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Jan. 4, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:46
January 4, 2010, Monday, Hour #2
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Happy New Year, America.
January the 4th, 2010.
America's Anchorman is resting up, and he will be here live behind the golden EIB microphone this Wednesday.
Until then, it's your undocumented anchor man, Mark Stein sitting in and happy to be here.
Looking ahead to 2010, which it now is.
So we're not looking ahead.
That was a bad start, just like that.
So we're now in 2010.
If we have another year like last year, we're done for.
We're done for.
You think of the things that would have seemed insane just eighteen months ago.
The idea of the United States government owning the automobile industry.
The idea of the United States government giving a blank check to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which they did on Christmas Eve in the late Christmas Eve news dump.
The Obama administration basically gave a blank check to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Uh in 2008, when they got into trouble in the fall of 2008, uh they were given a kind of 200 billion dollar bailout.
Last year Congress increased it to 400 billion dollars.
And on Christmas Eve they decided, no, no, no, we just can't keep expanding it.
It's far too many zeros to write on the you can't get them into the little box where you have to write the check figure in numerals anymore.
So we're just going to give you a blank check.
Fill it out for whatever you like, spend what you like.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are emblems of what has gone wrong with American capitalism.
They represent the malign alliance of government distorted capitalism with opportunists in what still passes for the private sector who want to find ways to rig and gerrymander the market to their convenience.
And that is the biggest threat, this alliance between uh sclerotic outposts of capitalism, such as the automobile industry or this rigged housing market and government.
And every time they come together and announce a solution with a bazillion zeros on the end, like this one the U.S. government's just given Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that means that people in functioning, efficient, profitable businesses are going to be stuck picking up the tab.
And eventually you'll reach the situation where there won't be enough profitable profitable, efficient businesses to pick up the tab.
Um this is uh extremely bad news.
Uh th uh not just what uh the government did with General Motors, but the fact that people accepted it.
Uh the fact uh that the nation sort of psychologically adjusted to the idea of a government running a cash for clunkers program.
Uh if we have another year of this, plus health care, plus cap and trade, plus any other big 2000-page unread bill that Congress decides to pass, uh, then I think uh the dynamism of the United States uh will be slipping perilously close to the cliff.
Uh we're not going to be hearing expressions like the American dream anymore, because there won't be an American dream.
Because one thing you can bet on is that whatever house you live in and whatever car you drive, and wherever you go on vacation, your kids and your grandkids are going to be living in worse houses and driving worse cars and going on lousier vacations.
So there isn't going to be an American dream because the idea of upward progress, which is built in to the American identity.
Uh the idea of social mobility is not going to be possible because they're going to be paying off the whole that Barack Obama and Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are digging for us.
You you reach the stage uh where you begin to see it very clearly.
It takes you a while.
Uh you know, Europe has been in decline for a long time, and incremental decline can be very agreeable because you still have all the great infrastructure of a once great society.
Uh you still have all in in Europe, they still have all the fantastic looking buildings, the palaces, uh the the spectacular architecture, they have all the infrastructure of uh societies that have reached the very top, uh and so incremental decline can seem terribly, terribly agreeable.
But you get to the you slip past the point uh of no return.
The difference we speak when we speak about the Western world, it's a convenient phrase and it has a certain degree of truth, but there are huge differences in the dynamism of the Western world.
There's a column in the New York Times uh this morning that points out, for example, that for the last thirty years uh the United States percentage of global GDP has stayed constant at twenty-one percent.
Whereas Europe's has declined uh from uh forty percent uh down to something like twenty-one percent the uh just approximately the same uh as the uh United States today.
So across thirty years uh Europe's percentage of GDP has declined as it's introduced more and more unsustainable social entitlements that have made life very agreeable in the present tense but in fact doom you in the long run.
And that is the course that Barack Obama set the United States on on January the twentieth, 2009.
The government shouldn't be propping up uh General Motors.
The government uh shouldn't for one simple reason because uh General Motors is set up uh on the basis that it loses money on every car it manufactures.
So that you can't this this is the old salesman joke, you know, uh you you lose money on every model you sell, but we'll make it up in bulk.
The more cars they sell, the more money uh General Motors loses.
There's no point in propping up a system that dooms you from the word go.
There's no point in the government uh giving it providing incentives for General Motors uh to develop what they call, you know, new green-friendly solutions for automobiles.
If there's not a compelling market reason, the government isn't uh savvy enough to distort the market to the degree it does uh and expect all the ducts to line up in a row.
So if we have another year like 2009, I think we are in in pretty serious, catastrophic, possibly fatal trouble by this time next year.
The alternative is that uh there's punishment for what Obama and Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed have done at the polls, significant punishment to a degree this November, to a degree that makes it impossible for us to continue on this present course.
In other words, it would be like 1994 and Obama would be forced uh to govern as Clinton did after 1994, where he steals uh half of Newt Gingrich's ideas uh and says they're his ideas and then demonizes Newt for sticking with the half that he hasn't bothered stealing.
That would that would be about the best solution uh looking at what could happen to Obama in the next uh in the in the in the second half of this first term.
But you know everything by the way I I've changed my mind on this slide.
I used to like I was always a big gloomy gus and I used to go around saying well look you know socialized healthcare is pretty bad in Canada, socialized health care is pretty bad in the United Kingdom.
I think government healthcare in the United States is going to be even worse because it's not even going to have it's it's not even going to have the mitigating factor as I mentioned last week of the equality of awfulness the knowledge that when you go along for health care treatment anywhere in Canada or the UK that you're going to be treated as awfully as anybody else.
We're seeing in the construction of this monstrosity all kinds of exemptions already and then and we've now reached the stage where we're getting exemptions to the exemptions.
For example after their assault on small business, the sustained assault on small business that the United States government has done this last year, they now announced that uh that businesses with fewer than fifty workers would not be penalized if they failed to provide health insurance.
Get this, by the way, this is where it Gets into the constitutionality of all this.
We're now saying that uh you will be fined if you fail to provide health insurance for your workers.
You will be subject to fines if you're an individual who fails to provide health insurance for yourself.
Anyway, they decided uh that uh small businesses with fewer than fifty people would get an exemption from this.
Then the labor unions objected in the construction un uh industry, and they went to work and uh persuaded uh the Senate to uh pull that back so that if you're a construction company, okay, this is the exemption to the exemption.
If you're a construction company with fewer than five people, you're not allowed.
You're not allowed.
Uh you you'll you'll only be allowed with fewer than five workers to be exempt from the penalties for the failure to provide insurance.
Now we got this.
This is from uh this is from uh the daily item.
Amish eye loophole in healthcare proposals.
The Amish.
They're plugged in.
There's a I don't know how, but there's obviously a big Amish lobby group in Washington, and the Amish lobby lobbyists on K Street uh have gone along and have decided uh that they would like uh uh an opt-out from the seven hundred and fifty dollar fine for individuals who uh who don't have health insurance.
So you get this.
If you ha don't have health insurance, you'll be fined seven hundred and fifty dollars unless you're Amish.
If you're Amish, you'll get the Amish opt-out.
There's never been a better time to become Amish because you won't have to pay the seven hundred and fifty dollar fine you'll get for not having uh health insurance.
Um, how does the You're probably asking uh okay, we've heard about the construction company exemption and the Amish exemption.
How does this impact Amish construction firms?
I have no idea, but I'll bet you Harry Reed is writing a clause for that in the bill right now.
If you are an Amish construction firm, you will probably get a double exemption to the exemption from the exemption.
Uh and so i we will uh if you're if you're just a regular non-Amish construction firm, you'll be penalized for not having health insurance for your workers, but if you're an Amish construction firm, you'll be able to do barn raisings all across Pennsylvania and never have to pay a single fine for not having health insurance for your workers.
You'll be able to drive down I-95 from Maine to Florida, and there'll be groups of Amish construction workers raising barns down e every side of the highway, all the way.
Uh and this is why American government health care is gonna be a disaster on a scale unforeseen by Canadian health care and uh and British uh government health care.
Because when you take uh European-style government health care and you sluice it through uh Harry Reed and Ben Nelson and Mary Landrew and all the other s uh jelly spine squishes, you're gonna come up with something inconceivably worse than was ever devised in the worst nightmares uh of European government health care.
Uh if we get another year like last year, we are in serious trouble.
So we have to roll this bank big time this November to have any chance of of uh uh of actually preventing uh the the world's most dynamic economy sliding uh off the cliff into European-style sclerosis.
1-800-282-2882, Mark Stein in for rush on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Amish eye loophole in healthcare proposals.
Those Amish lobbyists.
Boy, they're plugged in.
Boy, they're plugged in.
Now you know, I don't want to I don't want to demonize anybody, but uh I never really fell for it when when I get these emails about the international Jewish conspiracy and all the rest of it, because I think if you look into the international Jewish conspiracy, you'll find there's really an international Amish conspiracy behind it.
The Amish are now uh are now uh looking for a loophole so they don't get the $750 fine that you'll have to pay if you don't have health insurance.
If if you're a non-Amish and you've got no health insurance, you're gonna be fined seven hundred and fifty dollars, but the Amish will get an exemption, so they won't have to pay.
That's good.
That's great for Amish recruitment, isn't it?
Do the Shakers have an exemption?
I think there's one Shaker community left in uh Sabbath Day Lake Maine.
Uh so they probably can't afford a big time lobby group on K Street.
But uh but if the Shakers aren't hopping mad over this Amish health care exemption, then they uh they really ought to be.
So you you last six Shakers up in uh Sabbath Day Lake Maine, you want to get this same kind of exemption.
You want to you want to see if you can't get a Shaker lobby group uh down in K in K Street with the Amish lobbyists and get this same exemption?
Let's go to John in Crofton, Maryland.
John, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Great to have you with us.
Happy New Year, Mark.
Happy New Year to you too, John.
Let's hope it's better than two thousand nine.
It's uh unfortunate that Russia's in uh here today, but uh I understand he's doing well, and I want to use an Italian uh uh wish and say better gento Ani.
May you last a hundred years.
And in the dialect it's put chindon.
Yeah, that's that's uh good advice.
And you know, since this since this uh uh couple of days in hospital, he's now determined he's gonna he's gonna be on air till the year twenty fifty-seven to until the last three liberals in America give up in disgust.
So we we share we share those wishes, John.
You know, is uh his grandfather lived too uh at least a hundred years old, so that's why I I had that thing stuck in my mind.
And this is the time of year that you say pajin on uh for good luck.
Right.
But uh in and you were talking about uh infrastructure and uh it I'm Italian it came to mind uh the picture in my mind was of the uh the Colosseum, which was built uh thousands of years ago, and uh it's still standing, and you said in Europe, you know, they've been in decline and but yet they have all this beautiful architecture and everything, their infrastructure.
And uh recently I mentioned uh compared the United States to uh uh Edward Gibbons uh masterpiece, uh the decline and fall, and I think you know, we're falling in that category where the r where Rome didn't protect its borders and they were invaded.
Uh they weren't creating wealth, and we're in that boat now and they had to re re uh rely on the rest of the empire to funnel wealth into uh into Rome.
And then they had all these freeloaders that were there.
That's why they built the Coliseum so they can get 'em bread and circuses.
Right, right.
And there's where we're going.
Yeah, the call the Coliseum was the dancing with the stars of the time, wasn't it?
That was basically it was like the virtue it was like reality TV.
In fact, it was a lot real than reality TV if you were on the receiving end.
But uh they were yeah, that was the th that that was uh that was the thing.
And you're right, you're right, John.
Uh that as in Rome, uh people people find it hard to pick up on uh incremental decline, because incremental decline is terribly agreeable, particularly if you're in old in old societies.
Uh the th th th in in Paris, if you're sitting on a beautiful boulevard having your cafe ole at a sidewalk cafe, the fact that you are no longer a power in the world doesn't really bother you.
In fact, it's it's agreeable.
You don't have to have policies, you just have attitudes.
If you look at uh that's why Europe is hot for all the craziest schemes.
Uh if you take Kyoto uh, for example, Europe Europe signed Kyoto and then didn't abide by it because it thought, well, you know, why would we?
We just strike attitudes, and our attitude is that uh we're opposed to all this global warming uh business.
Uh but if you're a serious nation, if you're a serious nation, uh then decline is a choice.
Charles Crowdhammer gave a speech a couple of weeks ago and he said decline is a choice.
And that is what Americans are choosing if they follow Barack Obama and Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed down this path.
They're choosing.
You are choosing decline.
You're not choosing government health care and uh more environmental regulation and all the other stuff in these ghastly two thousand page bills.
You are v choosing decline.
Uh and y you're lucky, you won't get to see the worst of it.
But your kids and grandkids will.
And let's not forget, by the way, that Europe's decline has been insulated by American power.
After nineteen forty-five, uh Germany basically became uh this uh great social welfare case uh where people leave a social welfare state where people leave school at thirty-four and take early retirement at 43, and they can do that because America picks up the tab uh for the defense of Germany.
Uh even today, uh sixty-five years after the Second World War, the United States Army is living in Germany.
It's living on the German plane, waiting for an attack uh from a country that went belly up twenty years ago.
Uh so uh European decline has been insulated uh and and coseted by American power.
Who's gonna do that for American decline?
Who is gonna make America's decline comfortable for Americans the way America has made Europe's decline comfortable for Europeans?
No country in history has been able to afford what Obama is now attempting uh with the health care bill and the cap and trade and all the rest of it.
You cannot make that arithmetic add up.
And when you are either as ignorant or as hostile to private business as this administration and the present Congress is, uh there will be an awful lot of damage done to an awful lot of people, perhaps irreparably, uh, before uh you figure out that you didn't know what you were talking about and you screwed up uh really badly.
We cannot afford another year like last year.
More straight ahead on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to be with you.
Don't forget uh Rush will be back on air live Wednesday.
And if you go to Rush Limbaugh.com, you can see the video of his press conference and also read his uh message to listeners.
Hey, let's go to Joe in uh Somerset, Pennsylvania.
Joe, are you in Amish country?
Yes it is.
Yes it is.
Hi, Mark.
It's nice to talk to you.
I enjoy listening to you.
Oh, it's great great to uh great to have you with us.
So uh are you you uh you're not in the construction business, are you?
I most definitely am.
Um in our mainstay has been a dairy industry until uh about two thousand two when it took a real knock for the worst.
Uh we do do an awful lot of agricultural work and mostly dairy construction.
Okay, so they're like big cow barns, that kind of thing.
That's right.
In fact, we're trying to get some cows into a barn right now, and we're dealing with Somerset weather.
So my my throwaway remark about Amish uh basically federally subsidized Amish barn raising uh going down the whole length of I ninety five from Maine to Florida.
That hit too close to home to you.
Very close, yeah.
I mean, ninety-five's on the other side of the state, but still um you know, they're tough competition because they don't have to carry the workers' pump that the rest of us do, and uh they have different loopholes that they can work with and uh plus an awful lot of times they bring thirteen, fourteen year olds out to work and that's that's uh that's that's true.
It's uh it's one of the few communities left in America where uh when the uh teens get out of school the the work day is just beginning.
Joe, Joe, let me ask you this, though.
How many people do you employ in your construction business?
About eight.
Eight.
So in other words, you're three above the limit now for for getting the exemption from having to pay the fine for the health insurance.
So I already w I already warned my employees that they're gonna get a ten percent pay cut if I have to pay it.
Right.
So they'll either get a ten percent pay cut or you'll lay off three of them.
Right.
So this so the Obama stimulus once again is working its magic in Somerset, Pennsylvania.
Uh this now why why why do you uh think the number five was uh was I mean that that's just plucked out of the air, isn't it?
There's no there's no significance to five other than the fact that it happened to be the number that the these union labor unions in the construction industry asked for.
I mean, this is this is the problem with designing a bill this way that you cannot craft it to take into account millions of people across America who have very particular situations like you do.
Well, and you know, I I will defend the Amish to a degree they only educate through the eighth grade.
But when these young men come on my job, they actually understand what Pythagorean theorem is.
They know A square plus B squared equals C squared.
They know more about carpentry than uh than uh uh a lot of union carpentries.
Yes, it's a very strange thing that.
You know, when the when education was only mandatory to the eighth grade for for all Americans in many states as it was a century ago, believe it or not, people were educated by the eighth grade.
Now that Barack Obama wants everybody to go to college till they're thirty-seven like they do in Germany, uh they'll be learning in college what they do in the what they d in middle school.
Yeah.
We do we're not gonna it's uh it's all gonna we're we're gonna have fully qualified uh thirty-seven year old PhDs who are complete morons.
But the but the but the point, Joe, is that you can't design a system with enough exemptions and exemptions from exemptions that's going to work for a guy like you.
It's always guys like you.
It's people who run small businesses that employ, you know, five, six, seven, ten, twelve, twenty people that get clobbered uh when government starts microregulating like this.
And when they say the age of big government is over, what they mean is the age of big government is over, but the age of super duper micro teensy wincy government regulating every single crummy little aspect of your life is just beginning.
And that's what's happening with bills like this.
That's right.
The small business people have become the ugly stepchild if nobody wants to deal with when it comes to the government we carry an awful lot of the water.
No, I tell you uh thank thanks for your thanks for your call, Joe.
You're not the ugly stepchild.
You are who who was uh who was that?
Was that Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella who had the ugly stepsisters?
I can't remember now.
Yeah, Cinderella had the ugly steps.
I apologise to Sleeping Beauty.
I don't know what her stepsisters are like.
I don't want to get into any trouble here.
Cinderella had the ugly stepsisters.
No, you are the Cinderella, Joe.
You don't get to go to the ball and the ugly stepsisters are like uh Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack.
They're the two ugliest stepsisters ever devised.
General Motors, they're an ugly stepsister too.
I would be in favor of, by the way, if we have to have all these special exemptions and carve-outs, I am saying now, I would be in favor of putting the Amish in charge of General Motors.
Because then we would get some really interesting new models.
I think it would be interesting to see what in interesting new uh designs that the Amish uh came up with for General Motors uh and and for Chrysler as well.
They would certainly last HR makes the point that they would certainly last longer.
That's very true.
But but uh you were worried about the methane emissions from the new General Motors, yes.
So we would have like we had in when I was trying to fly down here last week and Vermont Airspace was closed again because of the excess bovine flatulence.
It would be the same thing now where Pennsylvania airspace would be closed because of the excess uh the the excess equine flatulence from the new Chevrolet models.
There's all kinds of problems.
But this is why the government shouldn't get into it i in in the first place.
Because the government micromanaging the economy by coming up with a humongous bill and you say right, right, well now everyone's covered.
We're gonna have health care, we're gonna do this, we're gonna reform healthcare for three hundred million people.
But they don't do it for three hundred million people.
They look at you and say, well which subcategories do you belong to?
Are you in a labor union?
Well then you go and stand on that side of the line.
Are you Amish you go and stand on that side of the line.
And eventually they've carved out so many uh contradictory opt-outs for this or that group that you the only thing you can say with certainty is that this thing is going to be a disaster on a scale unknown to man.
You look how long is the tax code at the moment?
How m however many trillion, seven trillion pages long.
You look at what's in uh the health care bill and think how long that tax code is going to be by the time they've said, well you have to pay the $150 fine because you don't have insurance unless you're an Amish uh in which case you don't have to to pay it if you're an Amish construction company that employs more than five people you'll have to pay this much of a fine if you are in a mixed uh if you uh in a mixed marriage whereby say you're an imam married to an Amish lady uh then
you will you would only be entitled to half the Amish discount unless of course by that point imams have managed to carve out a some kind of health exemption so that if you're running a mosque that em employs less than fifty jihadists you won't have to pay you won't have to pay the uh the 750 dollar fine per jihadist for not having health insurance because they don't need health insurance because they're gonna be blown themselves up on your flight.
But the good news is President Obama has just appointed, made his first transgender appointment.
And I just saw this on MSNBC just now.
He's appointed the he's made his first transgender appointment.
The transgender community was complaining that he hadn't uh he hadn't made his first transgender appointment.
Now I don't know whether they've got an opt-out in the because they require particular kinds of medical uh health uh health care so uh have they got have they got an opt-out in uh in in this uh health care bill do they have to pay the seven hundred and fifty dollar fine?
If you're an Amish transgendered person in the construction industry, what what exemption are you entitled to there?
They you cannot devise a health care plan for three hundred million people uh and give it to Ben Nelson and Mary Landrew to carve up.
This makes a mockery of the supposed, oh, you know, we're all in this together, we're all equal, everybody's fair, everybody's gonna be the same.
Even by the socialist principles uh of fairness for all, equal outcomes for all, equal opportunity for all, this bill is disgusting and an abomination and should be thrown out uh if if not in Congress, then by whatever new Congress gets elected this November.
Uh we cannot uh we cannot dis afford to go forward with this system because it will be a brutal disaster.
Uh as I said the other day, in Canada, everyone gets appallingly treated.
Unless you're a cabinet minister or a hockey player, you get the same crumminess.
When I used to write about health care in Canadian papers, two or three or four days later, there'd always be a letter saying, Well, yes, Mark Stein's right.
Our healthcare system is terrible and it's appalling, and you have to wait years to get seen.
But say what you like about it.
The one good thing about it is that Mark Stein gets the same lousy treatment that I do.
He can't write a check and buy his way around the lousiness of our system.
It's lousiness for all, lousiness uber alas.
Uh and that is the point of a government health care system.
A government healthcare system with opt-outs for Amish and construction workers and transgendered Amish and transgendered imams and all the rest of it.
That is never gonna work.
That is gonna be more expensive, more wasteful, more bureaucratic, and will give the IRS more powers to interfere in more decisions that you make as a supposedly free-born citizen than anything yet devised, because government health care licenses the government to involve themselves in every aspect of your life.
And that's the point to remember.
Government health care is not about health care.
It's about government.
And that's why if you look at that bill, if you look at that bill, uh it it actually doesn't do anything for the uninsured, large numbers are left uninsured.
It doesn't do anything for Medicare patients.
If you're on Medicare, your treatment is going to be work.
Worse, it doesn't do anything for those people who have health insurance except charge them more for the privilege of having so-called Cadillac plans.
The common f element to or every feature of that health care bill is government.
Government health care is about government, not health care.
Lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein, Inforush, 1800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the Rush Limbaugh Show, Rushback Wednesday.
Let's go to Carolyn in Cincinnati.
Carolyn, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Mark.
It's great to talk to you.
Good good good to have you here too.
You looking forward to uh the new year ahead?
Um it can't get any worse.
We'll we'll check back with you next January and see whether you feel that way.
It's gonna it can get way worse.
And uh you don't want to you don't want to take uh comfort in that uh in that cliche, Carolyn.
Well, I'm hoping the next round of elections, maybe we'll see a turnaround if the Republicans don't manage to snatch defeat from victory like they usually do.
Yeah, yeah.
That's uh again, that's not something I'm sure I'd want to bet the future on.
No, I don't think you have a warm fuzzy feeling here.
Now you you you called because you were objecting to my rampant Amish phobia.
Uh no, uh this is like Amish Monday, though, instead of we go Wednesday.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's true.
We're we're shaking up the format here.
We don't stand still.
You know, other talk shows they just say, okay, the we go Wednesday thing seems to work, but and they just leave it at that.
But that's why we're the where I cut ahead.
Where it was actually supposed to be Mennonite Monday, but it didn't poll test so well.
So you might get a call from a Mennonite.
I don't think you're gonna get any phone calls from the Amish.
No, well that's that's that's the great if for hate mongers like me, that's that's what's so good.
You can demonize them and they don't call up to hassle you back.
That's that's the uh so my Amish phobia, it's uh it's it seems to be working out.
Uh but you weren't necessarily to defend them.
It's just that um a few summers ago we were in Holmes County, Ohio, we were on a a tour of an Amish farm and we had a non-Amish guide, and she explained to us that the Amish they're not it's frowned upon in terms of like social security, welfare, any government benefit.
And that apparently the communities will put money into funds, and if they have members of their community that get sick and need to be hospitalized, they pay cash.
They negotiate cash rates with the hospitals and the doctors that are much lower than what an insurance company would pay.
Yes.
And I just I thought that was interesting, but they just, you know, they don't want to have any connections like that.
No, and you know and you know w the brilliance of the point you're making is that when you restore medical care to a normal market relationship, it is cheaper.
Right.
Uh if you uh go along to any U.S. hospital and uh say, well, I've I've got a bit of a got a bit of a problem, I need a shot, I need my leg being amputated or whatever, and the bill comes through uh a month later, and you look at it, and it will it will say on the bill there uh uh uh a an unin the so-called uninsured discount, which it can be twenty to thirty percent.
Right.
You pay you pay the uninsured discount, you're getting a better deal.
You and and and the other thing you're doing is you know exactly what that broken leg or whatever it is you're being treated for costs, what that uh hernia or whatever it is costs.
Every other way of doing it, uh inserting all these third parties, whether it's insurers or government, between the doctor and the patient, uh prevents people from understanding uh health care as a normal market transaction.
You've made a brilliant point.
The p the the one demographic group in America who are supposed to be unworldly are actually getting the best deal in their health care uh simply because uh th they pull their cash and they go along to the hospital and they pay cash for the treatment.
And that is an ingenious point.
And uh you know the way they say these things like, oh, we should all be on on Congress's health plan.
It would actually be better for this country if we were all on the Amish health plan.
Uh restoring the normal market features uh of health care that actually do make it surprisingly affordable and more importantly, give the people who use health care uh a sense of it as a market uh transaction.
So uh uh but so Carolyn, you're pro-Amish when it comes to the health care debate.
Well, I think that that makes a lot of sense, and I think we'd I'll be better off doing that.
I I work in a company where we deal with a lot of smaller companies and what a lot of the smaller companies are doing, which is the way that it should go, is that they're establishing health savings account or flexible savings accounts, and then they have high deductible insurance coverage.
Right.
So you figure out I've got I've got four kids myself, how many ear infections, how many visits to the doctor, let's deduct that money, put it into the account, it's gonna be there, and I'll just pay them.
The problem is that most doctors' offices are so ingrained in what is the insurance gonna pay that they don't even have available a non-insured cost.
Well, you'd be you'd be that may be true in Cincinnati, but it's actually the opposite in uh in uh New Hampshire.
If you gave a go along to the doctor, I had this with a a foreign visitor who was staying with me, and uh they were saying, oh uh a very wealthy person.
The uh the only uh problem was the wealthy person was uh not a United States resident, was just visiting from another country.
But they insist as oh, you're not insured.
Oh, well, okay, it'll only be fifty dollars then.
Uh uh, oh wait, is that too much?
Well maybe we can make it just thirty-five dollars or whatever.
And they were they because they were so unused to the idea of somebody just going along and wanting to have it as a normal uh market transaction.
And you're right, this high deductible thing, because if you're talking about kids and ear infections, that's not something you insure for.
You insure for things that are unlikely to happen.
That's a given.
You know your kids are gonna have a certain amount of small problems and and all the rest of it.
You you you insure for your house burning down because it's highly unlikely to happen.
You insure against your car flipping over on the median and bursting into flames because it's highly unlikely uh to happen.
So you're you're uh you're thinking uh straight here, Carolyn.
Lots more straight ahead on the Russian bull Show.
Amish Monday on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
It's a new innovation for the new uh year.
We we we started off by just uh saying we wanted the Amish to be running General Motors because they'd be uh full of new models like uh like the new Chevy Tahoe, which is just one horsepower, literally.
Uh and then we decided we were gonna put him put him in charge of uh healthcare too, because the Amish healthcare system seems to be working out uh pretty well.
Uh that's what I love about this show.
It always leads you in directions you never thought to to go uh to you'd go in.
The Amish is the solution for everything.
In the next hour we may get to the Mennonites, we may get to the Shakers.
Uh we'll we'll see uh how it goes.
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