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May 8, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:20
May 8, 2014, Thursday, Hour #2
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Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, Rush Limboy and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network doing what I was born to do.
We are here on the left coast.
We've been here since uh Tuesday, and today, a couple hours from now, three hours from now, somewhere around there, I will head over and get the brand new cochlear implant surgically implanted three weeks ago, a little over three weeks ago.
Swelling has gone down enough now.
I actually go in there and have the thing turned on.
And the first time that this happened, of course, I had no idea what to expect.
None.
There's nothing anybody can tell you.
I mean, the people that even have had cochlear implant surgery, there's no way that they can that anybody can adequately describe the way it sounds.
I was deaf for three months, and then it got turned on, and every the only way I could relate to it was my memory of having been able to hear.
And it's nothing like that.
Nobody can prepare you for it, even the people in the business, because they can all hear, and they've not heard what sound sounds like via cochlear implant.
They've tried, the engineers have tried to manufacture tapes of of what they think it sounds like to people.
But even those of us with implants cannot listen to a tape of what they produced and say, yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like, because we don't know if what we're hearing is the same way they hear it.
So that actually is what makes this technology all the more amazing.
People that can hear designed it.
Now they can they can map it and put it on meters and understand that it's gonna produce sound of the audio nerve.
They got a pretty good idea because they invented it.
But still, it it takes somebody deaf using one to actually know what it's like.
And no two people are the same.
No two people are identical.
The first time it was turned on, the first thing I heard, I thought it was an electrical hum.
A low-pitched electrical hum.
Nobody said anything for a while.
Because until I send them a signal, they had no idea whether I could hear anything.
So I sat there for a while and I digested what I was hearing, and it was the room noise, white noise, but there was a low-pitched electrical hum.
I remember that was the first thought that I had.
And the audiologist said, Can you hear anything?
I said, Yeah.
And I heard my voice for the first time.
Now, back then, the microphone was up on the head piece.
And that's the worst place for the microphone.
It's behind you when it's on the side of your head.
So I didn't, you know, I it's all I knew, so I accepted it was great.
I could hear people speak again, and I could understand what they were saying.
That electrical hum was always there, but after a while I got used to it, kind of like you got used to room noise, and then you don't hear it after a while.
And some days I have tinnitus, the correct pronunciation for the word some people pronounce as tinnitus.
And some people have it, some people don't.
For the longest time I didn't know I had it.
I there were there were uh remember one morning, about two months after I had had my implant first one turned on, I was awakened from sleep at five in the morning with this gigantic.
I thought I was in a panic.
I thought something had gone wrong with the implant in my ear, in in my head, because it it sounded it was an expanding in volume electronic, something wrong electronically.
So, oh my gosh.
So I got out, I I sent a flash email to my doctor, and he said, it can't be because there is nothing inside your head that has power.
It can't have any power till you attach the headpiece.
The battery and all the powers outside your head.
There's no power in there.
Turned out it was just a bad case of tinnitus.
It hasn't happened since, but the tinnitus or tinnitus that I experience more often than not is a low, very low frequency hum.
But I didn't know that's what it was.
I thought it was something wrong with the implant, or not wrong, just a characteristic.
But when that happens, it makes everybody I'm speaking to sound like this behind some carnival wall, because the the the tone is.
So you hope, like if if I had that happening today, I would cancel the map session because it would no way be accurate.
But I don't have any tonight as today, so I'm going to go in and we'll start the mapping process.
Now I kind of know what to expect, but in a way I don't.
I don't want to get too technical, but they're going to try a digital map on my new ear that does not work on my left side.
I'm still stuck with the old original analog technology.
Sounds fine, but it's not the best on paper.
The best is they call it this particular company brand name is high res for high resolution, but it's digital.
And I have a digital map on you can you can put three different maps or programs, actually five now, in in the implant externally.
And I they've always put the high resin one and they've begged me, would you just use it?
Just use it, maybe get used to it.
And I said, No, you don't understand.
A, there's practically no volume.
B, everybody literally sounds like chipmunks.
There is no way I can use this even for a week, and it's going to improve or get any better.
Trust me.
Don't doubt me.
I'm a sound expert, but they keep trying.
So they're gonna do the digital only today.
No matter what, I'm getting digital only.
And they told me you don't use your left implant for a while.
You've got to get used to the one on your right, because we're gonna we're gonna use the technology.
We got fresh ear.
We've got every one of your electrodes active.
We've got no facial ticks that we know of.
So they're kind of excited.
They can't wait.
They're hoping that the high-res works on the right side.
And I have no clue, no idea.
There is no predictor, no way of knowing, but we will in a few hours.
And I've had a lot of people wishing me.
I played golf yesterday with Joel Cerno and some of his buddies.
Uh what a great group.
Just a great, great group of guys.
And uh ran into Powers Booth afterwards, Lee Lamar on Nashville, and either the vice president on 24.
And everybody was uh, you know, wishing me good luck and keep me posted and so forth.
Everybody's been really great about it.
And but when the audiologist told me, you don't use your old implant for a while.
You just stick with what's on the right side, and and they're hell bent on making this high-res work, the digital work.
And I'm saying to myself, what if it doesn't?
As soon as I leave, I'm gonna make them do an analog map, I don't care what it takes.
If analog is what works, that's what works.
But the point we're telling everybody, it can't it can't get worse.
That's the upside here.
What I have is perfectly fine.
Like I it in doing the program, I have a line in.
I'm not using any kind of a microphone to hear.
I've got a direct line in, the same thing as wearing headphones or a direct audio patch.
So there's no microphone involved here.
Uh cell phones, I still need to call transcribed.
I can't hear what people are saying on a cell phone.
Uh regular phone, I can, but who uses those anymore?
I don't.
Uh I don't use the phone, period.
It's a great excuse to not take a phone call.
Sorry, can't hear you.
Being deaf has many upsides, folks, many, many upsides that you will never understand.
So they're gonna just insist on this digital working today.
And I hope it does too.
But like I've been telling you, it can't get worse.
And everybody that I've talked to that has had only one side implanted and has gone to the bilateral of the other, they've all said it was just incredibly improved.
Their circumstance, certainly spatial and turning determining where sound is coming from.
Uh and in some cases, it's it's helped speech comprehension as well.
Now the I mentioned the implant, The first one was a belt worn unit, which I still use to do the program because that's when you can tattoo line directly into it.
With for those of you watching on the ditto cam, the microphone initially is right here.
Bad place for it to be.
When I'm not doing the program, I don't use this.
I take it off and I put the behind the ear, the BTE unit, and that microphone is right in the ear.
The loop over the ear, the microphone right there.
The sound is improved, the comprehension 100%, just by locating the microphone a different place, including the way I hear myself.
It replicates line in audio.
There are actually two microphones in the behind the ear unit.
You can use them together or uh separately.
And the one that the one built in that I use in the golf course, it cancels all the wind, which is horrible.
Wind going through a microphone.
Trying to understand people with that going on is not possible.
But a microphone built into the unit cancels that out.
So it's it's harder for the wind to get to it.
So it all works out.
But it can't get any worse.
That's that's the I mean the total upside here.
I mean, if it doesn't work, which it will if it does, I've still got this.
And I'm uh I'm I'm perfectly functional.
Well, not perfectly, but I'm that's yeah, miraculously functional, even with just this one.
So and then what will happen?
Going to four hours this afternoon, maybe a little longer, and then go back tomorrow and do it all over again to make sure the results are the same.
And if they vary widely, they'll take an average of the two days and then make those the programs.
Then come back three weeks a month and do it all over again and do it enough times to where they can establish a baseline of sameness or consistency.
Because the programming is crucial.
They can, if they wanted to, they could program this thing so I couldn't understand a word anybody said.
That's how crucial the mapping process is.
And it requires the input and the honesty of the patient.
So you gotta no ego, there's no right or wrong, it's just how you happen to hear the various tones that they pump at you during the mapping session.
And you have to be honest.
Yep, I hear it now.
You can't wait until you really hear it.
You have to hear it the very flash you think you hear it.
You have to say so.
And what what's intense about it is the volume is so low that it's just intense concentration for hundreds of different tones, and then do it again, and this time they keep the cones coming at increased volume until you've reached what you think is a comfortable volume level.
Well uh it's tones.
How do you determine can't you give me a voice to tell you the volume level?
Nope, it has to be with the tones.
It all works together with the mapping and so forth.
But at least I know what to expect now when the thing goes on, as opposed to the uh to the to the first time.
So looking forward to it, in a uh little big decision to have to make, because everything was fine here.
Doing surgery again, not a big fan of that, but it went fine, it was okay.
So we'll find out in mere hours.
Now, one thing if people ask me, well, can you get better practicing?
No.
It's not like that.
Uh people think it would be.
Can't you go to a crowded restaurant and just get you No, you either hear or you don't.
You can either understand what somebody's saying or you don't.
There's no that's why the map is so crucial.
The programming is so crucial, because there isn't there is a period of becoming accustomed to how things sound.
But there's no way to improve your speech comprehension by practicing and spending more time at it.
It just it is what it is.
It's brilliant technology.
It it really is.
Brief time out, we'll come back and continue in mere moments.
Sit tight, do not go away.
How are you?
Welcome back.
L Rushbow, the excellence in broadcasting network.
Sit tight, my friends.
The Monica Lewinsky stuff's coming up.
It's quite hilarious, and it uh offers me an opportunity to be somewhat braggadocious if I wish to go there.
But people have been patiently waiting, and I want to get back to the phones, because sometimes, you know, it's just fun to bounce off whatever happens there.
You never really know what people are going to say, despite what they've told Snerdley they're gonna say.
It's always a roll of the dice.
And here's uh here's Lenny in Bayville, New Jersey.
Lenny, glad you called.
Thanks for waiting, sir.
Hello.
Thank you.
Yes.
Are you there?
I'm right here, Lenny, yes.
Okay.
Uh blessings this afternoon, Rush.
That's first and more important.
Thank you.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Now, uh with this medical insurance stuff from the companies.
ATT is taking all their retired non-management employees and putting them into the private health exchange January 1st of 2015.
All their retired?
Yep.
Non-management employees.
The retire- the retirees that are still on the company health care plan because of the deal they had or whatever?
Yes.
They're offloading them to the exchanges starting January 2015.
Yes.
Right?
Legally, by the way.
That Obamacare encourages it.
We should be honest in saying.
But you're talking probably a few hundred thousand or a million people.
Oh, dumped.
Yeah.
Well, wait till you get to the non-retired employees.
They're gonna get hit with this too.
That's that's what's kind of disingenuous.
Look, I don't want to get the Kaiser people mad at me.
There's there's nothing to be gained by that.
But for crying out loud here, they've known about this.
They've got this big news story from yesterday warning people that this is going to happen, and they're saying that there may be something they can do to help this situation.
But I mean, for crying, everybody who supported Obamacare has got to accept a share of responsibility for this.
Everybody who supported this, everybody who who you know knew what was in it and didn't tell anybody this was in it.
Two years ago, go back to Rush Limbaugh.com.
You can read transcripts of it being discussed on this program.
And again, I want to make the point it was supposed to have been implemented in January of this year, 2014.
Right now, all these cancellations you've heard about, those are just the self-insured.
Those are not people that get their health insurance at work.
And you've heard enough horror stories from those people about what the replacement costs are, what the premiums and the deductibles are, doubled and tripled, and what's happening to the co-pays.
And all along, we reminded people uh wait, those of you who are covered at work.
This doesn't affect you yet.
Your time is coming.
And it was supposed to have arrived with January, but the regime delayed it.
You imagine just in this guy's example, 18 to hundreds of thousands of people in January had been offloaded to healthcare.gov and the mess that was.
Can you imagine?
We wouldn't just be talking about a wave Republican victory.
We would be talking about the funeral of the Democrat Party.
And the regime knew this.
And that's why this has been delayed until after the election.
And there's there are a couple of other elements of Obamacare that have been moved back beyond 2016.
The presidential race.
ATT all along has been saying that Obamacare was going to cost them over a billion dollars a year.
And this is how they are going to get out of that in part.
And so the Kaiser report here is a warning story.
Heads up warning, guess what your employer is even now thinking about doing?
Well, of course your employer is.
Your employer's known about it for a longest time, just like everybody else has.
We had a call.
The guy couldn't go on the air.
He was afraid to go on the air.
He was Afraid he would be recognized.
He said, told Snerdley's name, he's a health care consultant.
What did he say?
15 companies that he's consulting?
If oh, okay.
He's a health care consultant.
In other words, he advises companies on how to best do health care at most affordable pricing and least expense involved and so forth.
He said so far he's he's consulting 15 different companies slash corporations who are going to offload all their employees.
He's also advising them on the 30-hour work week and what that will mean for them.
I e.
part-timers don't have to get covered at all.
That's before November or January of next year.
And then he told Snerdley that up next, the multinational corporations are wanting to know what elements of Obamacare legally impact them.
The bottom line here is that there are going to be millions of people who are not expecting it, who are going to get notices probably after the election.
I guess the notices will go out probably a day after the election, the week after, maybe two weeks after, warning them that in the coming months, in the first of the year, their health care will be transferred from the company to healthcare.gov or some exchange, and the company, the employees are going to get these notices and they're going to look at this and they're going to panic because they're going to have heard all the horror stories of Obamacare, the exchanges and all that.
That's going to affect most of the people in the country.
Well, now I've some, you know, darn it, Rush.
I'm sorry, folks, I have been thick headed and I haven't seen something right in front of my face on this.
IBM and Time Warner are planning on dumping their retirees into the Obamacare exchanges as well, in addition to stages of their full-time employees.
And then there's this story from May 1st of this year from McClatchy, and they are also shocked.
Report large employers could shift nearly all workers' health coverage to marketplace by 2020.
It finally hit me.
What has been bugging me about this?
And it does require, and I apologize to you, the media is gaming and scamming everybody.
They're acting like they just discovered this.
That's what's that's what's bugged me about this.
That's why I figured this makes sense to him.
Why is this news?
This is not news.
It's been known for years that this is going to happen.
And yet all of these news organizations all of a sudden now think they've discovered they covered it up.
In service to Obama in service to the regime.
Do you think that Obama would have been re-elected in 2020?
Do you think Obamacare would have passed if the news had gotten out to everybody that your employer could legally cancel your insurance, drop you from your plan, and force you to go to the government.
Do you think that plan would have passed?
There is no way.
Because what was happening while all this was going on?
Obama was lying for three years.
You like your doctor, you get to keep your doctor.
You like your plan, you get to keep your plan.
All along, the law said that businesses starting in 2014 could dump their employee covered health plans over to Obamacare or to the exchanges, whatever they were going to call them, did call them.
So people believed the president.
The president lied.
You like your doctor?
You can keep your doctor.
You like the plan?
Three years.
Told us lie left and right, and slavish drive-by media reporting it.
And all along they covered up.
And now, for some reason, out of the blue, Kaiser Health News, McClatchy, and a number Of others think they have discovered something that these evil corporations, and this is the tone in which this stuff is being reported now.
These mean, evil, greedy, selfish Coke brother types can just throw you off their health plan.
So this is part of an election year scam to tell you something that is at total variance from the truth.
These news organizations, all of whom knew that Obama was not telling the truth when he told you keep your doctor, keep your plan if you like it.
And anybody who had spent any time reading about or looking at the legislation knew that this provision.
And furthermore, when the delay was announced, everybody knew what the delay was.
Obama administration today announced a delay of one year of employers shifting their coverage to the exchanges.
Oh, hell, everybody knew it then when they announced the delay last year.
But now here we are on May 8th, and all of a sudden, the news media has discovered that these evil corporations can just do what they always do.
Treat their employees like dirt.
They don't care about them.
Look what they're gonna do with no reference in these stories that it is perfectly legal, that it is part of Obamacare, and that all there is is a small little fine involved.
So I ask you again, if you knew in the run up to the 2012 election, that your business could legally offload your health coverage to the exchanges, and were going to.
Instead of believing if you like your plan or doctor, you get to keep it, what What would what do you think the election outcome might have been?
I dare say I don't think it would have been nearly as easy for Obama.
And the same news organizations lied when the individual plans are being canceled.
The individual plans were going to be canceled all along.
Remember, everybody thought, no, no, I can keep my plan.
I keep my doctor.
Obama said so.
And everybody knew that that wasn't true when he was saying it.
Well, it's a caveat.
Some of these people in news business, I don't really know what they know anymore.
I I think it it may be they only really know what Obama tells them, and that's all they care about, and that part of the problem itself.
Here's uh where are we going next for?
Um, because it looks like you want me to take three calls at once up there, which I know you don't.
So, Larry in uh in not even good.
Lidditz, Pennsylvania.
Hi, Larry, great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hello, long time listener.
Thank you, sir.
I have a problem.
I have a business, and I got my new uh insurance plan in April, and my insurance is up for my employees a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars.
My deductibles went from two thousand to five thousand.
There's no way my employees can afford to do that.
And I seventy-five percent of my employees uh premium and they pay twenty-five percent.
I they pay the first thousand, I pay the rest.
I have to leave employees go to pick up the difference.
Let me see if I understand.
You said that what what goes up a hundred and seventeen thousand dollars?
My employees' insurance.
For all of your employees, the total increase to cover them all is an additional one hundred and seventeen thousand.
That is correct.
That you have to come up with the business has to come up with.
That's correct.
And you pay the first thousand of every employees' coverage and they pay the balance.
No, we pay 75% of our employees'insurance.
We pay the first thousand of the deductible.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
All right.
And you can't afford that anymore?
That's correct.
You can't afford it.
So you're going to have to let some people go in order to afford it.
That's what you said?
That's what I'm saying.
And were you given an explanation?
Is the coverage improving?
I mean, what are you getting for this $117,000 increase?
Well, the plan is a little worse than what I had before.
And the problem is the insurance companies...
blamed it on the Obamacare.
Of course they would and Obamacare is blaming it on the insurance companies.
That's correct.
And Harry Reed's blaming it on the Cork brothers.
Wow and Monica doesn't know who to blame it on.
Well I I'm very much concerned because I have good employees.
How many how many how many employees do you have Larry?
We have about 70.
70 employees, and your total nut goes up $117,000, above and beyond what you're already paying.
That's correct.
And just correct me if I'm wrong.
A lot of people, Larry, think that since you have a business, that you are rich, and that you have in the back room drawers of money, or over in the bank, you've got lots of money that you're hoarding for yourself.
And it would be easy for you, Larry, to go get $117,000.
You just don't want to take it away from yourself, Larry.
I don't think that's correct.
I I enjoy what I'm doing.
Well you would know do you have 1700 lying around idle?
No I do not my point is you don't have it you've got to come up with it somehow because it's not a law of the land I gotta come up with it out of the business and you like your employers and you don't like what you're going to have to do.
That is correct.
What are you going to tell them?
Well I you know they're probably gonna have some tears and uh but I'm trying to save the other employees jobs yeah how are you going to choose?
Bad situation I I wish I knew the answer but I'm relying on some Republicans but they don't seem to care neither yeah yeah well so the thing you've got to do is come up with somebody to blame that your employers are going to believe do you know do you happen to know Larry how your employees voted in the last presidential election I'm sorry I didn't hear that.
Do you happen to know how your employees do you know which ones voted for Obama and which ones didn't I do well get get rid of the ones that voted for Obama say you you bought it you own it.
Well I only found out I'd probably end up in jail yeah yeah yeah that may be true I I already thought of that long ago.
See this is the way people are thinking now okay well uh you could you could Harry Reed's using it you could try to blame it on the Koch brothers well I could you could it doesn't help the employees you've got to leave go.
I know.
I'm just trying to lighten the situation here that really shouldn't be.
It's a horrible situation.
You don't want to fire anybody.
You probably need those people and the work that they do.
That's correct.
Well, get ready, folks.
I mean, the real onslaught of this stuff hasn't even begun yet.
That's the point.
Be right back.
Now stop and think for a moment on something we have heard today.
In the news, we have heard that the first thing that's going to happen with these corporations offloading is their retired employees.
Now, who are they?
Retired, they are certainly not in the target group Obama needs to be signing up, are they?
Obama needs you millennials.
You need you young, healthy people who are out there earning big money.
money to Sign up at the exchange so that you can pay the freight for treatment for the seasoned citizens.
However, that isn't happening.
Vast majority of enrollees are already the elderly and the sick.
If hundreds of thousands times however many corporations of retired employees get dumped into the exchanges, that is going to overwhelm it.
There isn't the money.
Well, there isn't the money now.
That's the thing.
We don't have any money for any of this.
But just taking Obamacare as a subset of itself and nothing else.
It needs an influx of healthy patients making no claims because they're not sick.
They're not having any crises or emergencies.
They pay all the money for insurance, and that money covers the treatment of the sick and the elderly.
But you start dumping retirees, people that aren't working, they're net takers from the system.
They're not contributing anything.
Except they're going to have to start.
They're going to have to start.
They're retired.
Their company is paying their health insurance, but now they're going to be who's going to pay it if the company doesn't.
Who's going to pay for their insurance?
That's the whole thing.
That's just going to overwhelm the entire system.
And it can't work.
It will collapse onto itself.
Gary Denver, great to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Good afternoon, Rush.
Nice to be here.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
So I'll make this real quick, Rush.
Everybody's focused on employer mandate being pushed out till next year.
But uh as we sit here right now, there are small employers that are getting notices from insurance companies canceling them.
And the reason for that is that Obamacare changes the way that uh insurance companies and employers are uh uh being uh uh within uh oh sorry,
I'm trying to think of uh the term, but but basically uh last year I I've time employees and last year we had four covered by our health insurance and six were covered by their spouses.
We were considered a hundred percent covered at that point in time.
Obamacare now says that we only have 50 percent or 40 percent participation, so we're no longer eligible for our health insurance plan.
Now wait, are you a business owner or yeah, you're an employer?
I am a business owner and an employer.
Right.
And because of the rules changes, you are no longer eligible to give a health plan or to get one.
We already have a health plan.
We've had it for eight years, and because of this little nuance in Obamacare, the health insurers, when they audit to find out how many employees are.
Okay, I got you.
I I got I'm I'm I'm gonna guess it's on time.
I've really got it right.
Gary, thanks for appreciate it.
Thanks so much.
We'll be back.
I'll explain this in a minute, folks.
Don't go away.
It is the fastest three hours in media.
I mean, we've already got two of them in the can, and I've still got so much I want to try to get to today, plus uh audio sound bites.
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