All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 11, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:59
February 11, 2014, Tuesday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
How are you?
It's great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Happy to have you here.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
The email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
So I have to answer Jordan's question.
Now we ran out of time.
She wanted to know what my favorite character is and what my favorite parts. of the book.
And I'm going to take a little license here.
Because I want to talk about the new book, the one we announced on Friday, Rush Revere and the First Patriots.
This one has some things in it that I just, and I've got to be careful that I don't give too much away here.
The first thing I've already mentioned once, I'll do it again.
Rush Revere and Liberty time travel back to King George's Palace.
Get in there and actually have a debate slash conversation with the king about what he's doing to the columnists and why he wants them to remain enslaved and dependent on him and Britain.
And remember what these books are.
There is a mission here in the Rush Revere series, and it is to teach the truth of American history to young people who may not be getting it in school.
In fact, we know they're not.
There's another device that is employed in this book, and I've got to be very careful because I don't want to give it all away.
But there is a student who, the best thing I could say is a saboteur who tries to undermine Rush Revere and his mission and the other students that he takes along.
Spoiled brat student who tries to undermine or sabotage.
Yeah, it's good, folks.
I'm just telling you, kids are going to eat it up.
They're going to love it.
And the parents obviously will too, as will the grandparents.
So it's Rush Revere and the First Patriots.
I guess the focal point would be the Boston Tea Party, but we meet Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, King George, Patrick Henry, and a couple of people, peripherally Paul Revere at first, but he comes up another.
Well, shut up here, Rush.
So that's basically it.
And it goes on sale on March the 11th.
It's available for pre-order now at Amazon and Barnes ⁇ Noble and iBooks on iTunes.
And we're just so excited about it.
I can't tell you because of the mission and the purpose here and the reaction that we've gotten.
The feedback is just over the top.
It's just wonderful.
It's just great.
And all these phone calls we get that I get from the young people reading the book and sharing their thoughts and asking me questions about it.
I love it.
I just absolutely am eating it up.
So, Jordan, that's how I would answer the question, favorite character.
That's tough.
I mean, I have a little sympathy for Revere, too, you know, because his name's on the book, and Liberty is the most popular character.
And Revere's got it.
He's got a little ego problem about it, dealing with it, but still, a little sympathy for Rush Revere now and then.
Although he doesn't need it.
He's not asking for it, but it wouldn't hurt.
Okay, let's go to the audio sound bites before I – I've talked a couple of times today about the Ron Fournier piece where he says why I'm getting sick of defending Obamacare.
That is, I think, an umbrella piece for a lot of allies of Obama.
They're just getting fed up with this.
I mean, you know, their reputations are on the line, too.
Don't forget, all these media people have been from the get-go selling this thing right along with Obama as the great panacea and utopia that he told them it was.
And they have been doing everything they can to make everybody think that that's exactly what it is.
And it isn't.
And it's paramountly obvious now that it's a disaster and that everybody was misled and lied about it.
And some of these media people are at their wit's end over this.
Because you have to understand, they wanted it to work.
It's like Fournier says here, I wanted it to work.
I wanted it to work because like Charles Lane wrote for the Washington Post, he said, the link between work and insurance needs to be broken.
I want it to work.
And all these media types, they really wanted it to work because it's Obama's and they want everything to go well for him.
But this is key here.
We need the link between work and insurance to be broken.
What does that mean?
It means that these leftists think it's unfair that you should have to work in order to have health care.
That the only people who have it are people who are employed, who have it as an employee benefit.
And that isn't fair.
People ought to be able to get it without having to work.
They can.
It's just a choice.
You can get health care if you don't work.
It's called buying the policy.
But Mithril Limbo, Mr. Limboy, I thought Smith.
Well, okay, then maybe if you really want it, then you get rid of something else you can't afford at the same time.
Oh, that's easy for you to say, Mr. London.
No, no, it's the way we used to live with every other thing.
I mean, there was a time in my life I couldn't afford a house.
I couldn't have it.
There was a time in my life I couldn't really afford the car that I wanted.
I didn't run around bellyaching about how unfair it is that some people had the car they wanted and I didn't.
And I didn't run around demanding the federal government come up with a plan of policy to enable me to get a car without having to work.
What is this?
Break the link between work and insurance.
Why don't you break the link between work and everything?
Why should anybody have to work to have food?
Why do people work anyway?
Since I'm filled with questions today, let me throw that out there.
Why do people work?
Why is it unfair to have to work in order to have health insurance?
Why is it unfair to have to work to have a car?
Shouldn't we break that link too?
Why don't we break the link between work and cars?
And when we break that link, then let's break the link between work and shelter.
Why should we have to work in order to have shelter?
Isn't shelter as much of a God-given right as health care is?
Oh, no, in these people's minds, why should we have to work to have food?
For crying out loud, we cannot live without food.
Why in the world should we have to work for something that we can't get along without?
Where is the justice in having to work to eat?
You talk about discrimination.
You talk about unfairness.
You talk about injustice.
We need to break the link between work and cars and food and shelter and health insurance.
And that's why we support Obama.
Why should there be a link from work to anything?
All work is, is a lack of choice.
All work is, is some punitive situation that society forces you into, and you end up in something called job luck.
Now let's go to the audio sound booth.
Here is Obama.
This is from the joint press conference this afternoon with the French President Holland.
And in the QA, reporters said to Obama, yesterday, your regime again delayed the employer mandate for mid-size companies.
Last week, your economic advisor, Jason Furman, talked about the new choices that people have to find health care outside the workplace.
I wonder if you could explain the delay in the mandate and also talk about whether over the long term you see a future where health insurance is less tied to the workplace.
So you see this is conventional wisdom now.
This is a new mantra in the drive-by media.
What is this business of having to work to have health care?
We need to break that link.
And so here we have this unidentified reporter.
Would you talk about whether over the long term you see a future where health insurance isn't tied to the workplace?
What we did yesterday was simply to make an adjustment in terms of their compliance because for many of these companies, just the process of complying, yeah, they're mid-size between 50 and 100 folks.
It may take them some time even if they're operating in good faith.
And we want to make sure that the purpose of the law is not to punish them.
Oh man, do you realize what we just heard here?
Let me go back.
You know, they're mid-size, 50 and 100 folks.
It may take them some time, even if they're operating in good faith, which means he thinks most are not.
But for even the ones that are operating in good faith, meaning even the ones who are complying with my demand, maybe, you know, we need to give them some time.
They've only had three years to get ready for it.
And it looks like they need more.
And we really, the purpose of the law isn't to punish them.
Oh, it's not.
The purpose of the law punishes everybody.
What is a fine or potential jail time if you don't follow this mandate?
Well, we're not going to punish anybody here.
But compliance is punishment.
And since punishment would not work well before the election, we're going to delay the punishment.
They say they're delaying the compliance, but they're delaying the punishment.
Now, this is what he said about breaking the link between work and health care.
We have a unique system compared to many parts of the world, including France, where partly because of historical accident and some decisions that FDR made during wartime back in World War II, our health care has been much more tied to employers.
That's not the case in most other developed countries.
I don't think that an employer-based system is going to be or should be replaced anytime soon.
But what the Affordable Care Act does do is it gives people some flexibility.
What flexibility?
What flexibility does the Affordable Care Act give anybody?
The only flexibility they have is when he comes along and delays it, and then they don't have to comply.
But here he's trashing FDR.
Well, you know, FDR screwed up and GM, you know, World War II.
That's where this all went wrong, because we attached health care as an employee benefit in order to attract workers.
And by the way, that's where income tax withholding started too, folks, is World War II, just to simplify everything.
But we're not going to really separate the employer-based system, but the drive-bys are demanding it.
The drive-bys, we've got to break this link between work and insurance.
We've got to break that link.
So Obama let him down with that answer.
Now, he wasn't through here.
Here's how the Affordable Care Act, I want you to listen very carefully to this now, because he just said what the Affordable Care Act does is give people some flexibility.
And in the next sound bite, he explains that.
Here is how you are given flexibility by virtue of Obamacare.
It says, if I'm working at a big company like IBM or Google and I decide I want to start my own company, that I'm not going to be inhibited from starting a new company because I'm worried about keeping health insurance for myself and my family.
I can go make that move.
If I'm a woman whose husband's a farmer and I'd really like to work with him on the farm, but we can't afford health insurance on our own.
So I've been working at the county clerk's office for the last 10 years.
Now maybe I've got the opportunity to no longer work in a different job and instead work on that farm and increase the likelihood of economic success for my family.
How in the hell does this guy see women milking cows out on the farm if they're not in the county clerk's office?
So there's the flexibility, ladies.
If your husband's a farmer working with manure and pig slop all day, you want to join him, Obamacare will let you do it.
If you don't like working in the county clerk's office, you can get out of there and you can head to the farm and somehow you'll be able to keep your health insurance.
And if you're working at IBM and Google and you want to be an entrepreneur and you want to start your own company out there, but you're afraid to do it because you won't have health care.
Well, the Affordable Care Act fixes that.
But nobody knows how it does that.
Nobody knows anything about how this works because it isn't working.
And we will be back.
Don't go away.
Here's Rita in Corona, California.
Hi, Rita.
Glad you called.
Oh, Rosh, I'm so nervous.
This is like talking to the Pope.
Well, yes.
I'm serious.
I've got grandchildren that are rush babies.
I appreciate that.
That's so cool.
Thank you.
I used to send you emails all the time from Constitutional Conservative Gal on the left coast, on the far left coast, back when I was working for a company.
Then I went out on my own and I couldn't be the fly on the wall for all the stuff coming from the DNC anymore.
And so I've missed you, and I've never gotten to call in before.
I've just never been able to stay on the phone that long or dial that many times.
But I'm so glad, so glad, because I'm a broker here.
I sell health insurance, and I'm so sad for the people of California, the individuals, the families, they're going through holy hell.
Like how?
Because we don't hear about this.
No, you don't.
Yeah.
California was the first one to open up its own exchange called Covered California.
Oh, yeah, it's run by the Service Employees International Union and the NAACP.
Yeah, and 43 or 46 or however many felons, yes.
Right.
We're aware.
I wanted to relate to you a personal story.
One of my clients is myself, and I've been on the phone so many times.
Three and a half hours is nothing on hold to speak to somebody at an insurance company.
Back in November, I said to myself, well, you know what?
Humans being as they are, I wanted to make sure that I got as long a run as I could.
Well, hang on, right.
Hang on right there.
I've got to take a break here at the bottom of the hour.
Don't lose your train of thought.
We'll pick it up right there when we get back.
Hell yeah, back to Riva in Corona, California.
You are an insurance broker.
You're right in the middle of a story.
Yes.
I wanted to make sure that I would be able to take advantage of at least a six-month premium guarantee.
Okay?
Right.
So the day after Thanksgiving, I faxed in my application for my husband and myself.
He's 64.
I'm 63.
And they did my policy right away.
I had the policy start date December 17 so that I would at least be able to assure it a few months of the same premium.
Well, January 1st came, they sent me out first my package for the policy that I had chosen.
Great deductible, wonderful coverage, $580 a month.
Then five days later, they sent me the new package for the Obamacare mandates at $1,124 a month.
Hey, this almost doubled.
Yeah, just about double.
And now I had all of a sudden pediatric dental, ACA insurer fees, medical reinsurance fees, exchange fees, totaling $120 a month just in fees.
And I said, you know, hey, guys, then that wasn't the end of it.
I had 10 different billings within about 20 days.
What is very interesting, and I don't think the American public sees it yet.
I don't think they know it yet.
But this was the experiment to see how people, individuals and families would react.
They're already delaying all these mandates for the big businesses, the small businesses, after the election.
I think that it's going to happen with the individual market, too.
In fact, I'm absolutely sure it is because of all these bills that I've gotten.
So what's your prediction?
Well, my bill for 3-1 of 2014 says $580.
That's the premium I was supposed to be paying.
There's nothing in my billings yet, and it's already the middle of February.
There's nothing that is asking me for money from 3-1 to 4-1 for anything other than what they promised me in the first place.
The last time I was on hold for three and a half hours with the company that I have, so what do you think is going to happen?
Since this isn't all working, what do you think is going to happen?
I think the next thing we're going to hear is that the individual mandate is going to be taken out for right now to get them through this next November 4th and to at least give some of the Democrats.
If you delay the individual mandate you have essential with everything else they've done, you've just broomed Obamacare.
You basically have just broomed it.
Because now people can keep their illegal plan that they had.
The employer mandate for medium-sized business delayed till 2016.
The employer mandate for large businesses, that's next.
And she thinks the individual mandate will be the next thing that they will exempt or delay, which means there's no Obamacare.
I mean, that's the guts.
The individual mandate, that's what the Supreme Court case was about.
The mandatory requirement that you have health insurance regardless whether you work or not, if they broom that, if they delay that, if they do that, that's almost the white flag.
Well, you can't, well, you can't pay for 30 million extra people to do that, but they're not going to be able to pay for 30 million extra people anyway.
That's the whole business.
It was never going to work.
But if you eliminate that mandate, that everybody have insured, that's what got the insurance companies on board.
They saw massive new customers, mandatory, had to buy insurance.
That's how they suppose they're going to get premiums down with this massive big pool.
I'll be surprised if they do that because that's tantamount.
I mean, it's not striking the law, don't misunderstand.
It's taking the guts out of it if they do that.
But they can't administer what they've got now.
This is such a joke.
There's a story out of CBS, San Francisco.
Some doctors surprised to be on Covered California's provider list.
Now, get this.
In a nutshell, practically every independent doctor in California is opting out of Obamacare.
Independent means they don't work for hospital because their fees from Obamacare insurance are too low.
There's no reason to stay in it.
They can't get higher rates like hospitals can.
So they're just not taking Obamacare patients.
And yet this article says independent physicians across California say they can't afford to participate in Covered California's insurance plans because the reimbursement rates are too low.
And they say they don't have the clout that doctors with larger medical groups have to negotiate higher rates or fees.
And they also warn that that could mean a shortage of doctors in areas largely served by independent physicians.
So doctors who think they've opted out are in it and they don't want to be.
Rita, are you still there?
I am.
I just have one quick...
It's worse than that, Rush.
I just have...
Well, I know.
But I just have one quick question for you.
Mm-hmm.
Are you still able, despite all of this, to get your birth control pills?
Rush I had a tubaligation when I was 25 years old.
Doesn't matter.
But yeah, I probably could if I wanted.
However, on my new policy, there's a $5,500 deductible, and that applies to any medicines, too.
Yeah.
Look, it's unworkable.
It's an absolute disaster.
And Obama was what?
How will we know that it is totally imploded when it has imploded?
If you're waiting for the regime to admit that it's imploded, and that's your sign that it's imploded, you're never going to get that.
The regime is going to do everything they can to save this if they have to delay it to 2020.
Because remember, this isn't about health care for the regime.
This isn't about health care for the Democrats.
That's not what this is.
It never has been.
That's just been the lure because it's so important to people.
That's been the Santa Claus promise, but it's never been about health care.
So they're not going to give it up.
Well, I have not predicted it's going to collapse on itself.
Other people have predicted it's going to collapse on itself.
The manifestation of that will be people just not signing up for it, just refusing to, trying to find their own entrepreneurial way around getting treated when they get sick, paying a doctor, finding a way to do it.
It's going to be a rat race.
I think some people are going to have insurance, some are not.
Some doctors are not going to participate.
I think the regime is fully aware of the absolute disaster that they have here.
The alternative, you know, you can get Medicaid by not working.
You can't get Obamacare yet not working, but you can get Medicaid.
There's always that for people to go to.
But here's, look at the numbers that Rita gave.
$5,200 deductible and a premium of $1,100.
How in the world are people going to pay for Obamacare unless they have a job?
And if everybody ends up being subsidized, who's paying for it?
It's going to implode on itself one way or the other.
It is structurally impossible for it to work.
But that doesn't mean that even when that realization hits that the regime is going to throw up their hands and say, you know what?
It just doesn't, that's not who these people are.
Because it isn't about health care.
They're not going to surrender this control they've got over people.
The last thing they can do.
That's why they're desperate to win these elections.
It's really crunch time for them and us too.
You know, Obama's out there.
This press conference at Olon, and he's talking about, okay, you work at Google, or you work at IBM, but you want to leave.
You want to start your own company, but you don't because you might not be able to have health care.
Take it with your portability or whatever.
Well, we want to fix that with Obamacare.
Look, when we're getting to the point that health care stops people from moving around, we're doing everything back ass words.
Most employers, up until Obama got involved in this, most employers offered it.
And in boom economic times, the benefits got better.
It was part of the competitive nature for finding the best employees.
You offer the best benefits package.
The market works.
And now, because of Obamacare, businesses, most employers offered health care as a, just as they offered bathrooms and water faucets.
Then Obamacare comes along, and that's when they start canceling it.
Businesses were not getting rid of health care before Obamacare came along, except those who anticipated what Obamacare was going to mean for them.
But before Obamacare was even a thought or a dream in a socialist's eye, I'm going back 10 years.
Most employers offered health care and there was no problem and there was no fear.
There were complaints about how expensive it was and all that.
It wasn't a panacea.
But my point is that you moved around and because in a robust economy, jobs are being created.
It makes mobility more possible.
In a robust economy, employers have to compete for good employees offering good benefits packages.
The government doesn't need to be involved in this.
They can't be.
All they can do is mess this up, which they've done.
Now, since Obamacare is when people are losing their health insurance, now Obama and the Democrats want you to believe that it's evil, mean, big, greedy business people and evil, mean, medium-sized business people who want all the money for themselves.
And so they're reducing you to 29 hours and they're getting rid of your health package and they're cutting your wages because they're greedy SOBs.
They're only doing this because Obama was elected.
The only reason, well, not the only, because there are going to be exceptions to everything.
The vast majority of people losing their health insurance are losing it because Obama and the Democrats have taken over health care.
That's really all anybody needs to realize.
How many of you really feared losing your health insurance back in the 90s and back in the 2000s?
I mean, you might have worried about losing it if you're going to switch jobs and you had to start the bottom and work your way up the ladder and probationary status and all that.
But I mean, how many of you worried that the next day, next month, next year, your company was going to eliminate it?
There might have been a little bit of that based on the health of the individual company.
But culturally, societally, this is not something people woke up and were afraid of.
Now, the law of the land practically, it's only because of Obamacare that this mass cancellation of policies is taking place.
If you strip away all of the minutia, that remains the simplest way to understand what's going on.
I got to take a break.
I'm way long here, folks.
Sit tight.
We'll be right back.
Hey, one other thing here.
This business of breaking the link between work and healthcare.
You know, folks, I got to tell you something.
It really frosts me what's happening here with work and the Democrat Party.
Since when is forcing people out of work to be celebrated, and that's what they're trying to do, this is one of the biggest frauds in modern history.
The Democrat Party is a fraud.
The Democrat Party kills jobs and businesses and argues that this is mobility.
And this opens up all kinds of artistry in people.
If you're a hobo, it's mobile.
But since when is joblessness mobility?
Since when is destroying private insurance mobility?
Do you think Medicaid creates poets?
Does Medicaid create entrepreneurs?
None of the welfare state does.
Individual initiative does.
The benefits that come from it.
And here we're now, we're faced with the Democrat Party celebrating people losing their jobs.
It's outrageous, if you ask me, and it's tough to put up with.
Don't fret it, my friends.
The energy level will survive our 21-hour break, as will the passion.
We'll be back and resume, pick up right where we left off with whatever's hot.
▲
Export Selection