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Feb. 19, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:35
February 19, 2010, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
The views expressed by the host on this program and what do you think of those views, by the way, make more sense than anything.
Anybody else out there happens to be saying, Rush Limbaugh on Friday, live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open live Friday, 800-282-2882 when we get back to the phones.
And when we do, whatever you wish to bring up or discuss is fair game today.
That's a rule on Friday.
By the way, audio soundbites, where do we leave off?
Yeah, number 10.
Mike.
I get the audio soundbites.
From Moscow, Ohio.
Via WLWT.com.
Frustrated owner bulldozes home ahead of foreclosure.
Mann says actions intended to send message to bank.
Like many people, Terry Hoskins has had troubles with his bank, but his solution to foreclosure might be unique.
Hoskins says he's been in a struggle with River Hills Bank over his Claremont County home for nearly 10 years, a struggle that was coming to an end as the bank began foreclosure proceedings on his $350,000 home.
When I see I owe $160,000 on a home valued at $350,000 and somebody decides they want to take it.
Nope, I wasn't going to stand for that, so I took it down.
Hoskins said the IRS placed liens on his carpet store and commercial property on State Route 125 after his brother, a one-time business partner, sued him.
So, you know, folks, there is something going on out there.
You cannot deny it.
They can try to paper this over in Washington and say this is just, you know, a big mess.
Government systems ungovernable, unmanageable, and so forth.
People are burning up and bulldozing their houses and flying their airplanes into IRS offices.
I mean, this is utter frustration and defiance.
That is what's going on.
By the way, this is from the Daily Caller.
This is Chatsworth Osborne Jr.'s website.
I mentioned this yesterday.
Here's the headline, the stories by John Ward.
White House begins groundwork to avoid blame for tax increases.
President Obama on Thursday indicated that tax increases on people who make less than a quarter million a year will be on the table when a deficit commission makes its recommendations later this year on how to resolve a nation's fiscal imbalances.
Everything's on the table.
That's how this thing's going to work, Obama said, moments after signing an exec order creating the 18-member Blue Ribbon Commission.
But the White House has already begun to lay the groundwork for their argument that such a recommendation by the panel should not be blamed on the president, who vowed during his campaign not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than a quarter of a million.
White House officials said the president will not sit on the commission and the options they present will not necessarily reflect administration policy.
Obama's comment is consistent with past remarks he's made that the commission will not begin its work with preconditions, a word he used to knock Republicans during his remarks on Thursday.
Many Republicans, of course, skeptical of this panel, and they don't want to participate unless tax increases are off the table.
Obama thanked the panel co-chairs Irksom Bowles and Alan Simpson Babe for taking on a difficult and perhaps thankless task, said the former Clinton White House chief of staff and Republican senator from Wyoming, we're taking on the impossible.
No, it is not the impossible.
Their recommendations will not be binding or even require a vote.
However, a congressional chartered commission that would have had binding authority to require an up or down vote by Congress was voted down in the Senate last month.
Now, a companion story.
This is actually an editorial of the Wall Street Journal.
Unfortunately, Alan, not Homer Simpson, is the title.
President Obama's appointed Republican chairman to the Deficit Reduction Commission has lashed out at pro-growth tax cutters as unpatriotic.
The same day that President Obama called for another $50 billion to $100 billion stimulus plan and concommitant increase in the deficit, he also appointed the.
I saw that.
I saw that.
Lautenberg has stomach cancer, but he says he's going to get back to work.
He's going to miss the jobs bill vote on Monday.
Now, I don't know what the New Jersey law is.
If Lautenberg can't continue because of stomach cancer, he's 86, but he says he's going to.
I don't know.
Find out if New Jersey law, the governor, appoints, or if there's a special election.
I need to know that.
How many Democrats do we have in the Senate?
Now, there's Tim Johnson who had a stroke.
He's still there.
We got Robert Byrd, who's still there, but may not know it.
And we have now Frank Lautenberg, who's not there, but says he's going back.
Just reported with diagnosed stomach cancer.
He fell in his house the other day.
And I guess this is the result of the medical diagnosis that they came up with when they took him to the hospital.
Anyway, back to the Wall Street Journal piece here.
The same day that Obama called for another stimulus plan, he also appointed the chairman of his deficit reduction commission.
And it says a lot about Washington.
Almost no one got the irony of these paired announcements.
The two chairmen will be Democrat Irksom Bowles, Clinton's former White House cover-up artist, chief of staff, and Republican Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming senator.
Mr. Simpson was best known for being a thorn in the side of conservatives and supply-siders when he was in the Senate.
Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform said he is a tax increaser, and he's anti-immigrant.
Larry Kudlow of the Kudlow Report on CNBC is even more critical.
Simpsons to the left of Irksum Bowles.
He scoffs.
This thing, this bipartisan deficit panel, needs to be blown up.
It's an excuse to raise taxes when we need to be cutting tax rates.
That's what it is, and it's designed to make sure that Obama's fingerprints are not on it.
But for Obama's purposes, Alan Simpson is a masterstroke since he's likely to commit Republicans to being the tax collectors for Obamaomics.
Some are even calling it the VAT Commission because liberals want a bipartisan agreement to implement a European-style value-added tax that will raise federal revenues by about five percentage points of GDP.
That's the amount federal spending has risen under Obama.
Since 2007, federal spending is up by nearly 25%.
Sterling, you understand how a VAT works?
It's basically a sales tax at every stage from production to wholesale to retail to middleman to union mafia payoffs to paying off the billing inspectors and the zoning inspectors and the teamsters.
And then at the end of that, the consumer gets all of it piled onto the end price.
That's what a VAT is.
It's, I don't know what it is now in Europe, in the UK, it was 15%.
And Americans, if you go there, you get a, when you leave, you get it back.
Same in Canada.
They're looking here at a 20% VAT in the United States.
The journal says here the Republicans would be wiser to follow the lead of the new governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.
Even with a huge deficit inherited from John Corazon, Mr. Christie announced a budget plan that would freeze spending, axe unneeded programs, and still cut taxes to increase growth.
But do not expect any tax cuts from the Obama Deficit Reduction Panel.
This is looking with each passing day like a political ploy to make a tax increase seem imperative and unavoidable.
And it's anybody with half a brain knows exactly.
Even without this commission, this is what was going to happen.
That's why they ran up all the debt in the first place.
It's all been purposeful.
Now Obama gets to raise taxes without his fingerprints being.
That's why he said a couple weeks ago, oh, you know, I'm kind of agnostic on this.
Tax cuts, tax increases for middle class.
I'm kind of agnostic because he's washing his hands of anything he's ever said.
And these guys are going to be the architects.
Said if that's what Obama wants, that's what he's likely to get with Alan Simpson helping to run the show.
That's Alan Simpson Babe from the Wall Street Journal.
Folks, have you noticed?
I have because it's my Yoopman show prep out there.
Have you noticed that they are arresting more and more Taliban?
After the apprehension of this Abdul Baradar character over there, this is about the 20th number two in command that we've captured.
You ever seen a top-heavy organization like this, the Taliban, with 25 number twos?
After the apprehension of this guy, all of these arrests, and I have just a few questions.
Where is the investigation into how Abdul Baradar was treated?
Was he given his Miranda rights?
Was he waterboarded?
Where is his ACLU lawyer?
What are the priorities over there?
You know, the rules of engagement are.
If these guys walk out of their holdup houses and so forth, no guns, we can't shoot them.
You know, it's apparent all these arrests of more and more Taliban people.
How will the Taliban ever love us if we keep trampling on their rights like this?
Welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh on Open Line Friday and to the phones to John in Nebraska.
John, welcome, the EIB Network.
Hello, sir.
Hi, Rush.
Just got a quick story, and then I have two quick questions.
Yeah.
Been married for 15 wonderful years.
Congratulations, sir.
That's wonderful.
This week had a very awkward moment.
My wife comes in from getting a haircut or getting her hair done.
And when she walks in the door, we kind of look at each other and we both know what each other's thinking.
I'm staring at her, and she's kind of looking down at the ground.
And what I say was...
Wait a second.
Just don't lose your train of thought there.
Has somebody died?
No.
No, Coraldo just showing up to talk about Tiger Woods here on Fox.
When that happened, Tiger, I mean, he's a grim Reaper there.
When Geraldo shows up, somebody's either dead or they're going to die pretty soon.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I just thought maybe something could happen.
I didn't know.
No problem.
You were saying your wife walked in, hairstyle changed.
You both knew what you were thinking, which was what.
Well, what came out, what I said was, holy lord, you look like.
And in a low tone, she says, don't even think about it.
And at that moment, I said, Rachel Maddow.
Oh, no.
You said it.
It was a blur after that, but that's poor things.
Well, poor me, too.
Anyway, say, I have a quick, two quick questions.
One is, okay, the health insurance, you know, they talk about doing it over state lines.
Why can't if insurance is based on, you know, spreading the risk, more people in the risk pool lowers the cost, why can't we open it up worldwide?
That's question number one.
Number two is the cost of medicine.
Why, you know, how much is it costing the manufacturers to make it?
Where is this price getting inflated at?
Is it at the pharmacies?
And if so, you know, can we can the government possibly, instead of paying the pharmacies rates, why can't they pay the manufacturer's rates, sell it to the pharmacy so it's going to cost the government less?
Well, now, on the latter, I have a very simple market-based understanding of drug prices.
And I have been led, and I'm pretty much convinced that on the drugs that people need, the newest, the latest, the RD on these things is through the roof.
The regulatory process, the hoops they have to jump through at the Food and Drug Administration at every level of all the testing, the blind testing, the placebos, and the regulations here and regulations there.
I think the cost of bringing a drug to market would stun us.
What would be interesting is to find out the cost of the drug at the manufacturer and then what the markup is once it hits like Walgreens or whatever.
Well, that changes over the course of time.
After they make the R D back, it takes them a while to make back the R d production costs.
And that's when prices start coming down.
I don't know what pharmacy markups are.
What about the health insurance that I'd suggest?
Well, now, the reason that the states, the states are the ones, well, of course, Obama Democrats, the states are the ones that do not want insurance companies to be able to sell across state lines because every state has different mandates on these insurance companies.
In Alabama, and I'm just picking Alabama at random.
Alabama may mandate certain kinds of coverage at certain kinds of premium.
They may say you can't cover this and you can't cover that.
And as such, they don't want Texas to be able to counter what their mandates are with something that would undercut Alabama.
So it's the states that we don't have a single mandated system here that says what insurance policies can.
I've had so many insurance agents call here and tell me that they're going to Costa Rica.
Just think about what health insurance being available in the worldwide market would do as far as pushing the capitalist agenda, getting more people off of government, say over in Europe, getting more people off of the government systems.
Well, in theory, I like what you're talking about, but you're going to have a different quality of health care system from country to country to country.
But health care here is not the issue.
It's the cost.
And that's another thing is the health care crisis.
It's not the health care crisis.
It's the cost of care.
It's the cost, not just the cost, but access.
And there are so many mandates.
I had a story in the stack a couple days ago.
People do have access.
Everyone has access.
But to what degree?
Well, some only have access through the emergency room, but others don't want insurance because of their relative youth.
Sure.
They can afford it.
And so forth.
And they can afford not to have insurance.
I understand.
Yeah, I can't find it.
But there's an insurance company, Wellness or something like that, in California, that just bumped up rates 39%.
And the Democrats are saying, see, see, see, this is why we need national health care.
See, see, this is why we have, because they're just, look how they're screwing their customers.
And the truth of this story, the Wall Street Journal had a great story on it.
The truth of this is that this is exactly what's going to happen if Obama's health care takes over.
The reason they are raising rates out there is because of the restrictions and the mandates the state of California puts on them.
You know, if you look at the cost of a house, you look at the city, state, whatever regulations there are before you can get a permit to build and construct, and then you get your occupancy permit.
If you take all of these onerous state, city, federal regulations out of so much of what goes on in the private sector, you would not believe how cheap things would become.
And that's true of drugs.
It is true of building a house.
It's true of building commercial real estate, developing commercial real estate.
It's just onerous as it can be.
You can't build because of a snail's arter environment or whatever.
It's ridiculous.
And it's been building.
And this is all found to be percolating in the property rights movement.
Okay, in New Jersey, the governor appoints.
So if Frank Lautenberg were forced to resign because of his illness, Chris Christie would be able to appoint.
Now, imagine right now, as we speak, the Democrat legislature in New Jersey is meeting to create a law that requires a special election.
And they're trying to make sure that they will have enough votes to override a gubernatorial veto.
This is what Kennedy did in Massachusetts.
They demanded a special election there.
And what was it?
The law was in place, and they didn't like the law.
They had changed it previously, make it more advantageous.
So they changed it again to what they thought would make it more advantageous this time.
And it ended up Scott Brown being elected.
So they sort of shafted themselves.
And the Democrats in New Jersey will do the same thing if they start monkeying around with this.
Here's Don in Prescott, Arizona.
Great to have you on the Russian and Ball program.
Great pleasure to speak with you, Rush.
Yes, sir.
My question is in regards to Sarah Palin supported John McCain in the Arizona senatorial race.
She's allied herself with the Tea Party movement, but I can assure you the Arizona Tea Party folks are not supporting John McCain.
The chair of the Maricopa Republican Party, you may have heard of this last week, went on the news last week and stated that he doesn't even regard John McCain as a Republican.
So I went to a J.D. Hayworth campaign rally on Tuesday of this week, sponsored by the Tea Party.
And John McCain got mostly booze when his name was mentioned.
So I understand that Palin feels some allegiance to John McCain, but it's really terribly misplaced allegiance.
So my question is, can anything be done to get her to support J.D. Hayworth, or is it too late at this point?
Oh, it's too late.
She's not going to bounce off of this.
What are the implications for her?
You know, certainly she's supporting a candidate that's held in very low regard by the Tea Party movement.
What are the implications for her in that?
We talked about this the other day.
I know that a lot of people think that this is the part of cronyism in politics has got to change.
Yeah.
However, if you're Sarah Palin, the one thing you know is that if it weren't for John McCain, nobody would know who you are right now.
Yeah.
And there's a, you know, she has some loyalty there.
I'm more puzzled by Scott Brown endorsing McCain and then having McCain come into his district so Brown can campaign for him.
Palin's not doing that.
We're hoping that J.D. Hayworth is going to make it, but certainly Sarah Palin, probably independents in Arizona, would like the fact that she was here and supporting John McCain.
But certainly the Tea Party movement is not in line with that.
Well, I know.
It's a tough thing.
I know why she's doing it.
And I look at, I cannot.
I haven't spoken to her about it, and I don't even want to put words in her mouth.
I could only address this were I to be in her shoes.
And she's a Republican.
And she's made the case that she's a Republican.
And this guy put her on the ticket.
And had that not happened, she'd be Sarah who right now.
She owes him something.
Okay, now look, those of you out there in the tea party that are miffed at Sarah Palin and at Scott Brown, I just want to remind you of one thing.
Like I said the other day, if Sarah Palin had not endorsed McCain, can you imagine what the press would do to her?
Can you imagine the refrain, oh, he's perfectly fine to be president?
You'd run on the ticket with him as president, but he's not good enough to be Senator Marison.
It would kill her.
And in the case of Scott Brown, he was, McCain was the first senator to openly support Scott Brown.
He was being totally ignored by every other Republican in the Belway.
And McCain, and it's on this, it's the same deal, folks.
It's just loyalty.
It just is.
Okay, to the emails.
Dear Rush, I think Tiger Woods and Toyota should team up for a comeback and run an advertisement with their new motto, I swear we can stop.
Dear Rush, Tiger did it across state lines too.
He tried to spread the risk to lower the cost, but it didn't work.
Please, Rush, there are inspectors and building officials out there, very honest, and we work our rear ends off.
Come on, Rush.
There are honest conservative building inspectors and building officials, which I and my staff just happen to be.
We don't get paid off, maybe in Florida, but not here.
Please don't dump us in with everybody else with a few bad apples.
We take our jobs very seriously, just like you do yours.
And we do save lives with what we do.
A fair comment.
A fair cop.
It's a joke.
It's just a joke, primarily in New York, California.
I'm not aware of any shenanigans here in Florida.
And believe me, there are a whole...
Do you realize, folks, that where I live, you have to get approval from some town commission on how you're going to paint your house and how it can be decorated?
Ho!
You do.
And if your neighbors don't like it, they can show up, complain, whine, and moan, even if they'll never see it.
So we got even with them.
I'm not going to tell you how.
I'm not even going to go there.
I'm not even going to go there.
Instead, we have an audio soundbite.
Now, we all know, ladies and gentlemen, that the anthropological, anthropomorgic, the man-made global warming is a hoax.
It's falling apart all around us.
We have illustrated with sound bites from members of Senate and Congress.
In 2002 to 2005, when there wasn't any snow in Washington, proof of global warming.
Robert Byrd, who was then, what, 84?
Whatever he was sounding like.
I'm 80 for you, though.
I haven't seen such a long vid, Mr. President.
No snow.
Capital.
Something is going on out there.
Well, there's always something going on out there.
And yet, we just have blizzards that shut everything.
In fact, blizzards so bad a Dolly Lama had to walk out of the White House at a back door next to unpicked up garbage bags.
He doesn't wear sleeves.
Obama gave him some presidential cufflinks.
The Dolly Lama, who doesn't even wear a coat, walking out of the back door of the White House with unpicked up garbage bags.
Hey, don't slip on a banana peel, Dolly.
And that's all because Obama didn't want the Chikoms, as our creditors, to get mad because, see, Al Sharp can go in and out the front door.
Dalai Lama has to go out with the garbage.
So the Chikoms will not be upset.
All that snow, all that snow.
And everybody said, you know what?
That snow, that proves there are major climate change going on.
So no snow equals global warming.
Lots of snow equals global warming.
We all know it's a hoax.
We all know.
Phil Jones, University of East Anglia, UK.
Hadn't been any warmings in 95.
And the medieval period probably was warmer than it is now.
So he just threw Michael Mann from Penn State under the bus.
It's a hockey stick guy.
The head of the UN climate change unit, he just bagged it.
He just quit.
You know, Al Gore is in hiding.
He can't find him.
He's down in Rio in the summertime, urging everybody not to do anything about snow.
It's got to melt naturally.
Otherwise, you'll destroy the planet if you street.
The city of Washington, despite all the taxes people pay, 25% of the snowplows don't work, and they asked residents to get out there and shovel their own streets.
And all this means there's global warming.
So the big lie has been exposed.
It is falling apart.
It is an abject, fully exposed joke.
And yet this afternoon in Nevada.
We just got five feet of snow in Washington.
And so everybody's like, a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, see, look at that.
There's all this snow on the ground.
You know, this doesn't mean anything.
I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn't mean that every place is getting warmer.
It means the planet as a whole is getting warmer.
As the planet as a whole gets warmer, you start seeing changing weather patterns.
And that creates more violent storm systems.
Stop the temperature.
More unpredictable.
Is that like we were after Hurricane Katrina?
We're going to get all these massive new hurricanes here that were untold strength.
Of course, we've had a drought of hurricanes basically since.
This is the big lie, folks.
This is the big lie.
Something so audacious.
Nobody could believe any could possibly tell something this false.
So it's got to be true.
Nobody would have the audacity, the guts to lie this big.
That's the whole premise behind the big lie, and you're listening to it.
Double weather.
So any single place might end up being warmer.
Another place might end up being a little bit cooler.
There might end up being more precipitation in the air, more monsoons, more hurricanes, more tornadoes.
Okay, so there you have it.
The President of the United States ignoring facts to push a political agenda.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, anniversaries.
Anniversaries are normally a celebration of some good event.
But then you saw how Obama, Biden, and the White House are trying to find their pony in the manure of their one-year-old stimulus bill, even though it's been a total disaster.
This week, we gave you the full picture on just how ineffective it's been in creating jobs and saving our economy.
And then, as the responsible host I am, I have shared stories of surprised economists who are shocked, shocked that the slush fund isn't working.
I know it's just one more economist out of touch with reality, but I've always said that I would present both sides.
Looking out for you.
As I say, if somebody's intent on destroying the country, we'll give it a fair shot.
Fair examination.
Looking out for you, folks.
We're not going to jump on some right-wing bandwagon and start bashing things.
If some communists want to come and say they can do a better job, we'll listen to them.
Here it's a factor.
But you listen to this program to stay in touch with reality.
I understand that.
Now, if you are a member of the Heritage Foundation, that's another great way of staying in touch, too.
Heritage Foundation, one huge think tank of really smart people.
They know which economists to consult to filter out the truth, making it easy for everybody, including you, to understand.
When you start your membership to the Heritage Foundation, you'll find yourself with all kinds of information, all kinds of facts, opinions, all at your fingertips, research, consideration, or just your education.
You'll always feel more informed after every visit to Heritage and that you're helping advance the country's conservative cause at the same time.
Just go online to askheritage.org and make yourself a member.
Join me and hundreds of thousands of sensible, smart crowd people who are moving conservatism forward each and every day.
You will not be disappointed.
Askheritage.org.
Emily in Indianapolis.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's an honor to talk to you, and thanks for all you do.
Thanks very much.
I work for the big evil pharmaceutical company, and I wanted to let you know that you are right about the cost of pharmaceutical drugs.
It is the research and development, and it can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to bring a novel product to market, almost a billion dollars to bring medicines that save lives and make, you know, help people live better lives.
So I just want to let you know you're right about that.
Well, yeah, I know.
But, you know, a lot of people, even when they hear that, they think that they're being lied to because they've been conditioned to suspect all of big business by the Democrat Party for all of these years.
But it's tell us, if you will, very briefly, I've got about a minute and a half here.
Give me an idea of just the hoops, the regulatory hoops the FDA, you got to go through when you come up with an idea for a new drug.
Well, I mean, I'm not probably as intelligible as I'd like to be on that.
But what happens is, once a molecule is recognized by the scientists and it's gone through its animal studies and safe for human consumption, you know, these studies are years.
Oh, yeah, I forgot the animal testing.
Exactly.
But we have to make sure it's right for human consumption.
And, you know, people want to have safe medications, medications that can change their lives and improve their quality of life.
And it takes years and lots of dollars to get these drugs to market.
And it's very important.
Who is, this is a stupid question, but it's the only way you can not stay stupid is to ask for an answer.
The relationship between a pharmaceutical company and a pharmacist or a nationwide pharmaceutical chain, who determines the price mark up there?
I think it's between the company.
And again, this is probably out of my league.
It's between the company and the pharmacist.
Well, but they say there's another factor in there, too.
You can choose a whole bunch of different pharmacies to go to.
And so if a pharmacy wants to offer a spectacular new drug at a lower price than what they think somebody else is offering it for, they'll do that too.
Free market usually works these things out if it's left alone.
But when you start tacking on all kinds of onerous regulations and requirements, just raise costs, you end up paying for it at the end of the line, which is retail.
We'll be back.
Sit tight.
Somebody needs to tell Barack Obama, he's starting to sound like Tiger Woods.
I mean, if Tiger Woods didn't know that all his indiscretions were made public, you know, there's a level of denial there, and every addict has it.
I've had it.
That's what non-addicts don't listen.
How can you do what Tiger did?
How can you possibly think with that many culprits, it's going to stay hidden?
But the addiction takes over the brain.
I'll deal with it.
If it happens, I'm big.
It's not going to be any big deal.
It isn't going to happen anyway.
Now, we know that Obama's lying.
We know he's lying about every we know he somebody needs to let Obama know about the polls.
Are they not sharing him the data in the White House?
We know that he's lying about jobs.
We know he's lying about the economy.
We know he's lying about Obamacare, and we know he's lying about global warming, and we know he's lying about the stimulus, and we know he's lying about TARP.
We know he's lying.
He sounds like a total fool with every soundbite we play here.
And that's our fair investigation.
Now, I don't, does Obama not know?
You know, these Hitler videos that you see on YouTube, they're going to be Obama videos one of these days.
Somebody's going to make a movie of Obama blowing up in the White House and somebody tells him all this stuff.
You mean you've been letting me go out there and lie like this for two years and you knew I wasn't true.
And they're going to be Obama when Obama finds out the stimulus didn't work.
When Obama finds out that he bankrupted America, when Obama finds out, somebody does he not know that the world has not gotten warmer for 15 years or is he just a liar?
Now, about we've got a pharmacist on the phone from Chicago.
I'm going to get to him in just a second.
He's going to tell us where profits go, which means I'm going to ask him which union in Chicago gets his profit.
But I have a friend in Kansas City whose family owned a food product.
I'm not going to mention the food product, but you've heard of it.
They sold it.
They sold the food product.
It's still there on your shelves in your favorite grocery store.
The company that bought it decided it would make more sense to buy an existing product that was already a success than to start from scratch, do the RD, and come up with a new product.
Because it could take between $20 and $100 million to create their own.
So they just scarfed up an existing product.
The company, the family that had the product liked the money and they got out of it.
These are just the facts of life.
RD drugs, RD new food product, whatever it is.
If you're starting from scratch and you don't have any in that product line, it's going to cost you big bucks and you've got to make it back at some point.
Now, here's Kirk in Chicago, a pharmacist, who's going to tell us where the profit goes.
What union gets your profits in Chicago?
There's a lot of unions that get my profits in Chicago, Rush.
Good to get on the air with you for the first time here.
A long time trying.
And this time I tried about 70 times because I really wanted to get through here.
I'm glad you did.
I've got about a minute.
I don't mean to cut you short, but time is running out.
Very quickly, you know, it's all based on volume.
It's basically a 1% to 3% profit markup at your pharmacy counter.
1 to 3%.
So it's kind of like food in a grocery store.
Exactly.
And that's why we do such a volume.
And then when you look at the pharmaceutical industry, there's so much failure in terms of the pipelines that go on.
You're looking at like 4%.
This is something that I wrote about when I was actually in college.
Yes.
You know what?
Infuriated the liberals.
They were just furious.
They said, where did he get your numbers?
That's where those numbers come from.
You know what?
No, no, no.
That is an excellent point.
We never hear about the drug failures, the ones that don't work, even that get to market, that end up being prescribed and don't work, and they have to recall them or whatever, or they just never make it.
And all that has to be made back, too, as well.
I don't know, for example, you know, Zycam, big sponsor here.
I don't know what the original startup cost for Zycam was.
But I do know that it wasn't until they started advertising the product here that they started a huge, huge profit spike.
Of course, we're very proud of that, but their product is very affordable.
And they've had, you know what they've had to go through?
FDA banning one of their delivery systems because their sponsors here, they've had to go through a whole bunch of stuff for a product that works.
And then now they've got all kinds of new delivery systems and they've had to R ⁇ D that, but they keep their prices down because market dictates it.
My favorite kind now is the new oral spray, four times in the mouth, three times an hour.
First time you think you get a cold, I guarantee this stuff is amazing.
But this is Econ 101 that is not taught enough in the school system.
I wish we didn't have to go, but I do.
The constraints of time are such that I cannot bend the clock.
Anvil Sheila E. There on the bumper rotation.
Look, folks, snergly remind me to do this on Monday.
I've got a story here about premiums are jumping 14% on Medicare private plans because of government regulations and actions.
Here's Obama telling us how his health care plan is going to reduce cost and his own government is causing a 14% increase in Medicare coverage or private plans.
I'll explain this to you on Monday.
We'll be here on Monday.
It's not President's Day again, is it, or anything?
Okay, so we'll be here.
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