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Nov. 14, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:53
November 14, 2013, Thursday, Hour #1
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Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
The President's addressing the nation, ladies and gentlemen, on how he's going to play dictator again and fix his health care problem is supposed to start exactly a half hour ago.
He just started three minutes ago opening up on the Philippines.
He finished his remarks on the Philippines right as this program began.
So we're going to jip it.
Here's the President playing.
Of those 1.5 million people, 106,000 of them have successfully signed up to get covered.
Another 396,000 have the ability to gain access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
That's been less reported on, but it shouldn't be.
Americans who are having a difficult time, who are poor, many of them working, may have a disability.
We know what he's going to propose here.
We're just doing this because I know the affiliates want to carry this stuff.
Later today I'll be in Ohio where Governor Kasich, a Republican, has expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Courtney.
I can tell you what he's going to do.
And if every governor followed suit, another 5.4 million Americans could gain access to health care next year.
So bottom line is in just one month, despite all the problems that we have seen with the website, more than 500,000 Americans could know the security of health care by January 1st.
And they have just been shafted based on what you are going to propose here in a minute.
And it's significant.
500,000 significant.
It still leaves about one million Americans who successfully made it through the website, now qualify to buy insurance, but haven't picked a plan yet.
And there's no question that if the website were working as it's supposed to, that number would be much higher of people who have actually enrolled.
So that's true.
Problem number one, making sure that the website works the way it's supposed to.
It's gotten a lot better over the last few weeks than it was on the first day, but we're working 24-7 to get it working for the question.
Why would anybody believe what he says after a big lie about you having to keep it?
Why does anybody have a lot of attention concerns Americans who have received letters from their insurers that they may be losing the plans they bought in the old individual market?
Yeah.
Often because they no longer meet the law's requirements to cover basic benefits like prescription drugs or doctor's visits.
Now, uh, as I indicated uh earlier, I completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of Americans, particularly after assurances they heard from me that uh if they had a plan that they liked they could keep it.
Uh and to those Americans, I hear you loud and clear.
I said that I would do everything we can to fix this problem, and today I'm offering an idea that will help do it.
Already people who have plans that predate the Affordable Care Act can keep those plans if uh they haven't changed.
That was already in the law.
That's what's called a grandfather clause that was included in the law.
Still continuing the lie for the principle, both to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect, and to people who bought plans since the law took effect.
So State insurance commissioners still have the power to decide what plans can and can't be sold in their states, but the bottom line is insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014, and Americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to re-enroll in the same kind of plan.
We're also requiring insurers to extend current plans to inform their customers about two things.
One, that protections, uh what protections these renewed plans don't include.
Number two, that the marketplace offers new options with better coverage and tax credits that might help you bring down the cost.
So, if you received one of these letters, I'd encourage you to take a look at the marketplace.
Even if the website isn't working as smoothly as it should be for everybody yet, there is a plan comparison tool that lets you browse costs for new plans near you is working just fine.
This fix won't solve every problem for every person, but it's gonna help a Lot of people.
Doing more will require work with Congress.
And I've said from the beginning, I'm willing to work with Democrats and Republicans to fix problems as they arise.
This is an example of what I was talking about.
We can always make this law work better.
It is important to understand, though, that the old individual market was not working well.
And it's important that we don't pretend that somehow that's a place worth going back to.
Too often it works fine as long as you stay healthy.
It doesn't work well when you're sick.
So year after year, Americans were routinely exposed to financial ruin or denied coverage due to minor pre-existing conditions or dropped from coverage altogether, even if they paid their premiums on time.
That's one of the reasons we pursued this reform in the first place.
And that's why I will not accept proposals that are just another brazen attempt to undermine or repeal the overall law and drag us back into a broken system.
AND I THINK THAT'S A GOOD IDEA.
We will continue to make the case, even to folks who choose to keep their own plans, that they should shop around in the new marketplace because there's a good chance that they'll be able to buy better insurance at lower cost.
So we're going to do everything we can to help the Americans who've received these cancellation notices.
But I also want everybody to remember there are still 40 million Americans who don't have health insurance at all.
I'm not going to walk away from 40 million people who have the chance to get health insurance for the first time, and I'm not going to walk away from something that has helped the cost of health care grow at its slowest rate in 50 years.
So we're at the opening weeks of the project to build a better health care system for everybody.
A system that will offer real financial security and peace of mind to millions of Americans.
It is a complex process.
There are all kinds of challenges.
I'm sure there will be additional challenges that come up.
And it's important that we're honest and straightforward in terms when we come up with a problem with these reforms and these laws that we address them.
But we've got to move forward on this.
It took a hundred years for us to even get to the point where we could start talking about and implementing a law to make sure everybody's got health insurance.
And my pledge to the American people is that we're going to solve the problems that are there.
We're going to get it right, and the Affordable Care Act is going to work for the American people.
So with that, I'm going to take your questions.
All right.
We're not going to listen to questions because all of this is gobbledygook.
Greetings, my friends, and welcome Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and the Limbaugh Institute, Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you here.
Through all of that gobbledygook, let me try to translate what you just heard.
You would never know it if you just listened to all that gobbledygook.
You would never know that what Obama is doing is postponing the requirements that are forcing cancellations of your policies until after the elections.
He's doing two things.
He's telling the insurance companies, as a dictator would, what they can and can't do, or what they must or must not do, or what they have to and don't have to do.
He is suggesting for purely political purposes that if you have your plan now and you like it, you can keep it for one more year so that you don't get any angrier Democrats than you are now and vote against them next November.
If your plan has been canceled, he has just ordered the insurance company to make it available to you so that you can go back and get that plan.
The problem is that that plan was canceled precisely because it conflicts with his law with Obamacare.
So he has declared war against the insurance companies here and is making it veritably impossible for them to do business.
This is purely political.
All of this gobbledygook is designed to make everybody think that somebody else came along and canceled your plan, and he is going to come to the rescue now and give you your Plan back, but just for a year.
And he reiterated the original lie.
He told you that when he told you could keep your plan unless there's a change in it, he never said unless there's a change in it.
So he's continuing the first lie, well, the second lie to cover the first lie with uh with this announcement today.
So essentially this probably has also serves the purpose of preempting the Upton bill in the in the House of Representatives, which we talked about yesterday as a pr as a potential trap for the uh for the Republicans.
And there is a lot to wade through.
This, folks, this is this is this is a an absolute swamp now.
It is an absolute disaster, and it's also a minefield.
It is it this is all anybody needs to know that government has no business doing any of this.
This today is an admission of abject failure in the president's quest to actually destroy constitutional re Well, no, he's not failing at that.
He's he's actually succeeding at that.
What he's trying to do here is just speed the process to get to the point where the government is the only provider of health insurance and health coverage.
That's his ultimate aim, and all of this chaos is designed to speed that process.
What the president's actually trying to do here is subvert democracy, in my opinion, with all of these mandates.
I want to take you back, listen to something that I said on this program back on October 30th, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, essentially, um, was talking about Obama and Obamacare and and uh he was he was making changes in it willy-nilly and he was talking about how much he cared for people, and I was asking, well, why didn't he play dictator the other way?
And today he did.
So listen to this.
It runs about a minute and a half, but it is explanatory unto itself.
If Obama is gonna go out now and play dictator, let's realize he could play dictator in any direction he wants to go.
If he has the power to deny you your grandfathered plan, the one you liked and the one you were told you can keep.
And if Obama didn't know all of this was going on, and he didn't know all of these problems with the website, and if Obama really cares about being truthful and honest with you, then maybe Obama can play dictator and re-grandfather your plan.
If he can play dictator and take it away from you, then he can play dictator and fix it, I assume.
If he's gonna play dictator, if he's gonna pretend the law is subject to his whims, then let's all realize that he'd have the power to restore millions of health insurance policies by waiving these new Obamacare regulations, which are forcing insurance companies to cancel policies.
He loves you, he has compassion for you, cares about the little guy.
Why doesn't he get mad at all these people being canceled and go in there and fix it?
If he can play dictator and take things away, why can't he play dictator and give them back?
Why doesn't he fix it?
He knows people are being canceled in the hundreds of thousands.
Why doesn't he fix it if he really cares about you?
He told us if Congress didn't give him everything he wanted, he would simply do it himself.
Obama has said again, folks, and we've played the soundbite.
Well, if Congress won't do it, I'll just go and I'll take care of it myself.
So here he is doing it today.
Playing dictator the other way.
Reinstating your canceled plan, but just for a year.
But it isn't gonna be that easy.
Your plan is gone, and by the way, he didn't say anything that you're about getting your old premium back.
Who knows what the reinstated plan's gonna cost you?
Remember, he's doing this not because he cares about you.
He's doing this not because he's upset you've lost your plan.
He's doing this because he's losing the media, and he's losing his fellow Democrats, and he's losing the proposition.
And this is a purely political move today, disguised as typical Democrat Party compassion.
Worried to death about you losing your plan.
How could this have happened?
He's gonna blame the insurance companies, and if the Republicans aren't careful, they're gonna they're gonna make that possible.
He's gonna blame governors, he's gonna blame all kinds of outsiders and invisible people for making this happen.
He's riding in today as the white knight playing dictator.
The thing that I want to remind everybody is that I thought it was settled law.
I thought it was the law of the land.
I thought back when Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and others were saying, look, let's just delay this whole thing.
Or let's just defund it and repeal it.
I thought, oh remember, all those angry lectures that Obamacare was settled law, the Democrats said.
It's a law of the land.
You can't change it.
Well, so much for that.
So much for the rule of law.
So much for constitutional republicanism.
Now we have the president playing dictator the other way to save his party's bacon and to save his dream of government run socialized medicine.
This is where we are, and that Republicans had better talk about this honestly.
This is not how things happen in a free country.
What is happening is all it adds up to is why this mess should be repealed and gotten rid of.
You know, the big question is, given how frequently and how easily Obama lies, why do we even believe this today?
Why do we even believe this?
You know, there's a bunch of people who also have to act to make this happen.
We can sit up there and play dictator and wave his magic once.
I'm gonna give your policy back.
Well, there's a bunch of people in the insurance business here.
The insurance business who now are gonna have to go back.
It's like, gee, what do we do now?
I mean, we're complying with one part of the law.
Now he's saying we don't have to.
I mean, what do we charge for this?
Uh what about the people that that are gonna get their cancellation notices at work starting next year?
Oh, it's it's just an abject mess, and the chaos will play out to his advantage.
The more chaos, the more there will be calls to fix it, to fix it, to fix it, and the simple solution it'll be said will be look, let's just put one guy in charge of all this.
Let's just put the president in charge of it and be done with all this.
We'll close the exchanges.
We don't want those anyway.
He really doesn't want the exchanges, folks.
You get down to grass tax.
I mean, that's just they're placeholders designed to make it look like it's something that it's not, this this uh whole health care plan.
So uh we've had a series of time bombs here.
The president determines when each one detonates, and that can't stand.
You can't run a country this way.
Simply can't.
This bomb needs to be diffused.
We've had enough explosions, there's been enough damage and collateral damage, enough to know that we don't need any more.
This thing just needs to be shut down.
It is incompetent, it is impossible.
It is amateurish.
It is beneath this country to have something like this happen with something that is so important and so crucial to so many people, to have it bounced around as a political ping-pong ball, which is what's happening.
I gotta take a break.
Sit tight.
Your phone calls and lots of other stuff, of course, is the EIB network rolls on right after this.
So the fantasy continues.
Fantasy.
The fantasy that you can have the health care you want, it doesn't cost you anything or much at all, and that if you ever get sick, you're gonna get well immediately.
It's gonna all be handled, and this is never ever gonna be a problem for anybody again.
The fantasy continues.
By the way, I just listed a little bit more of Obama's.
You know, I wasn't the only one that made that promise.
A bunch of people up on Congress told you you keep your plan, too.
That that is just that's first grade kind of that's Bart Simpson.
Nobody saw me do it.
You can't prove anything.
I didn't do it, you didn't see me do it.
He's up there saying, Yeah, there were ten or twelve other people on Capitol Hill are making the same promise.
We all had our good intentions here.
This is such a disaster, uh, folks.
The original problem with this remains.
We have President of the United States who thinks that he can compel people to go buy something.
He thinks that he can compel people to go use something, even something they don't want.
If they don't buy it, they're going to get fined or penalized.
He goes so far as to deny what they want if they don't go get what he wants them to have, i.e.
having their policies canceled.
It's outrageous.
This is this is so unamerican, this whole thing, and now what's the fix?
The fix is for this guy to play dictator again and now command or compel the insurance companies to run their business the way he wants them to for the next year so that his party won't be hurt in the elections next November.
This isn't America, folks.
Let's flash back, ladies and gentlemen, two months ago, September 26th.
We have an associated press story here.
The uh headline to the AP story on September 26th was Obama mocks the GOP for crazy Obamacare predictions.
The GOP, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, everyone oriented in that direction, were all predicting exactly this.
And Obama mocked those predictions.
And everything's come to pass.
You know, folks, yesterday and two days ago and a month ago, two months ago, the plan that you liked, but you had to get rid of because of the Obamacare law was substandard.
That's why you had to get rid of it.
It was substandard.
It was placing your life at risk.
You were just uh disease away from bankruptcy or ruination.
Notice now that you now get to keep your substandard plan.
You get to keep your substandard policy.
You get to keep what they were saying yesterday and the day before and last month was a horrible plan.
You had to get rid of it, you had to cancel it because it did not work.
Well, you liked it, nevertheless.
So now what was deplorable and substandard and unduable all of a sudden has been reinstated.
But note that while you have the option to go get your old plan, there's nothing about getting the same premium was there.
And that's because you're not going to be able to get the same premium.
You see, there's a problem.
The problem is there is something that is the law now, and it's Obamacare.
And it has specific requirements vis-a-vis the insurance industry.
And Obama, willy-nilly, is just cherry-picking elements that he wants to change while leaving other aspects of his law intact, which puts what he wants to do willy-nilly in total legal conflict with the other aspects of the law.
And nobody is going to know how to reconcile those conflicts.
What was done today was a purely political move designed to make you think that the president has dictatorial powers to your benefit.
He has found out that you like your plan, and so you're going to get to keep that plan.
But again, yesterday, the day before, it was substandard because it didn't provide for birth control pills or other forms of contraception.
It didn't provide the mandates that Obamacare requires your policy to have.
So while on the one hand, those mandates and the requirements the insurance companies have to live by are still in place.
Obama has just waved his magic Dictator wand and said, except for this for another year.
If you want.
And if you like your plan, no, you'll be able to keep it for another year.
It's an absolute mess.
This, folks, this is there's so much wrong with this.
I mean, look, it's one thing to regulate government to regulate with tax policy or subsidizing a particular part of the economy like the whole mortgage interest deduction.
I mean, that's one thing.
But to use the force of law to compel citizens to behave is against the U.S. Constitution.
Now, if I understand the chief justice correctly, and I'm not sure I do.
By the way, it must be really bad for Obama and the press corps because it took 10 minutes and they started asking about Iran.
I mean, here's everybody waiting with baited breath for the president to answer questions of what he's going to do with health care, and ten minutes in, they go to Iran and the nuclear program.
Drive by is bailing him out.
It must be that the way he was answering their questions on his new policy change today are really upsetting, and they thought they needed to rescue him.
As I understand it, Justice Roberts, if I understand him correct, Congress.
I mean, what was the lesson of Obamacare?
You couldn't just pass a law forcing people to buy health insurance unless it was a tax.
Isn't that what Justice Roberts said?
That's the way we got around the commerce clause restriction.
The government cannot compel you to buy something.
They just can't.
And he did it again today.
This is so anti-democratic what is happening.
And that's the that's just the basic that people need to understand, if you can even trust what he's saying today.
So if you can't be compelled to buy a product, that's when Chief Justice Roberts said, well, but but if you call it a tax, then the government can do it.
Okay.
So now that we have Obama and sadly, maybe some Republicans scrambling to make good on the president's promise that if you like your plan and your doctor, you can keep them, period.
That means the insurance companies are going to be forced to offer specific policies that they were first forced to cancel.
You weren't canceled.
You didn't lose the policy you like simply because the insurance companies hate you.
And because the insurance companies want you to get sick and die.
as many Democrats would like you to believe.
The insurance companies canceled your plan because they had to.
school.
Obamacare was the law of the land, and your plan was canceled because it was substandard.
It didn't comply with the law.
The insurance companies were powerless.
They had to cancel you in order to be in compliance with Obamacare.
And they have spent years working out the details of this so as to both stay in business and stay in compliance.
But something unexpected happened.
The president lied to you and told you if you could keep your plan, if you liked it, you could keep it.
Same thing with your doctor.
But you couldn't.
You were never going to be able to keep your plan.
So people started complaining about it, so much so that the Democrats up for reelection in the Senate actually began talking about revolt.
Even the 10 or 12 Democrats who had promised the same thing, just like Obama.
If you like your plan, you get to keep it.
I mean, they all lied to you, folks.
All the Democrats lied to you about this in order to further this idea of government run health care.
So now, Because the Democrat Party is in horrible electoral trouble.
And remember it was just a month ago that Ted Cruz and the Republicans were guaranteeing that the Republicans were going to lose the House.
Just a month ago, Ted Cruz and the boys, they were embarrassing everybody.
They were extremists, they were terrorists, they were hostage takers, they were demanding ransom, they were racist, sexist bigots, they were extremists, they were liars and all that.
Everything they said was true.
Now, in order for the Democrats to save themselves, you now, the president has ordered the insurance companies to reinstate the plan that his law required them to cancel.
So how does that work now?
They're going to be in violation of the law.
How does this square?
There is a law.
It's called Obamacare.
They can't offer you the policy that was canceled by virtue of the law.
Except the president playing dictator has just waved his magic wand in fantasy land and told him they have to.
So how do they do it?
Are we gonna call what they're doing a tax in order to make it constitutional?
Again, your premiums are necessarily gonna skyrocket if you go back to your old plan, because they're this they they've just blown up the entire universe here with their website, healthcare.gov, it doesn't work.
it's an absolute total obliterated But all the chaos just fits right in with what the president's ultimate dream for all of this is, and that's the government in charge of everything.
And the more chaos and the more distress, as long as they just want to get through the 2014 elections.
That's that's all they want to do.
And then, folks, it's over.
Just get to the 2014 election, because it's the dream is the Democrats winning the House.
That's that's what they've all got focused on.
Now they're even looking at possibly losing the Senate.
That's how mad people are.
It could be 2010 times 10.
So I don't know how you save insurance contracts and elected politicians who perpetrated a massive fraud.
But that's what they're trying to do.
We'll get your phone calls in on this, and it's some interesting sound bites, too, as the program unfolds here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Be right back.
Don't go away.
Happy to have you with us, my friends, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Remember what Bill Clinton said about the entire Obama presidency, about the entire Obama campaign, Clinton famously dismissed Obama's entire candidacy by saying, give me a break.
This whole thing's the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.
This is back when it was gonna be his wife, and the media abandoned his wife for the for the young, attractive Messiah instead of the old and aging whatever.
And so Clinton was upset and they were playing the race card on him.
He said, give me a break.
This guy's the biggest suit I've ever seen is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.
And that's what this is.
This is a fairy tale.
This this cannot be fixed.
Folks, the damage is more than done here.
Already millions of Americans have been made to pay higher premiums.
They have lost their jobs.
Look at all the people who've been converted from part-time to full-time.
We had 91.5 million Americans not working, 48 million Americans on food stamps and climbing.
People have had for the past month their health insurance policies canceled, but all of a sudden today, with the waving of a magic wand, the insurance companies have to somehow make those canceled plans available, even though they are in direct conflict with the existing law called Obamacare.
Just yesterday, those canceled policies were substandard, and now that's what Obama wants you To have because you want it, you didn't want to have to get rid of it.
He lied to you, and the Democrats are in electoral trouble for November of 2014.
This is it's unfixable.
You know, even McCain.
And I've got the soundbite.
Even McCain said, this is never gonna work.
The only thing we can do is repeal this.
McCain, folks.
I don't know if he squared that with Chris Christie before he said it, but nevertheless, this is what Senator McCain is now suggesting if he only fixes repeal.
Now, was it just a month ago?
Ted Cruz was an extremist radical hostage taking ransom demanding wankko for suggesting this.
The AP headline on the Obama press conference today sums it all up.
It's by David Esper.
He doesn't write the headline.
This is the AP story.
Policy cancellations, Colonel Obama will allow old plans.
What is this will allow?
He might think of himself one, but he is not a dictator.
We are not a banana republic yet.
This is not an authoritarian form of government.
This is a constitutional republic.
And the president doesn't allow or disallow.
The president can't buy or purchase.
Congress must do that.
All this talk about, well, Obama, he'll just come along and offer subsidies if he has to to the Obama can't do that legally.
Only Congress can approve that.
Right here you have it, right from the AP.
Obama will allow old plan.
You wonder why I'm using the language I'm using about him pretending playing dictator.
The media already thinks he is.
Obama will allow old plans...
The fact of the matter is, in our form of government, Barack Obama did not have the power to do any of this in the first place.
And that's what's wrong with it, and that's why it needs to be repealed, because it does not jive with our former government.
This is this is an affront to the very founding of this country.
Every aspect of Obamacare is an affront to the founding.
Let me grab a call before the uh hour wraps up.
Jason in Dayton, Ohio.
Hello, sir.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Thanks for having me, Rush.
Long time listener, first time caller.
Hey, I want to know when are we going to see a shred of accountability from this uh administration?
You did.
Um you did today.
That's what you saw.
Well, I think that's uh laughable.
I mean, from the beginning of this health care rollout to um, you know, all the issues that they they've had with the website, and down to today, it's it's a lot of finger pointing.
Uh, whereas I feel that any of it had been successful, it would have been, you know, the rock saying, oh, you know, I did this, I did this, but um, we haven't seen uh a shred of accountability.
Here's here's the problem.
Look, I'm sorry, Jason, it didn't ever have a chance to be successful.
No.
No, I agree with that.
It couldn't be.
This is the point.
This was never.
This is a fantasy.
This is a bunch of liberal theoreticians, smug, arrogant, condescending intellectuals sitting around the faculty lounge for years and years planning and dreaming of how if they ever got control, how they would fix the horrible inequities of capitalism, and they would make it work simply by the force of their intellect.
They are smarter than anybody.
This is exactly what you get when you have a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals who arrogantly think they're smarter than anybody else, putting themselves in the place of people who've got experience and knowledge when they have none.
There is no accountability.
For socialists, for communists, for liberals, it's always somebody else's fault.
In this case, it's gonna be the insurance companies that screwed this up, and it's gonna be the governors that screwed this up who didn't do the exchanges.
Obama, as far as he's concerned, he went out and said, uh, I'm sorry you misunderstood.
And and that's that's as much accountability as you're gonna get.
In his mind, he hadn't done anything.
Everybody else just too stupid to figure out how to make this work.
It's just it's it's it's insulting, is what all this is.
I have a prediction.
I have a prediction.
I'm the Democrats in the Senate are not gonna go for this.
They're gonna want Land Rue, because it's permanent.
They don't want just a one-year fix.
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