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Dec. 17, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:54
December 17, 2009, Thursday, Hour #2
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 247 Podcast.
You, ladies and gentlemen, are listening to the Rush Limbaugh program, a program that has never lost to the Oakland Raiders.
Great to have you here.
Documented to be almost always right 99.5% of the time.
And we're going to get to your phone calls, El Quicko, little Bob Greasy lingo there in this hour.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
Here is the relevant passage from uh a press release put out today by Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate.
And here's the most outrageous part.
At the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the majority leaders conference room has even seen.
That's right.
The final bill that we will vote on isn't even the one we've had on the floor.
It's the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private.
And it involves, by the way, Senators Bennett and Wyden.
And it's a disguised bill to make it look like insurance will be taken care of in the private sector.
It does just the exact opposite.
And that's why they're holding it.
So this process has been totally corrupted.
100% totally corrupted.
Look at we have rules in the Senate.
We have rules in the House.
One of the reasons this country has held together is respect for those rules.
That's all been thrown out the window now.
I just was watching MSNBC.
Can Obama save the day at O at Copenhagen?
Could Obama get a deal?
This is all about Obama.
And nobody but Obama.
It's not about you, it's not about anybody else.
Obama says that the country will go bankrupt without health care reform.
Well, now wait a minute.
Isn't the real reason GM was going bankrupt was because of their health insurance and benefits?
Not the whole reason, but it was a large part of it, was it not?
Yes, it was.
So what was the solution for General Motors?
When General Motors was facing bankruptcy in part because of their health insurance and benefit costs, what'd they do?
Did they decide to give more people health insurance and benefits?
That's not the way I remember it.
They tried to cut them back.
They offloaded the pension plan to a government agency.
They were going bankrupt because of all these costs.
And yet Obama says we're going to go bankrupt unless we add to these costs.
Now, about the premiums going up, and my brilliant uh dissertation on why prices will go up in the private sector, even if the uh uh public options not there, and even if the Medicare buy-in is not there, it's not just preconditions that are mandated to be covered in the health care bills in either the House or the Senate.
There was a recent amendment that added uh mandating private insurers to provide mammogram and other women's issues coverage, including spousal abuse.
Insurance for spousal abuse, and mammograms, even though the amogram mammogram age is gonna be raised to the age of 50.
You you think of all the mandates that will be added on to private insurance.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
For example, if an insurance company cannot discriminate against preconditions, if they can't do it, if you got you got a pre-existing condition, they have to cover you.
The premium has to go up, but if they can't discriminate against preconditions, can they still charge more for smokers?
Can they charge more for mountain climbers?
Can they charge more for race car drivers?
Can they charge more for knife thrower assistance?
I don't know.
If they can, why?
I mean, if there if there's if there's if the insurance companies cannot discriminate against preconditions, a precondition could be defined as you smoke, fine, your premium's gonna go higher.
But if they can't discriminate against preconditions, they have to cover the high-risk people who are smoking 18 packs of cigarettes a day.
If they do, if they're forced to cover those kind of people, if they're forced to cover mountain climbers and race car drivers and other risky life behavior, what do you think the hell price is gonna do?
It's gonna skyrocket.
And this is a this is a little indication of what this bill is really all about.
It's not about health care, it's about controlling your life.
And if you can't get insurance because you're a race car driver, what are you going to do?
And if you if you if the insurance companies can discriminate against you, then who are you going to sue when they don't discriminate against pre-existing conditions?
This thing is just a it's it's a it's an unbridled mess.
Now, when you are covering, and I want to expand on this, when you are covering known illnesses, you're no longer insuring against something.
You are paying a monthly fee so others will cover your existing illnesses.
You're raising prices for everybody.
You are no longer a risk because your illness is a reality.
So this really isn't even insurance.
It is redistributing wealth.
Pure and simple.
I have always tried to impress upon everybody.
This is not about health care.
It is about the redistribution of wealth via the controlling of behavior of people and the ability to charge them more for whatever it is they do in their lives that is in the unapproved list that some bureaucracy comes up with.
Now, I don't want to be misunderstood here.
Because saying things like this can make people think that I, El Rushbow, am heartless.
And of course, this is the exact opposite.
I have a huge heart.
Boom boom, boo boom, boo boom.
I am not dumping on people who um who have illnesses.
Many of us have various illnesses and so forth.
But what is being discussed here is not insurance.
If, using my your house is on fire example, if you were allowed to buy a rider to your homeowner's insurance that covered fire, only after your house fire had started.
We're not talking insurance.
You're not being insured because the risk has already happened.
We're talking about something entirely different.
We're talking about the redistribution of wealth.
And this is why, in case you're also asking, why does Obama not care?
Everybody's saying he doesn't care what he wants, just get the bill now.
Just get the bill now.
This is why Obama wants anything he can get, any bill that he can get.
He sees this as a control issue.
If the bill is not as radical as he would like, they'll go back and they'll fix that.
They'll make it worse in subsequent years.
As bad as this bill is is horrible.
It is very bad, but they're not going to stop there.
Just like they didn't stop with Medicare.
Do you think when they came up with Medicare that they ever intended it to get this big?
Probably they did, but did they tell us it was going to happen?
No, Social Security ditto.
The idea that did Social Security reduce the budget deficit?
Did Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, did they keep the country from going bankrupt?
Or are they contributing factors to the country nearing bankruptcy?
Well, we all know the answer to that.
And of course, what will health care, if passed, end up being, but more of the same.
It's uh very simple.
And by the way, the timing, all the timing of this story from Reuters.
Just today, nearly 20% of the U.S. population, or almost 60 million people, went without health insurance at some point since January 2008, according to government estimates.
Estimates, nearly 20%, almost 60 million, went without health insurance, according to government estimates.
Released yesterday, the analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes as Democrat senators wrestle to pass their version of health reform legislation before the end of the year to help make good on Obama's top domestic goal of overhauling the nation's two and a half trillion dollar health care system.
Most of the focus so far has been on how to expand access to health insurance in a nation where coverage is closely tied to employment, but 10% of the workforce is unemployed.
More than 45 million people are uninsured.
Wait!
Obama said in his joint speech to Congress it was 30%.
My research has produced the fact that there are only 12 million people who want health insurance who don't have it.
and now it's now we're at 46, 45 million.
While the CDC's findings largely backed that figure, they also found 58.4 million lacked coverage at some point in the year prior to the survey, thirty-one point nine million, nearly eleven percent, did not have insurance for more than a year.
What convenient timing.
Oh, I sorry, later in the story, one bright spot in the report.
More children receive health coverage largely through the government.
How convenient.
What an amazing bit of timing for Reuters to come out with a story today.
More children received health coverage largely through the government.
I wonder whether that'd be the S chip program where children are calculated to be children up to the age of twenty-five or twenty-seven.
Let's now take a break.
What do we got on the phones?
Let us take a break because I we can come back and get to the phones, but I want to expand at some point a little bit on my opening comment.
Don't get all excited about Howard Dean flipping out and retrieving from the health care bill and some of the leftist wackos.
I think this is precisely what the White House wants.
It makes Obama look like he's not one of them when he is.
This makes Obama look like a reasonable centrist.
Makes Dean look like the hardcore leftist wacko, when in fact they're all hardcore leftist wackos.
Quick time out.
Your phone calls are next on the EIB network.
So the CDC, the centers for disease control and prevention, whatever the hell are called to say sixty million uninsured now.
Who are they?
Who were they?
How many illegals?
How many lost their jobs under the Democrats and lost health care as a result?
What's that statistic, CDC?
How many people don't have health insurance because of Barack Obama?
And Harry Reid and Pelosi and all the other Democrats and their economic policies.
How many can afford health care but choose not to buy it right now?
They talk about people unemployed.
You notice they don't talk about citizens unemployed.
And as for these numbers anyway, we're supp we're supposed to believe the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control about how many people go without insurance.
When it was the CDC that couldn't even predict how bad the swine flu would turn out to be, who couldn't even give proper instructions on how to diagnose it?
Who couldn't even get the vaccine program working right?
Could not even make it the proper strength for crying out, and that is their day job.
Not figuring who is and who isn't insured.
Who the hell are they?
Remember what I said earlier.
And I hate I you know I actually hate thinking this way.
But damn it, it's required because of who these people are.
Just because the government announces some figure on anything, your first reaction has got to be from now on suspicion.
The same bunch that couldn't predict how bad the swine flu would turn out to be, the same bunch that couldn't even make the vaccine at proper strength, is now telling us how many people didn't have insurance.
And getting vaccines right, telling people how to identify and diagnose the disease.
That's their job.
That is their day job.
What are they doing calculating the unemployed?
When did they take over the job of the labor department?
But the real big question is how many people are unemployed and thus lost their insurance because of Democrat policy?
Because of Barack Obama.
Because of Harry Reid.
All right to the phones, we're going to start in Hartford, Connecticut with Ferris.
Thank you, sir, for calling.
Great to have you here with us.
Underwater Ditto's from Hartford Brush.
Thank you.
And thanks for uh reading and recounting all the stitches on this fast curve ball called uh health care reform.
Uh very few uh hosts uh can see through the deceptions that are contained in all these uh gyrations, and just God help us if anything passes, because we all understand now, thanks to you that if we get this, it's just another step down toward the eventual single payer system.
Exactly.
But we have a plan B. We talked about that yesterday.
What there must there must be a plan B to break this thing up in a thousand pieces.
The spending doesn't start till 2014.
There'd be plenty of times to uh plenty of time to roll back some Provisions of this thing.
So all's not lost even if it does pass.
Well, I'd like to recall that uh being from Connecticut, our Senator Joe Lieberman had a chance to put an end to all this uh and back up what he said, but he chose to uh let it go ahead knowing that uh the trade offs would uh lead it where it is.
But I'd like to single out Tom Coburn.
Here's a man who I don't know.
I I stay pretty well tuned in as much as I can, not very much lately, and I'd like to ask for the prayers of your listeners from my mother.
But uh I've been uh distracted recently by Coburn's comments.
He seems to be a real leader, and by uh not only by calling for the reading of this 700 page uh Bernie Sanders amendment, by the way, he's not a Democrat um or a socialist, he's further to the left than that.
Um, but before that, Coburn sat with a sign above his his desk that uh just said no.
And uh somebody has to start saying no.
This man sounds like a real leader, somebody we can get behind, somebody like the fellow who spoke up in the speech that Obama gave and called him what he was a liar.
That'd be Joe Wilson.
Well, that's what this was a seminal moment yesterday for the Republicans.
It it it really was.
This is where they finally sprang into action and uh and and and started obstructing this thing.
And uh they uh both McConnell and Jim Dement and Coburn say they're gonna when they when they get this real travesty, when the whenever it shows up, they're gonna demand that it be read too.
Now the people who sponsor whoever's names are on the final health care bill will probably then you know have a fit and demand the clerk stop reading because they're pulling the bill.
If that happens, just remember, not only the the Senate rule is that every bill will be read.
The Senate rules that every bill will be read by the clerk.
Somebody always makes a motion to dispense with the reading.
By unanimous consent, they dispense with the reading.
Meaning don't even take a voice vote.
They just it's just you man everybody says, yeah, I got dispense with the reading.
Now, if somebody and all it takes is one senator to demand the bill be read, which is what happened yesterday.
Now that Senator must have a team with him to be on the floor at all times while the clerk is reading the bill.
And by the way, don't feel sorry for the clerk, because the clerks rotate in this process too.
There wasn't going to be some poor slub taking twenty-four hours to read the bill.
They probably alternate every ten pages or so.
So don't feel any sympathy for the clerks.
It's their job.
Plus they've got health care.
If they get sick or something happens while they're reading the bill.
Now, once the bill is being read, it requires unanimous consent to dispense with the reading, just as it required unanimous consent to dis to uh uh to dispense with the reading in the first place.
What happened yesterday was Bernie Sanders went in there and pulled his bill, and Ben Cardin, who was running the show in the Senate at the time, allowed the bill to be pulled without unanimous consent.
So I Senate rule and process has been corrupted.
And then the next time this happens, I expect the Republicans will object and say, nope, nope, nope, we're not going to stop reading this until you get unanimous consent to pull it, and you're not going to get unanimous consent because we're not going to vote to pull it.
So we'll keep a uh keep a sharp eye on that.
Steve and Fresno, California.
Hello, welcome to the EIB network.
Hey, good morning.
Thank you for being there.
Thank you, sir.
Uh I my opinion is that health care or health insurance are not rights or privileges, they're products.
And my question is why can't insurance companies do business uh nationally, but the fact is that government insurance will be available in all fifty states.
Well, the reason is that the states want control over what can and can't be included in a package.
That's why uh they can't sell insurance across state lines, is because the states are not uniform in their mandates.
But you're quite right.
I'm the public option will be available to everybody anywhere without any requirement that it be purchased from an agency within their state.
It's the ul it's the ultimate in economic hypocrisy.
Uh it's the ultimate in Marxism.
It's the ultimate in socialism.
We gotta we gotta start calling this for what it is.
Uh thanks, Steve, very much.
Potomac, Maryland, Kathy, great to have you with us.
Hello today.
Oh, Merry Christmas, Rush.
It's always a privilege to be in your classroom.
Thank you very much.
Same to you.
Ross, thank you so much.
I believe that this entire health care debate has become the civil rights issue of our time.
And if national health care passes, I call on our fellow freedom-loving citizen to take a page from the Solowinsky playbook and prepare for massive civil disobedience.
How do you how do you uh uh uh see that it's akin to the civil rights struggle?
Because it has to do with basic human dignity and human rights and freedom.
And as far as I can tell, these health care proposals will enslav, not give us freedom.
Just if the civil rights era was about giving people freedom and releasing them from slavery and prohibition.
Yeah, I would say this is not akin to the civil rights because they're trying to take all that away.
That's that's that's why I uh uh m made the point the other day.
I made just this point.
The the people are referring to it uh in in ways that are just the exact opposite.
It is a restriction on freedom.
It is not an expansion of freedom in any way, shape, manner, or form.
Now, let me tell you about Canada.
In my remaining moments before our next obscene profit timeout.
They have nearly 100% coverage in Canada, but you cannot get an MRI or an ultrasound or a knee replacement, a hip replacement.
You can't get cutting edge drugs or see a dentist, and you wait in line forever to get any of those things.
Now, this latest CDC statistic, and its timing, sixty million uninsured at one point or another in two thousand eight or since two thousand eight, that statistic and its timing demonstrates just how deep and broad the perversion of statistics and science has become in this government.
This government has corrupted science, academia, the four corners of deceit, as I uh continue to describe them as being.
All right, brief time out.
We'll let you hear Hugo Chavez get his uh reaction when we come back.
All right, I I I don't want to give up on this centers for disease control statistic or number that's sixty million Americans.
Sixty million people, they didn't specify Americans, they didn't specify citizens, have been without health care at one time or another, most of them for over a year, between two thousand and eight and the present.
How many people had health care when Obama became president?
And how many lost their health care since he became president?
What what's that number?
I want to know what that number is.
What are the if the CDC is going to abandon its day job and start counting up numbers of uninsured?
Let them look at that.
How many people have lost their health insurance since Obama was elected?
How many people had homes when Obama became president?
And how many have homes today?
How many have been foreclosed on?
Look up that number, CDC.
How many people had jobs when Obama became president?
And how many have lost those jobs?
How many have jobs today?
We know what that number is.
How many had savings accounts with money in them when Obama became president?
And how many have savings account with money in them today?
The answer, ladies and gentlemen, to the disaster that is Barack Obama and his policies, is not to expand his policies even more.
The answer here is to change course because he is an utter disaster.
He and his policies that are enacted by the Democrat Party in the House and Senate are disastrous by any way you measure how many people had jobs versus how many have them now.
How many people had health care before, and how many don't have it now?
How many had savings accounts with money in them?
How many people have savings accounts with no money in them since Obama was elected?
He's out there insulting everybody's intelligence, telling us the economy's reviving.
Yet his administration continually releases information to show that it's not.
Unemployment, housing insurance, look at it.
He wants us to believe he's doing great things, great numbers, and he has the CDC put out this number of sixty million uninsured.
We haven't heard that number before.
How how in hell can he say that the economy is revived?
How can he say we're coming back from the brink?
Housing ditto, insurance ditto, unemployment Ditto.
These are the questions that CNC, CDC ought to be providing our uh statistics for.
Now back to Copenhagen.
Hugo Chavez, the biggest applause line of the whole conference, showing you what the Global Warming Conference is really all about.
this is as a translator by the way because he speaks Spanish.
There's a ghost lurking.
There's a ghost lurking.
And Karl Marx says.
A ghost running through the street.
That ghost is silent somewhere in this room.
Amongst us.
It's a fantastic.
And that ghost.
Nobody wants to name him.
It's capitalism.
Capitalism is that ghost.
Nobody, I don't think, wants to name it.
Capitalism.
I wish we'd have left the applause in there, because it went on and on and on.
The applause was that was the biggest applause line of the entire conference so far.
The ghost in the room is capitalism.
And we're supposed to fork over mum.
That's right, we're supposed to fork over our money.
We are forking over our money to these people.
Hillary Clinton announced today a hundred billion dollars a year to these people, so that they can come out of this with saying they had some sign of success.
This is a conference that is designed purposely, primarily to destroy the United States.
This is about the destruction of capitalism free markets, the United States of America.
It gets the biggest applause of any line so far in the conference.
Hugo Chavez delivers it.
His people are starving.
His people are practically in chains in Venezuela.
These people applaud his reference to capitalism as a ghost.
This tells you exactly what this whole global warming snafu is about.
It's about attacking and destroying capitalism and the United States.
All these protesters that are over there and all these uh conference attendees, doesn't matter.
They could be at a WTO meeting, they could be at a climate change meeting like they're at now, they could be at any other meeting that the UN's in charge of, and all it is about is the destruction of the United States.
Then Chavez took a shot at Obama.
What the thing is, the climate salvador have saved it.
I think it's true.
If the climate was banking, a capitalist one of the biggest ones they would have saved it, the rich governments.
I think Obama isn't here yet.
He go and peace of the Nobel Peace Prize almost the same day as he sent 30,000 soldiers off to kill innocent people in Afghanistan.
And they applauded that as well.
So you know Obama may think he's cultivating friends among these people.
Who knows, he may share their desires.
He's certainly taking his stabs at capitalism.
He certainly is doing it.
He's certainly he uh if if you know what I if I what I'd like to say, I'd like to Obama show up actually as Casper the Ghost.
When it's when it's time for Obama to show up and make his speech, show up as a ghost.
And send a little signal to all these attendees that he gets it.
That he understands.
I'm not gonna worry about if I can address them, what would I tell him?
Uh I'd tell them to shut up, disperse, go home and take care of themselves.
There is no global warming.
It's a hoax, and every one of you in this room know it's a hoax.
All you want is what the United States has achieved because you're jealous, you know you can't achieve it on your own.
You don't want to free your people so that you can create many United States in your own countries.
You want to control them, you want to keep them in bondage, and they can't produce anything that way, therefore you can't get personally rich.
The only way you get personally rich is to make us feel guilty and have us like give uh our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over there to write you a check for a hundred billion dollars.
Well, we the taxpayers are through paying for it.
In this world, you take care of yourselves.
If there's any destruction or climate going on, it is you poor countries who are not investing in clean technologies and so forth like we've done.
We are not the problem in the world, we are the world's solution.
And until you find a way to be on our side of things, you are shut out, not a penny more for you little Marxist dictators.
And I walk out of the room.
That's what I would tell them.
Harry in Washington, D.C., you're next.
Great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, thanks for having me.
Uh I actually work in the Senate and I just wanted to call and comment on what happened yesterday on the floor.
Um the Constitution says that each house can set their own rules.
And the Senate, they decided way back when in 1789 that the rules would continue indefinitely.
It's very difficult to change the Senate rules.
It takes a supermajority.
Unlike the uh the House, on the other hand in Russia, it's very easy to change the rules.
The rules end at the end of each Congress.
But what happened yesterday was just so over the top, it just destroyed over two hundred years of precedent, and uh have a book in front of me that has the Senate procedure and precedent, it's a sixteen hundred page book, and says as clear as day what happened yesterday is against the rules of the Senate.
That a uh once a reading is demanded, it cannot be stopped unless there's unanimous consent, and there are no further interruptions or in order.
That was a precedent that was established uh in the late 70s rush, and it's just really disheartening that the Democrats are gonna do anything possible to pass health health care, even if it means throwing out the precedents of the Senate that goes back to our founding.
Well, I agree with you, but I think it's not just happening in the Senate.
I I think I think it's all about getting rid of the structure and the systems, the traditions, the institutions that have kept this country great.
I think all of this is about breaking all of them down.
Now what you what what what would have been the Republican option yesterday had they been aware of the rule.
Well, uh Dr. Coburn did call for regular order, but uh someone should have made a formal parliamentary inquiry.
And it would have been something along the lines of Mr. President Parliamentary inquiry.
Uh is it not the press of the Senate that an amendment is read in full and cannot be withdrawn?
And it is a press in the Senate.
They tried to change the precedent of the Senate yesterday, and the reason they did it, Rush, if the amendment was read, there was absolutely no way, and least most people believe that health care could be passed before Christmas.
Right, exactly.
And they had to find any way they could around it.
Um if it means blowing up tradition, which means they don't even respect the people comprising the majority in the Senate today, the Democrats, don't even respect the Senate, don't even respect the institution they're part of.
That's right.
I have a great quote in front of me, Rush is from Thomas Jefferson.
He was the second vice president, so that means he was a president of the Senate.
And he said whether a rule is rational or not is not very important.
It is much more important that there's a rule to go by, and that there's uniformity of proceedings in business, not subject to the will of the leader.
Uh so the quorum of the Senate was destroyed yesterday, and it is just really disheartening.
I know a lot of folks might not understand why it's such a big deal, but it's a huge deal because the quorum was violated.
Well, the Senate's a revered institution, the greatest deliberative body in the world.
It has a uh uh a tremendous reputation.
It's one it it's to see it to see it treated so shabbily by the people who populate it is a is a is an instructive and frightening thing.
But you know that it you can you can take that example and extrapolate that into the private sector, where we talk about rules.
Obama's out there demanding that banks lend money.
Obama's demand he's gonna have another meeting with bankers.
They're not lending.
They're not listening to him.
Go ahead and lend money.
The problem is the banks can lend money to the government at zero percent, They can buy treasury bonds, they can lend money to the government because their pre interest rates are practically zero right now.
The government guarantees a three percent return.
So if you can if you can lend money to the government, if you if the government can borrow money from you and it caught it's caught at zero percent, and you're guaranteed a three percent return, why would you take a risk of loaning money to anybody in this economy who may default on it, who may not be able to pay it back when you've got a three percent guaranteed return if the government borrows from you.
That's precisely what's happening.
So the banks I mean, these are smart people at the banks.
Their business is to show a profit, not show a loss.
Obama's demanding that they lend money.
Now the people in the private sector, the small business sector, corporate sector, wherever.
It's unrealistic to expect them to start out on a massive expansion when they have no idea what the rules of the game are going to be come next year.
So the rules here again matter uh in a different way, but one of which I think we can make a connection.
They don't know what the tax increases are going to be with health care because they don't know what version of it's gonna pass.
They don't know if cap and trade is gonna pass.
They don't know if amnesty is going to pass.
They do not know the rules, the tax rules and other rules they're gonna be working under until all that stuff happens.
And yet here's little man channel president leaning on them, making them the bad guy.
You gotta lend.
We gave you TARP money to lend, and you're not lending it.
So they're the bad guys.
When in truth, they are lending.
The banks are lending money to the government.
It's not just the Chicoms buying our debt, banks are buying it, and there's a three percent guaranteed return in this economic climate.
That ain't bad.
Now back to the audio sound bites.
This morning on PMS NBC, David Axelrod called into the show.
This is about the uh the White House at war.
Not just with Howard Dean, but with the Kook fringe base, and this does worry them.
Dean doesn't, uh but the Cook Fringe base worries him a little bit because they know that individual members in the House and Senate listen to the Kook fringe base, they go to the Kook fringe base conventions.
So Mika Brzezinski says, I'd like you to characterize, if you could, the White House reaction to Howard Dean's criticism, which has been extremely pointed and sharp uh at this plan.
He says he tried, he tried to go to the White House privately and behind the scenes to talk about this to uh talk about his concerns.
He has no choice but to lay his all out on the public stage.
To his criticism, you say what?
He got on the phone with uh Nancy Anne DeParl, our uh our point person on the health care issue went through point by point.
She explained why he was wrong, and he simply didn't want to hear uh that critique.
I saw his piece in the post this morning, and it is predicated on a bunch of uh erroneous conclusion.
And uh he was then asked, well, what what was wrong about it?
He says this legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans.
The fact is in many states they charge five times as much today, and this would this would help reduce that disparity.
They believe that they can charge more because there are greater expenses associated with caring for for older Americans, but this at least shrinks that ban down for uh many people in many states.
Well, the dirty little secret here is that by the time Axelrod and Obama get through with them, there aren't gonna be any old people being charged anything.
That's a dirty little secret.
Next question.
Um, look.
And this is the Dean, by the way.
This is uh no, no, this is Axelrod.
Next one.
People in this country right now, the progressives, they don't believe that the White House has stood up to the insurance industry.
And let me ask you a question.
Why is the insurance industry so vigorously opposing this bill?
If this is such a gift to the insurance industry, if they don't believe that this is going to force competition and force them to uh adhere to uh some standards in terms of how they treat patients.
By the way, let me just add parenthetically, we fought for years as progressives for a patient's bill of rights.
Everything that was in that patient's bill of rights is now enshrined in this legislation, and yet people say, let's just throw it away.
We don't need it anymore.
Let me answer the question.
Why is the insurance industry so vigorously opposing the bill?
Because they know that ultimately this bill puts them out of business, Mr. Axelrod.
There will be no Private insurance at the end of the day once this bill gets rolling.
That's what they know.
It has nothing to do with with uh wanting to overcharge customers.
It has nothing to do with anything other than they're trying to keep their businesses open.
Which is a lot of people face that challenge, Mr. Axelrod, with you and Obama.
Everybody's just trying to keep their business open.
Some people can't find jobs.
And this is not going to improve any of that.
So then the uh the next question.
Well, on top of this frustration from progressives, David, with a name that makes them all PO'd like Joe Lieberman.
I mean, you're just waving the bloody flag in front of people, Keith Oberman, all these people.
Uh, who's writing the bill?
Is Lieberman writing the bill or you guys writing it?
Look, I don't know, he's certainly not writing this bill.
But the the notion that we would let our personal feelings about one person defeat a bill that would deliver to people who don't have insurance the opportunity to get it at a price they can afford, that would defeat a bill that has patient protections that we fought for for decades for people who do have insurance to defeat a bill that will bend the curve on on this inexorable rise in health care costs is insane.
It will not deliver insurance to people who don't have it at a cheaper cost, just the exact opposite.
But he's calling his own people on the left insane, folks.
Well, this is funny.
Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson says that his vote is not for sale, and he called the reports false.
He said they're being spread by bloggers, talk show hosts, and columnists with political agendas.
Well, the talk show hosts, that means uh me.
Nelson says uh he's he's not selling his vote, and that it's uh it's how how can any of this be my fault?
How can any of this I mean he's the one that is holding out for whatever he wants to get the vote just like Landry did what?
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