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Oct. 1, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
October 1, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 247 podcast.
So I got out of bed and I was, I was, I I I have to admit, I got out of bed and I was a little worried.
So I went to the wall plate and I hit the button for the blackout shades and they began to open.
And then I hit the button for the solar shades, and they began to open.
And then I got the courage to actually walk to the window.
And I looked out there.
You know what I saw?
I saw a blue sky.
And I felt such relief.
I can't tell you, my friends, yes, I saw a blue sky.
I saw at least three quarters of all essential birds up at work and singing.
I guess the non-essential birds got the uh got the day off.
School kids, I found out, still gonna get breakfast, lunch, snack, ecstasy, whatever else they get still on display and still in in plentiful supply.
Uh all of the welfare checks and all of the food stamp cards are still usable.
They have not been shut down.
Everybody in Obama's base, depending on government, is going to have a fine day, even though CNN has now got another clock up.
Yesterday they had their countdown clock.
Now they've got a count going on the length of time the government has been shut down.
Hi folks, how are you?
Rush Limbaugh here behind the golden EIB microphone, three hours of broadcast excellence.
Look, I don't mean to sound uh off-putting here, but I have been doing this for 25 years, and as a result, you've been alive for all this time.
I mean, most of you have.
None of this.
It's amazing how similar all of this is.
It's amazing the formula that exists here.
It's amazing the absence of any real news about what is happening in this country.
It is nothing more than a template and a narrative that's dragged out, pulled out of a drawer that's held for every time something like this happens, and everything that's been said about every government shutdown in my lifetime is being said.
Well, except I didn't even know when the government was shut down during the Reagan years.
And you know, there were a lot of times when it was, and I didn't even know it.
The government, I think the government was shut down seven times during the Reagan years.
I have to look up the number, but it was a significant number.
But a big deal wasn't made of that.
The first government shutdown that that was actually treated as the end of life as we know it was 1995.
And that has the that's provided the template and the narrative ever since.
And it is, it's just it's breathtaking to watch this because it's so wrong.
It is it's so absent any reality and substance, in fact.
The shutdown's not even the story today.
The story is this is the first day the Obamacare exchanges are open, and it is a disaster.
Reporter after reporter has been going to these to healthcare.gov, trying to log on and buy an insurance policy, and it is an absolute mess.
I think, you know, I I I thought about appointing myself national navigator.
Uh if you've seen the story, there's a uh the the apparently there are at healthcare.gov, both at the brick and mortar locations and at the Department of Health and Human Services, or whoever's running this show and the and the website, they're navigators, and they are there to help people navigate the process.
And a memo has gone out to the navigators from the government as Obamacare enrollment begins.
The Department of Health and Human Services has a helpful tip for the program's so-called navigators.
Quote, do not leave documents that contain personally identifiable information Or tax return information on printers and fax machines.
This warning is contained in section 2.4.3 of the 207-page health insurance marketplace navigator standard operating procedures manual.
Are you kidding me?
We have a 207-page operators manual for the people running Obamacare.
207-page operator manual.
If you went out and bought an iPhone and it had a 207-page operator manual, you would take it back.
If you bought anything that had a 207-page operator manual, other than your car, and those things, every other every page, every other page is a safety warning designed to keep the lawyers off everybody's back.
Or a picture.
But here at 207-page operator manual, and they're so have such little confidence in the people they've hired to do this.
They have to remind them, by the way, don't leave people's tax returns lying around the office.
By the way, don't leave any of their personal or personally identifiable information.
On printers or in fax machine.
The same section of the 207-page operators manual asks navigators to double check the fax number before faxing Obamacare enrollees tax returns.
Get this.
When faxing personally identifiable information or tax return information, double check that the recipient's fax number is correct and that somebody is able to pick up the faxed information immediately.
Holy smokes, folks.
If they have to remind people of that, do you realize you're worried about the NSA?
You need to be worried about the Obamacare navigators.
Anyway, it's a disaster.
Now I know some people say, Rush, I mean, come on, it's so massive, it has to be a dis They've had three years, folks.
They have had three years to set this up.
Obamacare has been the quote unquote law of the land for three years.
They've had three years to get this system up and running.
They have known for three years it was coming.
This is utterly irresponsible.
It is a great illustration of the total inability of the federal government to manage something like this.
None of that is going to end up mattering.
But I'm going to tell you, I've been chronicling people.
There have been some journalists like Charlie Spearing at uh at the DC Examiner.
Is a six-page story on his adventures, he calls them misadventures of just creating an account at healthcare.gov.
And you know what people are learning?
Can't keep their doctor.
People are learning they can't keep their plan if they like it.
Some people are learning that their annual cost may be as high as $33,000.
Some people are learning their annual cost could be $26,000, $25,000.
They're all that's the story today.
And of course, it's it's it's being obscured and papered over by the uh the the affection that the drive by's have for this shutdown because to them all this is, as we pointed out cleverly and correctly yesterday, is just the latest assault on the Tea Party.
That's all it is is an attempt to destroy the Tea Party, an attempt to destroy the Republican Party, that's all this shutdown is.
The only people affected by this are the 800,000 to a million non-essential workers, and if you want to go to the Grand Canyon, you can't today.
It's it's shut down.
The national parks are shut down.
So, but whoever what is the Grand Canyon, but a giant hole.
Let's face it, folks, maybe pretty, it may be unique, but it's a hole in the ground.
You know you can't even go there because the government shut down.
What kind Of government do we have that cannot even let people get to the bottom of a hole without government assistance?
The one thing you do not need government for is to find the bottom of a hole, but you can't go there today because the government shutdown.
And the uh the national parks, which is no big deal because more and more of those are off limits anyway.
There were eight government shutdowns during Reagan.
And the what?
Oh yeah, I told you the Panda Cam.
I was first with it.
Well, the Washington Post was first with that.
And I had people sending me that story all night last night made me wonder what am I doing here.
I broke the story along with the Washington Post that the PANDACam at the Z at the National Zoo is dormant.
It's black.
I mean, uh blank.
You can't see the panda.
Camera's not being operated.
Non-essential person obviously does that.
So I got emails last night.
You rush, rush, look at this.
You can't even see the panda at the zoo.
And I said, Yeah.
I know.
Anyway, uh the Obamacare opening day.
And I want a lot of people, I'm going to replete that.
A lot of people are going to cut them some slack.
Rush couldn't have been massive.
I know it's been three years they've had to set this up.
Now the fines, all of that, that's all been delayed.
There aren't they don't have the ability to administer it.
I don't think, folks, you know, you talk about the uh employer mandate has been waived and everybody wants, well, let's have the let's have the individual mandate.
I don't think they have systems in place to administer anything right now.
I think this law is whatever Obama says it's going to be from day to day.
But here is there's there's a little story out there, and I mean little.
It's not being covered.
Drudge has a link to it, but that's the only place I've seen it.
And I think this story has as much to say about the decline of American culture as anything we could find out there today.
And it is this, the Office of Personnel Management.
That's the group, by the way, that is subsidizing members of Congress, up to 75% of their health care.
Well, speaking, what one thing about the shutdown.
The um the Senate did vote to maintain their subsidy.
They did that.
This is one of the things the Republicans sent over from the House was uh an offer to get you know to not shut down if the Democrats would give that up and Democrats in the Senate voted to keep their subsidies.
I think a big deal needs to be made of that, and we will do our part here as we did yesterday.
But the Office of Personnel Management ruled yesterday that members of Congress and their staffs, in addition to getting their 75% subsidy on the purchase of insurance at the exchanges.
In addition to that, they will be able to buy health care plans that pay for abortions.
Even though the premiums are funded largely by taxpayer money, that makes it illegal.
There is federal law on this.
And federal law is being broken by virtue of this ruling from the Office of Personnel Management under the terms of Obamacare.
Lawmakers and their aides are required to ditch their government-sponsored plans and buy insurance on the exchanges for which they're going to pay their subsidies.
Though, unlike most people on the exchanges, the staffers and members of Congress will have most of the costs of their premiums paid by us.
The taxpayer, their employer.
Federal law generally prevents taxpayer money from being used to pay for abortions.
But the Office of Personnel Management said That the health care plans offered through the exchange are private.
They just made a random ruling that the insurance plans being subsidized by taxpayer public money are all of a sudden private.
The Office of Personnel Management said that it'll make sure the money is segregated so that the portion that pays for abortions comes out of the employees' own contributions, which amounts to about 25% of the premiums.
This is snake oil.
This is bait and switch.
This is an abject lie.
Members of Congress and their staff are going to have any abortions they want, and any abortions on members of their family or friends who are covered by their policy paid for by you.
Now there's a very active pro-life member of Congress from New Jersey.
His name is Christopher Smith.
And he says that the Office of Personnel Management is violating a law that he wrote in 1983.
His and it's signed into law, it is the law of the land.
It prohibits the Office of Personnel Management from paying any expenses to administer plans that cover abortion, except in the case of rape or incest or when the mother's life is in danger.
And Chris Smith said yesterday, you can't break the law, Mr. President, and just issue a final rule as if somehow you're comporting with the law.
We don't want to subsidize abortion on demand, and the public is absolutely with us.
Democrats, of course, applauded the ruling, saying it ensures equal access to abortions, but it's a violation of law.
The law of the land is that taxpayer money cannot be used for this.
But the Office of Personnel Management, which is Obama, has basically said that taxpayer money can be used.
Now, I this issue, this abortion issue is rooted really in masked over and papered over with supposed feminist policy concerns.
But what it is is really the root of the deterioration throughout our culture, particularly among young people, of the loss of respect for the sanctity of life.
And I think this is a this is something this is priced.
This culture continues to pay.
Our society continues to pay for these 1.3 million a year.
You just can't have that happen since 1973, 1.3 million a year and have their have not have an impact on the on the culture, even if it's subconscious.
But this is just a wanton violation of law.
The law of the land says that this cannot happen.
But the Office of Personnel manages to hell with that.
We're going to make sure that members of Congress and their staff, if they want abortions, are covered under Obamacare.
And remember, 75% of the premiums, up to 75% of the premiums that members of Congress and their staff subsidized by you, by us, by the taxpayers.
You may not qualify for a subsidy.
Ultimately, members of Congress make anywhere from 100 to 100, and their staff 100 to 174,000 dollars a year, and they were bellyaching and whining and moaning a couple of weeks ago they couldn't afford Obamacare on their income.
So Obama wrote to the rescue and said the Office of Personnel Management will subsidize your premiums through the exchanges.
Now the Office of Personnel Management is not going to subsidize anybody else.
This is just the government workers.
But it's still taxpayer money that's going to be used for the subsidy.
Chris Smith said that his law, which has been in effect for all but two years since 1983, has a long legislative history very clear, and he said the Obama regime is just ignoring it.
By the way, you know, it might help if I were to tell you who these navigators are at the exchanges.
In California, the navigators Are people from Acorn?
Planned Parenthood, the Service Employees International Union.
Well, they are.
That's who got the money to administer the exchanges.
I remember the story that we did on this a month ago.
About that, about a month ago.
California's getting something like $900 million for their exchange.
And the people running it are Acorn, SEIU, Planned Parenthood.
And this is probably going to be the case in all the other exchanges as well.
They are voter registration outreach plans, essentially, in addition to administering the exchanges.
So it's going to be Acorn and SEIU Planned Parenthood are going to have to make sure that your tax return and other personal data isn't just lying around on a fax machine or left overnight in a printer for the janitorial crew to get.
Let me ask you a question.
If things get too bad out there at the exchanges, can the Navigators just do your annual checkup for you and be done with this?
You know, when you get right down the...
When you cut to the chase, when you strip away all of what's going on out there, these navigators are going to end up being your health care providers.
These people that you're going to be interacting with at the exchanges.
And what is an exchange?
An exchange, ladies and gentlemen, is a website.
Pure and simple.
It's a website.
Thirty-six states have set up or agreed to set up exchanges.
But let's say it was all 50 states, 50, or is it 57?
Hell, I'm confused.
They've had three plus years and limitless amounts of money, and they can't set up websites.
They have access to the best brains and the best IT minds out there.
Instead, they funneled the money for these exchanges to their political buddies.
The unions, planned parenthood.
And I'm not folks, I'm not making that up.
I'm I'm if you if you didn't hear the program that day when we learned who is getting the money at the LA or the California exchanges,
it is.gov today
has as run into an absolute nightmare.
That has taken a lot of time, and most of them have been kicked out of their attempt to get an account and register, and they've been sent to the what is essentially the back of the line.
I just...
I'm sitting here...
So I don't I don't think they need to be cut some slack.
They've had three years.
This is the federal government.
They've got limitless amounts of money.
There is no excuse except incompetence.
People that have no idea what they're doing are running this.
They think they're the smartest people in the world.
They think they have the biggest hearts and are the most compassionate.
They sit around all day and they theorize about how when they get power and when they're in control, they're going to fix all these things wrong with this country, and they make a mess of everything.
They make a mess of every entitlement program.
Nothing.
There isn't.
There isn't one thing the federal government does that anybody in big business would emulate.
At least not in the in the profit sector.
And that's the story today.
The media loves the shutdown because it's an opportunity to break the Tea Party, they think, and to rip into the into the Republicans.
Let me give you just an example.
This is Charlie Spearing, I think that's how he pronounces his name.
It might be Spire.
He's at the DC Examiner, the glitchy, error-filled misadventures of creating an account at healthcare.gov.
Now again, I want to stress here that everybody probably is thinking, well, we need to cut them some slack.
I'm not of that frame of mind because, as I say, they've had three years, limitless amounts of money.
There's no excuse for what's happening today to be happening.
But it was all predictable.
And it was predicted.
This cannot work.
Now here's Mr. Spearings' advance.
This thing prints out the six pages, and I'm not going to go through all of that.
He says a friend and I spent the morning trying unsuccessfully just to create an account, healthcare.gov and shop for cheaper health insurance.
We live in Virginia.
But it appears we won't be shopping and comparing health care plans anytime soon.
Here's a description and some screenshots of what we found.
Step one, you find the open for business page at healthcare.gov.
The health insurance marketplace is open.
And there's a smiling liberal woman there pictured beckoning you to enter the website.
And the button is apply now.
Enroll now in a plan that covers essential benefits, pre-existing conditions, and more.
By the way, it is the pre-existing condition policy that I read somewhere this morning that somebody encountered a price tag of $33,000 a year.
Now a lot of people who think Obamacare is finally going to cover their pre-existing condition, also think it's going to be free or close to it.
That's part and parcel of the expectation.
And they're finding out that's not the case.
Step two is there a line.
Step three of filling out all my data, my email, my name, my unique password with at least one uppercase letter and a number, and my username, step four, security questions.
And you have to pick three.
This is in case you forget your password.
And uh, in order for them to reissue you a new one or identify you as the person claiming to be you, you have to be able to answer these security questions.
I kid you not.
In the list that you can choose three from is what is your favorite radio station?
And it happens to be at the top of the list.
Other questions are, what was your favorite toy when you were a child?
What's your favorite cuisine?
First name of your oldest niece, relative's telephone number that's not your own.
Type a significant date in your life.
Mr. Spearing says, Do I want the government having the answers to those questions?
Oh, well, the NSA probably already knows.
So he did that, moves on to step five, says, okay, here we go.
Then there are the, you know, did the security questions he put in his favorite radio station.
And then step six, create a marketplace account after he had done everything up to this point.
He gets a red banner that says, your account couldn't be created at this time.
Please note that two or more answers to the security question cannot be the same.
You must provide distinct answers to the chosen security questions.
Please wait a few minutes and try again.
And there's a button here to return to create account page.
Well, as he points out, his three answers are all different words.
He didn't violate the rules, so to speak.
He followed directions explicitly, implicitly, and he was still rejected.
Said his friend had the same problem.
So step seven was back to the home page.
When this effort bombed out, after he had done everything right, he was sent back to the very beginning and told to repeat steps one through five, at which point he was told his effort had failed again.
He was sent back to the top of the page, back to the home page at this time with a button which said try again.
And he was told once again to repeat steps one through five.
A lot of people have been trying this today just to see what happens.
I, of course, have better usage of my time to do this, because at some point we're all going to have to do it.
But at the end of, I think three or four attempts, each one a failure, and each one sent back to the home page, he finally got a message which said, System error.
Please retry your action.
If you continue to get this error, please contact the administrator.
And I know some of you are out there shouting, come on, Russia, no big deal happens all the time.
It doesn't happen all the time.
But again, these people have had three years to set this up.
They've had limitless amounts of money.
It is a harbinger.
It's an indication of how this is going to go.
And it isn't pretty.
Gotta take a brief time out.
We'll come back and get to your phone calls in a brief moment.
Don't go away, folks.
You know, this is great.
The uh World War II memorial in Washington shut down because of the shutdown.
It's barricaded.
So a bunch of World War II vets showed up today.
They had a plan to go see it, and they said to hell with this, and they just tore the barricades down and went into the memorial.
I mean, these people took Normandy.
They stormed the beaches, they're not going to be shut down by a bunch of Obama barriers in uh in Washington.
You know, I get a question.
If if if if uh if if the Democrats can just exempt themselves from having to pay for Obamacare, why don't they just exempt themselves from paying taxes?
What's to stop them?
If the law of the land says that taxpayer money cannot be used to fund abortions, and they have a plan that does that, why not just exempt themselves from paying taxes?
Why not just bonus themselves any amount of money they want to pay their taxes?
What's to stop them?
They are not deterred by the law in any way, shape, manner, or form, and they certainly are not going to be deterred by the fact that you and I cannot get the same deal they've got.
It's readily apparent that laws do not apply to Congress, or the President, or their families.
I think they ought to just make that official and make it comprehensive.
I uh why doesn't Dingy Harry just declare that Democrats are exempt from paying taxes?
Democrats in the Senate are exempt from paying taxes.
It's too hard to live on what they make.
And their jobs are so important, they got to be in a good mood every day.
They can't have any stress.
They'll have their own separate healthcare.gov website that will not be shut down.
And they won't have to deal with these navigators from Acorn.
By the way, if you think I'm making that up, we had the story on this from back in June.
It was a Betsy McCoy piece using Obamacare to create a permanent Democrat majority.
Last month, Covered California announced $37 million in grants to 48 organizations to build public awareness about the opening of the health exchange October 1st in California.
Of the 48 organizations that got the money, only a handful have anything to do with health care.
The California NAACP got 600 grand to do door-to-door canvassing and presentations at community organization.
This is from exchange money.
Service Employees International Union, which says its mission is economic justice, got two grants totaling two million dollars to make phone calls, robocalls, and go door to door.
For what?
They're not going out and ringing doorbells for Obamacare.
They don't have to.
That's the law of the land.
So what is SEIU doing?
Getting exchange money and then making phone calls with it.
They are signing up Democrat voters.
The LA, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL CIO got one million dollars for door-to-door one-on-one education and social networking.
These are the navigators.
These are the health exchange navigators, in part, who are administering these exchanges, i.e.
these websites and these organizations closely allied with the Democrat Party are being funded by tax dollars to ostensibly run the exchanges, but what they're doing is conducting outreach to register Democrat voters.
Phone bank, door-to-door canvassing.
This is what activists do to turn out the vote.
They're not doing this to go out and get people to sign up for Obamacare.
Here's uh here's Martin in Cadillac, Michigan, as we start on the phones.
I promised we go to the phones if we're gonna do it.
Hi, Martin, great to have you here, sir.
Thank you for taking my phone call, Rush.
You bet.
As I mentioned to the screener, as of October 1st, as part of the Medicaid expansion in the state of Michigan, a health and human services mandate is that any doctor who is not a Medicaid enrolled provider, um, if he writes any labs x-rays or prescriptions, Medicaid will not reimburse for those at all.
Okay, tell me that in plain English.
What does that mean?
What that means is that if a patient, I am not a Medicaid enrolled provider, I've chosen not to participate with Medicaid.
Because you want to get paid for your work, right?
I want to get paid.
It doesn't even pay to mess with that.
The bureaucracy is overwhelming.
And I see those patients, I bill them, they either pay me what they can or I don't get paid at all.
I see them because that's what my commission here is to do is to take care of people.
Now, and I've been doing that for twelve and a half years up here in Michigan.
Now, if I see those patients and write a prescription for them, Medicaid will not honor that, and they will either have to pay it out of pocket or the hospital if I order a chest x-ray and they get it done at the hospital.
The hospital won't get paid because it came from me because I'm not enrolled in Medicaid.
Wait, are you telling me that?
I can't believe what you just said.
I uh I I'm sitting here, I'm in shock.
I I need to ask you what you did.
Did you just say that patients will have to pay for their own prescriptions?
In the United States of America, patients are gonna have to pay for their own prescriptions under Obamacare.
If they come to see me, yes.
Well, your practice is over.
I got a rush.
Um, you know, two-thirds of doctors in West Michigan, according to one survey, are not seeing any new Medicaid patients.
No, I'm being facetious, of course.
Your your practice will survive.
You'll find people that don't want to play this game.
Imagine you might have to pay for your own prescription.
No, yes.
What Martin said is true.
If a patient gets treated by a non-Medicaid doctor, none of his charges will be covered by Medicaid.
No hospital fee, no prescriptions.
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