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Feb. 19, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:52
February 19, 2016, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
What they said.
The Pope is backing away from what he said.
And Trump is backing away from what he said.
Trump's backing away from a couple of things that he said.
Trump's going moderate on the Pope.
And now Trump is backing away from his allegation last Saturday that George W. Bush lied about Iraq.
What's that gonna do to the Democrat outreach plan?
Great to have you, folks.
It's Friday.
Let's hit it.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
There is all kinds of confusing stuff going on out there, folks.
And you are at the right place to have it all untangled.
Intricately woven webs of deceit, no matter where you look out there.
And here we are, L Rush Ball and the EIB network.
Here to make the complex understandable.
800 282882, the email address L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
Grab audio soundbite number eight.
I can't, I can't wait on this.
I can I can't wait for this to come in the order in which it was given.
I do not, this is the second time now that I have heard this, and I'm not.
It's last night, CNN, Republican Town Hall, the second night.
The first night was Ben Carson and Rubio and Cruz.
And last night it was Jeb.
Donald Trump and Governor John Kasich.
Anderson Cooper said, Mr. Trump, if Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre-existing condition?
I don't believe this.
Well, I like the mandate.
Okay, so here's where I'm a little bit different.
I don't want people dying on the streets.
And I say this all the time.
The Republican people, they're wonderful people.
They don't want people dying on the streets.
We're going to take care of them through maybe concepts of Medicare.
We have hospitals that aren't doing well.
We have doctors that aren't doing well.
You cannot let people die on the street, okay?
Taking care of people that are really, really sick and are going to die.
That's not single payer, by the way.
That's called heart.
Uh just not feeling this, folks.
I did the first place.
There are people are not dying on the street.
Where does that where does it's the second time I've heard Mr. Trump say this?
Where does this come from?
Who's out there saying we can't let people keep dying on the street?
There aren't any Republicans saying that.
If anybody's saying that, it's got to be a bunch of Democrats, but I don't even know of any of Democrats are saying it.
It isn't happening.
So where's this com?
And I like the mandate.
Now, understandably, there was a question asked here, but this is the second time that Trump has said he doesn't want people dying in the street, and I think it's the second time he's come out in favor of the mandate.
Maybe not, maybe this is the first, but here's the question.
Mr. Trump.
If Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre-existing that question is exactly that question entails everything wrong with Obamacare from premise to implication or implementation.
The idea that the only way people who are there it's not insurance when you cover people with pre-existing condition.
We've got to call that something else.
That's not insurance.
If you don't have homeowners insurance, and all of a sudden your house catches fire, you can't call the insurance company.
Hey, I need some insurance here.
Too late, pal.
You didn't insure it for fire beforehand.
So we're not talking insurance here.
We're talking about some other.
Now I know that this is a sensitive issue to a lot of people, but it isn't in sure.
Words matter to me.
And so the premise of this question, If Obamacare is repealed, so in other words, if the only way we've ever got people with pre-existing conditions covered is to have Obamacare.
Sorry, the whole premise here blows up.
If Obamacare is repealed, and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance.
Everybody doesn't have insurance now.
There's still 29 million uninsured despite the mandate.
We have laws against murder, but they still happen.
We have laws against robbing banks, but people still rob banks.
So we have now a mandate that everybody has health insurance, but not everybody does.
Some people, I don't want to pay what it costs.
I'm 24.
I'm not gonna die.
I'm gonna roll the dice.
I'd rather have a flat screen and go out and enjoy my life where I don't have to comply with your silly stupid law.
I'll deal with it later.
What's the fine?
We still, you know, the purpose of Obamacare was to cover everybody, well, the uninsured.
We could have covered the uninsured for one twenty-fifth of what it's costing to do Obamacare, and we would not have had the government take over the health care industry to do it.
For the mandate?
The mandate, I don't care what the Supreme Court said is unconstitutional.
The mandate, the government forcing everybody, and then here comes Anderson Cooper.
This is classic.
These libs all think there's magic in intentions.
Well, if Obamacare is repealed, and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance.
Why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre-existing condition?
The insurance companies are in this whole thing, this shows how flawed this is.
The only reason the insurance companies are bothering to pay for people with so-called pre-existing conditions is because of that mandate.
The reason the old the insurance companies went along with Obamacare is because of that mandate.
The mandate making it a matter of law that you have to have health insurance.
The insurance companies would have been foolish to fight that.
Here's the federal government mandating, they don't have to advertise anymore, mandating that everybody have their product, mandating, you have to go buy their product.
What industry wouldn't sign on with that kind of crony corporatism?
It's exactly what's wrong.
It's just a microcosm of everything that's wrong, the way we're going about dealing with health care.
We're going farther and farther and farther away from market forces having anything to do with the way things are priced and what things cost.
But I like the mandate, but I'm a little different.
I don't want people dying in the streets.
I don't get the connection between the two either.
I mean, I people are not dying in the streets because of lack of health care.
They might be dying in the streets because of liberalism, which has brought about poverty and any other bunch of sorts of misery, untold illegal immigration, any number of things could have been, but I don't even think it's the case that people are dying in the street from anything.
Where did this get started?
I haven't seen any videotape on it.
It's not happening on TV, so it must not be happening.
I haven't seen a news report on some schmo dying in the street, and here's the here's the news at 10 videotape of 10 or what I haven't seen that.
So what does this get started?
And I know what it is.
Well, nobody wants people dying in the street.
Who is gonna who's gonna stand up and oppose that, right?
Oh, you mean you're four people dying in this street?
No, but it isn't happening.
And the mandate isn't gonna matter a hill of beans, whether people die in the street or not, because we have the mandate.
We still have 29 million uninsured.
And Obamacare doesn't cover illegal aliens.
Well, theoretically, it doesn't.
I mean, that's another thing.
Supposedly Obamacare doesn't cover illegal aliens, but I bet it does.
They show up at the ER.
So who is dying in the streets?
Anyway, I'm gonna circle back to this here, folks.
This is I I had this at audio soundbite number eight, and I told a broadcast engineer, you keep a keep that near the top of the stack, because I don't know if I'm gonna be able to put this off.
All kinds of polling data out there that's got everybody shaken up one way or the other.
The Democrat polling data is just Bernie Sanders here, Bernie Sanders there.
Bernie Sanders pulled into the lead here.
Bernie Sanders pulls in the lead over there.
Bernie doing this, Hillary out of it.
Hillary doesn't know what's going on.
Democrats in a total confused maze on the Republican side.
The NBC Wall Street Journal Marist poll, not to be confused with the NBC Wall Street Journal poll.
The there are two of these.
The NBC Wall Street Journal poll earlier this week has crews ahead of Trump by two, 28-6.
South Carolina.
No.
It's a national poll.
But it was taken after South Carolina after the debate on Saturday night.
And it's the only poll anywhere near that result.
And so the experts have been debating.
What is this?
Is this an outlier?
Or did the Wall Street Journal poll happen to take their poll at the beginning of a wave of people falling out of love with Trump because of what he said at the debate Saturday night?
It's still unknown, but here comes the next version of the NBC Wall Street Journal Marist poll.
And this one's got Trump's lead, not 18, not 15, not 20, but five over Ted Cruz.
So here you have two polls from NBC Wall Street Journal that are entirely different from every other poll out there.
There's an ARG American Research Group poll out today that has uh excuse me.
This is what it is, this is it.
Uh where is it?
They don't put these in order.
He's got uh let's see.
Yeah, this one's they got Trump at 33, Rubio 20, and Cruz in third place at 13%.
So there's all kinds of movement here in in uh a number of different polls.
We had the Bloomberg poll yesterday, which is a standard poll, which shows uh Trump Cruz Rubio with the usual uh distances between each.
But these two Wall Street Journal polls, one earlier this week and then the Wall Street Journal NBC Marist poll, which has Trump up five, not 15, not 20.
So the theories going around here.
Remember, we had the news earlier that there were there were two different sites reporting that the internal polling data for the uh Jeb Bush campaign had Trump only ahead of uh Cruz by two points.
That was internal polling.
There was there was no public poll that showed this.
So now we've had two public polls, both from the NBC Wall Street Journal unit.
Well, uh uh one is with Bill McInturf, the other was with Marist.
And one of them shows Cruz ahead by two, and the other one shows Trump only ahead by five, which has people wondering did something happen?
Has there is there actually fallout from Trump for Trump, away from Trump, because of the things he said Saturday night at the debate about George W. Bush, about uh the war in Iraq, about 9-11, about weapons of mass destruction and this kind of stuff.
So they the primary vote is tomorrow.
We'll find out pretty quickly, but it's very fluid out there.
I was watching CNN and this is funny to me.
I was watching CNN.
Well, I've got CNN and Fox on in my monitors here, and about I don't know, half hour before the program started, something drew my attention to CNN.
It must have been the fact they had five guests.
Five guests in five different camera shots, surrounding the host who was who was in the middle.
And I said, What the the something was going on now?
I mean, it looked big.
Breaking news, flashing lights, sirens.
I said, what the hell did another helicopter crash in Hawaii?
So I looked in, and you know what it was?
They were having an orgasm.
They were having a proverbial, they couldn't contain themselves with joy because James Clyburn had endorsed Hillary.
They spent 30 minutes on that.
That was the biggest news of the day.
As though an endorsement from James Clyburn is all you need.
That's it.
Hillary wins, Bernie, you can go home.
James Clyburn, formerly of the congressional, well, he's still a member of the congressional black Caucasians.
He's not that the chairman anymore, but he's uh he's a member.
But he's got a lot of power.
He's got a lot of integrity.
He has a lot of sway in South Carolina.
And here's what he said.
This was uh this morning in Columbia, South Carolina, at a press conference to announce that he was endorsing Hillary.
If you people speculated that my head was with one candidate and my heart with the other.
That was not the case at all.
My heart has always been with Hillary Clinton.
Oh.
But my head had me in a neutral corner.
Oh.
Well, after extensive discussions with my wife Emily with me today, our children and grandchildren.
And other constituents and friends here in South Carolina.
No kidding.
And across the country.
I have to sign it to terminate my neutrality and get engaged.
I'm telling you, you know what?
The way they reacted to this on CNN and that endless parade of guests, they're worried, folks.
They're really worried.
Even though Hillary has the game rigged with the superdelegates, they're scared to death that this old Codger Bernie might run away with this.
It looks like Bernie may win the Nevada caucuses.
It looks like Bernie might do something big in South Carolina.
It looks like Bernie Bernie has shown up ahead of Hillary for the first time in a national poll.
And in fact, here's a story from Breitbart News.
Senator Bernie Sanders passes Hillary Clinton faster than Obama did in 2008.
This is in the Fox News poll.
A national poll shows how quickly Crazy Bernie has edged in front of Hillary.
So when they had their orgasm over here on CNN when named James Clyburn endorsed her, you could just see the relief you could see they they had to share the joy.
They had to get all these guests in here to analyze what it all meant.
Oh, it just saved the day.
It saved the week.
And I'm thinking, an endorsement from James Clyburn can do that?
You people must really be scared.
Now common sense.
Don't be wrong.
Common sense would tell us that Hillary Clinton and her camp would be scared.
This is not how this is supposed to go.
Bernie Sanders is supposed to be nowhere near this.
It's supposed to be another coronation, right?
But instead it's playing out like uh the race in 2008 did.
You know, you've been there once, you see it happen.
The second time it starts happening, you get really unnerved.
So this look at it.
Look at Clyburn trying to make his endorsement sound bigger than it is.
My heart has always been with Hillary, but my head had me in a neutral corner, but after extensive discussion, listen to the my wife, our children, our grandchildren, other constituents and friends.
This guy consulted the world about what he should do.
That's how big and important it is.
They're worried, folks.
Open line Friday, whatever you want to talk about, folks, have at it.
800-282-2882.
The let me make a clarification.
Well, not a clarification, explain something.
The NBC Wall Street Journal poll earlier in the week's a national poll, and that's the ones that got cruised up by two over Trump.
The NBC Wall Street Journal Marist poll that has Trump up five over cruise is a South Carolina poll.
They're different polls, not just taking days apart.
One's a national sample, the other's strictly South Carolina.
In the email rush, I'm already getting confused.
Despite how much time you have spent and how clearly you've explained this Apple mess, could you make it even simpler for me to understand?
Sure.
Here is the simplest way to understand this controversy with Apple and the iPhone 5C that was possessed by the terrorists.
Do you like the fact, now that you've learned it, that the government cannot crack your phone?
Do you like that?
How many of you up until now think the government could have gotten into your phone, followed you around GPS, read your mails, read your your emails, your text message.
How many of you thought that was going on?
How many of you thought the NSA was tracking you because they care so much?
Have you figured out what the real the real takeaway from this is the government can't crack your iPhone.
And the government wants to be able to crack your iPhones.
The real question is do you like the fact that the government can't read your emails?
Well, if you have a phone later than the 5C, and if you're running iOS 8 or 9.
If you're running iOS 7, it's a little different.
With Apple's help, they can.
But if you're modernized, do you like the fact that the government can't crack your phone?
Do you want the government to be able to crack your phone?
If you do, then hate Apple for what they're doing here.
If you like the fact that the government can't crack your phone, which they are tantamount admitting here, then you need to support Apple.
They're the ones trying to keep people out of your phone.
It's no more complicated than that, folks.
And welcome back.
Talent on loan from God.
Now, look, the Apple circumstance is obviously a little bit more complicated than I stated it.
But in terms of really getting to the nitty-gritty about what it's about, I did give you the boundaries.
This could be solved very simply.
The FBI wants what's on the terrace phone.
If they would agree to take the phone to Apple, let Apple find out what's on the phone and report back to the FBI.
You could have this done this afternoon.
That's not what the FBI wants.
See, that's the problem.
The FBI wants to be able to get into that phone itself after Apple weakens its own security systems in the software.
And then after that, the FBI and the government and other law enforcement want to be able to get into any other phone, ostensibly in the hands of criminals, without having to go to Apple to do it.
There's a story out there that Apple has as uh uh helped the FBI on 70 separate instances.
Maybe so, but there's a key fact that's being left out of the reporting on that.
The key is can you get that data with a phone locked or unlocked?
Locked means you need to enter your passcode to unlock it and be able to use it.
The only time Apple has been able to get data off of a phone for the FBI was when it was locked.
Apple has never unlocked a customer's phone to get data.
If they're running an iPhone 4 or an iPhone 5 or a 5C and running iOS 7 or older, then Apple can go in and get certain data even if the phone is locked.
But if it's an iPhone 5S or 6 or 6s, running iOS 8 or iOS 9, they can't.
But the point is, how many of you have been believing all this time that you're sending a text, you've got a text or an iMessage thread going with somebody, and you think, gosh, I've got to be careful what I say here, because somebody could be reading this.
Well, you've just learned now that they can't.
You've learned that that's encrypted front to back.
And the only person that can read what you're typing is the person you're sending it to.
And vice versa, you're the only one that can read what they're typing, other than they, of course, because it's encrypted on both ends.
And the key, in other words, the key to unlock the encryption is on the phone.
It's not at Apple headquarters.
The FBI wants to be able to read your emails, other law enforcement, if you're a criminal, they want to be able to read your text messages.
And they're asking Apple to give them the permission to unlock your phone or a terrorist phone or whatever.
Well, they're no, they're not.
They're going to court demanding as the federal government that the courts make Apple make their systems more vulnerable.
The point is that I don't know how many millions of people up until this incident probably believed that if the government wanted to, they could spy on them, read their emails, uh, maybe even follow their FaceTime phone calls or their text messages.
And what you've learned is nobody can.
Your government cannot crack your phone.
Surprise, surprise.
I'm sure there's a lot of paranoid people actually sad to learn that, because they had bought into this giant conspiracy belief that the NSA is tracking everybody and listening to everything, content.
Turns out it isn't true.
So if you like that circumstance, if you like the fact the government can't crack your phone, that's the question for you, because the government doesn't want to just stop at particular phones that may be under suspicion.
They want to have the ability to be able to unlock and use any phone whenever it's under suspicion without having to go to Apple.
And to make that possible, they either want Apple to weaken their systems or to give the government the key to unlock.
Now that is a simplification, but it pretty much spells this out.
Okay, during the break of the bottom of the hour, did some research here on people dying in the street.
As I said, uh Mr. Trump is out there saying that we have to support, and he likes the Obamacare mandate.
I mean, folks, you can't, I'm just gonna tell you something here.
You can't talk about repealing Obamacare and like the mandate.
The mandate is everything in Obamacare.
If the man, that's what the Supreme Court case, that's what John Roberts turned himself into a pretzel, in order to find that it was constitutional.
When before Obamacare it wasn't, the federal government cannot mandate that you buy anything until now.
Without the mandate, there is no Obamacare.
Obamacare can't survive without the mandate, without the federal government requiring by law that you have to buy this product or else you're gonna be fined.
It can't exist.
So I don't know how you say you're gonna repeal this and start over and at the same time keep the mandate.
But then dying in the streets.
I haven't seen any news on that.
I uh I I haven't seen stories.
So I went and looked.
I just wanted to make sure, and I found what is this?
Uh what's the web?
Think Progress.
It's a liberal website.
And the headline, Cold Weather has already claimed the lives of the homeless.
Two thousand people died on the streets in 2014 alone.
Now, this story has nothing to do with health care.
This story, 2,000 people and estimated.
Estimated means they don't know.
Just like they they estimated the number of homeless at 3 million.
They finally did a homeless senseless census.
You people may not remember this, some of you, you might be old enough.
But starting in the mid-80s, all the way forward for 10 years, is this guy, Mitch Snyder, who was a homeless activist in Washington, the guy that slept on sewer grates at night to show his compassion for the uh for the homeless.
Sewer great in the wintertime, just to show he just to try to relate.
And the homeless didn't like it.
What do you mean kicking me off my sewer grates?
The only way I can stay warm.
And Mitch Schneider said, I need to show that I care.
I need to show that I'm advocating for you.
You go find someplace else to sleep, I'm taking your sewer grate tonight.
I mean, that is what passed for compassion.
So anyway, it's about the same time we're we're we're letting the homeless live in shopping carts, they steal from public and calling that compassion.
Okay.
So Mitch Schneider's running around.
Three million people in America are homeless.
And they just caught on, and the media started using it.
And I, in the early days of this program, could somebody please back up that number for me.
How do we three million homeless?
Who says, how do we get there?
And lo and behold, a homeless census was taken.
They actually hired census people to run around and count people on the streets wherever they were, which was usually bad neighborhoods.
They found them at night.
I mean, that's when you're gonna find people really without a home is at nighttime.
And the number was less than 500,000.
Not that that's acceptable, but it wasn't anywhere near three million.
Well, here we are again now with uh think progressing, an estimated 2,000 homeless people died on the streets in 2014, according to those who memorialized them.
So we are going to take it on the authority of those who memorialized them.
2,000 people died on the streets, but I looked here.
None of them because of health care.
Homelessness.
And where is homelessness rampant?
It's usually where Democrats run the city.
San Francisco may be the worst homeless situation in America outside of New York.
Then you go to Detroit, any number of these cities that are that why are the homeless hanging around in in in in bone cold cities in the middle of winter?
Why don't they all end up in San Diego or in Miami?
Or in Hawaii.
I know what you're saying.
How are they going to get there?
Well, how'd they get where they are now?
This country has done more.
We've given more, we have offered more, we have spent more on our downtrodden than any country in the history of humanity.
And this idea that people are dying on the streets as a reason why the government has to get bigger.
Or the government has to stay in control of health care.
I looked it up.
2,000 people, all of them homeless.
Okay, it's a brief break time, brief time out here, and we'll come back check and see who's up on the phones, and if there's anything there, we'll go there.
Hang in and be tough, folks.
Don't go away.
That's a good point.
In New York, New York City spends more than a billion.
That's billion would it be.
New York City spends more than a billion dollars a year taking care of the homeless.
If anybody is dying on the streets in New York, it's not because nobody cares.
It's not because we're not spending enough money.
It's not because of Obamacare or lack of it.
It's not because it's because I don't want to oversimplify it, but I'm telling you, those are the kind of things that happen when liberals are in charge of things.
I don't even want to waste time explaining it again.
It just, if you don't believe me, look at where these problems exist in the greatest numbers, and you'll find they're run by liberal Democrats.
It's no more complicated than that.
But the point is, people are not dying on the streets because people in this country don't care.
People are not dying in the streets because they don't have attention, not getting attention, we're not spending money on them.
No truth to that whatsoever.
Nowhere in any of this is the issue of personal responsibility ever mentioned.
Because to do that, why that's that's cold hearted.
Oh, yeah, you can't talk about personal responsibilities, people mentally ill, sick, or whatever.
If that's the case, what are they doing?
See, the liberals are the ones that close down these institutions, folks.
It's not it's that we don't have the right to keep the mentally ill incarcerated.
They may have a right to be on the street doing, okay, they have a right to be out there, then fine, stop complaining what happens to them out there.
If they have a right to be there, you're not winning with these people.
Let's go to the phones.
We got Blaine in Shepherdsville, Kentucky.
It's great to have you on open line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, how are you doing?
Megadegos, Rush.
Thank you, Brother.
What I'd like to say is that uh I hope that uh Mr. Trump did not mean mandate.
Uh he did mention that there are doctors in hospitals that are underperforming, maybe funnel the uninsured people and the people with pre-existing conditions to those locations.
Well, what do you think he meant if he didn't mean mandate?
Well, uh, you know, maybe it was a faux pas, I'm not sure, but uh because they used the word mandate, maybe that's why he used the word mandate.
But maybe, okay, and in the question he might have been responding because the question had the word.
Let's listen to let's say I hope he did not mean mandate.
Well, I do too.
Let's listen to the whole thing.
Grab number eight.
Here's the question from uh Anderson Cooper.
Mr. Trump.
If Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate, and folks, I'm telling you, without a mandate that you can't have Obamacare.
It can't survive.
That's what that whole first Supreme Court case was about.
That's why it's asinine what happened in that case.
Just it's just Supreme Court rewrote the law.
John Roberts rewrote the law to make it constitutional.
The whole argument whether it's a tax or a mandate, and the government can assess taxes.
Just is such a mess.
Anyway, I distract myself.
The question again, Mr. Trump, if Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, so mandates defined in the question.
If there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre existing condition?
And here's Mr. Trump's just the first part of the answer.
We're not going to listen to the whole thing.
Well, I like the mandate.
Okay, so here's where I'm a little bit different.
I don't want people dying on the streets.
And I say this all the time.
The Republican people, they're wonderful people.
They don't want people dying on the streets.
We're going to take care of them through maybe the tape.
I want to tell you, Blaine, how I interpret that.
You tell me if I'm wrong.
I don't like well, I like the mandate, Trump says, okay, but here's where I'm a little bit different.
I don't want people dying in the streets, and I say it all the time.
The Republican people, they're wonderful people.
They don't want people dying in the street.
You know what it sounds like to me?
It sounds like Trump believes that Republicans.
It sounds like Trump believes the image that Republicans are cold hearted, mean spirited extremists, and people dying on the streets, they don't care.
So he says, well, I like the mandate, because I don't want people dying in the streets.
And let me tell you something.
My Republican voters, they also, it may surprise you.
He didn't say that, but it's implied.
It may surprise you.
My Republican voters...
They don't want them dying in the streets either.
So it sounds to me like Mr. Trump's a Republican here and is trying to uh beat back this image that Republicans don't care about people, and so saying I don't want them to die in the street may be his technique or way of doing that.
What do you think?
Republicans are unfeeling, uncaring, heartless people uh by saying that.
Uh maybe he would uh create something like a uh uh catastrophic health care which could insure those with pre existing conditions and also be voluntary for those people that don't have insurance, not making a mandate, but see here's the he didn't say that.
I mean, we can sit here and put what he meant was, and maybe what he's gonna do, what we hope he's gonna do.
The problem with this now, this pre existing condition stuff.
In fact, let me review a little history.
Can I tell you can we remind you what happened with this?
When they set up the pool, the way they handled this in the early days of Obamacare, there was a pool that you had to sign into that would allocate coverage for you if you had a pre-existing condition.
And everybody was shocked at how few people actually signed up.
You remember that, folks?
Everybody was stunned because it's like every other myth.
It had been talked about for so long that everybody in this country thought everybody had a pre existing condition.
And the insurance companies were so mean and so rotten and so unfair that they weren't covering anybody, and therefore, people with pre existing conditions, a hell of a lot of them, were not being treated, couldn't get insurance, and may have been dying in the streets, who knows.
So they slipped the pool up because they had to go about this in a because this isn't insurance.
They had to set up an entirely new way of dealing with this, which is basically to set up a new welfare program.
If you want to get down to the grassroots, talk about the brass tax.
It's a welfare program.
It's not insurance.
By definition, it's not insurance.
I don't mean to offend anybody, but it isn't insurance.
Anyway, the number of people, supposedly so-called with self or pre existing conditions that signed up shocked everybody how few it was.
It was nowhere near what everybody had been led to believe because of the never ending press coverage.
So it turned out to be not that big a problem.
And it certainly wasn't a big enough problem to totally overturn and upend the American health care system, just like insuring the uninsured wasn't.
But that didn't matter.
Reality didn't matter.
Perceptions did.
Perception was there were gazillions and gazillions that didn't have uh health insurance, and gazillions and gazillions with pre existing conditions the insurance companies are being mean to.
And it was largely bogus in terms of the numbers.
Associated Press, October 3rd, 2009.
Health overhaul centerpiece endures growing pains.
The pre-existing condition insurance plan started this summer isn't living up to expectations.
They have the money and they didn't have nearly the applicants they thought they were going to have.
It turned out to be not an emergency or crisis.
Anyway, hang tough.
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