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June 4, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:41
June 4, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Yes, Rush returns live for full strength, all American Excellence in Broadcasting tomorrow at twelve midday Eastern time.
But this is your undocumented Anchorman sitting in and honored to be honored to be here.
We're coming to you live from Ice Station EIB in far northern New Hampshire.
If you're if you're fleeing the country, do do swing by.
You can't miss us.
There's a big sign on the highway saying last rush guest host before the border.
Uh we have uh some news about the impending Senate uh uh appointment or election uh to the uh United States Senate from New Jersey because of the death of Frank Lautenberg,
and apparently apparently uh Chris Christie has just decided about ten minutes ago that instead of appointing someone to finish out Senator Lawtenberg's term, he will hold a special election on uh Wednesday, October the sixteenth, uh to finish uh out uh the rest of uh Lawtenberg's term.
Uh the primary day will be Tuesday, August the thirteenth, so it look apparently the uh the national uh the Republican National Committee advised him to appoint someone just to serve out the next couple of years until twenty fourteen.
Uh instead, Chris Christie has decided to hold a special election in October, uh and that will mean that uh there will be uh most likely a Democrat victory there, um and it will mean that uh in the meantime there will not be an extra Republican vote in the Senate.
Uh so Chris Christie has decided that uh he's not going to appoint a Republican to the position.
All this talk you know, I I didn't do any of this yesterday, in part because it's all such wasted time, this speculative stuff, and because the idea of Tom Keane Senior or Tom Keane Junior uh coming uh into the uh United States Senate didn't didn't kind of exactly fire me up.
And I'm glad I didn't waste any time over it either, because uh he's not gonna be appointing any of them, he isn't gonna be appointing any Republican, instead there'll be a special election on October the sixteenth, and you can bet your life that uh whoever is the uh elected uh Senator for New Jersey on October the seventeenth isn't gonna be either Tom Keane Senior or Tom Keene Junior.
So it's a good thing we didn't waste any more time on uh on that.
Um talking yesterday and again in unfinished business, as it were, from uh the uh the EPA and the EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.
And again, uh the the the concerns people have over emissions and all the rest of it.
Ambulances now have uh and uh at the at the behest of the EPA, ambulances with diesel engines are now designed to cut power if exhaust filters are not kept clean.
Uh a process that requires the vehicles to be taken out of service for up to an hour every few days uh to burn off accumulated soot and allow the filtering system to perform well.
This this process is known as regenerating.
Uh and a warning light is supposed to flash and give the driver enough time to com l complete an emergency run before taking a scheduled break.
This is mandated by the EPA because because in all in order to reduce save the planet and reduce global warming, we we have to we have to put these things in ambulances, so they shut down if uh they uh have not burned off their accumulated soot.
In other words, that they'd be they'd their their exhaust would be too dirty.
So instead they have to go into the shop and be regenerated.
A DC ambulance, this is from the Washington Post, the DC ambulance rushing a gunshot victim to hospital had to pull over to avoid engine failure that fire officials blamed on an emission system required by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Paramedics were performing CPR on Nathaniel McRae, 34, when an indicator light signaled that engine failure was imminent.
They waited seven minutes for another ambulance to arrive, and McRae was later declared dead at Howard University Hospital.
Deputy Fire Chief John A. Donnelly said the ambulance delay did not impede McCrae's care.
And and figure that this guy isn't dead before.
This uh p police officers, this guy is a carjacking suspect.
He was shot by police officers during a gun battle at Barnaby Street North East in Washington, DC.
And they put him in the ambulance.
Having shot him, they put him in the ambulance to take him to hospital.
The indicator light says, unfortunately, uh you're no longer compliant with environmental protection agency regulations, so your engine is going to shut down.
They're performing CPR on him on their way to hospital, they have to pull over to the side of the road, and all the traffic they've passed with their lights flashing, as they're rushing this guy to hospital, all the people in the Toyota Corollas and the Honda Civics tootling along at seventeen miles an hour, all come past this ambulance waiting on the shoulder.
All the vehicles that the ambulance has passed with its lights flashing, trying to rush this guy to hospital, and they wait there seven minutes until another hospital whose engine presumably is compliant with environmental protection agency regulations is able another another ambulance with EPA compliant engine is able to pull up and they then they take the shot guy out of the ambulance,
the noncompliant, EPA noncompliant ambulance, and put him in the EPA compliant ambulance, and they get him to hospital just to be declared dead.
That's uh thank you, thank you, EPA.
But don't worry, we're we're saving the planet.
We're saving the planet.
Uh speaking of health care, um there's a new line, which again is all it all ties in.
It's all the same thing.
It's as uh somebody was talking, yes, one of the callers yesterday said that it's like a a uh a nest of rattlesnakes, and they're all intertwined and and tangled up together, and everything is tangled up together now.
Like the EPA is in your ambulance and the IRS is in your ambulance because of Obamacare.
And the Democrats had an ol had an uh had an old line.
When when Obamacare was passing through, it was all about how nothing was going to change.
Most people uh nothing was going to change.
This was just a way of taking care of all those people who who unfortunately had no health care, had no access to health care, and this was going to bring health care to everyone who's going to take care of them.
Well, now the Democrat line is evolving.
Avic Roy in Forbes magazine said for a while, independent analysts and conservative critics have raised concerns that Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of individually purchased health insurance for healthier people.
This would, of course, contradict President Obama's promise that, quote, if you like your plan you can keep it, and that the cost of insurance would go down, quote, by two thousand five hundred dollars per family per year.
By the way, if you we we haven't reached the full Obamacare just yet.
But if your family's health insurance has gone down by two and a half thousand dollars a year, I would love to hear from you.
You're that person that President Obama was talking about, the guy whose health insurance has gone down by two and a half grand a year.
Uh call me up.
1800, 282, 2882.
I'd love to know what plan you're on, who your insurer is, because it's not working out that way uh for most people.
The California Health uh insurance costs in California under Obamacare reveal that for the typical you can see this at ehealth insurance dot com, by the way, ehealth insurance dot com.
For the typical twenty-five-year-old male non smoker, the average Obamacare bronze exchange plan in California will cost between sixty-four and one hundred and seventeen percent more.
Sixty-four and one hundred and seventeen percent more.
For forty-year-old male non smokers, it's between seventy-three and a hundred and forty-six percent more.
Between seventy-three and a hundred and forty-six percent more.
So uh it was going to uh lower your insurance by twenty five hundred dollars a year.
Now it's in fact going to increase it by between seventy-three and a hundred and forty-six percent more.
Um so then the line by liberals defending Obamacare.
Ezra Klein in the Washington Post uh compared these rates to a similar website, uh government website, healthcare.gov.
And um and they've got a health care plan there for a hundred and nine dollars a month, uh, if the government is willing to sell it for you the that price.
14% of people who tried to buy the plan were turned away, and another 12% were asked to pay more than $109.
Do you realize this is now, this is a stroke of genius, what has happened with health care in this country?
Because it has taken all the worst bureaucrac, it has basically retained all the bureaucratic encumbrances of the existing system, and then piled a whole new set of government encumbrances on top of them, to create a unique, and nobody has ever devised a health care system like all the aspects of health care in America that are insane, that somehow it's...
the responsibility of your uh uh of of uh your employer to arrange for your health care no other country has that by the way you know if you you can you either have private health care where you go along and you write a check or you arrange with a private insurer or you have government health care where you go along and the hospital isn't quite as nice and the lines are longer uh but it's all paid for through your taxes.
Uh so so it's all basically both of them are simple as hell.
One is a straight commercial transaction and the other is a government service that is free at the point of demand.
So you go to the hospital if you're like this guy who was shot and was in the environmentally protect environmental protection agency approved ambulance and he was and he died on the way there while waiting for the compliant ambulance to arrive the environmentally compliant ambulance to arrive.
If he'd actually made it to hospital he'd have said I'm riddled with gunshot wounds, can you treat me?
And he'd be in there.
There's nothing to say well under your insurance plan for the f the first three uh gunshot wounds are part of your deductible and uh and then on the remaining four gunshot wounds uh there's a a dollar seventy eight copay do you have any cash on you?
No, because when the guy shot me he took all his m money there's none of that.
There's none of that.
We now have the most complicated bureaucratically complicated health care system in the world.
The central fact of which is that the internal revenue service the corrupt internal revenue service that we've been talking about for the previous two hours is in charge of it.
It's not even Kathleen Sibelius gets to decide what operations you're entitled to she gets to decide the tooth level surveillance a phrase that has never been used before in the English language but is there in the health care bill she's in charge of tooth level surveillance she will appoint the commissioners she will appoint most members of the death panel but the IRS will have the freedom to appoint Lois Lerner to the death panel or Douglas Shulman to the death death panel.
No other country in the world is the they're the actually the principal agency in charge of the implementation of Obamacare.
No other country in the world does that apply to and I don't care what you not just Sweden but North Korea.
No other country in the world puts the tax collection agency in charge of the administration of health care.
This is a recipe by the way this will be a bureaucracy the size of which no one has ever seen the the three biggest bureaucracies in the world are the uh Chinese People's Army the three biggest employees on the planet are the Chinese People's Army, the Indian National Railways and the British National Health Service, which is the biggest employer in Europe and the third biggest employer on the planet.
The number of people who will be required the number of lowest learners and uh who will be required to administer Obamacare if we're lucky it won't be as big as the Chinese People's Army, the Indian National Railways and the British National Health Service combined.
But it is going to be one of the biggest it's it's going to be a bigger disaster than anyone has ever seen.
And the question you got to figure is that Obama who Obama's already figured that out and the question is when it all collapses what's he going to do next?
Mark Steinin for Rush, one eight hundred two eight two eight eight two Mark Stein in for rush on the EIB network.
Honored to be behind the golden EIB mic microphone.
Jay Leno was talking about this uh IRS uh stuff last night he said President Obama says he's renewing his efforts to close Guantanamo Bay.
Guantanamo Bay how about closing the IRS?
Why don't we do that?
And the audience broke into thunderous applause thunderous applause.
Republicans have to keep their eye on the prize here.
They have to go for the they have to go for the big thing.
Don't just be content with uh with sending some low level official to jail for thirty five to eighty years or whatever whatever it is.
Actually J. Leno's audience is right.
Uh closing the IRS, replacing it with some and uh just to go back to what uh I was uh talking about with Alison.
Alison was a nice lady.
Alison uh has worked for the IRS, she's retired IRS uh agent, she worked in the criminal prosecution division, but she didn't grasp in the way that often government bureaucrats don't.
They don't grasp when she says, Well, the burden on proof is on you.
Why?
Why?
Why should one bureaucrat even where do you go, by the way?
Uh to what polling station, if you happen to disagree with the decision, you can't go to a court and appeal it.
You can't uh go to a a polling station and vote this person out.
In what kind of free society does a bureaucrat whose name you don't know, uh in this case, in the case of the lady who testified Becky Gerritson earlier, all she knew was Ms. Richards.
Ms. Richards wouldn't even give her the full name.
Uh you can't you can't go to a court and appeal against the decision by a Ms. Richards.
Nobody knows her name, nobody knows who she is.
And yet this woman, she determines that you owe this amount of money, uh, and uh if you don't do this, then she's gonna do that.
Uh y she she'll put a price on what she figures you owes, and she'll take it uh via your house or your savings account or whatever it is, and you then have to persuade her to give some of it back.
And nobody ever gets all of it back, by the way.
Nobody ever gets all of it back.
Let's go to John in Northern Wisconsin.
John, you're live on the Rush Limbo Show.
Great to have you.
I'm doing good, all things considered.
Seems like seems like old Jay Leno might have earned himself a roving wiretap.
That's right.
Yeah, he'll be I I I know I can always count on you to bring us all the Gerbil's warming news that's fit to print.
And uh I just called the day I I wanted and wanted to get an update on on your kerfuffle with Michael uh with Michael Mann, who who I heard it is rumored was uh seen in the Penn State shower with a hockey stick after a flapping noise was heard.
I mean, you know.
Well, you know, by chances, Michael Band is suing me for defamation, and uh my chances were were pretty good, but uh your characterization there.
I'm looking probably at uh at uh thirty to forty years in the slabber after after the way you just prejudice my case.
Uh actually we're in court in uh whatever it is, uh there's so many courts in this country, it's fascinating, isn't it?
I think it's superior court in the District of Columbia, is that what it is?
Uh uh I think it's uh this month, in fact.
Uh Michael Mann is the guy who invented this hockey stick, which uh which showed global warming.
Basically the temperature of the planet was consistent uh for a thousand years, and then in the twentieth century it goes rocketing up, and he did it like a hockey stick, and people call it the hockey stick graph.
And uh and I made the mistake of mocking his his hockey stick.
And uh, you know, no red bloody male red blooded male likes it when you make a joke about his hockey stick, and uh he's decided to to sue me for defamation.
We've had a bit of sport with him.
I probably shouldn't.
If my lawyer was sitting next to me, uh he'd be uh he'd be doing the cupped hand thing you see with the IRS guys when they testify to Congress and telling me to move on to another subject or to tell John in Wisconsin that I don't recall.
Uh but in fact, um we've had a bit of sport with him because uh Dr. Michael E. Mann falsely claimed to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
A Nobel Prize winner, in fact.
He d he has it on all his promotional materials, he has it on the jacket of his book, he has it on the resume provided by his publicist.
He's never won a Nobel Prize, and the Nobel Academy out uh out there in uh in uh Scandinavia says uh he's never won a no Mel Prize.
And uh and he and he actually put it in the criminal complaint against me.
He accused me of defaming a the crime of the hitherto unknown crime in uh the American legal system of defaming a Nobel Prize winner.
Uh so he's decided to take me to court, and I fancy by chances and we'll see how this works, uh we'll see how this works out.
But he is the guy.
This hockey stick is single-handedly responsible uh for the big uh for for for the big global warming fever.
There used to be this thing called the medieval warm period, where that's how Greenland got its name, because it was green and they had vines and they made terrific wine in Greenland.
Uh and there was this thing called the medieval warm period by that was accepted by all scientists.
And Dr. Michael Mann uh looked at a few tree rings in Siberia and Hither and Yong, uh in uh including North America and the Gaspey Peninsula in Quebec, and he came up with this hockey stick that has no medieval warm period in it, and that's why people are crazy about the Gliss.
Oh, it's unprecedented!
Hotter than it's ever been in a thousand years.
If you're graduating from high school this month, there has been no global warming since you were in kindergarten.
Don't fall for this.
Don't fall for this stultifying social engineering totalitarian consensus.
Uh there's been no if you're graduating from high school this week, there's been no global warming since you were in kindergarten.
Rush is back after his week-long break, fit and refreshed, uh and ready f to take on all the IRS scandals and Benghazi and the Associated Press and Amnesty and all the other stuff, live starting at uh at noon tomorrow.
I you know, it's a great honor.
I uh I know I make a joke about being the sinister foreign guest host and all the rest of it.
But it really is a great honour to be here, and I'm I'm I'm always touched by it.
I've I've worked for all kinds of uh broadcasting organizations around the world over the years, and uh and it's it's like amazing to me that I get off the boat at Ellis Island and next thing you know, I'm uh I'm hosting America's number one uh radio show.
It's uh it's it's a it's a great privilege and and an honor.
When Rush was making jokes about me uh about having to he was having to clear off on vacation because they'd already scheduled me to fly in from Australia.
The first time I did this show a couple of years ago, whenever it was, I actually did fly from Australia uh to host it.
In fact, that was the reason.
I w I think I was in Australia when I was contacted about it, and I would have been more nervous if I'd actually been in the United States and uh Tootligalogue listening to Rush on the radio that day.
But I happened to be in Australia uh for a couple of weeks, and they said, Would you would you like to host the show?
Uh H.R. and Mr. Snerdley said, and uh I said, Yeah, you know, I said, Oh yeah, sure, why not?
And um I mentioned to the I was uh uh at an event with the Australian Prime Minister, the great Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and he said uh he said to me, Oh, can you come to something I was doing uh, you know, a day or two later.
And I said, I'd love to, but I've got to fly uh back to Los Angeles uh and thence to New York, because I'm uh guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh show.
And he said, Oh, I hear that's a pretty big uh show.
Uh how many people listen to that?
And I said it's about uh twenty-five uh million people, I think.
And he goes, Crikey, uh Russia's more listeners than uh we have Australians, which is actually true.
There's uh I think twenty-one or twenty-two million Australians.
And so it's uh it's always a great honor for uh for me.
And one of the things I like about it is uh sometimes when I'm promoting a book or whatever on uh stations around the country, uh uh they'll they'll come on the air and they'll say, you know, so I'll be on the air in Buffalo or whatever and they say you know him because he guest hosts for Rush Rush Limbaugh.
So it's always I was on with uh Helen Glover uh at uh WHJJ in uh Rhode Island, Providence, Rhode Island this morning, and uh of course, uh, you know, Helen's uh happy to talk about whatever I want to talk about, but uh my main point of interest to her listeners is the fact that uh I'm actually uh going to be hosting their midday show a couple of hours from this.
It's a great o a great honor for a foreigner, and I am genuinely uh touched and gratified by the nice things people say.
I was plugging by the way, I was plugging not very effectively my appearance in Massachusetts on Helen's show.
Uh and I say not very effectively because it's a uh I'm appearing at the big synagogue in Central Street and uh as a uh as a repressed and inept Anglican, I can't pronounce the name of it terribly well.
It's actually a Hovat Torah congregation.
Uh but I'll be there tomorrow evening.
If you want to c if you want to come along, you can go to Atora, A T O R A H A T O R A H.org, uh, and uh find out how to get tickets.
But that'll be in Stoughton, Massachusetts, uh tomorrow evening.
That's the kind of thing I do when I'm not guest hosting for Rush.
But Rush himself is going to be back here tomorrow to talk about all the things that uh when Rush goes away for a week.
This is the other thing.
I don't know whether he I get the feeling he's in on it sometimes because it's odd to me that uh when he picks a day to be off, that'll be the day that there'll be like a big uh manhunt for the Boston Marathon bomb or whatever.
And this is certainly he's picked a a lively week to go away and you won't want to miss all the stuff he's got to to say about it.
Let us go to Dan in uh Laser, Minnesota and uh hear what Dan has to say.
Did I pronounce your town right, Dan?
Did I give it the or did I do it too Frenchly?
How do you say it?
Yes you did it's LaSour, the French kind of settled here way back when.
Actually in Heidelberg, Minnesota I'm sitting on my farm and it's raining Al Gore.
It's cold.
I think they should bend that hockey stick or cut it off there's no global warming here.
And thank you for having me on the show.
I just want to tell you Mark I did spend a month in Australia when I was in the service I went from Perth to Sydney and back.
So I I had a great time they were great hosts and everything else is good.
The main thing I want to talk about today is uh how I came to be conservative I grew up in Southern Minnesota, the hotbed of DFL.
Everybody voted Democrat, even though they're some of the most conservative people I've ever known.
I come from farm country.
I'm a farm kid that used to talk to airplanes.
I was in air traffic for 40 years and I retired about seven years ago.
When I was a supervisor I used to put on conferences all over the country I was in a national team called Soupcom, a supervisors committee.
We would go to military bases.
The first base we stayed at was Minneapolis, the guard base for six dollars a night we got free conference rooms we got to stay at their clubs and they gave us equipment to use everything was free.
So you can do that on the on the cheap later on we expanded to all over the country one of the favorite spots is Point Loma.
We never paid over twenty bucks a night we brought the VIPs in including Jane Garvey and the heads of air traffic and we put them in the VIP suites and we paid like twenty six bucks a night for that.
So you can do it you could do it you just have to be aware of this.
Most people on per diem when they travel they have a set amount they can spend for conference for everything else and how these agencies ran out of control and did their millions of dollars and stayed in these high price suites I'll never know because it's terribly terribly wrong.
I didn't provide the uh PACL strike I was in air traffic that kind of switched me to be more conservative because every union trick in the book was played on me for a period of two years.
The intimidation you name it whatever game they wanted to play so I'm very familiar with how they work they maneuver it's akin to what's going on now with the Chicago gang in uh power so I'll I'll relinquish to you Mark.
Well Dan thanks for your call.
And since you asked that you don't know how they manage to ramp up uh four point one million dollars uh to hold a for the IRS to hold their small business self-employed divisions conference in Anaheim.
Because it's true that real small businessmen, real self-employed people don't spend money this carelessly.
And only the regulators, only the tax collectors for the small business self-employed division, the small business self-employed people in America, only they can spend $4.1 million on the conference.
I'll tell you one way they did it.
This is how it got up to that.
they got two numbers nongovernmental event planners so called event planners uh to find a uh a suitable location for the con uh conference now these planners are not under contract with the IRS they're not so they're not uh all the things you were saying the per diem rate which basically is a government thing where they calculate how much it's legitimate to spend according to where they send you round the country.
So if they send you to Malibu you might have a per diem rate of uh two or three hundred dollars a day but if you come to my nowhere town in the middle of New Hampshire your per DM rate will be fifteen bucks a day.
Uh they determine how much a government employee can legitimately spend as according to the general cost of living in different parts of the country.
but that doesn't apply to these two event planners, event planners.
You know, this is like party planners.
It's like when Barbara Streisand throws a party uh for her favorite Democrats, she she might hire a couple of specialized party planners.
That's the equivalent that the IRS went to for their small business uh divisions conference.
And they had no incentive to follow the rules.
They didn't they weren't bound by the Purdue rules, and they had no incentive to actually find a favorable room rate because they were on a commission from the hotels.
So in other words, the more ho the more the hotels cost, the more these event planners made.
And they got a $133,000 commission for booking the hotel rooms for the IRS.
And by the way, this is an important point too, because in the end, big government corrupts not just the public sector, but the private sector too.
Because the only way you make money in the private sector is by uh is by being someone who has a government contract, is by being someone who does work for the government.
So in this case, these are two supposed private sector event planners, uh but they are happy to rip off American taxpayers too by booking by booking bureaucrats into the most expensive hotels so they can ramp up their commission to a hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars.
And by the way, you talk about all the concessions you negotiated, Dan, that again, this is standard.
When you say, I'm gonna be here with a big big conference, uh what what's your best rate you can give us on the rooms?
This is this this makes sense.
Any anybody does this.
Uh I'm gonna be booking so many rooms, uh so uh so what rate can you give me?
Well, okay, that w that rates may be acceptable, but I think you should throw in a complimentary breakfast as well.
That's how most people would negotiate it if they were doing it for themselves, if they were a real small business as opposed to the small business division of the IRS, and if it was their money and not the taxpayers' money.
This conference in Anaheim, the IRS actually waived the perks.
Um they uh the the non-government event planners uh were so uh interested in bumping up their commission that they cancelled they they wound up uh foregoing the f complementary continental breakfast, the welcome reception with two complimentary drink coupons, uh the significant number of sweet upgrades, because a sweet upgrade is not in their interest.
If you get if you if you pay for a room and they upgrade you to a suite, uh there's nothing in it for these event planners.
Whereas if you actually have to buy the suite at sweet rates, it increases the commission for these IRS event planners.
By the way, think of that.
Think of that expression.
IRS event planners.
This is what a republic of limited government has come down to.
Dan makes uh Dan makes an excellent point there.
They're not spending if you're a small business and you want to attend a conference, if you're a uh private sector lobby group, interest group, uh industry group, you want to hold a conference, you're there.
You're keeping track of the room rates, you want to get the best deal you can.
If you're the government, you don't care.
So they have thirty-five hundred dollar a night hotel rooms, and they fly in a guy for twenty-seven thousand five hundred dollars so he can stand on stage and paint a picture of Bono for IRS agents.
Uh for f paint a picture of Bonner, not even a lousy American rocker, but an Irish rocker.
Uh why why can he have done why couldn't he have done some guy from Whitesnake if he wants to paint rock stars to IRS agents for twenty-seven and a half thousand dollars?
Mark Stein in for rush, lots more still ahead.
Mark Stein in for rush at the golden EIB microphone.
Uh breaking news, Jay Carney says he only has one secret email address.
He uh he's he's suggesting he doesn't have uh the fully uh constructed secret fake identity uh that the EPA administrator had where she was award-winning public servant Richard Windsor who won who won ethics in Government Awards or whatever it was called three years uh three years running.
By the way, I said uh why couldn't this IRS artist who was paid twenty-seven and a half grand to do a picture border done an American uh uh rock star like some guy from Whitesnake.
It's just been pointed out to me that Whitesnake are a British band.
Uh so like Bono was knighted by the Queen a couple of years ago.
Uh there's got to be an American.
Why can't he have done a picture of Bruce Springsteen?
I'm way outside my comfort zone here.
Uh I shouldn't be doing the uh white stone uh uh uh whitesnake cracks.
I should just have said, why couldn't they do a why couldn't this IRS artist have been paid twenty seven and a half thousand dollars to do a portrait of Andy Williams or Johnny Mathis?
I don't know.
Let's go to Steve in Reading, California.
Steve, you're live on the Rush Limbo Show.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Mark, how are you?
I'm good, thanks.
Uh can you hear me?
I'm extremely irritated about we've been warned that our health insurance rates are gonna go up between a hundred percent and one hundred and forty.
Not for you to understand that.
We pay thirteen hundred a month now for what they call a Cadillac plan, because my wife is an autistic school teacher.
Right.
And we don't know what we're gonna do because if it goes to twenty six hundred, if you simply double it, we would not be able to afford that plan.
And I I have like several surgical autoimmune disorder.
Right.
Body's attacking itself.
So I have a lot of medical needs, so that's why we buy that plan.
Well, we're just because we can't afford the twenty six hundred, and they said it could even go up a hundred and forty percent.
Yeah, no, so and if it goes up to a hundred and forty percent, you're looking at around uh whatever that is, thirty-two hundred dollars a month.
Yeah, and we we have five net.
Yeah, yeah.
So you're yeah, yeah.
So you this is this is crazy.
This isn't insurance.
Thirty-two hundred a month, you're uh you're looking at uh just shy of forty thousand dollars a year.
Uh that's before you have a dime to keep to yourself.
That's just for your health insurance.
And every year it used to be five ninety and now it's thirteen sixty-seven.
Right.
Right.
Well, you know why?
Who who's who who is your insurer, by the way, Steve, this is uh Blue Cross.
Right, okay.
That's well, that makes sense because it's not Blue Cross and Blue Shield anymore.
These guys have done basically the government has annexed the private insurance market as it annexed the mortgage market.
So they're not really Blue Cross and Blue Shield anymore.
They're they're Fanny Cross and Freddie Shield.
They're like uh the that that's what basically they've done to them.
There's no blue cross and blue shield.
It's Fanny Cross and Freddie Shield.
Because the minute they say you can't discriminate against pre-existing conditions and all the rest of it, then you're telling private insurers they can no longer evaluate risk, which is the basis of insurance.
Because right now, as you say, you've got your you you pay for a Cadillac policy because you've got kind of specialized needs.
And you're and you're a good risk because you've done the responsible thing.
You've understood you have particular health needs, so you found a health insurance policy that covers for that.
Uh whereas the Obama administration says if you're if you happen to be dancing drunk on on uh the garage roof and you fall off tomorrow and break your back and you have no health insurance, it shouldn't matter uh that you and your broken back won't count as a pre-existing condition.
In other words, you the the Obama administration, as big government does consistently, is it rewards irresponsible behavior.
Uh Steve, I'm very sorry I'm very sorry for you, but you're gonna be one of thousands and millions of people who have this bad news that something that we you paid a particular amount of money for is now no longer affordable.
Mark Stein, back in a moment.
Mark Stein for Rush.
By the way, if you're an IRS party planner and you'd like a a painting of me, I'll I'll fly in and do a self-portrait for a mere eighteen thousand dollars.
Just something to think about.
This has been great fun for me.
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