman and uh Nancy Pelosi and a couple of other and we but let's get our inspector in there as well.
So if we ever to have a top ten list, uh they could be the ones to join the the Uyghurs on the beach.
Are you confident you can sell this to your neighbors at least Gail.
Yes I can tell it to my neighbors you know it reminds me of the old saying uh first the government cripples you and then they sell you crutches.
Yes, that's very true.
That's very true.
And under Obamacare there's going to be a waiting uh a waiting time for crutches as well.
It'll only be three years.
You'll get used to hopping.
You'll get used to hopping.
It'll it'll it'll work you'd be surprised how easy that is and it's you'll be able to hop down to the mall and most of the shops will have closed anyway so there's not gonna you'll hop around the dust windblown the tumbleweeds blowing through the mall you'll hop around for a bit, get you out of the house, get a bit of circulation.
Yeah, into your remaining functioning leg, and eventually the crutches will come through.
Thank thanks very much for your call Gail in Chart Lauder.
Let's quickly go to Richard in Conroy, Texas.
Richard, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show great to have you with us.
Well uh thank you very much Mark and it's a pleasure to get through you.
Uh I just uh my my communist basically uh uh is on the health care and and uh it's something that you don't hear Democrats or Republicans either one.
You know, you hear the Republicans talk about tort reform and you won't hear the Democrats, but you don't hear either one of them talking about the problems that we're having down here.
And the problem is basically is the illegals come in and they go to the emergency rooms here in the hospital in the big cities.
Right and that's the biggest cost that we face down here in our in our medical system in Texas.
And so they will not shut that border down.
You know, where's the fence they were supposed to build no and and it's a signific it's a significant feature.
Essentially the Southwestern United States emergency rooms have become the Mexican medical system.
Exactly.
And in California it's crippling the system and the governor the governor uh stands up and gives a speech every every few months uh pledging to uh end disease.
He gave a speech uh a couple of years ago pledging to end disease.
Not uh just this disease or that disease but all disease.
This is a guy whose entire uh health system is on the verge of collapse because it's been overwhelmed uh by illegal immigrants uh getting first world uh health treatment uh through the emergency rooms of California hospitals.
And they're doing the same thing here in Texas and I don't hear the Republicans talking about doing anything about that either.
As a matter of fact when George Bush was in there, you know uh he's uh you know he was uh for amnesty for these people.
Oh no his his the uh the President's great line was family values don't stop at the Rio Grande, which is true.
But America stops at the Rio Grande.
That you would think that would enter into his calculations of uh of these things.
You know this is this is a absolutely uh vital point, Richard, because if you when the people talk about these uh fifty million uh uninsured Americans, 45 million uninsured Americans, twenty percent of them are not American.
Twenty percent of them are foreigners.
Uh a lot of that twenty percent are people who shouldn't be in the in the uh in the country in the first place.
Others are people who are here on temporary visas, others are permanent residents or whatever.
But the idea that uh America has an obligation uh to provide health services to people who are in the country illegally uh I think is uh I think is very doubtful.
And what's interesting is that under the whole death panel scenario, you know, you'll be an eighty seven year old who's paid his taxes all his life, but they're not going to give you the procedure because they think it's it's it's it's more in the country's interest to give it a to a thirty eight year old uh illegal immigrant uh who shouldn't even be here in the first place.
So that is a uh that is an interesting point, Richard, and thank you uh thank you for making it.
Uh that's Richard from Conroy, Texas, and it's true, the Southwest of the United States uh uh has really uh had its uh health services overwhelmed by trying to cater uh for people that it shouldn't really have to cater for.
Yeah, all these people that don't have health care.
Which actually which is great now.
I mean, again, Mexico, where are Mexicans gonna go once uh once the United States has a uh has this government health care.
Eventually there's going to be huge traffic accidents from Canadians fleeing Canadian health care south and Mexicans fleeing Mexican health care north, they'll all uh collide around St. Louis and the entire Missouri health care system is going to be uh overwhelming.
This is why we need to act now.
This is why we should have let pass this bill in August and we could solve all these problems before the recess.
More straight ahead.
Great to be with you.
America's anchor man is away, but he returns tomorrow, and this is your undocumented Anchorman, no supporting paperwork whatsoever uh filling in and happy to be here.
An honor to be here.
I survived government health care, and I struggled across the border, and I got to the EIB studio, and it's uh it's uh always a privilege uh to be with you.
Let us go to Barb in Toledo.
Bob, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Mark, my hero.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Mark, um, you know, this statistic I've heard that our life expectancy is lower than that of European countries, and supposedly the reason is because they have national health care.
That's always bugged me.
So uh being kind of the nerd that I am.
Right.
I I went I went and looked up uh about a dozen different countries in Europe, and I noticed their population distribution and what their life expectancy was.
And in the majority of countries in Europe, there are I'd say ninety-two percent plus white Caucasian.
Right.
When you compare that to the United States, which is about seventy percent Caucasian, if you compare the Caucasian life expectancy of the U.S. with, say, Denmark and Sweden, our life expectancies are identical.
Right.
Uh and within it's within a year or two of most countries in Europe.
What causes our life expectancy to be lower is because we have a larger minority population who sadly have life expectancies on average five to ten years less.
And when you put that all into the you know, the big pot of statistics, that lowers I I hope I'm not getting too technical here.
No, no, you're you're make you're making what is uh uh a very sound uh point really, that the the uh the systems that uh and the countries that have uh high life expectancy uh tend to have uh small homogenous populations.
Uh and and and in a sense what that reflects is uh that life expectancy is as much to do with genetic and cultural variables uh as anything else.
The Japanese happen to be genetically a very healthy people.
Uh but when you when you have a huge continental size nation like the United States uh that is full of all kinds of different uh kinds of people uh from everywhere on the planet, you're gonna have a much wider range of variables than than than you would in Sweden or Norway.
I mean that Well, so i it it's really a false comparison, and then the those who make the argument uh I mean um that the reason is health care, they're they're making a a lot a common logical error that if um you know bec uh what's it called post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Right after this because of this.
Right.
That means that the reason that life expectancy is higher in Europe is because of national health care.
Well, the old thing that you've probably heard, you know, the old thing, well, you know, uh that would that would be like saying people there's probably a large percentage of people who have traffic accidents who had orange juice for breakfast.
That doesn't mean orange juice causes traffic accidents.
No, but I don't want to make a definitive uh uh uh pronouncement on that until we've set up a massive government inquiry and maybe spend a few billion dollars investigating.
Well, you don't want to let's not rush to conclusions there.
But but in terms of logic and comparative statistics, I mean the the arguments on the side of the proponents they're just flawed, and unfortunately I don't think.
No, and then you let's let's uh uh un unpack this li whole life expectancy thing uh uh uh uh uh a bit more carefully anyway.
Life expectancy at birth is the figure by which Americans do badly compared to Europeans.
Now there are certain kinds of reasons for that.
America has a slightly higher uh uh childhood infant mortality rate than other Western nations, and we can go into that.
That's a whole separate thing in some ways.
But when you get to life expectancy at 40, uh uh America's caught up with Britain, life Amer uh life expectancy at sixty, America is caught up with Germany, life expectancy at eighty, America has overtaken Sweden.
In other words, the longer you live in America, the better your chances of living longer are.
And why is that?
It's because Americans uh in early middle age and late middle age are free to make their own health care decisions and avail themselves of state of the art treatments, state of the art procedures, uh, and make decisions about their own health care.
So I would say if we're gonna if the if the life expectancy at birth is a reflection on socialized health care, the life expectancy at 40 statistics have got to be some kind of reflection uh on the benefits of American health care.
Well, I you know, I've Mark, I've said from the beginning that we have just not taken enough time to define the problem correctly, and and I think we're fixing the wrong problem.
And I that I I I actually now see I disagree with you on one thing.
I don't want to sound like your wife.
Right.
But I I disagree with you about the implementation of this.
I I think that this whole thing would collapse in implementation for a whole number of reasons which were, you know, we would take the time to take away.
Well you're you're you're saying that because no one has ever tried to design a uh a government health system on this scale before for three hundred million people.
And and you're uh and you're right to wonder whether anyone is actually capable of doing it.
Uh in uh I mean they they obviously have some kind of government system in uh Russia and China and whatnot, but nobody's ever done it for three hundred million uh people in an advanced society.
They've done it they've done it for four million Norwegians.
They've done it on that kind of scale.
Uh and whether it's actually possible, but you l you look at the uh National Health Service in England, which is the third biggest employer on the planet after the Chinese Army and the Indian Railways.
Now the Chinese Army, uh that's uh a country with a billion people.
The India uh railways, that's a country with a billion people.
You'd expect them to employ a lot of uh people.
Uh th the w with the with uh with with the England's National Health Service, we're talking about fifty million people, and it's the third largest employer on the planet.
You can imagine the size of bureaucracy uh that would be set in motion if you tried to do it for three hundred million people in the United States.
It doesn't bear thinking about.
Well, you know, Mark, I didn't they recently try to impose some kind of uh unified computer system in in Britain um on the National Health Service where they were going to try and unify all computer records or something.
And as I understand it, that effort collapsed, and you you you were already predisposed to national health care over there.
And when you implement something like that, it collapses because I'll tell you why it's gonna collapse in this country.
Because you're trying to impose a solution on a group of people who don't want it.
And im uh resistance is always the thing that undermines any kind of change effort.
I I will bet you money on that one.
Well, I hope you're right on on that, uh, Barb.
And uh I I I I'd like to be an optimist and I'm a happy warrior, but I'm I worry about creeping soft uh despotism, uh the velvet glove, we don't have to well, all this Hitler talk, you know, jack boots down the interstate.
It would be easy if it was that.
But when it's the velvet glove of the nanny state beguiling you into a uh a government comfort blanket, uh it'd be no matter how incompetent it is, eventually if you do it incrementally uh uh uh enough uh people get people get sucked into it and it becomes very difficult.
But I hope you I hope you're right, Barb.
And uh and thank you for your call.
I mean, uh j just to expand on what Bob was saying there about the difference between um uh trying to compare the US and Swedish health services.
You're talking about a small geographical area, small population, uh homogenous population.
When people go on about this life expectancy thing, uh the number one life expectancy in the world is Macau, which is a former Portuguese colony that is uh now part of China.
In other words, it's a town.
Macau is a town.
That's number one.
Number two is Andorra.
Uh Andorra, again, is this nothing little uh country uh in between uh France and Spain.
Uh and the uh the King of Spain and the President of France are the honorary co-princes of Andorra, which is this little thing, little pinprick on the map.
So that's so we got we got uh uh m Macau, uh basically one town, Andorra, that's number two.
Uh number four is Singapore, that's a city state.
Number uh five is San Marino, which is this little mountain enclave in the middle of Italy.
Number six is Hong Kong, another city state.
Number seven is Gibraltar, a British rock in the middle of the uh m uh uh Mediterranean.
Uh and uh you find Sweden, which Bob was talking about at number ten.
But what is uh striking about that list is that the the the highest life expectancy are in tiny jurisdictions, a very homogenous population.
Uh and and and the reason for that is Barb's point that the minute you've got a population of three hundred million spread out against the continent, uh descended from people of on every corner of the earth, you're gonna have far more variables in health outcome.
Because uh just you know, despite the amazing pap powers of big government, uh the cultural and genetic factors uh in life expectancy uh more than you know what procedure is licensed by what particular govern uh government bureaucrat.
And the the lesson to learn from all that is that um insofar as big government works and the welfare state works, it works in small uh homogenized uh countries uh where essentially the variables are all minimal and people can beh people behave in reasonably compatible ways with each other, and big government can work in that.
But when it when you have a huge uh country like the United States, as Barb says, it's doubtful whether you can even design a health system that would uh a health b try to design a health bureaucracy uh that would account for one sixth of the US economy.
And do you think uh as brilliant as they are that Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, people who've never run anything, never made anything, never created any wealth, uh whether these people could actually do it.
Uh Mark Stein in for rush on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
By the way, I mentioned Singapore there.
I actually quite like the Singapore health system uh because it's it's basically personal health accounts.
That's the sort of thing that could be introduced here very easily.
Uh basically be something similar to uh you put your money in an IRA, uh it would be tax-free.
If you spend it on uh insurance, spent it on treatment, spend it on prescription drugs, uh you wouldn't be you wouldn't be taxed when you use that money, but if you drew it out and decided to blow it all on Coke and hookers, then you'd have to pay tax on it as if it was income.
It would be very easy to introduce a system like that uh that would be market-based and would actually correct the drift away from the market, which is causing m um many of the problems in American health care.
But they don't want to do that because that doesn't uh that doesn't uh enlarge government and government's role in your life.
And th that's what's at stake here.
It's the express route to a permanent left of center political culture.
You want to get there in a hurry, you pass uh the government mentalization of health care, that gets you uh to a permanent left of center political culture.
Let's talk to John uh in Los Angeles, where uh where Rush is uh today recording his family guy uh uh bit.
You uh you haven't uh you haven't run into traffic caused by Russia's uh Russia's convoy ferrying him to do the uh the family guy thing, have you, John?
No, I haven't.
No, it's not like Michael Jackson's funeral then.
It's good to know.
Okay, John.
Where where where you're you're calling from uh your downtown Los Angeles or in the U.S. in in the suburbs, a little southeast of uh LA.
And you mentioned uh your struggles at the northern border, so I'd like to suggest uh try the Southern California border next time you need to come across.
Oh no, you won't have any problems there.
No, no, no.
That's a whole different thing.
I love California.
I usually when I uh illegally cross the border, uh the the Southern border, I usually stop by a couple of California polling stations and vote illegally in the elections, too, because that's uh that's a lot easier to do in than in New Hampshire.
You got everything's easy in California, unless you want to run a small business and make money and do things without a government car to get you like keeping our own money.
Yeah, that's that's that's getting increasingly difficult, isn't it?
If you need a ride next time, I'll come pick you up at the border.
Okay, that's great.
Uh that's good.
Are you got a nice car?
I don't want to be poked uh in in one of those like uh the trunk of one those tiny little European sized cars.
I want some I want the Lincoln Town car when I'm illegally being smuggled in across the board.
I uh I'm an evil uh gas guzzler.
I have a pickup truck.
Oh, great.
Okay.
Well just put me in the back, uh underneath the uh dirty nuke, and then they never spot it.
And uh I'll just come w whizzing straight in.
Okay, we got we've got that all sorted out.
My transportation needs a bit answered.
Thank you, John.
Uh uh w what what else did you want to talk about?
Well, I called because uh uh just over four months ago, I had uh I'm a firefighter, and I was at work and kind of started acting goofy, and they took me to the hospital and they found I had a brain tumor.
Oh right.
And uh I have uh uh as a member of uh the union, I have a PPO type insurance plan, and within nine days I'd had the appropriate tests and uh had been seen by a neurologist and neurosurgeon, and my surgery was done within nine days.
And uh when you mentioned uh in Canada that they're gonna do away with all these elective surgeries, uh my surgery was actually considered elective.
Right.
Even though it was uh a brain tumor, they uh you know, if under a government system, if they can say, oh no, that's an elective surgery, uh I can't imagine the boat I'd be in then.
Yes, because it's a benign uh well, for start, you wouldn't have been seen, uh you wouldn't have been diagnosed, seen by the specialist, operated on within nine days uh anywhere in the Dominion of Canada.
That wouldn't uh have happened.
And as you say, if it's a benign tumor, uh that comes under the category of elective surgery.
And and in uh many jurisdictions, uh what would happen is that they would just leave you they would just leave you sitting there with the tumor, no matter what it did to you, they'd they'd check in on you every few months.
Uh and at the point at which it became non-benign, then it would th then they would move you into the non-elective category and you'd put in the w be put in the wait time uh to uh to have the thing operated on.
But r but realistically you can see where this leads, because you can go to uh hospitals in the northern tier of the United States and uh find a lot of them full of uh Canadian cancer patients who can't get speedy, timely treatment in their own country.
Uh uh and eventually uh the because and we're not talking about people who pay privately, but the uh the government will pay will in the end say we can't find anywhere to treat this cancer patient, so we'll uh we'll send you down to die uh in a foreign country unsurrounded by tarsome loved ones.
Uh they bet the date the death panel, basically, in in the province of Quebec, the death panel allocates your death, outsources your death.
You don't even get to die uh uh in your own hometown surrounded by your own family.
They'll say, No, go die in uh you know you're a French speaking Quebec, go and die in Maine or New Hampshire.
You don't speak English, but don't worry, you got nothing they want to listen to anyway.
You just die and you're just m moaning, whining, complaining.
Uh you the death panel outsources your death to another country.
Uh John, uh I'm glad the the brain tumor thing w all well.
Well, I don't know.
Yeah, things are things are going well, and I should be uh I should be back at work probably uh before I would have even been seen by a specialist uh if I were somewhere else.
And uh hopefully within the next couple months uh I'll be back at work.
Well, you know, I checked with Rahm Emanuel, and they do say that with your condition, one of the terrible side effects is you can find yourself listening to right wing extremist talk radio.
So you want to be careful.
If that gets out of control, uh you might want to go and uh and see the government surgeon because they can put something in your head to deal with that, and it'll all work out uh fine.
Thanks, uh thanks for your call, John, and I'm glad it's working out, and I'm glad you got uh uh dealt with and treated with uh within nine days, because that ain't gonna be happening uh once uh the government system is in place.
Uh thanks uh thanks very much for your call.
More straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Or whether you're a brother, you're staying alive.
Not if the death paddles get their way.
The mother may st no, the mother will go, they'll keep the brother alone.
I don't know.
Uh anyway, I gotta run my incontinence operation has just come through at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.
I gotta get up there.
Rush will be back uh tomorrow uh for more excellence in broadcasting, fighting fit and refreshed on the EIB network.
Join him then.
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