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Nov. 5, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:17
November 5, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Hi folks, welcome back.
Great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh.
Talent on loan from God.
Look at that Jake Tappert's CNN.
Obama adds if to healthcare promise.
Not Obama lied.
Obama adds if through healthcare promise.
And in fact, let me find it here.
Here we go, the Associated Press, not Julie Pace.
This is Jim Koonin and Josh Lederman.
And the headline, Obama's Simple Promises Vex Complex Health Rollout.
And what this story, let me tell, here's the lead.
President Obama's early efforts to boil down an intricate healthcare law so that Americans could understand it are coming back to haunt him, leaving a trail of caveats and provisos in place of the pithy claims he once used to make.
Yes, you see, because the American people are so stupid, they would have never understood it if Obama had said that his health care law was going to make premiums and deductibles triple.
He couldn't say that.
The simpletons in this country wouldn't have understood it.
He couldn't tell them they were going to lose their current plans.
That's simply too complex for anybody to comprehend.
So Obama told them the opposite.
And now his early efforts to boil down an intricate health care law so that Americans could understand it are coming back to haunt him.
Aw.
So what we have here in the AP is another attempt by the drive-bys to justify Obama's endless lies.
And what they're saying here in a nutshell is that the American public was too stupid to understand how good Obamacare is for them.
If they'd have been told upfront about everything, they would have rejected it.
And that would have been a mistake because this is the greatest thing that's ever happened.
And Obama, in order to get it through and get it signed into law for the good of everybody, had to lie to everybody.
He's actually being very valiant.
In fact, Obama was being valorous.
He was lying to us to protect us because we're too stupid to know all of the wonderful benefits of Obamacare.
If we had known about some of these early caveats, we would have opposed it.
And that would have been bad for us.
So he had to lie.
That's the thrust of the AP story.
Now, let's hit the audio sound bites.
We shared with you yesterday excerpts of a column in the Wall Street Journal by Edie Littlefield Sundby, who has stage four gallbladder cancer.
And it was all about how she's not political.
She doesn't care about any of that.
She just is up.
She's losing her health care, losing her doctor, losing her great team of oncologists.
She doesn't like it.
And Erin Burnett, CNN, got hold of her and asked her about it.
And she said, when we're talking about whether Obamacare is the problem here, you're saying you've gone through the whole market, the exchanges with Obamacare, the plans available outside of Obamacare.
You're saying categorically, you can't find the plan that you have now or anything similar for the same cost.
You can't find anything.
And this goes right to my crux in the first hour.
Everybody apparently liked their plans.
So why the hell do we have to do this in the first place?
That's right, because nearly 30 million Insurance and the 30 million in insurance because you like your plan.
Is it fair?
30 million people, the greatest country in the world, and 30 million uninsurance had to throw everything upside down.
But the bottom line is, this is what we've now learned in the aftermath.
Everybody, apparently, or the vast majority of people liked their plans compared to what they now have available.
So here is Edie Littlefield Sundby answering that question from Aaron Burnett.
I know that for a fact.
Just like when I was hit with a curveball called terminal cancer, stage four cancer, I had to be quick, I had to be thorough, and I had to act.
And so when my policy is canceled, I have to be the very same.
I have to be attentive, pay attention, and really, really get down to the nuts and bolts of it to make sure, because I am alive for just a couple of reasons.
I'm alive because I'm really, really lucky and I'm blessed.
And part of that luck and that blessing has been my doctors and my health care policy.
And I am alive for a very large extent because I could control who I chose to provide medical coverage and where that medical coverage was coming from.
And control is life.
She wasn't through.
She kept going.
I have a very vicious disease called gallbladder cancer.
And less than 0.8% of us are alive in eight years.
Well, I'm almost at eight years.
I will be in another year.
God willing, I will still be alive.
But I will only be alive if I can when it hits again, when I can respond quickly.
And I don't know where I'm going to need to go.
I may need to go back to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
I definitely will be at Stanford Cancer Center because they have worked this wonderful miracle with my life.
Or I may have to go someplace else.
I need a policy that gives me what United Healthcare gave me for the last seven years.
That's the point.
She can't find it.
She can't find it with Obamacare.
She can't find it outside of Obamacare.
Now, why is that?
She had it.
She had a policy.
She was paying.
She liked.
Everybody was happy, go lucky.
Everybody was comfortable with it.
Obamacare comes along and it vanishes.
She can't get it as part of Obamacare.
She can't get it outside of Obamacare, which is not even legal.
She can't find it.
Scared to death, she's going to have a recurrence.
And then what does she do?
What does she do?
Can we go back to June 24th, 2009?
Because here's what she's going to do now.
There was a woman on an ABC special that asked the President of the United States about her mother.
My mother is now over 105, but at 100, the doctor said to her, I can't do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.
And I said, go for it.
She said, go for it.
But the specialist said, no, she's too old.
When the other specialist saw her, saw her joy of life, so on, he said, I'm going to go for it.
That was over five years ago.
My question to you, Mr. President, outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who's elderly, is there any consideration that can be given?
Can you believe?
I still can't believe this question was asked in the United States of America.
A citizen in the White House asking the president, well, can we consider my mother's spirit, her will to live when she's 105 for medical?
Can we, why is this Obama's business?
Why does he get to say no?
Your mother is not worth keeping alive.
Why does he get to say that?
What the hell have we become?
So you just heard Edie Littlefield Sunby say, I don't know where I'm going to go if this cancer comes back.
I'm already at the life expectancy with this disease.
I need to go back to MD Anderson, Stanford Cancer Center, whatever.
I can't find the policy.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
This woman asking Obama, what about my mom?
She wants to live.
She's 105.
Can we accommodate her will deliver her spirit?
I don't think that we can make judgments based on people's spirit.
That'd be a pretty subjective decision to be making.
I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good quality care for all people.
End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make.
But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another.
If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers.
At least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn't going to help.
Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.
Maybe we just have to tell your mom that, you know, maybe you're better off not having the surgery.
Just, you know, take the painkiller.
The President of the United States actually said that to a citizen in telling her, no, somebody's will deliver their spirit.
No, we can't start factoring that in.
It's just got to be a money thing.
It's going to be, is it, do we have the money to spend on your 105-year-old mother?
Is it better spent on somebody in their 30s?
Is going to live a long time after we offer the treatment?
That's what he was saying.
So in the case, your mother, it's pain-pill city.
We'll do the best we can for what time she's got left.
That's what Edie Littlefield Sunby is facing.
She can't find the policy.
She can't find treatment.
She can't find anything like she had that has kept her alive.
So president's already answered what happens in that situation.
We make them comfortable as we can and assure them we love them.
And there's really nothing we can do.
Here's the painkiller.
Okay, back to the phones we go.
Salem, Wisconsin.
This is Larry.
It's great to have you, Larry.
Hi, how are you?
Great.
Thank you so much.
I'm fine.
Hope you're doing well as well.
Thank you, sir.
Well, but the reason I'm calling, two very quick points, and then I'll get to my main point where the reason I called.
That comment that I've heard a number of times about Obama talking about the elderly lady, you know, that is the most disgusting, despicable thing.
And we know why, because all the elderly, especially the elderly that are ill, are considered by this person simply a charge to the state.
And as soon as they are no longer living, then that this provides the state a little bit more dollars.
They don't have to pay out for these people.
Two, I'd like to bring up Obama's comment concerning people just being one paycheck away from financial ruin.
There's something else in the works here that's going to bring them less than a paycheck from financial ruin, and that is this.
Any CPA or corporate CEO out here that knows, that has any kind of integrity will confirm this, which I have already myself.
But the IRS is getting ready.
If people start looking at their W-2 forms in block 14, which is, quote, the other box, labeled the other block box, they possibly might be seeing two initials in that very soon, a double D, D, D.
And they'll be told that that's for informational purposes only.
For what the IRS is getting ready to do, probably after the 2014 elections, is to assign a value to the insurance premiums being paid by employers for employees, but assign that tax liability to the employee.
And what that's going to do, I don't know how it's going to treat the employers, whether they'll be able to still continue to maintain the continue the adjustment on their profits.
But what it's going to do is increase the tax liability of the employee.
So if someone's making...
Well, I know this has been talked about forever, taxing employee benefits and adding the equivalent income.
But have they decided to firmly do that?
Well, it's already being briefed out here by CPAs and the insurance companies know of this already.
No, no, I know everybody knows about it in terms of a possibility, but has the law been passed that they're actually going to start taxing employer benefits, not just health insurance, whatever the benefit is, as imputed income, and they're going to start charging, adding that to your adjustable gross income.
As that law passed and he signed it, that's actually going to start happening in 2014?
It has not been signed yet, but it's in the works and it will happen.
Yes.
Right.
Well, that's been in the works for a long time.
I have no doubt that it is going to happen at some point.
Just like I think the mortgage interest deduction is going to go by the wayside because the entire concept of homeownership is changing.
More people are renting.
They can't afford it.
Look at a housing market and so forth.
I think we're in the midst of all kinds of things.
And I know we've got this massive national debt.
What do they do?
Raise taxes.
There's going to be a value-added tax.
The more Democrats win, the more of this there's going to be.
The more any Washington establishment candidates win.
This is where we're headed.
We're going to get, if the Democrats get their way, and it won't, you know, I don't know how long it'll be after the 2014 or 2016 or 2018 or 2020 elections, but at some point, they are going to start attaching the imputed income value to your benefits and add that to your AGI, and you'll pay taxes on that, not just your gross salary.
I'll give you an illustration.
Let's say that your salary is $100,000, just pick a number, but your benefit package is worth $25,000.
The way the government looks at that right now, you're getting $25,000 free income that they're not taxing.
So if your benefit package, health care and whatever else that you get from where your job is, adds up to, what, say, $25,000 in this case, that's imputed income.
You never see it.
It's never in your take-home pay.
It's not there on your gross, but it's going to start being, and you're going to pay taxes based on that.
Massive tax increase.
They also want a carbon tax.
3 million Britons cannot afford to pay their energy bills because massive carbon taxes have been imposed while they are getting rid of fossil fuels as energy sources because the left wing in this silly climate change global warming hoax, they're using windmills and solar and all this, which doesn't provide enough electricity.
And so they have to have fossil fuel coal as a backup, but they've de-emphasized it.
Therefore, there's less supply.
It's more expensive.
3 million Britons can't pay their utility bills.
That's coming here.
But they need the money.
Even with all the QE3, QE4, the national debt isn't going down.
National debt's getting bigger.
The deficit isn't coming down appreciably and not consistently.
So the Democrat dream is a value-added tax, imputed income on your benefits that will be taxed.
They've been threatening that 20 years.
That's going to happen someday.
The mortgage interest deduction, you know as well as I do that every election that comes up, somebody proposes it, some candidate somewhere, and he always goes by the wayside.
At some point, these Washington establishment types keep winning.
They will implement this and make it happen.
So all this stuff is desired.
And the odds of all of it happening are increased exponentially if Democrats win.
This is what they do.
And their excuse is, well, still have the uninsured that we have to pay for, even despite Obamacare.
Got massive deficits.
There's still a wide income gap.
We've got to take more money from the rich.
It just isn't fair.
They keep saying the same things.
And they'll make you think your taxes aren't going up.
It's only the rich.
You'll be safe.
So just keep a sharp eye.
Whether they've done it yet or not, they want to.
Here's Andrea.
Okay, well, I thought your boxes are not big.
Andrea in Chicago.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi there.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Thank you.
Great.
And this is the first time I'm calling, so I'm real excited about talking to you.
My question is, Rush, is where are the insurance companies in this?
Why aren't they speaking out for better, for worse, whatever?
I hate to use the word, but I'm really pissed off at my insurance company because I did get one of those letters of cancellation.
And I really liked my insurance program for me and my daughter.
And I don't know what I'm going to do now.
And I'm just really mad because the insurance companies are not talking.
You know, where's the Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and Aetna and all those big companies?
Why aren't they saying something?
Well, one of the reasons is that they were co-opted into supporting all of this back in 2007, 2008,
because they were told that Obamacare was going to require everybody to have a policy and that the uninsured were going to be covered.
So they saw 30 million, whatever the number was, brand new customers.
They saw a government making everybody get insurance.
And they thought, oh, my God, how can we not sign on to this?
We don't need to spend another dime in advertising.
We've got a government that's going to make people become our customers.
And now I have to think, Andrea, that the insurance companies are just starting to realize that they're going to lose big money.
I don't understand it either.
I don't know why they didn't see that the objective is to put them out of business in 10 to 15 years.
I'm sitting here.
I am flummoxed.
I'm amazed.
I do not, I understand the lure of crony capitalism, the lure of being brought in, being close to power, being protected.
Why don't these people see that Obama wants to ruin their industry and eliminate it and replace it with the government?
I'm at a loss to answer your question.
Hi, how are you?
Welcome back.
Great to have you.
El Rushbo, executing assigned host duties flawlessly, zero mistakes.
Don't forget, when it comes to the insurance companies, the regime is ordering them not to talk to the media.
Remember that?
Earlier this, this is Tuesday, it's either Monday or Friday, we had the story that the regime is ordering insurance companies not to divulge the number of cancellations they are making.
And you might say, well, how can I do that?
Don't forget.
These people were all bought off, folks.
Don't you remember the hospitals, insurance companies were given money and preferential treatment if they ran ads supporting Obamacare, remember?
And the insurance companies, they thought that millions of brand new customers were coming their way.
The thing that I just, this is what continually flummoxes me.
And it's, you know, let me tell you something.
The best way to explain all this is we say that what's going on here is socialism and so forth.
And to an extent, yeah, but what really is happening here is crony, I don't even want to say capitalism.
It's not, it's not, there's no capitalism.
What is happening here is that the regime is simply buying and luring support from businesses that people would think are oriented toward capitalism and free markets and free enterprise.
And it's like GE.
I mean, they're giving GE and all these Solyndra people and the green energy people.
They're literally given federal money in exchange for loyalty to the regime.
And what you have is a melding, if you will, of the government with corporations.
And the corporations go for it because they have close ties.
They're right next to the seat of power.
In many cases, they're bought off with money and grants or what have you.
And the insurance company's cases promised new customers.
How in the world they don't see who they're dealing with?
Maybe they do and they don't care.
They just take the just look at the here and the now in the next three years and make hay while they can.
And then if they go out of business, so what?
Just score what they can.
It's all anathema in terms of common sense.
And, you know, that's a good way to put it.
Every one of these corporate entities is trying to be the last one eaten by the alligator.
They're all giving the scorpion the trip across the pond, with the scorpion promising they're not going to sting them.
And before they get across the pond, the scorpion will sting them.
And the CEO of the insurance agency, why did you sting me, Obama?
What am I?
I'm a scorpion.
What do I do?
I sting you.
It's your mistake for believing me.
They all think that they're going to be the ones untouched by all this.
And they fall for it because they refuse to admit who and what Obama is.
He lied to them.
He lied to the insurance companies.
They're not reaping a windfall profit under Obamacare.
They're going to be thrown into a death spiral.
Single payer's coming.
They're out of business.
I don't know how they don't see it, but they don't see it.
Or maybe they did see it and they say, okay, we know that our days are numbered, so we're going to score what we can while we can and get out with as much money as we can by the time we get stung.
Whatever.
There's no fight back.
This is my point.
This is the reason the second hour monologue.
There's no pushback.
And I've lived all these years under the idea that I'm on a team fighting back, trying to stop this and reverse it.
Here's Tina in Jupiter, Florida, right up the road.
Great to have you.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
I am a hardworking medical professional, mother of five.
I'm married to a also hardworking professional with a good income.
Never in a million years dreamed that next year we would need to be concerned about our health coverage.
My point is I would really like to see a situation where we get a grassroots group of people starting to turn where they don't wish to be part of the Obamacare process, willing to take the hit of the penalty, somehow get in conjunction with insurance companies that are also being sideswiped by this process and establish a system where we can be independent of the government involvement.
There is.
It's called cash.
I'm not kidding.
You find a doctor in a hospital that'll take cash of your credit card.
They're out there.
I'm not being facetious.
It's, and when I say cash, I mean write a check, just don't have an insurance plan, put it on a credit card, but pay them directly with no insurance company middleman.
There are more doctors leaving Medicaid than you can shake a stick at because they're not being reimbursed properly, timely, or sufficiently.
And they want to stay in business, and they're working to create clientele that'll just pay them directly for service, like you would any other.
But you go to a lawyer, you don't have lawyer insurance, do you?
You don't have hotel room insurance, do you?
You pay for it.
There are doctors that try to set up businesses exactly like that with a limited clientele that'll pay cash and the service is immediate and so forth.
Same thing with the hospitals.
They're out.
That's one of the most elementary free market solutions there is.
Problem is that most people have now, since World War II, just been accustomed to insurance paying everything, not paying for it themselves.
They are, they just don't have the check to a doctor.
Well, maybe they do out of pocket or before the deductible is hit.
So it's not maybe not that bad in terms of the mystique of living under the illusion somebody else is paying for everything.
But I think that's the solution.
The problem comes in when you develop a catastrophic illness, you have an accident, causes a hospital say that runs into $1.1 million.
You know, your average American citizen doesn't have that disposable cash for those kinds of medical expenses.
This is true.
This is true.
How often do those things happen at the same time?
It only has to happen once, you know, in an individual's life.
But that's what I'm trying to suggest here is that the other, for lack of a better term, let's call it day-to-day health care.
Pay for it out of your pocket.
If you get a checkup, a test, or one of this kind of catastrophic.
My guess is, no, I shouldn't guess it.
So I don't know if it's going to be illegal for insurance companies to exist outside of Obamacare after things.
I happen to think there's going to be a black market for exactly the kind of thing you're talking about because just like there's a black market in cigarettes, when things get too expensive and the system is what it is, people find ways around it.
And when there are people with money who want to find ways around things, there are people who will sell.
Offshore healthcare is developing.
Costa Rica is a great example of a country.
And they, yeah, they do it under the guise of tourism, but they'll sell you.
They've got doctors down there who will sell you this kind of catastrophic insurance if you need.
Now, that may not satisfy you.
You're in a car wreck here.
How do you get to Costa Rica?
I understand all the objections to it.
But what you're doing is illustrating exactly how this whole system has become just blown up and bastardized.
Because what you ought to be able to do is go to the doctor for your standard, ordinary, everyday health treatment and have insurance for nothing but catastrophic.
For if that happens.
And because of Obamacare, you can't do that.
You've got to sign on to the whole kit and caboodle.
You've got to sign on where people are getting free birth control pills, free contraception, free condoms, free whatever, all these left-wing wet dreams thrown into where everybody else is paying for it, jacking up your premiums for things you're never going to use, never going to access, but other people do, and you're being asked to pay for it.
Yes.
And I liken this to being told what kind of car I have to buy and that I need to have a roof and parrot windows when I don't really need them or want them.
And it's no different.
You're just transferring those demands to a healthcare environment.
You are exactly right.
You are taking free will away from people, and you are mandating that everybody live as numbers on a ledger.
You are not an individual anymore.
You're just a number with a set of statistics.
And a computer and a health panel are going to determine what happens to you based on the data that is input about you.
All this in the name of efficiency and fairness and what have you.
This is why I may be beating myself up against brick wall, but this is why I have so admired what Cruz was trying to do and not give up and fight back against this, however we do it.
Because the alternative are just unacceptable.
Circumstance that Tina describes here, this woman with gallbladder cancer, Sunbee, these are just unacceptable circumstances.
There's no reason for any of this to be reformed like this.
No reason for this change.
There's no reason for this healthcare system to get worse like this.
Other than to enrich the Democrat Party.
And that's not good enough for me.
A story here that I didn't have a chance to get to yesterday or today.
13 nutrition lies that made the world sick and fat.
And it's just another example of how we are being lied to so much by government people for different reasons and activists of the left.
One of the, let's give some 13 nutrition lies.
Eggs are bad for your health.
Myth.
Saturated fat is unhealthy.
Myth.
Eating a lot of protein, bad for you.
Myth.
Low carb diets, bad for you.
Myth.
They're actually the best diet you could do.
Everybody should be cutting back on sodium.
Myth.
I'll go into more detail on these tomorrow because they're fascinating.
No, no, no.
Like I said yesterday, Ken Cuccinelli, I thought, was tough, sincere, a warrior.
I thought he was a great conservative when I talked to him.
I wish him the best today in Virginia.
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