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Nov. 12, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:34
November 12, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Okay, let's see where we are here.
We have 48, 49% of Americans on food stamps, or is it 49 million on food stamps?
It's million, not percent, though.
It's million, right?
Okay, so you got 40, let's just say 48, 49 million on food stamps.
We have 91.5 million Americans not working.
By the way, that's not even counting the unemployment number.
That 91 million, they're out of the labor force.
They're gone.
91.5 million Americans not working.
48 million on food stamps.
The amount of jobs, the number of jobs, percentage that have been converted from full-time to part-time is overwhelming.
And the Associated Press says that 444,000 additional Americans on Medicaid is a success story.
What this means is that more and more Americans are living in poverty.
Medicaid is not Medicare.
Medicare is health care for the elderly and the seasoned citizens.
Medicaid is for the poor.
How in the world, what kind of perspective must you have to equate 444,000 new Medicaid recipients with success?
This is a national disaster.
91.5 million human beings not working.
There isn't work for them.
48 million on food stamps.
The percentage of people on Medicare, I think the number I saw was that at one time or another, 70 million people are on Medicaid for a month or two because they can't afford anything else.
There's nothing successful about any of this.
This is a national disaster that is happening to this country.
And for the AP to run around and have as their lead story today, which is going to be all over the news sources for the low information news consumer, a success story, 444,000 people sign up for the healthcare plan for the poor?
What in the world is successful about that?
Mr. Limbaugh, this just goes to show that you have no compassion.
What the reason is that the 444,000 people who wouldn't have health care have it?
No, it's that 444,000 people need it.
That's the indictment of this regime.
Well, they were able to sign up with no glitches as opposed to signing up for Obamacare.
Here is the dirty little secret, folks.
The ultimate aim of Obama is to get everybody on Medicaid that would qualify as socialized medicine.
And I'm guaranteeing you this.
All this chaos and all these problems at Obamacarehealthcare.gov.
And if the alternative is Medicaid, in the privacy of the White House, they're rubbing their hands together and going exactly as we had it planned, exactly as we had it drawn up.
I just, it's repugnant to me to call any of this a success story.
To start ballyhooing that 444,000 people are so poor that Medicaid's the only option for them, and we're going to start clapping our hands of what a great people we are.
We don't have the money for this.
I mean, the last time I looked was $17 trillion in debt.
We don't have the money.
I don't have the money for any of this.
And as this goes on, the whole concept of people paying for their own way in life becomes stranger and stranger, becomes a foreign concept.
Becomes one of those, well, easy for you to say type things, like telling the homeless to go out of job.
Well, well, easy for you to say.
I just don't, folks, this just bothers the heck out of me.
Those of us that, and I know you're all in the same boat here, we want a great country.
This is just, this is a, it is an absolute shame.
What is going on?
What do you mean the Republicans wouldn't expand Medicaid?
Oh, Rick Perry wouldn't expand Medicaid.
Yeah, I say the Republicans are mean, cold-hearted radicals.
They don't care if people get sick and die.
So forth.
There's no money.
Anyway, I just wanted to run those numbers by you, put them in perspective.
Greetings and welcome back.
Great to have you here.
Here's the piece, Stephen Hayward in Forbes magazine prediction: even if healthcare.gov is fixed by the end of the month, which is unlikely, Obamacare is going to be repealed well in advance of next year's election.
And if the website continues to fail, the push for repeal from endangered Democrats will occur very rapidly.
The website's a sideshow.
The real action is the number of people and businesses who are losing their health plans or having to pay a lot more.
Fixing the website will only delay the inevitable.
Now, it's important to remember why it was so important for Obama to promise repeatedly: if you like your health insurance and your doctor, you can keep it.
Cast your mind back to the ignominious collapse of Hillary Care in 1994.
Hillary Care came out of the box in September 1993 to high public support according to the early polls.
And it did, by the way.
And it was a source of great consternation among us because the national polls in support of Hillary Care were very, very high.
But it wasn't a surprise.
Opinion polls for decades have shown a large majority of Americans support the general idea of universal health coverage.
But Hillary Care came apart as the bureaucratic details came out.
The most important one being that you couldn't be sure you would be able to keep your doctors or select specialists of your choice.
Well, I remember this like it was yesterday.
Hillary care comes out, and Betsy McCoy was the first I knew of to read the bill, and she was the one who uncovered the aspects of Hillary care that became repulsive to people.
You couldn't keep your doctor, maybe.
You couldn't keep your plan, maybe.
But for doctors, they were going to be assigned hospitals.
They were going to be assigned states.
They were going to be assigned specialties.
Medical students were going to go to medical school and be told what their specialty was going to be under the terms of Hillary Care.
When all of this became known, it began to unravel at a rapid rate.
In fact, Hillary scheduled a nationwide bus tour to promote Hillary Care, and we had people at every stop waiting for that bus to arrive, protesting it, mocking it, laughing at it, making fun of the bus.
And in some places, the bus didn't even stop where it was scheduled to.
It just kept going to the next location.
I mean, it was a great, great, great success story.
But Hayward is right here as he recounts the history of Hillary Care when the details became known.
When you just say universal health coverage, 100% of people support it.
But when you tell them what it means, but see, can I interrupt myself here for a second?
This is one of the things that constantly perplexes me.
Now, I know 1994 was a long time ago to some people, and 1994, a lot of people were infants and don't remember it.
But for people who were alive, this is my question.
Why do we have to keep reminding people that Democrat ideas fail?
Why does it not become apparent?
Hillary Care, 1994, universal health coverage, Obamacare, same thing.
If people accept the lies that they're told in both instances, you like your doctor, you can keep it.
You like your health plan, you can keep it.
And you can, you can, they have to lie in order to get this thing originally supported.
And when the truth comes out, why does the truth have to come out each and every time?
Why don't people remember the absolute abhorrent nature of things that Democrats try?
I know the answer to my own question, but I'm still asking because it still frustrates me.
I'm not, contrary to what you people might think, I am not that smart.
But I can tell you this: I don't have to learn things twice.
I know that liberalism is rotten and horrible and devastating and inhumane and doesn't do anything that it promises.
And I don't have to be reminded of it.
The world is filled with history of this.
You know, I have asked the same question about the 80s and Reagan.
Now, I understand how they've set out to revise the history of that era, but why don't people remember how, I mean, we had a booming economy.
We had patriotism that was flowing from every pour.
The love of country, the economic rebound, all of the things that were happening in the 80s during the Reagan boom, and they lasted into the 90s.
It's amazing to me how people can be talked out of how good things were and can have their minds totally remade, and their memories will be shaped in such a way that they'll think the 1980s were the absolute worst period of time in their lives.
It's a, I know it's a relentless drumbeat.
I know how the left does it.
That's not my point.
I just Obamacare, Hillary care, universal health coverage.
It isn't possible.
And yet people cling to the hope.
And you have a likable, charismatic, messianic-like guy telling you this time is going to work.
Maybe people buy into it.
It just, though, continues to flummocks me.
And I don't mind admitting it.
Now, when I say I'm not smart as you, all I mean by this, I don't have any, I live through things like other people do.
Why?
Pointless exercise.
Never mind.
I relived this Hillary care business, and we're going through it again here.
It's tearing the country apart like it did in 1994.
We keep recycling the same old failed liberalism from the New Deal forward.
You name it.
We've tried it.
It never works.
How in the world can anybody call what's going on a success story?
91.5 million people not even in the labor force.
All these people on Medicaid, 48 million people on food stamps and climbing.
And it all equals compassion.
But if you do think back to how the details of Hillary Care became known, Hillary Care fell apart.
And what happened when all of this became known, when the bureaucratic details came out, the most important one again being that you couldn't be sure that you would keep your doctor or plan, the Clintons at the time refused to consider a compromise.
It was all or nothing on Hillary Care.
Now, remember, too, that this was Hillary's baby and it was her payoff for essentially staying married to Clinton and therefore keeping him viable.
Her payoff was running Hillary care, and she was tone deaf.
And they were unwilling to make any compromise.
Remember the Harry and Louise ad?
That's what did it in.
The Harry was one of the many things.
And that is why Obama lied.
Because he remembered the Harry and Louise ad.
Obama remembered that ad, which is why he portrayed Obamacare as simply expanding coverage to the uninsured, improving coverage for the underinsured, and leaving everybody else undisturbed.
But it was all a lie.
The redistributive arithmetic of Obamacare's architecture could never add up, which is what the bureaucrats knew early on.
As early as 2010, according to the Federal Register, they knew that 93 million Americans are going to lose their insurance.
They knew it, and they were lying on purpose.
And now that people are losing their insurance and finding they can't keep their doctor, Obamacare has become the domestic policy equivalent of the Iraq War, a protracted fiasco that is proving fatal to the president's credibility and approval rating.
The only thing missing is calling in FEMA to help this Category 5 political disaster.
This is Stephen Hayward writing in Forbes.
And he eventually predicts that this thing is going to be repealed.
They won't call it that.
They'll call it delay.
They'll call it repository.
He thinks it's going to be repealed.
Let me take a break and I'll come back and give you the details of how he thinks that's going to manifest itself.
And then we'll move into your phone calls.
So if you're on hold, sit tight.
We'll get to you el quicko.
Okay, here's how it's going to happen.
This is Stephen Hayward again at Forbes.
He's a blogger at Power Line, a well-known gad fly think tanker.
He's written some books on Reagan.
Senate Democrats, endangered for re-election, will lead the charge for repeal, perhaps as soon as January, after they get an earful over their Christmas break.
They already are, really, when they troop up to the White House and ask for the individual mandate to be delayed.
They're actually, this is his argument.
They're really arguing for repeal.
They may not know it.
They call it reform.
They clothe it in calls for delaying the individual mandate and allowing people and businesses to keep their existing health insurance policies, and that's happening.
Let's reinstate what's been taken away.
We can't.
They're gone.
Anyway, Hayward says it's too late to go back in many cases.
And the reason it's too late is because the plans don't exist.
They don't qualify.
You'd have to cancel Obamacare in order to reinstate your old plan.
And then you'd have to get the insurance company to offer it again.
You know, it sounds really good.
Well, let's just reinstate what people have lost, Ethel.
Well, yeah.
I don't know, folks.
I'm sorry for my frustration here.
My little kitten woke me up at 6 o'clock biting my nose.
It's much earlier than usual.
A little cat wanted its food and introduced it to a new kind of food that's like a cat's addicted to it.
It goes absolutely nuts.
Just canned cat food, but it lets soft food.
It just loves this stuff.
And now it'll eat the other hard food, too.
But now it just, this little kitten, and I love it.
I just love this little thing.
But it biting my nose.
And if that doesn't work, it goes under the covers and bites my big toe.
Not hard.
I mean, it's a smart little kitten, it knows.
But the point is, it harasses me until I finally get up and get out.
These things are smart.
Anyway, then I'm a little irritable because of that.
I'm irritable because of the news anyway.
So Hayward says it's probably too late to go back in many cases.
With the political damage guaranteed to continue, the momentum toward repeal will be unstoppable.
Democrats will not want to face voters next November with the albatross of Obamacare.
The politics of the repeal effort will be a game theorist dream.
Tea Party Republicans will resist reforms to Obamacare in favor of complete repeal.
Democrats will try to turn the table, set up Republicans as obstacles to reform, hoping to inoculate themselves prospectively for mayhem at the polls next November.
So it's, and it is, it's going to be fascinating to watch this because the very people who voted for this, the very people who gave this garbage to us, are the first ones in line to be really hurt by it electorally and politically.
And it's going to be fascinating to see how they try to massage this into getting rid of it without getting rid of it, making you think they're going to, but not doing it.
That'll be the trick.
By the way, Jay Carney, the White House spokesman this afternoon in a press briefing, do you know that he agrees with Clinton?
And Obama agrees with it.
Clinton says that Obama ought to be honest and tell the truth.
And here's Jay Carney was asked about it by Julie Pace of the AP.
So Clinton made an interview, a comment, talking about health care.
He said Obama should honor his commitment to people who've lost their health insurance.
What about that, Jay?
As you saw the president say in an interview with NBC last week, the answer is yes.
The president has tasked his team with looking at a range of options, as he said, to make sure that nobody is put in a position where their plans have been canceled and they can't afford a better plan, even though they'd like to have a better plan.
The president has tasked his team with looking at a range of options.
Why, it's the Limbaugh theorem.
Obama agrees with Clinton.
He thinks he should keep his promise, too.
Yep, I do.
I think that guy who made that promise will keep it.
This is unreal.
Limbaugh Theorem right in front of your face.
Obama agrees with Clinton that that guy, Obama, ought to keep his promise.
And he's working real hard to make sure that that guy, Obama, keeps his promise.
We've got to play this soundbite again from Jay Carney because I had to rush through it in a hurry, and we're going to get the phones right after this.
But you've got to hear this again.
This is at the White House this afternoon.
And Clinton, earlier today on an obscure website program, I think the president ought honor his commitment.
I think he promised people I'd keep their insurance and now to be able to keep it.
I even have to change the law.
I think that's the only thing that could happen.
So Julie Pace asks Jay Carney about that.
I wanted to get your reaction, Jay, to a comment that Clinton made in an interview posted today.
He was talking about health care.
He said that Obama should honor his commitment to people who've lost their health care or are losing their health care under the president's law, even if it means changing the law.
Does the president agree with Clinton's comment?
As you saw the president say in an interview with NBC last week, the answer is yes.
The president has tasked his team with looking at a range of options, as he said, to make sure that nobody is put in a position where their plans have been canceled and they can't afford a better plan, even though they'd like to have a better plan.
It sounds like they're going to give everybody who's been canceled a subsidy.
That's where they're headed.
I think that's what they're going to end up doing.
And you wait because Obama does not want this repealed.
He's not going to sit there for that.
He's not going to let any Democrat talk him into repeal.
So what they'll come up with is a taxpayer subsidy in order to buy off these people before 2014.
You know dead to rights that's what's going to happen.
He'll call a national address and say, if you've been canceled, if you lost your insurance and the plant that you want is better, but you can't afford it, then we'll subsidize that new plan for you.
He doesn't want people put in a position where they can't afford a better plan.
What the hell does that mean?
It means he's going to subsidize them.
Well, he's the guy that put them in that position.
His law canceled their insurance by design, and he lied to them about it.
And now that everybody's up in arms about it, he'll just come around.
He'll offer them a subsidy.
A one-time subsidy for these special people.
These 5%.
That's all it is.
Okay, let's head to the phones because people have been patiently waiting.
We're going to start Lillian in Los Angeles.
Hi, Lillian.
Great to have you here, and I appreciate your waiting.
Hi, Rush.
More insidious facts about control that you were talking about a while ago.
I went to my physician yesterday who told me that he has another patient who was dropped from her health care plan.
So she went to the new affordable care website.
When she did, she learned she would have to pay over twice what she paid before and couldn't find her doctor in Beverly Hills.
She called his office and told him.
He in turn told his secretary to call to find out how to get on the list of referred physicians.
The government workers said that only those doctors who get an invitation will be on the list.
When she asked how to get an invitation, the Obama worker said that's confidential.
So he said to me, will I not be on the list because I'm a Republican or because I'm white?
And he's worried that it's going to interfere with his making a living.
So it can control doctors, too.
Or, I don't know, maybe it's to get kickbacks.
So more insidious facts coming out all the time.
Well, this in fact is not new, what you've encountered here.
Doctors are encountering this all across the country and are getting out of this health care plan as best they can.
They're abandoning Obamacare.
They're simply not going to join a network.
They're not going to be part of it.
They're not going to get paid.
They're worried.
They won't be invited, as you say.
And the exchange sites, most of them do not list people by design.
They don't want people knowing where they can go outside of Obamacare.
So he's not on the Obamacare provider list.
He can't get on it, and he doesn't know why.
But look at what he suspects.
You know, this is quite telling about what the country has become.
Every doctor who wonders if he's not on the approved list because he's not a Democrat or because he's white.
Now, this is the kind of stuff that this president inspires, to use a word.
This is the kind of thought process that he engenders in people.
And it's because of his uber partisanship.
No, we don't know the answer.
But it's just a gigantic mess.
The thing that people are, you can't convince them of.
I could probably have 10 low-information people sitting in this room who don't know who I am.
If I could find it.
In other words, their minds have not been polluted about me.
And I could tell them, look, this is all by design.
This chaos, your canceling of your policy, the massive new expense of a replacement.
It's all on purpose.
And at that point, I'd probably lose them.
Why would anybody want to do this?
Well, because they want to end up having control over every aspect of your life.
How would that happen?
Well, they're already doing it by telling you what you can and can't eat and how much of a soft drink you can and can't have.
And they're going to do this on the basis that if you drink too much Coca-Cola or Pepsi or whatever, that you're going to become an obesity risk later in life and you're going to put a lot of cost expense strain on the healthcare system.
And if you do, if you live and behave that way, they're not going to provide you health care.
You'd lose them.
I think a lot of people, and somehow this, to me, is the secret, is trying to convince people that this is not just incompetence and bureaucracy, although it is.
They simply don't have the best people.
They're too big.
There are too many people with their hands in it.
But it's also, this is the intent.
You were supposed to lose your insurance.
I could walk them through it, and I wonder how many of them could be persuaded.
So there has to be another way.
Anyway, Lillian, I appreciate the call.
Thank you much.
Steve in South Bend, Indiana.
Welcome, sir.
It's great to have you here.
Hi.
Yes, good afternoon, Rush.
Thank you for taking my phone call.
Longtime listener, first-time caller.
In fact, you mentioned Hillary Care earlier.
It was around 1993 that I think I first started tuning in when the Hillary Care debacle was going down.
One thing I might add, if you recall, C. Everett Koop supported Hillary Care.
In fact, if you remember the red carpet ceremony with Hillary walking into the joint sessions of Congress, she was, I think, joined by C. Everett Coop, who lended his weight behind her plan.
That's not why I called.
Okay, 2010, when Obamacare was passed, they went to the states and wanted the states to offer extended Medicaid.
And the promise was that the federal government would pay for it for two years.
And the bait, of course, was that the states did not have to pay for it.
It was free Medicaid for two years.
And then, of course, once they get everybody hooked into their entitlement, then the federal government pulls the rug out from under it, but everybody's hooked.
So, you know, the states have to continue it.
What I can foresee, what I predict going on with Obamacare rollout 2.0 is they're going to just jack up the subsidies.
They're going to get everybody hooked in who lost their health care by overly subsidizing them, getting them hooked in, and for a protracted, limited time, a year or two, whatever.
And then once they're hooked, they're hooked.
And you just mentioned the taxpayer subsidy would probably be a possibility here.
So that's what I see happening.
Yeah, well, I think that's what Jay Carney means when he quotes the president as saying he doesn't like people put in a position where they can't afford a better plan.
So here come subsidies.
That's the Democrat solution to everything is buy them.
The fact that we don't have the money is irrelevant.
The fact that they're still being lied to is irrelevant.
We'll just buy them.
We'll just buy their love.
We'll just buy their support.
And we'll use the federal treasury to do it.
There's a guy in the Rights of Peace in Politico today named Jonathan Gruber and practically admits in a piece.
Let me read a little excerpt here.
He says, The White House is just reacting to one broken promise by imposing a much larger and harmful one.
Our promise to insurers that if they priced fairly, we would deliver a broad pool of insured.
If you allow the healthy enrollees to stay out in their old policy, the insurers lose money and the programs fall apart.
In other words, if insurers are allowed to keep their plan, Obamacare will fail.
If you get to keep your plan, if we try to dial back the clock and everybody gets to keep their plans, it won't work because the insurers will lose money and the program falls apart because they won't stay in business that way, whereas the federal government can.
And Jonathan Gruby was quoted, he didn't write the piece, but he's one of the architects of Obamacare.
And he practically admitted that if insurers are allowed to keep their plans, that Obamacare will fail.
Meaning, if you're allowed to keep your plan, Obamacare fails.
This has been my point all week.
You cannot keep your plan and have Obamacare at the same time.
Obamacare, by definition, gets rid of your plan and replaces it with health care run by the federal government.
Now, what, and you're right about, he's right, the caller is right about the Medicaid.
Remember, they tried to off that to the states, and Alaska said, well, wait a minute, we don't have the money to pay for this.
But Obamacare wanted to off that expense to the states to reduce the overall cost as reported to the CBO.
So he keep it under a trillion dollars and get it approved.
And everybody thinks, oh, wow, it's a net wash.
We're replacing the Iraq war with health care.
Net, no loss, no gain.
The whole thing was a lie.
The states said, we can't afford Medicaid.
We can't print money.
We can't accept it.
So now it's coming back.
And Obama, the theory is, well, we'll just subsidize people.
And like the call, we'll get them hooked.
And once people are hooked with the government paying for things for them, that's it.
And of course, well, of course, they're subsidizing it with money they don't have.
But that's the story of this whole administration.
There was a stimulus that we didn't have.
Green energy program for money that we didn't have.
We're subsidizing everything Obama's doing with money that we don't have.
But the beneficiaries don't care.
The people getting the money don't care that we don't have the money.
In fact, tell them we don't have the money.
So yes, we do.
I just got it.
Anyway, another obscene profit timeout, my friends.
We will resume right after this.
Now, the Gruber quote, just to be clear, he's one of the architects of Obamacare.
It's in a political piece.
Gruber is reminding people that we cannot go back and give people their old plans.
We will not have Obamacare if we do that.
We can't turn back the hands of time.
We cannot turn back the clock and give people their as a fix for all the people who are losing their policy, losing their doctor.
We can't just now say, oh, okay, well, here it is back.
And the reason is the White House is just reacting to one broken promise by imposing a much larger and harmful one.
And the original promise to the insurers, not the insured, the original promise to the insurers, the insurance companies, was that if they priced their policies fairly, that the regime would deliver a broad pool of uninsured that were mandated to buy.
This is how they hooked the insurance companies in.
These idiots thought that they were guaranteed 30 million new customers.
Well, they are.
What else explains this?
So they sit there, and of course it's the president.
I guess you meet with the president, he tells you something, you automatically believe it.
That's what I don't get.
But anyway, they did.
They bought it.
And they saw this.
They were salivating 30 million new customers.
And all we've got to do is price our policies fairly.
Well, now they can't offer what they were offering at the same price because of the new mandates and all that in Obamacare.
The bottom line is it isn't easy to repair this broken promise that millions of consumers would be able to keep their insurance coverage.
And by the way, the political random act of journalism here, they've gone out and they've found a bunch of industry experts to say so.
You can't repair this broken promise.
And the reason I'm making a big deal out of this is Jay Carney was asked by AP today If Obama agrees with Clinton, you know, Clinton said, I think, I think the Health Honors Promise said, people keep their plan.
I used to do that.
You can't.
It doesn't work.
The only way you could do that, and I'm not even, the only way would be a total repeal of Obamacare.
There are just too many mandates and requirements on everybody.
That is why people got canceled in the first place.
Your insurance company didn't cancel you because they hate you.
They didn't cancel you because they want you to get sick and die.
They didn't cancel you because they're Republicans.
They don't care about people.
They canceled you because they couldn't offer what you had at the price you were paying and stay in business, which was the design.
Obamacare, to get where Obama and the Democrats want it to ultimately end, requires that the private sector health insurance industry cease to exist.
And this is how.
This is the first step is practically requiring them to be unable to provide you with the policy you've always had because there are other mandates and requirements they have to conform to.
It makes it impossible to offer to you the coverage you had at the price you were paying.
So the only way to get your plan back is not to fix a broken promise.
Now they may try to subsidy.
The only way is to repeal Obamacare, folks.
And this is what this architect is basically saying.
As is the political.
I got to go here quickly back in just a second.
Yeah, here's the money quote from Jonathan Gruber.
If you allow healthy enrollees to stay out in their old policy, the insurers lose money and the program falls apart.
The program is Obamacare.
You cannot have people stay in their old plans and have Obamacare.
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