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Oct. 25, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:42
October 25, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Let me ask you a quick question here, folks.
Can you imagine?
And I'm serious here now.
Can you imagine what the news would be like today if all of those 2,500 businesses and unions and others had not received Obamacare waivers?
Can you imagine what it would be?
I mean, we are just getting the tiniest glimpse of the horrors of this.
I mean, if you think Kathleen Sibelius is a jerk today, just wait.
Because these waivers, they're going to expire.
And I'm going to tell you what's coming.
The full weight, the full weight of the evil of Obamacare is going to end up being a wrecking ball so big, not even Miley Cyrus would write it.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Who knows we might even get Morgan Freeman to agree with us before this is all said and done.
Did you hear what he said?
He's in some movie with the typical Hollywood stardom.
And he did it at promo interview, and they asked him something, and he started off on the Tea Party.
And he's mad at the Tea Party running around carrying signs talking about taking our country back.
He said, What the F is that?
What do you mean take the country back?
Obama won the election.
So the biggest problem in his country is all that rhetoric out there from the Koch and Rush Limbaugh.
And I predict before this is over, oh you may not admit it, but I'm telling you, once these waivers expire, ladies and gentlemen, I don't do you know anybody who has received a letter from their insurance company canceling them.
I ran in to someone to whom this just happened.
And prior to that happening, this was uh conversation.
It was something that was happening, but it was it was happening to other people.
This person had been a blue cross customer for 40 years.
Health insurance policy was a gift from a father.
And Blue Cross just sends a letter out saying it's over.
Uh we have to cancel because of Obamacare, the replacement.
Obviously, much higher.
And it totally changes that person's now, that person not a big believer in Obamacare anyway, but but still now it was personal.
Now it's happening.
Do you know anybody to whom this is happening?
And the people to whom this is happening.
You tell them, yeah, and if you don't get it, you've got to pay a fine.
And you you am not paying a fine.
They're more willing, they're more ready to hit the streets these days than they are to pay any kind of fine.
I mean, this is just the tip of the iceberg that's happening right now.
There's all these waivers out there, don't forget.
And the businesses were given a waiver on providing insurance for employers for a year.
I mean, there's a there's a lot of pain that has been delayed for a lot of people.
And even with that, and even the drive-by today, they can't help it.
We got CBS News talking about all of the cancellations that are happening, all the insurance company cancellations, there are random acts of journalism taking place, all of more Democrat senators are asking for this thing to be delayed till after the 2014 elections.
Byron York of the uh of the DC examiner has a piece today about the IRS and the earned income tax credit, and that the details of that are what anger you enough.
I mean, it has nothing to do with health care, just is how much money is spent giving families four and five thousand dollar tax credits or checks under the earned income tax credit.
And the the crux of Byron's story is that the IRS annually gives out earned income tax credit checks, of which 30% of the claims are fraudulent.
And we're not talking about the entire population of the country here.
We're talking about a small subset that qualifies for the EITC.
Here's the thing.
The inspector generally, the IRS went and said you've got to clean this up.
And the IRS said we can't.
It's too big.
It's too complicated.
There is no way.
There literally is no way we can clean the fraud out of the earned income tax program.
Now what's noteworthy, IRS are the people running Obamacare.
IRS are the people enforcing Obamacare.
And there it is a story today where they admit that they can't.
It's impossible to clean up the fraud that exists at a 30% level, the earned income tax credit program.
They just can't.
This program cannot survive as it's being implemented.
That doesn't mean it's going away.
When I say it can't survive, it can't function.
But there's a lot of government that doesn't function that opens for business every day and still tries and messes things up.
I mean, it is it is an utter design.
What?
What?
Well, I don't know.
These people getting these letters canceling their insurance.
I don't know if they're blaming Obama yet.
I got a Fox News poll here.
Hang on, folks.
None of what I'm talking about had I intended to.
I had intended to be into a song by now.
So sit tight.
Here we go.
Fox News poll, 73% dissatisfied with the direction of the country.
73%.
That's up 20 points since last year.
Disapproval over the country's direction.
73%.
Now Fox found that much of the current overall decline in satisfaction comes from Democrats.
Forty-one percent of Democrats are satisfied with the direction of country down from 54% in July and 77% a year ago.
That's a 36% point slide over the past year.
So Obama's not losing these precious independence.
He's losing his base.
And yet the news media says it's the Republicans that need to reinvent themselves.
The Fox News, I know it's Fox, but it the Fox News poll doesn't disagree with any of the other polls significantly on presidential approval or anything else.
The Fox News poll didn't have Republican, didn't have Romney beating Obama.
I mean, it's it's right in line with all the others.
And the Democrats are abandoning Obama here in the question of direction of the country, and his approval numbers are plummeting.
So when people get these cancellation letters from their insurance companies, I don't think there's any doubt.
Privately, I think they're mad at Obama.
Who else could they be mad at?
I mean, the Republicans had nothing to do with this.
Now, will they publicly say so is an entirely different matter.
It's Open Line Friday with Rush Limbaugh, ESPN.
As we wrap up another brilliant week of broadcast excellence, and you know the drill on open line Friday.
Whatever you want to talk about is fine.
Not the case Monday through Thursday, Monday and Friday.
You can bring up whatever you want, whether I care about it or not.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
Sit tight.
We'll be right back.
Pretty much every insurance company is going to have to cancel their current plans, folks.
Because none of them, none of the current plans out there will be able to provide coverage at the same price that they're offering today when all of the new Obamacare mandates kick in.
And that begins in January.
So what's happening to the insurance company is they're simply getting a head start.
I mean, they're uh they're revving up.
I mean, they know it's coming in January, and they're not going to be able to provide.
That's That's why you're getting either cancellation notices and new price quotes.
And your premium is more than likely doubling, and your deductible is tripling.
And that's the best they're going to be able to do.
That means that you head to healthcare.gov or some other exchange and try to qualify for a subsidy.
Which is your neighbors paying part of your costs.
Just uh just this week.
Uh what is it?
Uh 76,000 people in the Virginia, Maryland, D.C. area are having their Blue Cross Blue Shield plans canceled because of Obamacare.
And it's uh it's beginning to happen in Florida.
And I'm sure most of you know that it happened to uh Kirsten Powers of Fox News.
She was a Megan Kelly last night.
I don't have the audio of that, but it doesn't matter.
I don't need it.
I don't need it.
I can tell you what happened.
She got on to healthcare.gov.
She'd been an early and long advocate of Obamacare.
And we like Kirsten here, by the way.
I I need to stress that in matters where I have been involved, she has been over the top fair, which is unusual and unique.
And she's been a longtime advocate of Obamacare, nevertheless.
And she admitted to Megan Kelly last night that her policy doesn't survive, that her premium is going to go way up, and that her deductible is going to go way up.
And that she was surprised.
And she she said that she wouldn't mind paying a little more if it would help others.
But that's that ought to be her decision in a private charitable matter, not something forced on her or everybody else by the government.
But the impetus of the story is that she was a true believer.
And even she was surprised.
I I think there's all kinds of shock waiting to hit people.
People believe Obama.
They believe him when he said that it's going to cost $2,500 a year less.
They believe him when he told them he'd keep their doctor and keep their plan if they like it.
Nobody's going to be able to do that unless they're willing to pay almost double for it.
Which is not really keeping your plan, is it?
So as this continues to roll out, and all kinds of people, low information voters, others that are highly attuned, liberal democrat partisans of the whole mix are going to find what's happening here, and that it's going to be interesting to gauge the reaction.
CBS News, Nora O'Donnell reported that this Obamacare rollout is not happening the way Obama explained it.
Insurers are canceling coverage for hundreds of thousands of Americans because of Obamacare, forcing them to buy new policies despite Obama's promises to the contrary.
This was a report this morning on CBS.
Let's go to audio soundbite number four.
Jan Crawford did the report.
A CBS News analysis shows that in many of those 15 states that have their own health insurance exchanges, more people are enrolling in Medicaid than are actually buying private health insurance.
And there is concern that if that trend continues, there won't be enough healthy people buying insurance for the system to work.
Medicaid experts say they're not sure why they're seeing those lopsided enrollment numbers.
Industry sources say that if we don't see some real turnaround soon, there could be big problems for the entire system.
I don't know why people are going to Medicaid.
David Do they really not know why people are going to Medicaid?
Do they really not know that?
There's concern that if this trend continues, there won't be enough healthy people buying insurance for the system to work.
We're not even close.
The number seven million.
Minimum healthy.
Healthy people buying insurance and not needing it.
Minimum seven million is what it is said to require for this to work.
I don't even know how that's possible.
The objective of this thing is to get everybody signed up.
Seven million.
Anyway, if even if that's the bottom line number, they're nowhere near it.
Many states have zero enrollees.
Absolutely zero.
Now the the thing that amuses me, and it really does.
I was talking about this to Mr. Snergley before the program began.
One of the things, and you've noticed it, I'm sure too, is slowly but surely journalists are figuring this out.
There's Jan Crawford of CBS.
Do you know what she got her chops are Supreme Court reporting?
She is a supreme court expert.
You cannot be dumb and do that.
Nora O'Donnell.
She's uh she said yes, you didn't in a revelatory report.
It's not happening the way Obama explained it.
One California citizen, Natalie Willis said her insurance had gotten worse and more expensive.
Before I had a plan where I had a $1,500 deductible.
I paid $199 a month.
The most similar plan that I would have available to me.
$278 a month.
The deductible would be $6,500, and all of my care after that point would be covered by 70%.
Now the thing that amazes me is that it is journalists who are the last to figure all of this out.
It is journalists who should have been the first to warn everybody that this day was coming.
Because we knew that it was.
It's been on track.
This is exactly what Obamacare is.
All anyone had to do was read just some of what the law changed.
All anyone had to do was then add whatever real-life experience you have to the government coming in and running something.
What happens?
Wild spending with no accountability takes place, drastic deficits occur, and great inefficiency.
There's nothing new about that.
That is the standard day-to-day operation of a government-run entity or any bureaucratic entity.
These journalists should have been the first to tell people what Obamacare would mean to them.
They are now the last to figure all of this out.
Why don't they ask why so many young and healthy people are going to Medicaid, which is for the poor.
Why are people doing that?
Why doesn't anybody they just sit here and they wring their hands over it?
Oh no.
So many people are going to Medicaid.
They can't figure out.
They do not understand the dynamics of life, apparently.
You put a brick wall in front of somebody in an effort to stop their forward progress, and the left thinks that most people will just stop.
Whereas most people will find a way to climb the wall or get around it.
And when that happens, they act surprised.
Well, there's a reason people are not going to Obamacare.
They find out what it's going to cost them and they go somewhere else.
And in the process, they're undermining the very foundation of Obamacare, all of which was predictable.
But our journalist community appears to be the last to be learning this.
Open line Friday, your phone calls are coming up in this hour.
Yes, they are.
One little side note about this story from CBS, Jan Crawford.
They're just shocked that people are young and healthy people are going to Medicaid rather than Obamacare.
They're shocked.
And here's the interesting little side note about this.
The regime is actually the regime in the states are adding these Medicaid enrollees to the numbers of people signing up for the Obamacare exchanges.
And that they're two different things.
And they're adding those numbers together to make the overall enrollment in Obamacare look better than it is.
So when you hear an enrollment number that the regime offers about Obamacare, it isn't that high because a lot of those enrollees, they're including people signing up for Medicaid.
The actual enrollee number for Obamacare, if you can get it from anybody, it's so bad.
It is so bad they're not even releasing it.
and Obama's told Blue Cross and Blue Shield not to divulge the information.
If you do ever figure that is from the regime, understand that it is not that high.
I mean, it Another way of looking at this is the abysmal low numbers of Obamacare signups is even lower than you think.
Because the federal government and the states are adding these new Medicaid signups to their Obamacare numbers.
Now, just to illustrate what I'm talking about, Rev, just throw it out there and leave it somewhat questionable to some of you.
I have here from a source called EnrollMaven.com.
They're being quoted in a number of places as experts in tallying the enrollment for Obamacare.
And they have issued a report that show nine states with shockingly low Obamacare enrollment numbers so far.
Alaska, zero.
Delaware, one.
Florida, one.
One person in Florida has enrolled in Obamacare.
Hawaii, zero.
Iowa, sixteen.
Michigan, zero.
North Dakota, sixteen.
Oregon, zero.
South Dakota, twenty-three.
It's abysmal.
There is no Mad Dash to sign up.
There is no rush.
There is no hurry.
There is no excitement.
There is none of what the regime and the media attempted to prepare everybody for.
They wanted everybody to think that people were clamoring at the gates, could not wait, wanted October 1st to get here, get here, get, and then October 15th, get here, and then November 1st, because people can't wait to sign up.
Can't wait.
Obamacare, yeah, not happening.
And now, according to the Heritage Foundation, the regime's caught in a new Obamacare dilemma.
You remember sequestration.
Those automatic budget cuts went into effect when Congress failed to do real budgeting a couple of years ago.
Well, guess what?
Sequestration is running into Obamacare now.
Both Obamacare and the sequestration laws have been around for a while.
But the regime hasn't done anything to prepare for their collision, which is beginning to happen.
The sequester cuts are hitting a set of subsidies that were supposed to help pay deductibles and co-pays for lower-income Americans with Obamacare coverage.
Did you know that?
Yes.
The sequester, God bless it.
God love the sequester.
The sequester is hitting the subsidies.
The sequester is preventing the subsidies from being paid.
This the this the sequester is legitimate budget cuts.
An Obama official pledged that there would be a plan before October 1st to deal with this, but that didn't happen.
So now what?
Well, Heritage says that there are two possible outcomes.
It's a Wall Street Journal today.
The first possibility is that individuals who have managed to enroll in subsidized health insurance will find that they've been misled about their copays and deductibles.
Families who currently think their plan will charge a $20 co-payment for a doctor visit, may instead face a $25 charge when the sequester kicks in.
People who now believe they face a maximum out of pocket cost of two grand may end up paying hundreds more.
The other option is to stick the insurance companies with the cuts and tell them to deal with it, and that would cost them about 286 million dollars through next September.
And Heritage says no matter which way the regime goes on this, it does not help, and it does not look good.
So I I could spend all day again on Obamacare.
I could spend all day on the stats and s and and figures that are starting to surface.
But there is other news out there, and there are your phone calls, and I want to start with phone calls.
Right now, it's open line Friday, and we're going to start Wilmington, Delaware, where there have been zero enrollees in Obamacare.
Zero.
Here's Eric.
You're up first today, sir.
Great to have you.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Um, glad to talk to you.
Yeah, I have a suggestion.
Um, you know how they have charities where you get a you know like fill the child the children, you get a picture of the child that you're paying for.
for the Obama program.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I I've I've not I've heard of that with a highway.
If you you adopt a highway, they give you a picture of the stretched.
Now these are charities like feed the children or something in other countries.
You get a picture of that child.
Oh feed the Oh, okay, okay, okay.
Feed the children.
I think the um people that are paying the higher subsidies and supporting the other people should get a picture of the person that they're supporting.
And it makes it a lot easier, and they should call it Bend Over for America.
The new program.
The problem.
I like your idea.
The problem is you'd need a whole wall to make room for all the pictures of people that would need to be thanking you or that you would be supporting.
It would make it make it easier to swallow, though, um, Rush, if you got the picture, at least right in the check.
You feel a little bit better.
How would that make it easier?
Why would you because the you could look at who you're personally helping?
Yes.
Put a face on who you're that would just make me angrier, particularly if the person in the picture was smiling.
If if if that would tick me off.
That that would tick me off.
I get a picture of the person I'm subsidizing.
And they're smiling.
I I I'd think they're mocking me.
I I that would that would fact that may we maybe we may be.
I'm gonna tell you, folks, the way to look at this.
If you want to understand, I like to put things in real world terms, in terms of you know, subsidizing certain people exchange.
You and your family, you are going to end up supporting via subsidies more people than the average NFL player does.
I have some health news from the BBC.
How many of you are overweight and are convinced that your metabolism is just slower than, say, a Person who's not overweight.
And you've mentioned this to people, and they laugh at you.
And you've mentioned it to your doctor, and your doctors laughed at you.
And then your doctor said, look, it's a nice thought, but it's not true.
There's there's no appreciable difference in metabolic rates in person to person.
You are overweight because you eat more than you should, and the person that you think has the high metabolism, a high metabolic rate is not eating as much as you think.
It's really not complicated.
It's 3,500 calories equals a pound.
And then they start in.
And no matter how much, over the course of your life, you have been convinced that your metabolism is slow, that your metabolic rate is slow, that you just you don't believe in any way you're eating anywhere near the amount of food that your weight would indicate.
But everybody's always poo-pooed.
Your whole life, every expert in every field and even every layman has been kind.
Everybody has wanted to circle back to the fact that you just eat too much.
Well, from the BBC News, the mocked obesity excuse of being born with a slow metabolism is actually true for some people, according to latest research.
A team at the University of Cambridge has found the first proof that mutated DNA does indeed slow down metabolism.
The researchers say fewer than one in 100 people are affected by it and are often severely obese by early childhood.
And that would be one of the indicators.
The findings have been published in the health journal Cell, C E L L, may lead to new obesity treatments, even for people without the mutation.
Scientists at the Institute of Metabolic Science in Cambridge knew that mice born without a section of DNA called the genes KSR2 gained weight more easily, but they didn't know what effect it might be having in people.
So they analyze the DNA of 21 hundred severely overweight people.
Some had the mutated versions of the of the gene.
It has a twin effect of increasing their appetite while slowing metabolism.
You'd be hungry, you want to eat a lot, but you would not want to move because of a slower metabolism.
And you probably also develop type 2 diabetes at a young age, said the lead researcher, Sadaf Faruki.
I love that.
I have I love these researcher names.
Sadaf Faruki.
She added, it slows the ability to burn calories, and that's important as it's a new explanation for obesity.
So I just wanted to throw that out.
I just wanted to let you know that there may actually be something to it.
Now don't expect a lot of understanding.
You probably write, hey, guess what?
I just heard it, I heard it in a limb bar radio.
There is a thing.
It's the Cambridge BBC story research.
There are people with slow metabolic rate.
Don't use that as an excuse.
You're still eating too much.
You're still a pig.
Have you ever made a note of everything you eat?
If you do that, you find out that this metabolic rate thing is just a bunch of rasmatas.
So don't expect a lot of sympathy to it.
Uh or understanding it first.
It could take more than one research study to uh to gain any momentum here.
But I find it because I love all this conventional wisdom falling by the wayside.
I just all this stuff that we've lived with for all of our lives, supposedly etched in stone, and we still don't know Jack about so much of it.
Here is Ron in Cincinnati.
You're next on Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Rush, thank you very much for taking my call today.
You bet.
All right.
Hey, the uh reason I'm calling.
What we're seeing here with uh people getting their new Rate structures with uh liberals finally opening the mail or getting notifications that their rates are going up.
What we are seeing is economics 101 coming to roost to modern liberalism.
So we're gonna see uh liberals who've been defending all along.
Now it's gonna hit their pocketbook, and they're gonna have to defend it while they're shelling out war, and you're gonna see them falling like dominoes.
Well, why has it not hit their hock uh pocket books before this?
There have been plenty of liberalism out there.
We've got we've got a welfare state, we've got anti-poverty programs, we've got this and that.
We've got high taxes.
Why is this the magic event that's gonna force because this hits the individual, and there's no escaping it.
If you're young, and if you are healthy and you're uh not qualifying for subsidies, you have to have insurance, and your insurance policies with this uh with this broad brush that they've painted, the insurance companies are not able to maintain the same policy.
You said it over and over again, but it's now at an individual level, and uh liberals as individuals can't stand um they they're all you know they they can speak as a group, but once it's down to the individual and and it hits their pocketbook individually, they're they're they're falling like dominoes.
Kirsten Powers was a good example.
I think so.
Yeah, I think I think it is.
And there are countless others.
Um a lot of people getting these cancellation letters are people that voted for Obama.
No, a lot of people getting their cancellation letters are people that believed him that their premiums are going to go down $2,500, and that their uh access to actual health care was going to increase.
They believed all of this.
Uh it it I I think there is already it's just not reported on.
I think there is already a level of rage and anger out there over this.
You will you can't I gotta tell you.
I'm looking forward to now that people are starting to get these notifications.
I'm so looking forward to coming around to the folks that have been defending this all along and just asking them very benignly, hey, what what did you get any notifications from your insurance policy?
What's it doing?
And I'll bet you they're gonna be coming out of the woodwork with, oh yeah, I got my notice.
And well, how'd that make you feeling?
What we're you we're gonna have them changing left and right.
You think that's gonna be their reaction?
You think they're gonna give up on Obama that quickly?
You think they're gonna turn and get bad and blame Obama that quickly?
Rush, 150, 200 bucks a month increase?
You know, that's uh or more, you know, 900 increase, that's a house payment.
You know, and hell.
Well, I don't I don't disagree with any of that.
Ron, if you don't mind, you don't have to you don't have to answer this.
But I would like to know your age.
Forty-eight years old.
You're 48.
Okay, you have the enthusiasm if somebody 19 or 20 who's a true believer in figuring this out, who doesn't yet have the experience to know how liberals think and operate, which is which they don't think they're gonna start.
They're not going to turn on the dime that you think and blame Obama.
They're too loyal to the cause, and they hate us.
You don't understand.
That would mean giving you to your face a victory.
They are not going to let that happen.
They're not gonna let you be satisfied by seeing them do a 180 and admit that they were wrong and Obama lied and that they're mad.
They'll try to keep it to themselves and they'll try to come up with ways to blame Republicans for this and the shutdown.
I'm just I'm just trying to warn you little dose of reality.
Now take a quick time out, folks.
No, I'm not trying to be negative, and I'm trying to be realistic here about people ending up blaming Obama.
However, there is something different about this from other potential tipping points.
And I will explain that.
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