All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 17, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:54
December 17, 2009, Thursday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 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 lrushbow at EIBNet.com.
Here is the relevant passage from 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, 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 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 a 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 dissertation on why prices will go up in the private sector, even if the public options are 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 mandating private insurers to provide mammogram and other women's issues coverage, including spousal abuse.
Insurance for spousal abuse.
And mammograms, even though the mammogram age is going to be raised to the age of 50.
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've 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 the insurance companies cannot discriminate against preconditions, a precondition could be defined as you smoke, fine, your premium is going to 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 going to do?
It's going to skyrocket.
And 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 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 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.
The dirty little secret is always, 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 Rushbo, am heartless.
And of course, this is the exact opposite.
I have a huge heart.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I am not dumping on people 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 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 very so.
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 Democrats' 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 $2.5 trillion 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 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.
31.9 million, nearly 11%, did not have insurance for more than a year.
What convenient timing.
Oh, I'd start later in the story, one bright spot in the report, more children received 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, would that be the S-CHIP program, where children are calculated to be children up to the age of 25 or 27?
Let's get this now and take a break.
What do we got on the phones?
Let's take a break because we're going to 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 timeout.
Your phone calls are next on the EIB network.
So the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whatever the hell are called, say 60 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 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 actually hate thinking this way, and I despise it.
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 do they do in 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 Dittos from Hartford Brush.
Thank you.
And thanks for reading and recounting all the stitches on this fast curveball called health care reform.
Very few hosts can see through the deceptions that are contained in all these 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.
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 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 being from Connecticut, our Senator Joe Lieberman had a chance to put an end to all this and back up what he said, but he chose to let it go ahead knowing that the trade-offs would lead it where it is.
But I'd like to single out Tom Coburn.
Here's a man who I don't know.
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 for my mother.
But I've been distracted recently by Coburn's comments.
He seems to be a real leader, and not only by calling for the reading of this 700-page Bernie Sanders amendment, by the way, he's not a Democrat or a socialist.
He's further to the left than that.
But before that, Coburn sat with a sign above his desk that just said no.
And 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 why this was a seminal moment yesterday for the Republicans.
It really was.
This is where they finally sprang into action and started obstructing this thing.
And both McConnell and Jim DeMint and Coburn say when they get this real travesty, whenever it shows up, they're going to demand that it be read too.
Now, the people who sponsor whoever's names are on the final health care bill will probably then have a fit and demand the clerk stop reading because they're pulling the bill.
If that happens, just remember, not only the Senate rule is that every bill will be read.
The Senate rule is 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 they don't even take a voice vote.
Everybody says, yeah, I got to 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 24 hours to read the bill.
They probably alternate every 10 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 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 a 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 sharp eye on that.
Steve in Fresno, California.
Hello, and welcome to the EIB Network.
Hey, good morning.
Thank you for being there.
Thank you, sir.
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 nationally, but the fact is that government insurance will be available in all 50 states?
Well, the reason is that the states want control over what can and can't be included in a package.
That's why they can't sell insurance across state lines is because the states are not uniform in their mandates.
But you're quite right.
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 ultimate in economic hypocrisy.
It's the ultimate in Marxism.
It's the ultimate in socialism.
We got to start calling this for what it is.
Thanks, Steve, very much, Potomac, Maryland, Kathy.
Great to have you with us.
Hello today.
Merry Christmas, Rush.
It's always a privilege to be in your classroom.
Thank you very much.
Same to you.
Rush, thank you so much.
I believe that this entire health care debate has become the civil rights issue of our time.
And as national health care passes, I call on our fellow freedom-loving citizens to take a page from the Solinsky playbook and prepare for massive civil disobedience.
How do you 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 enslave us, not give us freedom.
And just as 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 why I made the point the other day.
I made just this point.
The people are referring to it 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, 60 million uninsured at one point or another in 2008, or since 2008, 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 continue to describe them as being.
All right, brief time out.
We'll let you hear Hugo Chavez get his reaction when we come back.
All right, I don't want to give up on the Centers for Disease Control statistic or number that 60 million Americans, 60 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 2008 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's that number?
I want to know what that number is.
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 is 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 60 million uninsured.
We haven't heard that number before.
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 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, Luke.
And Karl Marx said a ghost running through the streets of Copenhagen.
That ghost is silent somewhere in this room amongst us.
Coming through the corridors underneath.
And that ghost is a terrible 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, 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.
That's right.
We're supposed to fork over our money.
We are forking over our money to these people.
Hillary Clinton announced today $100 billion 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 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 saying is the Kleinup was a bank that already have saved it.
I think it's true.
If the Klenup was a bank, a capitalist bank, one of the biggest ones that would have saved it.
The rich governments.
I think Obama isn't here yet.
He got 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, if you know what?
What I'd like to say, I'd like to Obama show up actually as Casper the ghost.
When it's time for Obama to show up there 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 going to worry about it.
If I can address them, what would I tell them?
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 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 give our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over there to write you a check for $100 million.
Well, we, the taxpayers, are through paying for it.
In this world, you take care of yourselves.
If there's any destruction of 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.
I actually work in the Senate, and I just wanted to call and comment on what happened yesterday on the floor.
As you know, 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 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 200 years of precedent.
And I have a book in front of me that has the Senate procedure and precedent.
It's a 1,600-page book.
And it says as clear as day what happened yesterday is against the rules of the Senate.
That once the reading is demanded, it cannot be stopped unless there's unanimous consent and no further interruptions are in order.
That was a precedent that was established in the late 70s, Rush, and it's just really disheartening that the Democrats are going to do anything possible to pass health care, even if it means throwing out the precedence 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 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 would have been the Republican option yesterday had they been aware of the rule?
Well, Dr. Coburn did call for regular order, but someone should have made a formal parliamentary inquiry.
And it would have been something along the lines of Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry.
Is it not the precedent 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, at 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.
Even 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.
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 tremendous reputation.
To see it treated so shabbily by the people who populate it is an instructive and frightening thing.
But you know, 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 demanding.
He's going to 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 0%.
They can buy treasury bonds.
They can lend money to the government because their interest rates are practically zero right now.
The government guarantees a 3% return.
So if you can lend money to the government, if the government can borrow money from you and it's caught at 0% and you're guaranteed a 3% 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 3% 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 in a different way, but one in 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 going to pass.
They don't know if cap and trade is going to 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 going to be working under until all that stuff happens.
And yet here's Little Manchin President leaning on them, making them the bad guy.
You got to 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 3% guaranteed return.
In this economic climate, that ain't bad.
Now back to the audio soundbites.
This morning on PMS NBC, David Axelrod called into the show.
This is about the White House at war, not just with Howard Dean, but with the Kuk Fringe base.
And this does worry him.
Dean doesn't, but the Kukfringe base worries him a little bit because they know that individual members in the House and Senate listen to the Kuk Fringe base.
They go to the Kukfringe base conventions.
So Mika Brzinski 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 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 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 Nancy Ann DeParl, our point person on the healthcare issue.
Went through point by point.
She explained why he was wrong.
And he simply didn't want to hear that critique.
I saw his piece in the post this morning, and it is predicated on a bunch of erroneous conclusions.
And he was then asked, well, 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 help reduce that disparity.
They believe that they can charge more because there are greater expenses associated with caring for older Americans.
But this at least shrinks that ban down for 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 going to be any old people being charged anything.
That's a dirty little secret.
Next question.
Well, look, and this is to Dean, by the way.
This is, 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.
Hey, 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 adhere to 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 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 next question.
Well, on top of this frustration from progressives, David, with a name that makes them all P.O.'d like Joe Lieberman, I mean, you're just waving the bloody flag in front of people, Keith Olbermann, all these people.
Who's writing the bill?
Is Lieberman writing the bill or you guys writing it?
Look, I don't, no, he's certainly not writing this bill.
But 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 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, talk show hosts, that means me.
Nelson says he's not selling his vote, and that it's, 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 in the vote.
Just like Landru did what?
▲
Export Selection