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Sept. 2, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:48
September 2, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Great to be with you.
America's Anchorman is away.
He returns Monday.
This is your undocumented Anchorman here today and tomorrow.
The great Walter E. Williams will be here on Friday.
And Rush returns with his uh voice all rested and recovered on uh Monday.
It's very important that if you're in the this line of work, you've got to keep your voice in in great shape.
I saw poor old Whitney Houston uh had a uh it was supposed to be her big comeback thing on Good Morning America uh yesterday, and it all went uh hor horribly wrong because her voice cracked and she couldn't reach the notes or whatever, and she blamed it because she'd been been uh talking to Oprah, apparently on the day before.
I think it was more to do with the fact that she was brooding over this uh extraordinary headline in the Daily Mail in London.
Obsessed Bin Laden wanted to kill Whitney Houston's husband.
Uh apparently Osama bin Laden is in love with Whitney Houston.
He's uh he's an obsessed with Whitney Houston, and he's so fanatically jealous he wants to kill her husband uh uh Bobby Brown.
This is according to a lady called a Sudanese poet called Cola Boof, who was uh Osama bin Laden's sex slave uh Tayotin years ago.
Uh and uh and uh she says that Osama told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
He kept coming back to Whitney Houston.
Uh he said that he had a paramount desire for Whitney Houston.
Uh and although he claimed music was evil, he spoke of someday spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try to arrange a meeting with the superstar.
We don't need to send more troops to Afghanistan.
We just need to like bombard.
What we need to do is strategically place in the foothills of the Hindu Kush speakers playing Whitney Houston singing I Will Always Love You.
And Osama, Osama will hear the music and be drawn towards it.
He'll come out for whatever cave he had his dialysis machine uh hooked up in at the moment.
He'll be there.
He'll be back at the uh in the the back of the cave in Waziristan by the executive latrine, you know, the prime position that only Osama has the right to go to, and he will hear the strains of Whitney singing I Will Always Love You.
The good version, not like the one she tried to do on Good Morning America, where voice is all shot and everything, but like the the the real version of it.
And he'll think, Oh, she's come for me.
She's got rid of that loser Bobby Brown, and he'll come wandering out, and that's it, the whole Afghan situation solved right there.
That's that's right.
I love the I love the sound of Whitney in the morning.
Uh that's uh that's that's what they're gonna do when they come to make the uh make the film of it.
Uh Rick Rick actually had a very good point, and we got distracted on it because I was uh going on about Chicago, best places to eat in Chicago, because me and O me and uh President Obama got like uh like the older Rugula joints and uh and he was talking about the Chop House.
And uh Catherine, did you say that's right?
Did I hear that right?
That there's a hot dog place in in Chicago that serves a foie gras dog?
Yeah, uh they did it when Chicago did their Frog Rad Ban as sort of like uh screw you.
They came up with the Frag Rod dog.
They've got a Foie, you know, because this was like John Kerry's thing.
Uh every every time he tried to be Mr. Normal American when he was like campaigning, he'd he'd be at like a hot dog joint, and uh they'd say, Well, how do you want it?
And he'd say, Oh, I'd like it drizzled in an uh aubergine and raspberry coole if you've got one.
Uh so he would clearly have been at home in the Foagra hot dog joint in uh in Chicago.
Uh but Rick uh aside from the restaurant recommendations, Rick made an important point.
Rick i Rick is what people love about America.
He lost his job a year and a half ago.
What does he do?
He doesn't uh he doesn't say, Well, why can't Obama pay my mortgage and why can't Obama take care of my car payments?
Uh, and why can't my uh why can't Obama find me some government make work job?
He founded his own business.
That that is that is the great thing about America.
That's what drives America, that's what supports America is small business.
And we have done terrible things to we do terrible things to small business uh in this country.
Uh we overtax them, we overregulate them, we have some of the most uncompetitive uh corporate tax rates uh in the world.
Uh and we uh uh and we're proposing to make them worse.
We've got the situation I mentioned this when I was here a couple of weeks ago.
Uh Tim Horton's Donuts, uh, which serves donuts on both sides of the 49th parallel, Canada and America.
It's incorporated in the State of Delaware.
It's reorganizing itself as a Canadian company to take advantage of Canadian corporate tax rates.
We do terrible things to business in this country.
And yet at the same time people come here because they want to live the way Rick lived.
They want they want the right to control their own destiny to say, well, I uh I've I've lost my job, but I'm going to form my own business.
I'm gonna uh get up, uh I'm I don't need a government handout, uh I'm gonna go and do it myself.
And it's interesting to me that the the the the worst thing about big government is not that it costs too much money, but it costs too much, I would say, in a deeper sense that uh that it uh that it actually uh atrophies the human spirit.
Uh I w I mentioned earlier that I was in London uh uh uh couple of days ago last week all last week and it was interesting to me wandering around uh you'd go into like coffee joints, uh the post office, uh department stores, very rarely were you served by a Londoner.
In all the coffee places and all the equivalents of Starbucks and everything, it's all these Polish baristas now and from other parts of Eastern Europe.
They're all talking in Polish behind the counter.
And is this because uh Britain has full employment uh and so uh Londoners uh don't need to do these jobs these are jobs that uh Londoners won't do to to to put it in the lines people use about immigration here.
No, not at all.
There are staggering figures for the number of people who have opted generationally out of work completely in Britain uh since they introduced the welfare state if you go back uh to uh the uh the time the Labour government, Tony Blair came in in 1997.
Five million Britain.
Now, we all got excited here because the unemployment rate tipped up to about 10% in the United States.
And that's high enough to have commentators alarmed.
In the United Kingdom, there are five million grown-ups, or about 10% of the entire adult population, who haven't worked a single day since Tony Blair's Labour Party came to power in 1997.
These are people who aren't unemployed.
They understand that the welfare state no longer requires them to work.
And there is no stigma attached to not working, that, in fact, you can exist entirely on government handouts, and you won't be disapproved of it.
It will be regarded as...
entirely normal.
In one sixth of British households not a single family member works.
One fifth of uh British children are raised in homes in which no adult works.
And this and that's uh that's kind of common right across uh Europe.
Uh you you don't have to game the you're not gaming the system.
The system lets you do this uh perfectly uh uh legally four-fifths of French imams are on the dole.
So all these people who are calling for the overthrow of Western civilization are actually taxpayer funded.
With this will be the first this will be the first taxpayer funded civilizational downfall in history.
We say we say to Saudi uh imams hey hey come to uh come come uh come come over to uh Europe come over to North America don't worry don't worry if you if you can't find one of the big time mosques to pay you a big six figure figure salary we'll we'll let you be on the dole.
One of the chief Al-Qaeda recruiters uh was living on benefits in Britain uh and he had a quarter of a million dollars in his checking account at the time the so-called Department of Work wondered if they were were giving him uh way too many handouts.
Uh that is what Rick is talking about that at some point you reach a you reach a stage where the where it has become entirely natural for millions and millions and millions and millions of people to do no work.
Their children do no work their grandchildren do no work you have generational dependency.
And I don't want to see the United States go down the same track that other parts of the Western world have done and as I said not only because it's unaffordable which it is in the fiscal sense but it's unaffordable in the moral sense.
It absolutely corrodes any citizenship in any meaningful sense.
And someone like Rick, someone like Rick, he got a tough break.
He got laid off a year and a half ago and he to as he told us and so what does he do?
He looks on it not not as something that requires government intervention, uh but as something that in fact is an opportunity for him.
He forms his own business.
Uh he hires people.
That is the that is the American way.
Uh and when you look at the failed parts of this country, which are increasing in number, I I regret to say, but when you look at them, when you look at say uh New Orleans, which uh Mark Davis was talking about uh yesterday now uh New Orleans had had democratic government for the last half century.
They had done everything the Democratic Party way.
Uh they had had uh big government, big welfare uh and all the rest of it.
And there is simply no point.
You can't build a city on that.
You cannot you can't you can a and that is why uh when when uh Katrina sweeps in and devastates everything, you have the spectacular sight of all those uh uh the school buses that were supposed to evacuate people instead sitting in a parking lot full of water uh because uh somebody the big government had failed and had not sent it to rescue people.
But look, if you're in a place when the the tsunami hits and you're waiting for government, whether state government or local government or uh never mind federal government to do something for you, you're looking at it all wrong.
If something's gonna sweep in uh and blow away your home and you think uh it's George W. Bush's responsibility in some big city thousands of miles away, you're looking at the situation all wrong.
The only one of the few good stories to come out of New Orleans uh in that period when all those school buses were sitting rotting in that big pool of water that nobody had sent them out to rescue people was some kid, I think he was fifteen or sixteen and he commandeered a school bus and and rescued himself and a whole bunch of other people and drove it out of there.
And the reaction of course of the uh city of New Orleans was to want to prosecute him uh for for for for driving without an official school bus license or whatever the hell it was but that's that's the point.
His he he demonstrated initiative and the trouble with big government is if is it eventually it kills initiative.
It kills initiative and you have this dead dull uh intergenerational dependency where you can have three, four people three, four generations of a family that have never worked, which is now becoming the situation parts of the United Kingdom, parts uh of uh of Europe.
Uh there's uh a suburb of Stockholm where twenty percent of women in their forties are on disability benefit.
Why?
Is Stockholm a particularly dangerous place to live?
Do you do you injure yourself and find yourself unable to work in all kinds of weird ways?
No.
What happens is the people figure out uh that when you can live off the government you don't need to work.
Uh the essence of Western civilization and society, which is self-reliant citizens taking responsibility for their own lives dies.
It's happened in large parts of Europe and it doesn't have to happen here.
So don't let it happen here.
Mark Stein in for rush on the Rush Limbaugh Show, lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein InfoRush on the EIB network.
Great to be with you.
Let's go to Dan in Cookville, Tennessee.
Danks for waiting.
Great to have you with us.
Mark I'd like to take a stab at uh telling people why the uh stimulus uh package uh especially in transportation is not gonna work and first of all I'd have to I want to assume that you don't know uh all everything there is to know about American history although you seem to know more than too many Americans.
I haven't I haven't had the benefit of an American education which may be why I'm up to speed on some of it.
But uh go a go ahead Dan Well let's get let's go back to 1956 uh when the interstate system was uh first conceived the uh Congress demanded that uh these roads connect major centers, major um uh uh cities that and these cities uh had very high uh per capita incomes they were uh perhaps overperforming uh in and what we we call today uh uh it it was an attempt to get the greatest good for
the greatest number.
Right.
And so um the whole uh package we have now in the stimulus is exact opposite.
You can't spend stimulus money unless the county or the city is underperforming.
Now then if you go back to nineteen fifty six, uh there's some economists have have figured and I don't know how they did this, but they figured that uh uh we got a rate of return or we got a dollar and thirty cents back for every dollar we spent on the Interstate.
And uh they're very flummoxed and and concerned because when they do the same calculation today that same rate of return is declining and it may be down to six cents on the dollar.
Yeah and and and you're absolutely right that the reason is because what they were doing when uh in the uh Eisenhower days in nineteen fifty six when they put in the interstate system was uh uh in a sense putting in infrastructure uh for what were already uh successful dynamic uh parts of the country where so in a in a sense they were supporting the market the market's decisions there.
Here they're trying to stimulate the economy by saying, well, here's some broken down rural township in the middle of nowhere uh so we're gonna put a paved road through it in defiance of market reality.
Well not only that uh so we've got a uh in Tennessee here we have a I sixty nine project it's gonna cost about twelve million dollars per mile it's over in the West End, you know parallel to the Mississippi River.
And uh it will not make enough money to pay for itself.
You know, here in Tennessee we get about two and a half cents per vehicle mile.
And if you put the amount of traffic on that at two and a half cents a vehicle mile, we cannot buy back that uh uh pavement over forty years at a five percent interest rate and so it does not pay for itself.
So we'll have inadequate future sums coming in to pay for the money that we're going out.
And there's there's one other thing that that uh gives me concern is that if you go look in the Bureau of uh transportation statistics and look at how much Americans pay for transportation, it's only been above twelve percent once and below ten percent once in all the data that they've got.
It averages about eleven point seven percent of disposable income.
Now your disposable income is what you make minus taxes.
And so if you increase taxes your disposable income goes down.
And so no matter who's the president, no matter who's you know, Americans are going to spend that uh on the car, on the insurance, on the gasoline, on the oil.
And and so you know we're uh for some reason that I don't even understand that's very fixed in our psyche or or I don't understand why it's so fixed, but we're not gonna spend a whole lot more than that.
And you can if you take it out of the general fund and put it into our um highway fund or whatever, it's still going to be about that percentage.
And I I think that's the reason that uh I don't have any great expectation that that we're going to do that.
And also we have a bunch of people in the highway department who are perfectly uh willing to let the interstate decline.
Here in Tennessee uh we have a road that goes from Memphis to Bristol.
It's uh I forty and and I eighty one they're gonna let that thing decline to serve what they call service level D. And if you were an engineer you would know that they're gonna let that thing drop to an average of fifty four miles.
That's uh that's you're you're you're right there uh you're right there, Dan.
And what is irritating to me about this vast highway construction thing is it is nothing to do with stimulating the economy.
It is stimulating the federal government's role in transportation infrastructure.
And that is not for the reasons that the Eisenhower administration created the original interstate network as a way of facilitating the throughways of American commerce.
And making them perform more effectively but for entirely different reasons in hopes of social distortion to ease out.
up as you said inequities between so called underperforming areas and in most cases uh they're not even performing any necessary infrastructure work they're just taking off the top layer of uh of pavement and they're and they're re-skimming it over and over.
I've just seen I've seen that every time uh the last couple of times have driven to the airport to come down to New York to do the uh the Rush show.
Uh it's exact the the the the they that's all they're doing on the bridges.
They're gonna have to do it again uh on some of these roads when the frost heaves in my part of the world break all the roads up uh in the winter.
Uh so all they've done in effect is use taxpayer dollars for a temporary and superfluous skim coat on the highway.
So we'll talk about that a much more straight ahead on the EIB network one eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two Mark Stein sitting in for us today and tomorrow Walter Williams will be here on Friday.
Great uh great to be with you.
You know we were talking about uh President Obama's speech to these school kids that he's doing on September the eighth the Eagle Bay Elementary School in uh in Farmington uh is in Farmington, Utah is already uh showing a uh celebrity video uh uh about Obama that was made by Ashton Kutcher that great thinker and let's let's face it we're all glad to hear that more and more Ashton Kutcher is being uh taught to our schoolchildren.
Uh he it's a video pledgeon in which various big time celebrities well that's to say you'll actually have heard of maybe two or three of them uh pledge to devote themselves to service to the president.
They pledge altogether quote pledge to be a servant to our president and to all mankind because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek, unquote.
No doubt it sounds a lot better when uh Whitney Houston does it as the big power ballad on Good Morning America but uh th the idea of these celebrity obots uh uh uh supporting the personality cult around the president being taught in the Eagle Bay Elementary School in Farmington,
Utah is what a lot of the what a lot of the problem is the personality cult uh is uh is unbecoming uh to a republic of citizen legislators and and that's why we shouldn't be doing it.
Let's go to Jill who's been waiting a long time.
Jill in Ithaca New York, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Mark Stein sitting in for Rush, great to have you with us.
Hello Jill.
Thank you Mark Hello Mark.
Um well it's interesting you talk about celebrity culture because Mr. Limbaugh is part of that so that's interesting he would point that out.
Yeah and what are the chances by the way of rush videos being played in American grade schools.
If you can if you can find me that school district I will personally well the parents that um would want that are the ones that are probably going to keep their kids out of school if that's legal or not on the first day.
I mean all the president is probably going to say and if George Bush addressed children I wouldn't have been upset.
I would have checked it out but I wouldn't have been upset.
Rush uh Mr Obama is probably just gonna you know uh try to coax them to do well in school.
I don't think that's so horrible.
He is the president.
He did win which you some people just seem to forget yeah but no no let's that because this gets that gets to the uh this this gets to the heart of the the matter here.
The President of the United States is not an absolute monarch.
He is someone who, and this is why he, long before there was an official amendment constraining presidents to serve two terms only, it was understood that presidents only serve two terms because they came from the people and they returned to the people, as Calvin Coolidge, a great citizen president, said.
And there's no more moving sight.
It has more power and impact on me than any of the great monuments to great kings and emperors than to see Calvin Coolidge's simple granite headstone exactly the same as the seven generations of Coolidge's before him because it makes the point that he understands he is not an absolute monarch.
He is not a personality cult.
He simply is a citizen representative.
He governs on behalf of the people and he is not the sovereign, but he is the temporary custodian of our interests.
Yes.
And...
Well, come on, not just yeah.
What about yay go?
We'll do the modest syllables.
It's not what is is, and unfortunately I don't like it.
However, our country has devolved into becoming somewhat of a celebrity culture, and I find it offensive myself, but that's what is.
You can't fight what is at once.
You have to work on it.
Okay, now, Jill, you originally called because I think you disagreed with my view of the simpletons in Wyoming who didn't seem to understand that the health care deal that they were being offered by the government was in fact in their interest.
The public option, it's an option.
The word option means choice.
No one is being forced into anything.
People do need a choice, and that's what this is.
This is what is the underlying factor.
The bill has not been passed.
There's different forms to it.
Well, wait a minute then.
Why is it that people in rural states, and a lot of other states too, as we see on these tea parties, are they so overwhelmingly opposed to it?
Because you're getting a select group of people it's a select group the American people voted for Barack Obama because he was going to bring change and one of those changes is an option to their insurance care.
I don't want to have somebody like Stephen Helmsley one of the CEOs of an insurance company making seven hundred million dollars while people are turned away by insurance.
It happens all the time and anyone who's listening to the show knows that.
They know if it's not them they know of someone who's been Well why but wait a wait a minute you say this is a self-selecting group of the Tea Parties.
The the numbers on the polls aren't self-selecting.
They're entirely representative and they're showing uh an ever greater hostility to the uh governmentalization of health care.
Why why don't people Because of well part of that, just part of it is because those people listen to people like Rush and Glenn Beck and Michael Savage because those people are waiting iron on some level by corporations.
Right so like corporations do not want to so rush and Glen uh Beck and everyone else we're all on the payroll of the Inser in some form you are definitely Rush has a corporate debt my niece just saw it.
Do you think the average person has a but it's flying over her house now just to taunt her.
Uh what is what's the look the the figure the what this is where this is where Jill I I I part company from you.
You're many ways a charming person.
But the assumption no I can tell that you've got uh you've got that uh yeah I like your voice I like your voice.
If uh if uh if the uh call screener has taken your number I may call you after the show you're in Ithaca that's not far from New Hampshire.
You seem like a very charming person.
But what is wrong is the assumption of bad faith.
The assumption of bad faith that somehow those of us who want dynamic private health care in the United States...
What's so dynamic about turning people away because they can't afford the premium?
What is dynamic about that?
The thing about...
You're arguing there.
What you're actually getting to is the difference between health care and health treatment.
don't get turned away I have seen people in uh the uh in the Dominion Canada and the United Kingdom including my own relatives who do get turned away even though they've been even though they they've been taxed up to the hilt to pay for it.
On the other hand I had someone staying with me who got taken sick and I thought she was having a stroke.
She's a foreigner uh doesn't have uh any she's she's not paying the seven hundred million dollar salary check for any American insurer uh and I took her to the hospital and they did more tests on her in the two hours that she was in that hospital uh than she was uh than she'd had uh in the United Kingdom uh all the time uh she'd been living there and seeing the doctor every month.
There's a difference between health care and health treatment and health treatment Americans have access to it uh and have the best available state of the art health treatment not all Americans have access.
I disagree with you and I was in just in Nova Scotia, Canada, where my father in law had fusion surgery on his back.
He's eighty seven and the Canadian doctors did it and it was taking time in that case.
Well, just a minute, Jill.
In that case, why are hospital have hospitals in Detroit just signed an agreement with the government of Ontario to provide services that the Ontario government health care plan can't provide.
Why is it that if you're in Windsor, Ontario and you need an angioplasty, you have to go to Detroit.
Because possibly certain things are done in this country.
American.
It's a cultural thing, is it?
Canadians can't just can't handle the angioplasty thing, right?
Oh, Mark.
It's like female circumcision in Sudan.
It's just not a local feature of life, is it?
It's just a second.
Wait a second.
My father-in-law could not find my sister-in-law was the one who looked for an American doctor to do the spinal fusion.
The man is 87, so of course it's a very delicate operation.
They could not find an American doctor to do it.
The Canadian doctor did it and did it well, and thank God the man's recovering and and may be playing golf pretty soon.
Well, I'm I'm glad I'm I I'm glad uh for your father-in-law and I'm happy for him.
But when we talk about backs, for example, and spines, that's a very interesting thing.
Uh in I had a uh letter from a reader the other day who is in Scotland and he wants an X-ray for his back.
He can't get an X-ray for his back because uh, in a sense his back uh has no individual identity.
Uh they have a government bureaucrat has ruled that you can't x-ray backs in Scotland.
Don't ask me why.
It's just they've got a the a government bureaucrat has allocated a sum of money to backs, Scottish backs in general, and that budget that is out that line item in the budget for Scottish backs does not extend to the cost of an X-ray.
And that's one thing that people in Wyoming get.
When when you think that they're voting against their self-interest, that somehow they're too dumb to understand that Obama's got their best interests at heart.
They understand that in fact, in fact, uh what happens is that governmentalization destroys the concept of self-interest.
You don't have any self-interest.
Obama decid when Obama decides what your self-interest is, it is by definition no longer self-interest.
And that's like that Scotsman and his back.
That Scotsman thinks he knows what his back needs, uh but a bureaucrat has ruled that in fact uh his back has no self-interest.
They're only the collective interests of Scottish backs.
And that's what people understand, uh all the Rube Hicks uh in the tar paper shacks in Wyoming and everywhere else understand uh that uh that uh the price for letting Obama do make all the decisions about your so-called self-interest, is that in the end you no longer have self-interest.
You no longer have self-interest.
By definition, once the government uh is making decisions about key aspects of your life, self-interest becomes an obsolescent concept.
But that's what the insurance companies in this country are doing presently.
So the insurance company and I'm not gonna just end that.
No, no, but wait a minute, wait a minute, Jill.
There's two two two thoughts here, two thoughts here.
First off, nobody says, look, you're you're with Mr. Miss m m Mr. Hardhearted uh insurance company of uh of Pocatello, and uh that guy's on the 700 million dollars and he's flying around in his corporate jet and you're lying there waiting for your angioplasty, uh, but you didn't read clause uh 734 of the contract, so you can't have an angioplasty.
In the end, in the end, what every uh American can do is say nuts to that, I'm out of here and go somewhere else, including writing a check if they want the angioplasty.
Uh they still have that freedom.
In Scotland and in Canada and in other countries, you can't do that.
That's why those angioplasty patients from Windsor, Ontario are in Detroit.
They have to leave the country.
They have to leave the country uh to exercise their rights as freeborn citizens.
Because that guy with the angioplasty uh uh on his heart, uh effectively the government has nationalized his heart.
They say no, you don't have any say in that, our bureaucrat does.
And that's the difference, Jill.
Who's been talking lately, her husband died from I believe it was bladder cancer, because the insurance companies would not take care of him.
There are a lot of unfortunately a lot of the people.
Yes, but but I'm just I'm just you have a range of options here.
There's there's a ton of people who uh there's uh there's a ton uh people here.
Uh uh this is th th th this is the point to take away, Jill.
If I if I have to come round, uh get your number from from the call screener and come round and explain to you in person.
Uh I'm willing to do it.
Is there are multiple ways in America.
In America, you can have uh insurance company A, insurance company B, insurance company C, you can have no insurance, you can write a check.
Uh you can uh you can uh in the end decide you're gonna have to sell your car to get the treatment, or you can decide to dispense with the treatment.
You're a free person, you can make multiple decisions, uh multiple decisions.
In government systems, there's only one decision, and it's made by a bureaucrat.
Uh and if it's chest pains and you need the angioplasty, and you're like the poor young 22-year-old guy in uh Rivier de Prairie, Quebec, who went round there uh and the bureaucrat said he hadn't brought his government card with him, even though he was in the computer, and they send him home.
He collapsed and keeled over and died.
And he was the only way, uh he's the only source uh of getting an angioplasty in Quebec is the government.
There's just one.
There's a monopoly, there's a monopoly provider.
There's no monopoly here.
There are choices here.
Uh and that's what I want to that's what I want to keep.
Thanks for your call, Jill.
We gotta we gotta move on, I'm afraid.
Uh the Rush Limbore show, more on the EIB network straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
Let's quickly get a Brian in Salt Lake City.
Brian, uh, we don't have much time, but you are on the air.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Mark, nice talking to you.
Uh just listening.
Uh you know, these people if they can't afford health care, they need to get a job and they need to make payments.
Not rely on the government.
This is why our children are growing the way they are.
They have no responsibility nowadays.
That's that's a that's uh that's a great that's a great point, Brian.
And uh you're you're right.
Basically, in the end, uh, you know, health care costs what it does, and we have to be able to afford it.
But actually, I'm always surprised uh when you when you break it down how affordable it is.
I was talking about this uh lady I had sent with me and we had to go to emergency.
She had a cat scan, she had X-rays, she had blood work done.
We got a bill, uh they send it along uh a couple of weeks later for like three hundred and fifty dollars.
Uh yeah, that's a lot of money.
But compared to what?
Compared to what?
Compared to eating in those restaurants in Chicago we were talking about uh uh compared to the costtier cable package.
Health care, health care is something that people should pay for and should understand in market terms.
Because if you're not prepared to spend three hundred and fifty dollars on your life, on your life, because well, that's a bit much, and I was planning to spend it on my cable package, you're not functioning as a fully adult human being.
That's exactly why health care uh should remain in the private sector and as private individual decisions.
And yes, stupid people will make stupid decisions, and they ultimately they will die be beyond that, uh because of that.
But the price of insulating themselves from the realities of adulthood is too high.
By definition, that becomes a totalitarian society, even if it's a beguilingly soft, fluffy, uh nice, soft focused totalitarian society.
It's your body.
Take care of it.
If you don't, you'll die.
It's that easy.
Uh but it is something that you should be taking in a uh uh a fully formed citizen of a free society should be able to take care of that himself uh without a distant government stepping in and doing it uh doing it for him.
Mark Stein in for rush, more in a moment.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
Well, I I got a little too excited uh talking to Jill from Ithaca there.
I I think I could use an angioplasty myself after that.
Uh uh fortunately it's only uh a three year wait for that in Canada, so uh I should be I should be fixed up uh real soon.
Uh uh I'm uh here tomorrow, and then uh Walter Williams is gonna be taking care of business on Friday, and Rush comes back uh on Monday uh fighting fit.
But remember, uh don't get annoyed with the Jill from Ithagas.
We gotta convert them one by one.
That's the secret, folks.
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