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Dec. 27, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:44
December 27, 2010, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24 7 Podcast.
Just in time for the new year, the death panels are back.
I've got to tell you about the death panels are back.
You know, the death panels, the thing that they said was never in Obamacare, that it was made up, that the right wingers and Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and all those people were lying about it.
And the death panels are back.
Well, they aren't back.
The death panels are back.
But before we do that, I know I'm only a fill-in here, and we're working with a very skeleton crew here because of the uh storms in New York City, but I'm wondering uh I've only got Mike Mamone, the engineer in the studio with me.
Think it's possible to get El Gore lined up for me on the program today.
Is that too big of a request?
Uh yeah, go to work on that because I really need to be bucked up on this.
I really need to have this global warming thing explained again.
Do you understand what's going on in this country right now?
The entire eastern half of the United States is frozen.
The high temperature in Miami, Florida is supposed to be something like 59 degrees.
There isn't a plane taking off east of Cincinnati.
Uh, we're in New York City, or at least I'm in New York City doing the program today.
All of New York is shut down.
Most of the trains aren't running.
There aren't any cars anywhere.
You look on the major drags, Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, there are cars that are plowed over on the street.
Everywhere you look, I see vehicles that can't move anywhere.
By the way, it's always bread trucks.
Maybe one of you who are from New York can explain that why it's all the bread trucks that are stuck.
I guess the breadbread trucks have to make the deliveries and the stupid big vans and they're all stuck.
So I I need Al Gore to explain exactly what this is.
We've had Europe frozen for a month.
Planes didn't couldn't get out of Europe for like a week and a half.
Now the East Coast of the United States has been under a blizzard.
The whole country is frozen.
It was raining in Southern California.
I I need that global warming thing explained to me.
In any event, I am here.
I'm actually in New York, and based on what we can see, there aren't a lot of people working in New York, but I'm here, and I'm your guest host, and I'm here to tell you that the death penals are back.
This story broke over the weekend in of all places the New York Times.
The headline, page one, ominous as it is, Obama Institutes end of life plan that caused, and then we get a perfect New York Times headline word.
Obama Institutes end of life plan that caused try to figure it out.
What word do you think the New York Times uses to describe the objections that occurred during the debate on nationalized health care over end of life counseling paid for with taxpayer funds that caused here's the New York Times word stir.
You know, a little bit of minor upset that caused stir.
You know, that got those right wingers all in a tizzy.
Obama Institutes end of life plan that caused stir.
Well, the stir may be back.
Now I'm going to explain exactly what the regulations say.
But before we do that, I think it's important to get into some background as to why this was taken out of the legislation in the first place and how the whole thing developed.
When the president proposed Obamacare, and the bills were introduced in the Senate and the House, initially in 2009 and eventually in 2010.
One of the most controversial provisions in there was language that said that Medicare would pay doctors to discuss with patients their end-of-life options for the type of care that they would want to receive.
Given that other language in the bill also provided for government panels to decide what the appropriate treatments are for various diseases, the treatments that were not appropriate were not going to be covered.
A lot of people developed the very real fear that this end of life counseling was going to be nothing more than glorified deciding whether or not you're going to be eligible for this treatment or not.
There was major opposition.
Sarah Palin coined The term the death panels.
And everybody got all over her on that.
Nonetheless, it stuck.
And people were rightly concerned about whether or not tax money should be used to have doctors go to talk to elderly patients and discuss years before they're sick, years before they're sick, what kind of treatment they want to have as they get sick.
A lot of people argue that this is not the role of government and that this stuff's going on anyway, that any per person who wants to talk with their doctor to plan out end-of-life treatments can do so right now without having language put in, Obamacare that says that Medicare has to pay for this.
In any event, because of the opposition, overwhelming as it was, they took it out.
There's nothing in the bill that passed the Senate and the House providing for any type of payment for end-of-life consultation.
It's not in there.
It's gone.
It was the only way they could pass the bill.
The Democrats who voted for this knew that selling Obamacare was going to be difficult, and as we see it was very difficult.
They didn't want to have to try to defend this language that many people believe would lead to death panels.
Panels that would decide whether or not this treatment is appropriate for this person who is terminally ill and this person who has no hope.
So they took it out because they knew they couldn't pass it if it was in.
It's not in there.
You won't find anywhere on Obamacare anything that says that Medicare will pay for this.
Lo and behold, Obama's administration is now writing the rules for the implementation of the health care program.
And in the rules that they write, it's write back in.
This is such an important point, because if they are willing to write in through administrative rules, language that was specifically not included in the bill on this end of life, why can't they write back in everything else that was supposedly taken out?
You know, there was a huge debate over whether or not Obamacare was going to cover abortion.
And the Democrats kept arguing, well, it doesn't say it's going to cover abortion.
Conservatives were arguing as long as the bill doesn't specifically prohibit it, they could indeed cover abortions.
This was denied.
Well, now we see with regard to this end-of-life care, since the bill didn't specifically prohibit it, it's merely silent on it, that Barack Obama and his bureaucrats can grab their pens and write in anything that they want to write.
Obamacare therefore becomes far more than the law that passed the House and Senate.
It becomes anything that they use their administrative rulemaking power to say that it means.
They can literally put in anything.
This is essentially dictatorial.
It's abusing the legislative process.
It's taking the most controversial program that passed under that president, a leap that many of us believe moved the United States close to socialism.
There's nothing he's done as controversial as Obamacare.
Even as it was, there were things they had to take out in order to pass that bill.
And now they're magically back.
What point is there to the legislative process then?
If we're going to have this give and take, if we're going to have what the defenders say was a moderate bill, if what the defenders say was being mischaracterized by those of us on the right who said that this was a radical bill.
If you can take what supposedly is a moderate bill and turn it into a radical law by using rule making authority, what's the point of even having the legislative process?
Let's radical it right up with the administrative rules.
Now, in the New York Times story, listen to some of these ominous ominous programs.
Under the new policy, Outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who who the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advanced directives to forego aggressive life-sustaining treatment.
Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an advanced directive stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make health care decisions for themselves.
While the new law does not mention advanced care planning, the Obama administration has been able to achieve its policy through the regulation writing process, a strategy that could become more prevalent in the next two years as the president deals with a strengthened Republican opposition in Congress.
This was a giant bait and switch.
There was a lot of wink winking going on on the left.
Let's pass whatever we need to pass.
We've got to get something through.
We have to have some sort of national health care legislation passed.
And let's throw out this.
Let's throw out that.
Let's throw this out to get this Democratic vote here and that Democratic vote there.
And remember that this thing passed with the barest of margins.
Because once it's in, once we get it passed, we can use our rulemaking authority to let it say whatever we feel like wanting it to say.
Well, but the end of life counseling, that's very, very important.
It's a very, very major.
Don't worry.
We'll take it out, but we'll put it right back in.
It's nothing more than getting some moderate Democrats to buy into legislation that would be easier for them to defend, and then come back with something that they never could have defended had they had to do so.
But they didn't have to do so, and we don't even know that it's in the legislation.
We don't even know that it's in the rules until well after the election.
So much for the president moving to the middle.
He can do all the posturing that he wants and agree to all of the tax extension deals that he wants and try to send out this arm of cooperation to the Republicans in Congress.
That's all for show.
The reality is what he's doing in terms of where the public policy ends up.
And he's making it very, very clear right now that he's going to use every power he has to not only defend Obamacare, but make it a very, very different law than the one that the Congress passed.
My name is Mark Belling.
Our phone number on the Rush Limbaugh program is 1-800-282-2882.
I'm Mark Elling, and this is EIB.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I want to get to callers on this topic because this is a really big deal.
And given that this story broke in the New York Times and it was over the holiday weekend, I'm not sure how much play it's getting in a lot of other newspapers.
Given that I'm in New York and we couldn't get any newspapers delivered, I wasn't able to even look at any others.
We've got to talk about this because what this means not only is that one of the most noxious parts of Obamacare is back in, it means that the president is willing to use rule making authority to put in there everything that he wants in, and they don't want this out.
In fact, in the New York Times story that broke all of this, they quote an email from one of the leaders of the movement in favor of all this end-of-life counseling, in which the email said we would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists, even if they are supporters.
Emails can do easily be forwarded.
Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it.
But we will be keeping a close watch and maybe calling on you if we need a rapid targeted response.
The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chance of keeping it.
Now that's an email that came from the author of the original end-of-life proposal, Earl Blumenauer of Oregon.
He put that email out in which he essentially said to his supporters, We've gotten this into the rulemaking authority, but don't tell anybody about it.
Don't even tell your supporters, don't advance this to anyone.
We don't want the media to find out about it.
We don't want the bloggers to find out about it.
Well, somehow the thing got into the hands of, believe it or not, the New York Times, and now it is out there.
But they knew the longer that they could keep this quiet, the greater the chance that they could avoid any kind of backlash.
Let's go to the telephones, Louisville, Kentucky, and Marty.
Marty, you're on EIB with Mark Bellingham.
Hey, yeah, good afternoon, Mark and everyone.
Listen, this is more sinister than it appears, because the government gives the doctor a financial incentive to withhold care and punishes him if he spends too much.
In other parts of the bill, the doctor is evaluated as to whether or not he is a meaningful user, that's the term they use, a meaningful user of the system.
And he's evaluated by how much money he spends.
So the same person who is being reimbursed to give end-of-life counseling is being given an incentive not to spend money on the patient, and he's being punished financially, they they reduce Medicare payments, and in some cases they have the ability to pull your license.
Well, I think what you're mentioning is crucial.
It's almost like a quota system for cops in writing out parking tickets.
The point that he's making is very, very important here.
No one objects to doctors right now talking to their patients about the kind of care that they're going to want if they face terrible problems in the future.
That's going on all the time right now, and nobody has a problem with it.
What this is is language that says doctors will be specifically paid by Medicare to do it, meaning there's now an incentive for doctors to raise the issue and push the point because it becomes something that is billable.
Medicare will reimburse them for it.
And exactly as you point out, given that they're going to be creating all of these rules about what's covered and what isn't covered through this very rulemaking authority that they're using to come up with this rule, they can very easily say that we don't want doctors to do ABCDE and F, but we do want them to do G H and I, and G H and I includes this end-of-life counseling that can be very, very heavy-handed.
Well, you really wouldn't want, if you sustain a heart attack, us to go through this extraordinary procedures in order to keep you alive because after all you have all of these other problems.
That's what we're talking about here.
And when you put in a financial kicker in which the doctor is specifically paid to bring this up and specifically paid to talk about it, what doctor who's out there trying to survive under this morass of federal rules isn't going to want to do it for people who want this kind of consultation, it's available.
There isn't anybody in America whose doctor isn't willing to talk about what kind of treatments is going to be available.
But to put this into some separate category where it becomes a separate billable process as opposed to just the general consultation and care that a doctor would provide, that's very, very powerful.
And this is why a lot of people think it does lead to the death panels.
And the point that you make, Marty, is excellent because it shows that there's an incentive here.
Now, for the doctor not to provide care and indeed to push the envelope with the patient.
To Charlotte, North Carolina, and Marie.
Marie, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
...survive under this morass of federal rules.
Okay, yeah.
That's not Marie.
That was I think me.
I was going to say Marie was making a lot of sense, but I think that Marie might have been listening, might have been listening to me in there.
Uh the point that I was making about how a lot of people fear that this is going to lead us to these death panels.
It's not demagoguery, and it's not exaggeration.
What the caller who was a physician by uh based on what he said was saying from Louisville is that when the government sets up rules that specifically say you will be compensated for doing certain types of treatment, And you will not be compensated for other things.
And that's what Obamacare and all of these rules about what's covered and what isn't covered is so important that when those rules are in place and they discourage by not paying doctors from providing certain types of treatment.
You are limiting access to patients to receive certain types of care.
On the other hand, when the government specifically says we want you to do this, we want you to talk to patients about, well, do you really want to have this?
Do you really want to have that?
When the government comes out and says you will be paid for that, it puts the onus out there to create, provide that type of care.
It's very, very close in and of itself to the death to to the notion of a death panel, to a decision as to what doctors are supposed to talk to their patients about and what types of care they are to provide.
This wasn't passed by anyone but Barack Obama has written it in to federal law.
I'm Mark Belling in Farush.
We're talking about fascinating development.
Reported initially over the weekend in the New York Times.
That very, very controversial provision that was in the original version of the House and Senate bills on Obamacare, they called for the government paying doctors using Medicare money, paying doctors to discuss end-of-life options with patients.
It was taken out of the final bill.
It's been written back in by Obama using his rule making authority.
Here's the kicker.
The language he wrote in is far stronger than the language they took out.
So not only is he putting something back in that specifically was excluded from the bill that passed, he's making it much stronger language.
From the New York Times story.
Section 1233 of the bill passed by the House in November 09, but not included in the final legislation, allowed Medicare to pay for consultations about advanced care planning every five years.
In contrast, the new rule allows wells annual discussions as part of the wellness visit.
So the language that Obama and his people wrote in pays doctors every year they do this.
The original proposal, considered too Dracodian, too indefensible for even Democrats to vote for, said they could do it only once every five years.
So we took language that was thrown out because it was too bad, too indefensible, and wrote it back in and beefed it way up.
There's nothing about this that makes this a legitimately passed bill by the people's representatives.
This is the President of the United States, taking the most controversial piece of legislation we've had in this country in decades and radically altering it by writing up the rules of his choice.
Charleston, South Carolina, Coy, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mr. Bellings.
We shouldn't be surprised at this at all.
Didn't Speaker Pelosi tell us we have to pass it to see what's in it?
She did she did say that.
Exactly what they were going to do.
She did say that.
I guess she's right.
Until we pass it, we're not going to know what the bill actually does say.
Because until it's passed, they aren't going to really get down to writing.
Why did they even draft anything?
Why have any language in there?
As long as they're going to put in whatever they want to put in, why include any language at all?
The reason so many Republicans wanted to have the bill to have prohibitions against things, specifically say you can't do this, was precisely to avoid the ability of a president to use this power to write things in.
And this is just the initial move.
What's the language going to say next year and the year after that and the year after that?
And what language are we going to put in with regard to every other provision in the bill?
What language are we going to put in with regard to what you can force the states to pay for?
What language are we going to put in with regard to what the insurance companies can and can't cover?
How are we going to define which drugs are available for certain diseases?
If they're willing to take language so bold as this in this one area, knowing that this area is controversial, imagine what they're going to be doing with the language throughout the entire bill.
They're able, if he gets away with this, to make this health care legislation say whatever they want it to say.
And you're right, Nancy Pelosi told us, well, you got to pass the bill, then you'll find out what's in it.
And guess what?
The things that they told us weren't in it have magically reappeared and are in the bill.
Auburn, uh yeah, Auburn, Michigan, and Bill, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi, Mark.
Uh pleasure to talk to you.
One other phrase that was used during that discussion was health care rationing, too.
And Ram Emanuel's brother, who is a doctor, uh name is Ezekiel, uh, has made speeches and it's in print that he says that in order to provide the kind of health care everybody needs, there necessarily will be some rationing, and he stated uh clearly that the very young people that are not uh real healthy and the very old will have to have their care restricted.
And this is what so many people are concerned about with this language about the end of life counseling, because end of life counseling can easily become end of life advocacy, particularly given that they're going to be drawing the rules to say whatever they want them to say, and they've got a real, real big enforcer here, and that's the checkbook.
This language says doctors are specifically paid to do it, who wait until the next rule says that they're specifically paid to do it only if they talk about the things that they want them to talk about.
The step from where we are here to the point of rationing and denying coverage of people who the government has determined are too ill is not a long leap.
It's a legitimate step.
You've got to understand every single thing the left has accomplished in this country has been done incrementally.
It was the problem that Hillary Clinton faced when she tried to do the all of this back in 1993.
She tried to do it in one fell swoop.
They never get anywhere with this.
What they do and where they succeed is to start and move forward and forward and forward and for look at what happened with regard to the repeal of don't ask, don't tell.
If that was an incremental, an incremental move gradually toward a radical change in social policy, what is they have what they've done here is they passed a bill that they're allowed to take and turn into whatever they feel like making it making it say.
And this notion that they aren't going to go toward rationing is a silly thing for them to be able to say isn't they can't say it can't happen because they don't have the money to pay for health care.
We all know that there's no way that they can fund this massive monstrosity unless they're willing to say we're not going to pay for a lot of things.
And by putting in these rules that put restrictions on what doctors can and cannot provide, and now paying doctors to talk essentially about trying to fight to stay alive, is opening the door for it.
It's a real concern and it's not an exaggeration.
Thanks, Bill, to Farmingdale New York.
Steve, it's your turn on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Well, thank you very much, Mark, for taking my call and thank your staff.
I was just concerned that they're spending billions of dollars to keep mass murderers arrive uh alive uh with their inherent rights, and then government death panels are convincing grandma while she's depressed on drugs to end her life for the good of society, just as it makes sense.
And I just wanted you to weigh in on that and see what you thought, and and I'll listen.
Thank you for the call.
Well, it's a matter of where their priorities are.
There were a lot of signs at the rallies that were held in 09, even separate from the Tea Party rallies.
The Tea Party movement, I really think, merged with the opposition to health care.
All those rallies that occurred when people showed up at the town hall meetings back in 09 where their house members and their senators were there, the rallies that were held against health care, those were going on at the same time that the Tea Party movement was developing.
And they eventually merged into one another.
This was one of the most one of the biggest concerns.
There were people holding up signs saying, Don't kill my mom.
They had A real concern about this, and they know where this kind of language can lead.
It's a real concern.
It bothered a lot of people.
They don't think that the government needs to be in this area.
Because they know right now there isn't a person in this country who can't have a frank conversation with his or her doctor about how they want to live and how they want to die.
It goes on all the time.
When you have government, however, essentially mandating it, and don't say it's not a mandate when you dangle a check out there and say, we will pay you to do this.
Specifically, you will be paid to talk about these things and to follow this program.
That becomes a mandate.
When you get paid to do something, it's amazing how often it gets done.
This was something that people were very worried about.
They didn't want it.
They are very fearful that it's going to lead to government starting with paying for health care and eventually deciding what health care we aren't going to pay for and what requirements are going to be placed on you as the patient.
And that's where the fear about death panels comes in.
They couldn't pass this because people thought this is where it could lead.
Well, it's leading there anyway, even though it's not written to the legislation.
So is Pelosi now going to mock Sarah Palin and all of the others who said it's not in there?
It's not how many times did they say it's not in there?
There's no death panels in there, there's no end of life planning in there, there's no abortion coverage in there, this isn't in there.
The right is lying.
They're lying.
Talk radio is making it up.
Rush Limbaugh made that up.
It's not in there.
Look at the bill.
They were screaming at us to look at the bill.
Well, now we find that looking at the bill is an exercise in irrelevancy.
There's no point in looking at the bill because it's not until Barack Obama gets his hands on that bill and all of his millions of bureaucrats get out there and write in whatever they feel like it feels like saying that it won that it ought to say.
That's what this is all about.
It's their taking their power and trumping the legislative process.
And for those who were mocking the rest of us, who warned that they would do it.
Let's have them defend it now.
And are they now going to tell us that the end of life counseling isn't in?
Or are they finally going to admit that it's there?
They can't claim that this is Talk Radio making this up.
I'm reading it in their own Bible.
I'm holding in my hands the New York Times.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
What President Obama and his administration has done here with regard to using federal rulemaking authority to put end of life counseling back into the Obamacare bill is the exact opposite of the way he vowed he was going to govern.
Remember the OA campaign?
It wasn't that long ago when so many American moderates bought into the rhetoric.
They were tired of Bush, they were tired of partisanship.
Obama was up there saying we're not a nation of red states and blue states, we're a nation of United States.
He said that every bill passed by the Congress would be put up on the internet for five days before he would sign it.
And people loved that.
This government has been just the opposite.
Everything is slapped together at the last moment and signed instantaneously.
Look at all the legislation that came out of the lame duck Congress.
Obama was signing it as soon as the ink was dry.
Nobody knows what's in anything.
What he what he vowed was a government that was that you would be able to see.
We were going to have transparency.
Everybody was going to know what was going to be in legislation.
People would be able to react to it.
Instead, it's been just the opposite.
There's no review of anything.
All the stuff that they couldn't pass in two years, they had to jam through in a week and a half prior to Christmas.
And now we find that even the legislation that was passed becomes meaningless because of rules that they write.
I guess there wasn't any five-day requirement on the internet before the imposition of the Ease rules, they don't even want anybody to know about them.
You've got the guy in the house who was the biggest backer of it, sending out an email saying, by the way, we won, but don't tell anyone we don't want anyone to know that this has happened.
Far from being transparent, this is an attempt to run a government in secret.
Who even knew about this?
No one did.
Now there is another side to this story, and that is whether or not the entire House of Cards, this Obamacare is going to fall apart.
Kim Strassel had a very good column on the Wall Street Journal on Friday.
Congress's monstrous legal legacy is what she titled it.
And she talked about the very real potential of the federal courts striking the whole thing down is unconstitutional.
We already have Judge Hudson, Federal District Court judge, ruling that the mandate that Americans buy health insurance is unconstitutional.
That ruling obviously is going to go to the United States Supreme Court.
But it's such an important part of the bill because if they don't mandate that people buy health insurance, there's no way that they can make the money add up so that people all everybody is covered with health insurance.
That ruling, based on the premise that the government of the United States does not have the power to compel an American citizen to buy anything.
That ruling has a very real chance of being upheld by the United States Supreme Court.
It was mocked and ridiculed when people raised the concern that this wasn't constitutional.
But Judge Hudson's ruling was on very sound legal grounds.
There's no other case we can think of where the government says that if you are going to be a resident of America, you've got to buy something.
Yes, you do have to have a license to drive a car, but nobody says you have to drive a car.
This is a requirement to buy health insurance that might not be constitutional.
Now let me read from Kim Strassel's column.
She writes, look at any other consequential piece of legislation.
And the record is brimming with sober congressional investigations into its legal merits and ramifications.
Obamacare?
It was a largely unread, 2700-page fiend, crafted in secret, fed on deal making, birthed on late night votes.
The Senate and House Judiciary Committees didn't hold hearings.
The record is bereft of letters from congressional chairman requesting Justice Department legal analysis of the bill.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus actually ruled out of order, an amendment that would have required expedited judicial review of the individual mandate.
The result is a bill that is in its design the most profoundly unconstitutional statute in American history.
In its execution, one of the most incompetent ones, says David Ridkin, the lawyer who represents the twenty state plaintiffs in the Florida lawsuit.
The best example is the individual mandate, the requirement that all Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty.
Kim Strassell in her column then refers to the fact that the Justice Department is now trying to say that really this requirement to buy health insurance is merely a tax, even though they denied that this was a tax when they passed Obamacare.
As Kim Strassel concludes in her column, but what else can the Justice Department do?
It's stuck defending a steaming pile of a statute.
This is the one hundred and eleven Congress's legacy, one that will last long after its five hundred thirty-five members finish their term.
If the individual mandate was not held to be constitutional, will the courts uphold language specifically being written in by the administration that was never authorized by the law that was passed by the Congress.
This is a brazen case of overreach by the American left.
And it is the reason the Constitution created checks and balances in our only check here on the power of the Congress and now a president going beyond that Congress is the courts.
I'm Mark Belling in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbo on a day in which about half the country is snowed in.
People aren't able to go home after the holidays.
But you can listen to me sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm here, and we've got a lot of good things things coming up on the program.
I want to talk about how some parts of the American economy are thriving despite President Obama, while others are really hurting.
I want to talk about Afghanistan.
A few other things.
I even found, believe it or not, I found a story that compares Jon Stewart to Edward R. Murrow.
But I wanted to open the program with this topic.
Because for the past year, those of us who were saying that Obamacare could lead to things like end-of-life counseling and so on were called liars.
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