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Dec. 23, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:36
December 23, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Merry Christmas!
Seasons greetings, America.
America's Anchorman is away today.
This is your undocumented anchorman, Mark Stein, sitting in.
And great to be with you, all things considered.
Even as the Republic trembles on the brink, Olymbia Snow, Olymbia Snow is on TV right now, saying something moderate and centrist and bipartisan and reaching across the aisle like.
And that is never and that is never a good sign.
I don't know what she's saying.
I don't need to know what she's saying.
But it's not good news.
It's not good news.
This bill.
Rush talked about this a couple of days ago.
And he was absolutely right about this.
This idea that all through the summer, as the numbers tanked on this, in other words, the Republicans won, the Conservatives won, the Tea Party's won, the protests won the argument in the court of public opinion.
They changed the terms of the debate.
And what happened, even as public opinion turned against this monstrosity, it advanced procedurally through the House of Representatives and now through the Senate.
And I think really relatively early on, the Democrats decided the key strategic thinkers in Congress, by which I mean the sort of Pelosi-Barney-Frank branch of the Democratic Party.
Now, if you think about it from their point of view, Nancy Pelosi represents San Francisco, Barney Frank's in Massachusetts.
These are not typical, not typical parts of the United States.
They're some of the most liberal left-wing parts of the United States.
And so if you're Nancy Pelosi or Barney Frank, what you'd like is a situation in which more of America was like San Francisco or Massachusetts.
What's the quickest way to get to that?
A government annexation of health care, because that makes big government a given in the course of your political culture from now on.
And for conservatives, what it means is if you look at the situation in Canada or Europe, generally speaking, what you find you have to do, you've got to introduce taxes to pay for the health care, because whatever they tell you here, by the way, and the CBO, I've got nothing against the CBO, no doubt they're perfectly pleasant fellows, but I got what they are failing, I think, to understand is that the minute you have government health care, you can never find enough money to pay for it.
No way, no how.
And there are two ways of doing it.
You restrict access to the guy on the receiving end.
So that's why they make people wait for surgery and that's why they deny them certain procedures and certain drugs under these systems.
But the other way to do it is, of course, obviously just to increase taxes and raise taxes.
So if you think about what else would these ambitious Democrats like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi like to have?
Well maybe the value-added tax that they have in Europe, for example.
This is not like a sales tax, by the way.
This is far more fun than a sales tax because you add, you essentially tax the value that's added everywhere, everywhere along the line in the process.
So that if you make a certain product, it begins, you add a 15%, it's usually, I think whatever it is now, 17.5% or whatever, tax at that stage.
Then you add something else to it and you add to make the product a little better.
Then somebody adds the final gloss to it and adds another 17.5% and then you put it in the store counter and sell it and there's 17.5% on that.
And that means that everybody in the process along the way becomes a tax collector for the federal government.
And you spend ages in paperwork calculating your VAT and what you can claim back.
Because if you buy, if you're registered for value-added tax in Europe, you can deduct the cost of your stamps or whatever, which is nothing, which is nothing.
It's just a big.
So you went to fill in tons of paperwork and then eventually being able be, yeah, it'll be one of the, it'll be another one of these things when they introduce it, that the, that it'll only apply to the richest one percent.
But the richest one percent what percentage of America now falls into the richest one percent?
And and under these Democrat uh spending plans?
And this is the way it's, this is just the way it's going to be.
And a certain point, as you may be thinking, if you're, if you've got a small tanning salon and you're being subject to the 10 uh tanning tax and, by the way, by the way, why stop there?
Why not just have like 10 percent?
If you get just like a little tax, if you're just getting a little light tan, if you say, like one of these pasty wan, grey whey faced uh, New Hampshireites just going there and you're having a little light tan, just to take the pasty way, gray facedness off you, you pay the 10.
But if you want the deep golden, beautifully bronzed uh, like you've been on the beach at Tahiti, type tan, why don't we increase that to 17 and a half or 23 percent?
Why not have a sliding tax?
Uh, for for the, for the tanning bed uh, and if you think that's not occurring to some of them as the revenues start to fall, as they're not getting the expected revenues from the tanning bed, don't think they won't be thinking about things like that.
At some point.
You get sick of uh, of regulation, just sick of regulation.
I uh did something a few weeks ago, and I won't.
I won't mention her name to avoid embarrassing her, but I hired somebody who happened to reside in New York state, and I have never I I did this innocently, thinking it didn't make any big deal, because I, I i'm a New Hampshire corporation and New Hampshire is a reasonably simple system uh, when it comes to taxation and regulation.
But I create.
I thought i'd do New York State a favor and create a job.
Not not, they've driven rush out and they've driven all these other people out, but I thought i'd create a job in New York state.
So I we get a call a couple of days later say, oh, now wait a minute, this person you've hired lived in New York state.
That means we'll have to register with the state of New York, and uh, so we go, wait a minute.
What does that actually mean?
So we then have to register as a registered employer with the state of New York and the next thing you know, we've run up uh 173 dollars in new rolls of fax paper from the government forms, faxover from the state of New York, that we have to fill in.
You've got to fill in the form that says uh, that the license is you to hire somebody from the state of New York, the form that entitles you to be a licensed employer in the state of New York, the form that, in uh, says that you've complied.
You've filled in the other form, so you've filled in the license, application for the form, compliance form application, license.
And it just goes on and on and on.
And the reality is the reality is No disrespect to this New Yorker.
It would be far easier for me as a New Hampshire employer to hire somebody from Singapore or Hong Kong or Malaysia or Uzbekistan than to hire someone in New York.
There's no incentive when people say, oh, well, you know, we're outsourcing all these jobs overseas.
Good, good.
I tell you something, I'd far rather hire somebody from Uzbekistan.
If there's a Uyghur out there, a Uyghur out there in a Cambodian detention facility, why not get yourself, why not say to you, you don't need to sell me to China.
I'm going to work for Mark Stein now because it'll be less paperwork for me to hire the Uyghur in Cambodia than it is to hire an American in the state of New York.
That is what has gone wrong with this country.
And the idea that you can just impose these burdens endlessly without killing America is a delusion, a complete delusion.
And what's happening now when we see the failure, you know, Schwarzenegger now is saying, Schwarzenegger is threatening to close down the state.
If he doesn't get $8 billion, he's threatening to close down the state of California.
Good.
Saw it off.
Float it out to sea.
Because what's going to happen is that the three or four remaining solvent jurisdictions in this country, I don't know where they are.
I think New Hampshire is still one of them.
I think there's an unknown U.S.
Yeah, there's one of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
I think it's an uninhabited atoll that re-emerged from the Caribbean Sea when Barack Obama fulfilled his campaign pledge to lower the oceans.
This uninhabited atoll in the Virgin Islands and maybe a couple of other states are the last solvent jurisdictions under U.S. sovereignty, and they're going to have to bail out everybody else.
And this big shape, you know, California is now too big to fail.
Too big to fail.
California, so we're going to have the almighty cash for clunkers, for Californian clunkers, for 30 million Californian clunkers who've messed up their state and delivered it into the hands of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the so-called socially liberal, fiscally conservative Republican.
Well, a lot of that, funny enough, funny enough, a lot of that social liberalism seems to come with a huge price tag attached.
And when the fiscal conservatism meets the social liberalism, it's the fiscal conservatism that buckles every time.
We're going to have to now pay to bail out California.
And he's, oh, if you don't give me $8 billion, give me $8 billion now or the state gets it.
Go ahead, punk.
Make my day, I say.
Anyway, anyway, 1-800-282-280.
It's Christmas.
It's Christmas.
I should be more in a pericomo mood.
I should have worn the patterned sweater and be in the rocking chair saying, I'll be home for Christmas.
I should be more bellow.
It's the day before Christmas Eve.
1-800-282-2882.
The healthcare, the healthcare is key to this because it is the fastest route to a permanent left-of-center political culture.
And the Democrats understand that, that it's not about healthcare.
That's why, in case you haven't noticed, the bill doesn't do anything for healthcare.
There's 25, the bill, the proponents of the bill concede that even if this bill passes, you know, we were originally told it's to do, it's because there's so many people uninsured in America.
There's still going to be 25 million people uninsured under the bill.
So hang on a minute.
What kind of health care bill is that then?
It doesn't do anything for them.
It doesn't do anything for young, healthy people who are going to be charged huge amounts of money that bear no relation to their likely costs of needing health care or requiring treatment for health care.
It doesn't do anything for old-timers who've had it great for so long under this system.
It's not going to lower costs.
What does it do?
Is it expands government?
This is a government healthcare bill that's all government and no health care.
And that's the genius of these guys, that they understand that's what it's about.
It's like the environment.
Nobody really care.
That's why if you talk to the environmental crowd, they don't care whether it's global cooling, global warming, whether it's 54 and partly cloudy.
It makes no difference because the whole thing is an excuse and it's an excuse to expand government.
That's why if it's hot, you need more government regulation.
If it's cold, you need more government regulation.
And between the two of them, between healthcare and the environment, that licenses government to regulate every single thing you do in your life.
And that's the attraction of it.
The minute it provides a pretext for regulating every single aspect of your life.
And that's the genius of this bill.
The government healthcare bill, all government, no healthcare.
That's what the Democrats have succeeded in ramming down the throats of this nation.
And it has terribly grave implications.
Now, I don't want to be all gloomy the day before Christmas, so I'll get out the Perry Como patent sweater and we'll try and jolly things up.
But it's going to be tough.
It's going to be tough.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for rush.
Lots more straight ahead.
That's my holiday.
That's my holiday single with my friend from the West End stage and TV's Doctor Who and a lot of other things, Jessica Barton, over in London.
Santa Claus is covered at.
I don't care what you say.
That's better than that Paul Bacartney wonderful Christmas time.
Is that EIB approved Christmas music, Mike?
Yeah, Mike's looking.
At the end of that, this is, by the way, where big government regulation comes in as well.
Just make a, I'll just, this is, this is genius.
I'm going to make a big government point related to my Christmas single.
At the end of that song, Santa Claus is coming to town, I sing, I think, the longest note I've held since I was a boy chorister aged nine and the and the priest scoot.
Yeah, let's just hear this note.
Let's hear this note.
Yeah, coming up.
Listen to this.
You'll be impressed by this note.
Now, now, that's pretty damn.
And that's not like your hip-hop type, you know, lady gagger types where it's all done with the old smoke and mirrors in the studio.
I had to do that live.
And I got like a little piano demo of the arrangement beforehand, and I'm playing it in my car and singing along.
And I do that last note, and I can't do it.
I can't do that last note for as long as I'm meant to do.
So what I do is, I'm worried I'm not going to be able to do it in the studio.
So what I do is I take off my seat belt, and then, freed of my seatbelt, I can sing the note perfectly.
And I can only do that because I'm in New Hampshire, which is what I believe is now the last state in the Union where you don't have to wear a, where you're free not to wear a seatbelt when you drive.
So only because I was in a land, I was in a state, if I'd been in Vermont, I wouldn't have been able to do the big note.
Been in Maine, wouldn't have been able to do the big note.
Been in Massachusetts, couldn't have done the big note.
But I was in New Hampshire.
I took off my seatbelt, I hurled it through the window, and it was Christmas suddenly.
That's when I sang the big note, congratulated myself, careered across the media, got sliced in two by the logging truck, but I hit that big note.
And I could only do that because we don't have a seatbelt law in New Hampshire.
That's live free or die.
Even when you're making a holiday single, this stuff is relevant.
So that's the virtue.
That's the virtue of small government.
There's no long notes.
The only long notes are when they're playing the death march for your society when you got the big government.
I can only do that note because I was in a free jurisdiction.
Let's go to Max in Max in Sudsbury, Massachusetts, where you can't sing the log notes in your car.
Max, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Yes, thanks.
Mark, I don't understand something, and maybe you can explain.
As I understand, the Democrats needed 60 votes for cloture in the Senate to get the health care bill through.
But I also read on the internet last night that the Republicans, I think Senator DeMint, after he finally had a chance to read the bill, found that at page 1100 and something, that there's a provision or rule in the bill that a future Congress or a Senate, I think, will never be able or authorized in the future to bring up any future bill to repeal or amend, I think, the death panel provision,
just to put a label, I think like the death panel provision, they can never amend.
But the issue is, beyond the unconstitutionality of having a bill that lasts forever that can never be changed, since that's a Senate rule that they can't bring up the death panel thing in the future, wouldn't that, and then that requires two-thirds votes, 67 rather than 60.
Don't the Democrats now have to amend the bill to get rid of that rule or send it back to the vote?
They need 67.
And why aren't the Republicans onto this?
In other words, the very bill needs 67, not 60.
Yeah, what they're doing is, as you say, there's something disgusting about this because effectively they're trying to bind all future legislatures for all time, which is an affront to any kind of democratic, accountable government.
That's something that predates the birth of the United States.
It goes back to colonial times and to previous times that an existing parliament cannot bind future parliaments.
And you're right, that what they're trying to do effectively is to get this thing so insulated that certain provisions of it can never be repealed ever.
And the Republicans ought to be on to that.
Jim DeMint actually is onto some of this stuff, and we'll talk about that in just a moment.
1-800-282-2882.
We're talking healthcare and lots more on the pre-Christmas edition of the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Stein in for Rush, great to be with you on the EIB network.
Stick around.
Lots more still to come.
Great to be with you at Christmas.
We'll have a best of rush for Christmas Eve.
EIB approved Christmas music on Christmas Day, and then I'll be back here on Monday.
And Walter Williams and lots of other great fun live in the week ahead.
Let's go to Matthew in Houston, Texas.
Matthew, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Yeah, it's become pretty obvious that these thugs up in Congress are not listening to our emails or our phone calls, and they didn't listen to us in our town halls.
So I think the last best chance we have maybe would be to meet some of these people when they come back for their Christmas holiday at the airport and to tell them what we think of their bills.
And especially I think this would be effective against some of the moderates, so-called moderates.
Yeah, so so-called moderates is right.
In the Jennifer Rubin at Commentary Magazine made a great point the other day that when it comes to the last ditch, all Democrats are liberals, and there's no such thing as a blue dog Democrat.
When it comes to it, when it comes to the crunch, they're not moderates.
But your theory is that these guys are going to be flying home, landing, coming in for the Christmas break, and they ought to be met there by their constituents carrying placards and peacefully telling them what it is that they've done wrong and that they've, in fact, betrayed their duties as accountable legislators.
Absolutely, and I think too with the number of holiday people picking up their friends or whatever at the airport, that it's going to get joined by a lot of other people as well.
Yeah, the airports are certainly crowded these days.
And if it's a choice between standing at the gate or waiting for your mother and waiting for your mother-in-law or standing at the gate and waiting for the congressman who's just crippled your children's and grandchildren's future, then I think there's a lot to be said for actually going and telling the congressman what you think of it.
You know, the moment they were rattled, you're right to this degree, Matthew.
I think that the moment they got really rattled was when they discovered in the summer that they couldn't hold their so-called town hall meetings, this phony baloney term anyway, but they couldn't hold them without holding them in a secure facility and doing background checks on any constituent who wanted to go along and say something.
And I think if they're going to do, I mean, they've seen the numbers, they've lost the argument in the arena.
If this were a battle, simply a battle of public opinion, these guys have lost.
They haven't made the case.
And the fact that they cannot actually face constituents in the room and talk about this speaks very poorly for the legislative class.
But you know what it is, Matthew?
I think they figured that.
I think they figured that out, that they know they're going to be unpopular, they know they're going to be hated, but that it's going to pass, that it's going to pass.
It'll be like all these things.
People get mad, but they can't keep it up.
People get outraged, but they can't keep it up.
And so it eventually fades and goes away.
But that's not a bad idea.
Meeting your Democratic congressman at the airport, especially your blue dogs.
I mean, Ben Nelson seems to just, Ben Nelson, I think this was, who was it?
I think it was Field Marshal Haig said of Lord Stanley in the First World War that he's like a feather cushion.
He bears the imprint of whoever sat on him last.
Ben Nelson bears the imprint of whoever sat on him last.
Harry Reid sat on him and he voted for this monstrosity.
Then the governor back in his home state in Nebraska sat on him and he suddenly started saying, well, maybe I'll vote against it or whatever.
So maybe the best thing to do would be if his constituents met him at the airport and metaphorically sat on this pathetic feather cushion of a man and persuaded him that he is supposed to represent the people of Nebraska and no matter what squalid, contemptible deal that he gets for them by sticking his hand in the pockets of citizens in 49 other states, they don't want any part of it and he should rethink.
That's just an affront.
I mean, why do we need a federal bill if we're going to have state-varied exceptions?
I mean, if it's state-specific legislation, the state should be able to legislate it.
If you're going to have federal legislation, it should apply to all states equally.
What this is now is what they call in Canada asymmetrical federalism, where the Quebec has negotiated a fantastic deal whereby they get more seats in parliament and they get more this and they get more that.
And they call it asymmetrical federalism.
The great thing about U.S. federalism, which is why it's so successful, is that it's supposed to treat every state the same from Maine to Hawaii.
And if it doesn't, then there's really not a lot of point to it.
But now you're going to be, you know, the special Medicare program, the new version of Medicare, program not available in all states.
That's what they're going to have to put on this thing now.
Program not available in all states.
That's the new kind of variable speed, very speed federalism we've got in this country now.
Let's go to Dustin.
Dustin, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Thanks for waiting.
You're live on the air.
Hey, Merry Christmas.
And Merry Christmas to you too, Dustin.
Yeah, you're celebrating it in Virginia.
They've still got Christmas there, or is it, as Al Gore says, it's one of these things that in your faith tradition they've called it something else now.
You still have Christmas in Virginia?
Absolutely.
We definitely have Christmas, and it's pretty cold here.
Oh, great.
What global warming is they're talking about.
Exactly.
Well, I'm glad.
Good.
Yes, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Good.
Dustin, Dustin, what's your point?
You know, you hear about all these things across the country, these special ballots about gay marriage and all these other things.
If it's really that important of an issue to both sides, why not have special ballots in these districts and have your constituents vote on it, and you're supposed to represent your constituents?
If your constituents vote against it, these polls, you could say one poll says one thing, one poll says the other.
A vote is unanimous.
A vote is a vote.
Well, you're right.
It would be non-binding, but it would certainly be a sense of the electorate.
For example, if you were, I don't know what system they have in Nebraska, but if you had a ballot initiative in Nebraska and the state of Nebraska overwhelmingly rejected the, whatever they're calling it, the corn husker kickback that this squalid man Nelson got, if his electors overwhelmingly rejected that, he would be a discredited man.
He would be like these fellas from toppled regimes who still maintain embassies in foreign capitals.
He could no longer be said in any authentic sense to still represent the people of Nebraska.
That's an excellent idea.
You know, we are.
You're right.
We are going to have to translate some of the opinion polls into something a little firmer.
And actually, having ballot initiatives in those jurisdictions that do permit them is a good way of rejecting a lot of this stuff, particularly if they reject specific kickbacks that their grubby and squalid senators have managed to get Harry Reid to put their way.
That's an excellent idea, Dustin.
Are you still there, Dustin?
Yeah, yeah.
I thought you'd gone off to celebrate Christmas in Virginia.
No, just one thing to keep in your hip pocket for maybe this time next year.
These Democratic senators who lose the vote because they obviously don't care about their constituents.
Which one of them ends up as these special czars, these crazy little programs?
Oh, no.
I'm sure there's a lot of that.
You look at all these huge agencies that are being created.
Obviously, at some point, they've said, well, look, things aren't looking too good for November 2010, but we want to do this.
And we understand that it may cost us a Senate seat here and a Senate seat there.
Well, then, what incentives can we make to individual senators or congressmen to go along with it?
And I don't doubt that they'll be taken care of.
They always are.
We had a Democratic congressman who voted for in New Hampshire, who voted for Clinton's assault weapons ban and got tossed out of office immediately the following November.
And what was he called?
Dick Sweat.
Dick Sweat.
And Dick Sweat got made ambassador to Latvia, which is one of the Baltic states.
And he's so interested in Baltic affairs that in his announcements, welcoming this appointment, he said he was delighted he'd be going to the Balkans.
Balkans, Baltics, what difference does it make?
So I'm sure there's a lot of that that's been going on.
What is happening here is that Republicans are focused on the short term.
They're thinking, hey, this is great.
We can pick up a couple of Senate seats in 2010.
We can pick up a couple of House seats.
And Democrats are thinking, how can we install the basic architecture for a European-sized big government state?
And if we just get it there in embryo, we're just doing the framing now, people won't really know what it is.
It's like when they build a new development on the edge of town and you see the timbers going up and you see them pouring the foundation, you don't really know what it is.
And we don't really know what this is, or that's what they're figuring at the moment, because it's going to be a while before they put the windows in and before they put the clabbards on and before they shingle the roof.
But what they're doing is they're establishing the basic structure for big government, for big government, on the size of a European social democracy.
And that's why they're prepared to lose.
If it costs this guy, Byron Dorgan in North Dakota, his numbers are terrible.
He's essentially a blue senator from a red state.
And in the latest numbers in North Dakota, he's got 36% against 58% for his Republican opponent.
So they may lose Dorgan next November.
But what do they care?
What do they care if they get this thing through?
They're using their 60-seat moment and they're thinking for the long term.
And we're focused on some crummy midterm elections, thinking that getting a couple of extra senators is going to do anything about this.
Lots more straight ahead.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Mark Stein in for rush on the day before Christmas.
According to the New York Times, thousands may incorrectly be using stimulus tax breaks.
I love that word.
Incorrectly be using stimulus tax breaks.
Could happen to anyone.
Thousands of American taxpayers incorrectly claimed more than $500 million in tax benefits under the Obama administration's tax break for first-time homebuyers.
A government watchdog report said Tuesday.
Hey, great, why not?
Everybody, if Ben Nelson's getting a piece of it, if John Kerry's getting a piece of it, you fill in the paperwork and they send you the check.
Why not take it?
Why not cash it?
Go for it.
That's what you get.
And that's the way it's going to be.
Whenever you expand government, the government, there are never any economies of scale.
You always lose far more money in fraud and incorrect, as the New York Times would say, incorrect payments.
Incorrect.
Why not go for it?
You'd have to be when they're giving money to everybody else, why not fill in the form and incorrectly receive stimulus benefit money?
So that's just 500 million.
It's barely a rounding error in the multi-trillion dollar boondoggles that are going on right now.
Let's go to Scott in Dallas, Texas.
Scott, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Mark, good afternoon.
Good afternoon to you too.
General, just a little bit of math by you with regard to what the impact is going to be for the number of physicians and physician assistants and nurse practitioners that are going to be available to people after this monstrosity has passed.
There are roughly 660,000 practicing physicians in the United States, only 20% of whom, by the way, come to the AMA.
Now, when this takes force, healthcare plans may require that patients see a nurse practitioner or physician assistant first.
Now, there are many, many great PAs and nurse practitioners out there.
There are probably 300 or 400,000 in the United States.
About half of the doctors practice primary care, about half of the nurse practitioners and PAs practice primary care, all under the direction or supervision of a physician.
But what happens if patients are suddenly required to see a PA or NP first?
What happens is that even though these people have a good level of expertise, there are things that because of the number of years that they've practiced or the amount and length of training that physicians have had, that physicians, assistants, and nurse practitioners might not catch a mole on somebody's cheek that the doctor who's seen this patient for years might recognize and say, John, that thing looks like it's changed color from a couple of years ago.
Let's buy OPSIA.
Yeah.
You're absolutely right there.
That's the one thing that your entry level into the health system becomes much lower.
That's something that, again, people who live in the Euro-Canadian systems will tell you about.
You actually have to go through a couple of stages.
You no longer have your old-time family physician who's known you for years.
You have to go through a couple of entry positions to get to be seen by the level of doctor.
Before that, as you say, with little things, little things like moles, which they claim to be concerned about, that's the reason they're taxing the tanning beds because they think there's a melanoma epidemic and that the reason for the 10% tax on the tanning bed is to pay for all the extra melanoma.
But melanoma is a classic example of something that gets treated by, as you say, the doctor who knows you well enough to know when something's grown a little more, changed a little color or whatever, and you're being seen by low-level care.
But that's actually, in a more basic sense, it's also true that when you mandate and you bureaucratize healthcare, what you do is eventually you lead to a physician shortage in your own country because medicine no longer becomes an attractive middle-class profession.
If you don't want to be hyper-regulated by the government in every way, you go into something else.
Medicine has ceased to be a middle-class profession in a lot of these countries.
And then again, a lot of your doctors move to.
Now, we don't know whether that will apply here.
For example, the highest concentration of Canadian doctors anywhere on the planet, of Canadian-trained doctors anywhere on the planet, is the state of Florida.
Florida is full of Canadian doctors who would rather work under the discredited American medical system than under the benign, utopian Canadian healthcare system.
Now, obviously, if the Florida system takes on the characteristics of the American system, where are those Canadian doctors going to end up treating?
Maybe they'll stay here, maybe they'll go to Costa Rica, I don't know.
But you notice that one thing all these socialized healthcare systems do is they denude the third world of doctors and nurses.
So people who could be, if you're in Botswana and you train as a doctor, you go and work in a hospital in Canada.
If you're a nurse in Malawi, instead of working at a hospital in Malawi, you go and work in a hospital in Britain.
And so where do you, we kid ourselves that it's progressive to take away all the most skilled people from third world countries and bring them to work here because nobody wants to work in the in it.
We can never provide enough doctors and nurses for the medical system here.
But for you, if you're on the receiving end, what it means is that where you would previously have been seen by a doctor, you're now going to be seen by a nurse practitioner or some other level of qualified aid.
And you'll have to jump through several hoops before you eventually get to see the doctor.
Lots of fun straight ahead.
Boy, you guys really are just at the beginning of this learning curve.
And for those of us, if you're, you know, the incontinent Quebecer who's been waiting three years for the little 20-minute procedure that will stop him having to go to the bathroom 12 times a night, he's way ahead of you.
He's been sitting with his legs crossed for three years.
He knows what it's like.
You guys, you're just starting to cross your legs and you're really about to discover what's ahead for you.
Mark Slide, infra rush on the pre-Christmas Eve show on the EIB network.
More straight ahead.
$500 million for John Kerry.
$500 million for incorrect allocation of stimulus funds.
There's money for everything, except it seems, for rehousing these prisoners who are going to be moving from Guantanamo Bay to rural Illinois.
I love this word.
The Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money.
I've never seen that phrase before.
It's never been written in human history.
Quote, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money, unquote.
It's in today's New York Times.
Are they struggling to come up with the money for stimulus too or for the health care cap and trade?
No, no, it's only for rehousing these Gitmo detainees in Illinois.
You know, why don't you save money?
Just my suggestion to the President, why don't you just save money by, say, rehousing the Gitmo detainees in closed tanning salons in rural Illinois?
That way you would kill two birds with one stone.
You'd no longer be exposing people to all this.
You'd have taxed people out of the melanoma business.
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