All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 1, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:31
December 1, 2010, Wednesday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
All right, here's the answer on life insurance and pre-existing conditions.
You can get it.
You can get life insurance if you have a pre-existing condition.
The policies are called high-risk policies, and you pay through the nose.
But you can get it.
If you have a pre-existing health condition and you want medical insurance, you can get it, but it's going to cost somebody.
Well, that's the trick is to getting somebody else to pay for it, which seems what a lot of people ended up wanting to do.
But like I said, 36 states do offer healthcare insurance, health insurance for pre-existing conditions.
Anyway, welcome back, folks.
Nice to have you with us.
As always, El Rushball behind the golden EIB microphone, serving humanity simply by being here.
Do you remember when Obama announced an end to the moratorium on oil drilling?
Well, like everything else, it was a big, fat lie.
This is from NPR, the White House will not allow any new drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least the next seven years because of the BP oil spill.
And it's not just there.
There won't be any new drilling allowed.
In fact, they're going to shut down some drilling in Alaska.
Senior administration official told the AP today that drilling leases will not be considered in the waters off Florida as part of the change.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision hadn't been announced yet.
He said that because of the BP spill, the regime now understands the need to elevate safety and environmental standards.
Before the spill, the regime had considered a plan to allow drilling in the Eastern Gulf.
Ken Salazar, the cowboy hat-wearing interior secretary, is expected to discuss the decision later this afternoon.
And then Fox just had a story on these federal workers all bit out of shape over the pay freeze.
My patience.
My patience is, I mean, there's not much left today.
But I, what am I ticked about?
The federal workers, because they're idiots.
They actually think that their pay has been frozen.
And it hasn't.
These idiots, pardon me, you federal workers, you glorious, wonderful, we couldn't do without you federal workers, understand that you've just had your jobs and salaries locked in for two years.
No cuts for crying out loud.
But it's not just that.
If you're a GS10, step one, there's nothing that says you can't become a GS10 step five and get a big raise.
You may not be able to go GS10 to GS11, but you can advance in the steps inside each GS level.
Like I mentioned yesterday, a person at GS9 step 9 makes more money than somebody at a GS10 step 1.
I mean, that's how there are raises within the GS levels, but without moving you up to a new GS level.
You people who think your wage has been frozen, it's just the exact opposite.
You can still get bumps.
You can still get bumped up.
You can stepped up within your GS level.
Anyway, back to Obama.
Job killer.
The rest of the world is drilling safely in the Gulf.
We're going to have the ChiComs drilling there, the Vietnamese drilling there.
The Cubans are going to arrange for their areas to be leased off to some of these places.
The Mexicans are drilling there.
But Obama says we can't.
Now, and it isn't just absurd.
This is a lie, and it hurts everybody who lives and works in and around the Gulf as well as the rest of the country.
No new drilling means no new jobs.
It means no new energy sources.
It means no new energy.
Forget no new sources.
It means no new energy.
It means no new tax revenues.
And this tells us everything we need to know.
No, the president's not going to triangulate.
No, he's not a moderate.
He doesn't like the private sector.
He's not going to change.
He's not going to go to the center.
He's not going to realize what happened during the election.
He's not interested in the plight of the little guy.
He isn't interested in energy independence.
He's not a moderate.
He's not going to be part of the solution.
Barack Obama is the problem.
No new all drilling in the Eastern Gulf for at least the next seven years.
Of course, we get rid of Obama in two years.
We can throw this out too.
Now, this is why all this diplomatic nice, nice talk is so frustrating to me.
It's why he likes us.
How do you think we can find common ground with Obama?
B.S.
It does not help the public to understand what problems adults in Washington face.
Forget all this.
Let's hold hands talk.
Forget all this.
He loves us.
He really loves us.
Because that conveys the idea that these Democrats are reasonable people.
They're not reasonable people.
They are destructive.
And I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's the fact this is an outrage.
No new drilling in the Gulf while everybody else is drilling everywhere else in the Gulf.
We can't.
And it's not because he cares about safety.
It's not because he cares about the environment.
He hates oil.
He hates the traditional ways that we produce energy in this country.
There's no other way to look at this.
He's not going to triangulate.
Obama will strangulate.
And all this is designed.
There's another reason for this.
Price of oil is going to go up here.
That means the price of gasoline is going to go up.
And that means more and more people are going to be quasi-interested in his car, the Chevrolet Vault.
I mean, it all stands together.
All right, let's move on to this unemployment day two.
Unemployment benefits compensation day two.
This is from the Associated Press Tom Breen.
Two million lose jobless benefits as holidays arrive.
You know, I look back, I remember back to yesterday.
It's amazing I was able to keep my composure.
And I only had to bleep myself once yesterday.
And thinking back on it, I was amazed I didn't have to bleep myself a number of times during this discussion of unemployment extensions, unemployment benefit extensions.
When I read that AP piece and these people try to intellectually explain how unemployment benefits boost economic activity and how tax cuts are a gift, the government gives tax cuts.
I don't want to go through the whole thing.
If you missed it, it'd be worth going to rushlimbaugh.com to revisit that whole segment yesterday in that monologue because it was, even if I say so, it was good.
It was so good, we're going to put it to graphic display in the next issue of the Limbaugh letter.
I just ordered that today.
We're going to have Obama's stash over here, the stash.
Where does Obama get his stash?
Where does it come from?
This idea that somebody has an income of a million dollars has it because Obama's given it to them or the government's given it to them.
And if they get a tax cut, it's because the government gives them a tax cut, writes them a check every month for $5,000 for a tax cut.
It's silly.
And that's what this AP story essentially said.
So now here's today's installment.
Extended unemployment benefits for nearly 2 million Americans begin to run out today, cutting off a steady stream of income and guaranteeing a dismal holiday season for people already struggling with bills they cannot pay.
Unless Congress changes its mind, benefits that had been extended up to 99 weeks will end this month.
That means Christmas is out of the question for Wayne Pittman, 46 of Lawrenceville, Georgia, and his wife and nine-year-old son.
The carpenter was working up to 80 hours a week at the beginning of the decade, but saw that gradually drop to 15 hours before it dried up completely.
His last $297 check will go to necessities, not presents.
I have a little boy, and that's kind of hard to explain to him, Pittman said.
Isn't it funny now here in the AP how important Christmas is all of a sudden?
In fact, when's the last time AP used the word in Astoria?
Normally it's the winter holidays, or normally it's the holidays, or whatever.
Now all of a sudden, they've got no compunction about using the word Christmas.
Christmas is usually a forbidden word in the AP style book.
It's got to be holidays.
You can't say Merry Christmas is going to offend people.
But the word Christmas appears seven times in this article.
So the AP style book says it's okay to mention Christmas when you're trying to tug at readers' heartstrings.
Congressional opponents of extending the benefits beyond this month say fiscal responsibility should come first.
Republicans in the House and Senate, along with a handful of conservative Democrats, say they're open to extending benefits, but not if it means adding to the $13.8 trillion national debt.
Now, notice here again, the opposition to extending benefits for a fifth time this year without paying for them is actually bipartisan.
There are some Democrats who don't want to do this either.
Just like the support for extending the Bush tax rates, everybody is bipartisan.
Now, what happened to the importance of being bipartisan?
Seems to me that if it was bipartisan, everybody ought to accept it.
That's what we want, right?
We want bipartisanship.
Well, we got it here.
We got Republicans and Democrats who say, if you're going to extend unemployment benefits, then pay for it.
Shouldn't that make it automatic?
Bipartisanship being what the media and everybody else says we should be aspiring to.
Back to the story.
Forget Christmas presents.
What the so-called 99ers want most of all is what remains elusive in the worst economy in generations, a job.
99 weeks may seem like a long time to find a job, but even as the economy grows, it isn't growing.
I've got a story in the stack to illustrate.
Just, oh, oh, it's, I have to find it.
They've done a survey of employers, and the number of people are going to fire and layoff in January versus last January is almost 50% more.
The number of employee layoffs starting next month versus January of this year is almost 50% additional.
And yet, these jerks say we have an economy that's growing.
The private sector added about 159,000 jobs in October, half as many as needed to reduce the unemployment rate of 9.6.
But this is journalistic malpractice.
Mr. Breen, you ought to be ashamed.
Well, you're probably not.
You're doing the bidding of your bosses, the administration.
Now, a carpenter, Mr. Pittman, 46 of Lawrenceville, Georgia, he's probably a listener.
The odds are that most people are.
Mr. Pittman, you have skills.
You can make things.
You can sell things.
People buy handmade things all the time, handmade Christmas ornaments.
They buy all sorts of things.
It's not as though there's nothing for you to do, Mr. Pittman.
I mean, I know if I go any further, it's going to be heartless rushing in a tax carpenter out of work.
I can see the headline.
When we come back, audio soundbites on unemployment extension, benefits extension, how it grows the economy and all that rot gut, a continuation of the sham that was reported yesterday.
We'll be right back.
All right, let's go back to yesterday's AP story before we get to today's audio soundbites because yesterday's AP story was a fax.
It was a fax from Pelosi's office or a fax from the Oval Office or somewhere.
Here's how it began.
If Congress lets unemployment benefits expire this week for the long-term unemployed, they won't be the only ones to feel the pain.
The overall economy would suffer too.
Unemployment benefits help drive the economy.
Unemployment benefits help drive the economy.
Now, just stop and think of that alone.
If unemployment benefits help drive the economy, we need more of them.
And an extension here is just not nearly enough.
If they help drive the economy, doesn't that say that unemployment drives the economy?
Doesn't it?
I mean, you don't have unemployment benefits without unemployment.
So unemployment drives the economy.
Let's continue.
Unemployment benefits help drive the economy because the jobless tend to spend every dollar they get pumping cash into businesses.
A cutoff of aid for millions of people unemployed for more than six months could squeeze a fragile economy, analysts say.
Among the consequences they envision over the next year if the benefits aren't extended, annual economic growth could fall by one half to nearly one point.
Up to one million more people could lose their jobs.
Hundreds of thousands have fallen into poverty.
Look for homelessness to be on the rise, food lines to get longer as we approach Christmas.
If the situation can't be resolved, said Diane Swunk, chief economist at Messero Financial.
Look for homelessness to rise, food lines to get longer as we approach Christmas.
That money ripples through the economy into supermarkets, gasoline stations, utilities, convenience stores.
That allows those businesses to hire more people.
Then why aren't they?
Here are the numbers.
This is a Reuters story.
The number of planned layoffs by U.S. employers rose in November.
This is planned.
The number of planned layoffs of U.S. employers rose in November to the highest level since March, with the government and nonprofit sector leading the rise.
Employers announced 48,711 planned job cuts last month, up from 28% from 37,000 in October.
And as they look forward, they're planning on even more layoffs in January.
Now, how does that happen?
How can that possibly happen if these people are right about unemployment driving the economy, the unemployment benefits?
Shouldn't the economy be growing left and right as people lose their jobs?
I mean, that's how this is, it is embarrassingly stupid, this piece.
That money ripples through the economy into supermarkets.
So why don't we all just quit our jobs?
Everybody go on unemployment.
If benefits were the way to stimulate economic growth, why would anybody work?
Now, the story goes on and on and on to talk about how this all happens, which led me to ask a question.
Where do these benefits come from?
You're out of work and you get your $300, what is it, a week check.
Where does it come from?
It's not yours.
It's not, I mean, if it were yours, you'd go to the bank and get it.
So whose is it?
Where's it coming from?
That money has been taken out of the economy first.
There's not a single new dollar added to the economy with unemployment benefits.
It's just a transfer payment.
It's going from one pocket to another, but there aren't any new dollars circulating.
That's why I said yesterday, this is economics 101.
This is irresponsible for a leading wire service to be writing such PAP.
That's why it's a fax.
It came from some Democrat office.
Let's go to the audio sound bites to prove it.
A montage of journalists from headline news, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CNN, blah, about unemployment benefits, the checks, and what will happen.
The last check is in the mail for about 2 million Americans unless something changes.
2 million people are expected to stop receiving checks.
2 million Americans losing those unemployment checks.
2 million people are expected to stop receiving checks.
2 million people who will stop getting unemployment checks.
Those checks will stop.
About 2 million people are going to stop getting checks, people today.
Very, very concerned this morning about where their next check will come from.
Right.
Okay, so it's all part of a planned action.
They run the story and they get all the media talking about all this horror.
Now we move to hardball last night with Chris Matthews interviewing Sherrod Brown, Democrat Senator Ohio.
Matthews says the American people are going to have their taxes go up in January.
If the Republicans hold out for the rich, that'll happen.
But you're saying that you're saying they're going to buckle.
These tax cuts for the rich that Bush did twice, Chris, in 2001 and 03, as you know, resulted in very little economic growth.
We saw only 1 million jobs created in the Bush years, 22 million created in the Clinton years when we reached a balanced budget with a fairer tax system.
And there's no real history illustrating that these tax cuts for the rich result in jobs.
It's extending unemployment benefits that creates economic activity that creates jobs, not giving a millionaire an extra $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 in tax cuts that they likely won't spend because they're already buying what they're going to buy anyway.
That's exactly what the AP story said yesterday.
It's exactly.
So it is not rich people.
It is not, forget even the rich.
It's not tax cuts that propel an economy.
It's unemployment benefits.
Now, this is pure sophistry.
This is embarrassing.
But here's a Democrat senator actually saying it.
Tax cuts don't cause economic growth.
Unemployment benefits do.
Unemployment benefits create economic activity that creates jobs.
Somebody explained this to me.
How does well, you can't explain it.
I'm not even going to ask for it.
There's no way unemployment benefits create jobs.
But this is what the Democrats are saying.
It's the unemployed can't hire people.
Exactly.
Well, no, the unemployed can't hire people.
Otherwise, they'd hire themselves and we wouldn't have any unemployment.
But they don't.
It's just it is depressingly stupid.
Notice something else, ladies and gentlemen.
This whole thing is a giant scam.
The whole thing is an orchestrated political movement.
Notice unemployment benefits were scheduled to expire after the elections and right before Christmas, thereby making this debate necessary.
And this is how the left always does things.
This is how they everything's political.
Nothing is compassionate.
Nothing is oriented around humanity or any of the things that they say they care about.
It's all, every bit of it, is manipulatively political.
And Stacey, our insurance agent somewhere in Georgia, weighing in with an update.
How are you, Stacey?
I'm well.
Thanks.
How are you?
Very nice.
Thank you.
Well, listen, I can answer the lady from Florida's question, but that's not why I called.
Well, wait a minute.
Let's stick there.
Her question was she didn't like being called a welfare recipient.
She wanted to know how she gets insurance.
A kid gets insurance after leaving home with an affliction known as type 1 diabetes.
Correct.
And she specifically mentioned how would an 18-year-old handle that?
And I can answer that question.
Go ahead, answer it.
Okay.
Promise to let me talk about Canada?
Because that's the big one.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is your suite.
Anyway, an 18-year-old is covered up until the 19th birthday.
Any dependent who is registered as a full-time student in a college, vocational school, or junior college can be covered by their parents' insurance today without Obamacare up to the age of 22, as long as they are enrolled full-time.
At that point, then the quote-unquote child would be expected to get a job and join a health plan just like everybody else.
Right, and that's where the problem comes in.
Well, no, it's not because we're going to have to split up group insurance is provided by an employer versus individual coverage.
No, we're talking two different things.
What I mean is the problem comes in when somebody has to start providing for themselves.
That's the foreign concept here in the country that that's the controversy.
You mean I got to start paying it myself when I leave home and I'll be like, oh, no, that's not fair.
Well, you know how kids are.
Kids?
Kids.
I know.
Try the president.
Try the freaking Democrat population of this country.
Well, Rush, it's funny.
You know, talking about the 18-year-old with type 1 diabetes, the pre-existing condition plan that was one of the supposed first benefits of Obamacare.
Yeah.
The Wall Street Journal reported and confirmed what we've been hearing in the industry on the 5th of November that this urgently needed federal insurance plan has enrolled nationally 8,011 people.
What does that mean?
Well, they were expecting enrollment of 375,000 nationwide.
They got 8,011 people to buy this coverage for the preexisting condition plan.
If preexisting conditions are such a freaking emergency, why is their enrollment 8,011?
South Dakota.
See your point.
So we've been sold a bill of goods again.
And listening to Eric Cantor, I heard that on the podcast this morning, and I had to rearrange the schedule because I just had to tell you this.
Please, Mr. Canter, go talk to the HHS.
And if she won't talk to you, please go talk to The Wall Street Journal.
Another thing that they instituted on September 23rd is requiring...
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Who is they?
HHS, sorry.
Another of the Obamacare provisions.
The government, okay.
Another of those was that for individual child-only policies, which is a small market, to be sure, that they could not deny coverage for pre-existing conditions for anybody under 18 who buys one of these policies.
Yeah.
Guess what?
As of September 23rd, there is no more policies being written anywhere in Georgia.
And I'm hearing throughout the country.
It's gone.
That market has collapsed.
Are you surprised?
I'm not.
But here we're going to go back to the 8,011 enrollees.
Could not deny coverage pre-existing conditions.
Anybody under 18 who buys one of these policies, meaning they're not buying the policies?
It's not that they're not buying the policies.
The policies aren't being written.
There's no insurance company who's offering those policies anymore.
Wait, I thought Obama mandating them to do that.
No.
Obama mandated that they, if they offer child-only policies, that they accept everybody regardless.
What am I talking about?
Obama doesn't even know what's in this bill.
He doesn't care.
All he knows is he's going to screw it all up.
The insurance companies basically told Obama and Kathleen Sebillius to take a hike, and they just quit writing them.
They said, we're out of the child-only insurance business.
We're gone.
Now, when the rest of this kicks in, you're going to see the same thing happen with the individual, the general individual, which is about 20% of the healthcare market.
They're just going to go away.
Nobody's going to write that because you can't cover the cost.
You're just going to lose money out your nose.
That's the design.
I hate to tell you, you know it better than I do.
Well, I know, but they've already collapsed part of the U.S. health insurance system, and nobody's reporting it.
Well, you just did.
I mean, it's just frustrating.
And listening to Mr. Canner go on and on about the pre-X, you know, do you read the Wall Street Journal?
It was right there.
It's not needed.
It's not the great emergency everybody thinks it is.
Well, whether it is or isn't doesn't matter.
The way it polls is how it matters.
But that's where they're failing in education, Rush.
You know, you keep talking that they need to be educating the public as they go along.
They are so totally failing in that.
I know, because it's easy to poll, figure out what the people want, and go through the motions and making them think you're going to give it to them.
And Rush, I hate to do this to you, sweetie, but I've got to correct you on one thing.
You said that 36 states have laws on the books that mandate coverage for pre-existing.
Yes, that's what a staffer told me.
Well, the staffer's mistaken.
Starting in 1996, federal law requires all insurance companies for group plans, now not individual, but group plans, you have to accept everybody, regardless.
Now, there is a waiting period for pre-X of a year maximum, and that's reduced based on how long you had coverage prior to enrolling.
Now, that's HIPAA, isn't it?
It is.
That's the HIPAA law.
And that's been in effect since 1996.
And, you know, your group, your employer-provided coverage is 80% of your insurance market.
But I was talking about high-risk pools since 1996.
Some states do have high-risk pools.
Most states got out.
36 of them, I think.
Well, most states got out of the high-risk business, one, because it really wasn't needed.
And two, the folks who do go into it are the folks with the catastrophic illnesses that are going to, you know, you just can't put enough money into it.
So could somebody with diabetes get coverage under HIPAA?
Oh, yeah.
Well, what are we talking about here?
Well, that's what I wanted to tell the lady in Florida.
You know, if you had an 18-year-old who didn't go to college, she just went to work as a secretary for some company.
Yeah.
Okay.
She would go in under their group plan.
If her parents covered her up until the point that she went to work, that person, that 18-year-old, would have no waiting period whatsoever for coverage for her type 1 diabetes.
If the parents did not have that coverage, if she went to work and had not had insurance for 12 months, the maximum amount of time she would have to wait for coverage for the diabetes is a year.
So everything else, if she broke her leg, it would be covered.
Whose regulations are these?
Did you guys write these yourselves or the government make you write this stuff?
This is the HIPAA.
This is the government.
Incidentally, it was a Republican Congress that did that.
It's supposed to provide medical care privacy, medical record privacy.
Oh, there's much more in there than that.
I know, but it doesn't even do that, is my point.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, it's kind of funny.
If the Pentagon's computers aren't protected, then who thinks that their health records that are now going to be electronic are going to be protected?
I want to see that.
It's not.
But look, I want to go with the high-risk pools because I'm telling you, Morden, I'm pretty sure that more than half the states have these high-risk pools.
And they may.
I mean, I'm just, I know where I am that it was tried and it was dropped.
Like I said, there wasn't the need, and for the few enrollees that you had, the costs were through the ceiling.
Okay, so what's the difference between HIPAA and what Obamacare does?
Why do we even need Obamacare, this preconditioning stuff, if we got HIPAA?
I think they're doing it because the public is generally ignorant of pre-ex laws that are on the board.
But it's not ignorant.
It's impossible.
I can't keep up with this stuff as you're telling me about it.
Oh, I'm not sure.
Look at what.
No, no.
It's not you.
I'm supposed to know that my kid has 12-month variants to go get coverage if my parents covered me, but he didn't get covered under my parents.
My grandparents were covered here under this law in 1874.
If it contrives with what was written here in 2009, maybe I can get coverage for six weeks of my type 1 diabetes, provided it doesn't offend a Democrat.
I mean, that's what this whole stuff sounds like to me.
What in the world just happened to walk into insurance office, saying, look, I want to buy a policy.
I got type 1 diabetes.
Will you cover me?
Yes, here's what it's going to cost you.
Fine, I'm not going to buy it.
I can't afford it.
Or here's the check.
Whatever happened to all that?
This is all, my God, this is worse than hieroglyphics.
This is worse than trying to learn a foreign language.
This is like trying to learn every dialect of the Chinese lingo.
Well, Rush, that's why we've got to get the government out of it.
They've created this monstrosity.
Yeah.
And, you know, we understand it because we have to work in it every day.
And if people paid half as much attention to their health insurance as they do the NBA scores on a weekly basis, they'd understand it too.
It's really not that complicated.
They think they are.
Don't you understand?
People are obsessed with their health care coverage.
They're obsessed with it.
They're more obsessed with their health care coverage than they are with getting food for crying out loud.
Their health care coverage is a daily emergency.
They don't think they can get out of bed without it.
Well, Rush, I got the biggest kick out of reading that two South Dakotans signed up for Obama's wonderful pre-existing condition fix.
You know, the maximum number of enrollees in a state is in Pennsylvania.
They have almost 2,000.
But the reason for that is that they cut the prices.
So for year two of Obama's great fix for pre-existing conditions, DHS is doing three things.
They're reducing the premium cost by 20%.
They are going to add two more tiers to the coverage and vary the premiums based on your coverage.
This is getting even more ridiculous as I went.
Two more tiers.
Two more tiers of coverage.
$20 million.
Two more tiers of coverage.
I'm crying a river here just trying to understand what you've said in one 10-minute phone call.
I'm sorry.
I'm trying so hard to explain it where it makes sense.
It's not your problem.
You could explain it perfectly.
And look at it.
I'm not a dumb guy.
Can you imagine somebody, Rio Linda, trying to keep up with all this?
Well, Rush, you know the SEIU who bumped off their dependent coverage?
You know why they did it?
You mean for their kids?
Yeah.
You know why they did it?
Well, yeah, I know why.
They're a bunch of heartless SOBs.
They could have bailed out the, they could have done any number of things that they're making us do to cover their kids, but no, their kids are going to go without coverage.
No, they're not.
They're going to go to the pre-ex plan because another way they're going to spend that $5 billion that was allocated is open it up to children.
Thinking the theory floating around the industry is that Kathleen Sebillius is going to allow children with pre-existing conditions to go to the government plan, and that's going to entice these companies to start up again for child only.
You know what?
They ought to make prisoners try to pass a course in this stuff.
That would keep people out of jail.
If you had to pass a course in this stuff to get out of prison, nobody would ever commit another crime.
Oh, Rush, I'm sorry.
Not you.
That's the thing.
I've got to take a break here because you wanted to talk about Canada, right?
And we haven't even gotten there.
Sure.
All right, hang on.
We'll be right back, folks.
My source of the Heritage Foundation confirms with me, folks, there's talk.
Senate Republicans may choose to negotiate with the president giving away some leeway on the START treaty with Russia in exchange for the tax cuts.
This doesn't go away.
And nobody really cares much about the START treaty except Putin, who's going to appear on cable TV tonight talking about it and telegraphing a message to Americans that the treaty's needed.
Now, the heritage people come out on this exactly the same place I do.
This is no time to compromise.
That was the message in the last election.
Talked about that yesterday.
We don't need to compromise.
We don't need to be bartering our own national security either.
Each issue should be taken on its own.
But we deal with it as it comes.
Heritage has all of their researchers putting information together on what's happening on the Hill this afternoon.
It's all going to be at askheritage.org after the program today, including what happens if we give start away, what it's all about.
That's the one place to go.
Heritage, askheritage.org.
It's our think tank.
You can make it yours too.
They're looking at issues from our point of view.
They're inside Washington.
You don't have to be, which is a blessing.
Askheritage.org.
All right, back to Stacey.
All right, I got two minutes.
No, sorry, I got a minute and a half.
What's Canada?
Okay, Obamacare came within 5% of making the U.S. health care system Canada system.
And now the CBO on December 13th, before the Senate pushed through the bill on Christmas Eve, the CBO released a memo about the medical loss ratio.
Remember, I told you about how much they were going to make us pay out in claims versus what we get to spend on administration?
Yeah, I remember every penny of it.
Okay.
The CBO said Harry Reid initially wanted that to be 90% of claims and 10% for admin.
The CBO came back and told Harry Reid that if they did that, The CBO would assume all health insurance, private and public, to be part of the federal budget.
I am going to email Mr. Snerdley the link to this document.
The last paragraph is where it is, because I know how you hate people reading.
Well, it's only because most people aren't highly trained professionals like I am.
But look, this is, again, this is the government telling a private business how to run itself.
You know, what it can spend on profits, what it can spend on coverage.
It's just asinine.
It's absurd.
Senator Snerdley, I'm sure he's got your email address and vice versa.
Stacy, thanks much.
I got to run here, folks.
Back to close it out after this.
Folks, that's it for today.
But as you know, the program never ends.
We just have to take a 21-hour break.
And we'll be back here tomorrow to pick it up right where we left off, such as women caught trying to hide stolen goods in their fat rolls on airplanes.
▲
Export Selection