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Jan. 5, 2017 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:12
January 5, 2017, Thursday, Hour #2
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Buck Sexton here in for Rush on the EIB.
Thank you so much for joining.
And thanks to uh Rush himself for letting me sub in for the day.
Obamacare.
Back in the headlines in a big way because yesterday on Capitol Hill, the first steps underway to try and repeal, and yes, I would hope replace this thing.
It has turned into a war of words with Trump saying it is a disaster.
And he's referring to those who defend it as, quote, clowns.
Meanwhile, the Democrat side of things, they're calling any change to the current Obamacare bill, Trump care, saying Republicans must own it, and that really eventually all that's going to happen here is, as Senator Schumer says, they're gonna make America sick again.
Oh, so clever.
What's the reality?
What's really happening with Obamacare now?
We're joined by an expert in the field, Ovik Roy.
He is the president of the Foundation of Research on Equal Opportunity and an opinion editor at Forbes and a trained MD, by the way.
Ovik, great to have you.
Hey, buddy, how are you?
Good, good.
So let's get let's start with some of the broad stroke claims here, because obviously Democrats are saying, let's just start with the numbers.
Uh I I'm hearing people put out that the thirty million have insurance that didn't before, some say twenty.
What's the reality?
How how effective has this been just at the simple on the simple issue of covering people who did not have health care before?
Well, they're saying thirty million.
The media is regurgitating that number uncritically, as you would expect.
The real number is more like probably thirteen million, because there are lots of people who are on Obamacare, as you well know, Buck, who had health insurance before and their plans were canceled.
So they had no choice but to go on Obamacare.
Plus, Obamacare expanded Medicaid.
But a lot of people signing up for Medicaid today are people who were actually already eligible for Medicaid before Obamacare.
It's just maybe they didn't know they had the benefit or whatever, or they were eligible.
Uh so there are lots of people who they're claiming Obamacare helped that it hasn't helped, and of course, there are lots of people whose premiums have gone up by a lot who haven't been helped by the law.
What are the biggest shortcomings based on the promises that were made initially by the Democrats and by President Obama himself?
We already know if you like your plan you can keep it was uh was a lie.
But uh we'll put that aside because that's been established.
What are the other uh what are the biggest uh holes in this thing?
Uh what are the shortcomings that need to be addressed by this incoming administration and Congress?
Well, I'd say the single biggest shortcoming of Obamacare i are is the entirely new twenty thousand pages of federal regulations that the law imposes on the way health insurance can be designed and issued to consumers.
Those regulations have are the direct cause of the high premiums that everyone's been talking about.
That's the biggest problem with Obamacare, and the problem with the way Congress is moving forward on the partial repeal of Obamacare is the repeal bill they're contemplating doesn't actually repeal those regulations as far as we know.
It only repeals the taxing and the spending in Obamacare.
I say only in quotes.
Obviously the taxing and spending is important, but it's the regulations that have drive driven premiums up and the costs up so much that a lot of people can't afford health.
Well, let me ask you about that issue of cost, because yesterday I saw some of the presser with Nancy Pelosi, and this is not the first time I've had this experience, but it felt like I was watching somebody who is living in another country and talking about some alternate reality, but she was saying that uh the costs are sort of what is it, accelerating at the slowest rate in decades in health care.
Meanwhile, all I see are headlines about how you have two things happening because of Obamacare of huge premium increases in a lot of states across the country because the insurance pool is riskier, less healthy people, more sick people than they initially anticipated.
So you have huge premium increases, and also major insurers just saying I'm not we're not gonna be in this Obamacare game anymore.
So what it what is the truth about pricing here?
What is the truth about the cost of health care for Americans affected by this?
Well, as you know again, Buck, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
So what Nancy Pelosi is referring to is that from 2013 to 2000 I mean, excuse me, from 2003 to 2013, for that 10 year period, there was a slowdown in uh the growth of health care spending overall in the country.
Why?
Number one, because we had a massive recession in 2007-2008 that slowed down spending overall by consumers.
But once Obamacare went online in twenty fourteen, health spending spiked considerably.
So if you if you select a window that doesn't include the actual implementation of Obamacare in 2014, sure, yeah, health spending, the growth of health spending did slow down.
But once Obamacare went to effect, the growth of health spending spiked.
And people can expect what going forward.
I mean, the cost is uh the costs of this are trending in what direction and how how I want to know this over how of the Democrats, assuming that they had won, right?
If Hillary Clinton had won, and let's just for you know fantasyland for some people it's a nightmare, but whatever.
Let's assume the Democrats managed to take the House and the Senate.
What were they poised to do on Obamacare?
Because even they admit that there were failings, or they would call them, I guess, needed tweaks or something, but that there were things that needed to be changed.
What was their plan?
Yeah, their plan was tweaks that wouldn't have worked.
So you know, they would have put in more regulations that would have driven costs up more as a temporary South.
And the one big thing, the one quote unquote big idea of Democrats in Congress was to reintroduce the public option, right?
To have a government health insurer compete with the private insurers and drive them out of business.
That was their big idea.
It wouldn't have worked, but that's probably the thing they would have tried to pull off, pull off if they were running the show.
So the I mean the public option, had they introduced that, then do we really have a discussion about the slippery slope toward single payer?
I mean, it isn't that uh I heard people during the sort of Bernie Sanders surge uh who were speaking about how really what we do need Medicare for all, that was the chance.
So that's where the d that's where the Democrats seem to be trending.
Absolutely.
Single payer was supposed to be the Trojan horror, I mean, excuse me, the public option was supposed to be the s the Trojan horse for single payer health care.
That's why when Joe Lieberman said, I'm not going to support the public option, Democrats called for his head.
And that's an important thing to realize.
You made a really important point there.
Bernie Sanders, when he campaigns for single payer health care, how does he describe it?
He describes it as Medicare for all.
Why does he do that?
Because the traditional Medicare program designed in 1965 in the Great Society by LBJ is single payer health care.
So the irony of all this is that while we criticize Obamacare for a lot of things, and rightly so, we have to remember that Obamacare is not the only form of government-run health care in America.
Medicare is by far the largest single payer program in America.
And if we want to reform the health care system and put patients and consumers and voters and citizens in charge of their own health care dollars again, we can't just replace Obamacare.
We also have to reform Medicare and Medicaid.
Those are two gigantic single-payer programs.
Let's just go back to Obamacare for one second.
Here we got the Trump administration coming in.
They're saying they're going to repeal.
There are Republicans in the Congress.
They're saying they're going to repeal it and replace it.
One of the lines you're hearing from Democrats is, oh, but if you don't replace it right away, there's going to be dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.
It's going to be terrible.
What is the truth of of that?
Or is what what's the reality of the situation?
I mean, do they have to have uh can they do piecemeal replacement uh of Obamacare?
Do they have to have something right away?
And what should it look like?
Well, the key there is the difference between what you can do through the Senate reconciliation process, which requires fifty-one votes in the Senate, and what requires you to overcome a filibuster, which in other words, which requires sixty votes, six zero votes in the Senate.
What you can do with fifty to fifty one votes on the Senate is you can defund Obamacare.
You can get rid of the taxing and the spending.
But what you can't do through the reconciliation process, by and large, with some asterisks, is you can't you cannot change these regulations.
You can't repeal and replace these regulations that I talked about that are driving the premiums up.
For that, you need sixty votes, six zero.
And so that means that Republicans don't have a completely free hand here.
They're gonna need to do something that uh at least on the replace side, that's bipartisan.
I think they can get there, because if you repeal the funding dreams first, and then you take the next two years to work on a bypartisan replace, a lot of those Democrats in red states, like Joe Manchin, you know, I think they're interested in working with Republicans to come up with a better solution.
But you don't get there unless you defund it first, I think.
But if you defund it, what happens to the people that currently rely on subsidies to buy program or to buy uh coverage on the exchanges?
I mean, the Democrats are saying essentially, who if you do this, they're not gonna have coverage, and it's gonna be on you, Republicans.
Yeah, so the way it's set up or the way they're looking at talking about setting it up is they're gonna delay the effective date of the defunding until 2019 or 2020.
So there'll be a two to three year window where Obamacare, the vote to repeal Obamacare, a partially repeal Obamacare to defund it, has happened, but where Obamacare's subsidies are still flowing for those two to three years, and you use that window to come up with the replace.
And in that way, uh, when you do replace Obamacare, there's uh a smooth transition from Obamacare to the new system.
That's what they're trying to do.
But obviously to get there, they're gonna need to uh finish off and and and put that replace plan together.
And that's the challenge right now.
The risk is what if they don't succeed?
What if they don't have sixty votes for a place plan and can't find their way there?
Then uh there's gonna be challenges.
So it's gonna be very important to think through how do you get sixty people in the Senate to agree on something better than Obamacare.
If they had the sixty votes to repeal it in its entirety, would you advocate that, Ovick?
Yeah, I mean, uh, but the problem is they don't.
I mean, the fact is they have fifty-two votes in the Senate for repeal.
Uh, and even of those fifty-two votes for repeal, there are a couple of at least a handful of those fifty-two Republicans who don't want to repeal Obamacare unless there's a replacement.
So uh so you need to have a replacement, you know, reasonably worked out by I'd say the the third quarter of this year, you know, for the summer to fall time frame.
So that that way people can have the confidence that you know you're you're moving towards the end go the end zone and and you've got something uh worth making it.
Last one for you, Ovik, before we uh before we we let you go.
Um there are a lot of people, and I I I actually count myself among them, it's certainly on the uh pre existing condition side who want to keep the pre existing conditions uh or you know, the the this the statute now or that there's no such thing essentially as pre-existing conditions when it comes to health care market, and a lot of people also want to keep the staying in your parents' insurance until you're twenty-six provision.
Is that doable?
Are Republicans good at Trump has said he's gonna try to keep it.
Is that something that actually one you think is advisable, and two, is possible?
It absolutely is possible.
And without getting into all the kind of wonky details with you since we're wrapping up here, what I'll recommend to your listeners is that they go to the website of my think tank, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, which is free op.org, F-R-E-O-P-P dot or G, and click on an article on there, which is called Understanding Free Ops Replacement Plan in Ten Minutes or Less.
And that summarizes exactly how you cover pre-existing conditions within a market-oriented system that doesn't prevent people from choosing the kind of health insurance that they want to buy.
Ovik Roy is the president of the Foundation of Research on Equal Opportunity and an opinion editor over at Forbes.
Ovick, my friend, great to have you.
Thanks for joining.
Hey, Buck, thanks to you.
Uh Buck in for Rush.
We'll be right back.
Buck Sexton here in for Rush today on the EIB.
Uh I'm very pleased to bring on now a voice that many of you will recognize, I am sure, from the past.
An EIB alumni, Jason Lewis, I should say, Congressman Jason Lewis, formerly a revered guest host here on the EIB itself, currently, as of a couple of days ago, a United States Congressman.
Congressman Lewis, great to have you, sir.
Hey Buck, how are you?
I'm good, sir.
It's a small class, but proud to be an EIB alum.
There we go, right?
The family.
I I like to think of myself as the young buck of the EIB crew, which I know people are going to boo me for that one, but I'm glad to see somebody uh taking the taking the helm down there of uh congressional seat.
Um and I just want to ask you first, first couple days, how's it going down there?
What's the vibe like?
You guys are in quite a position, the Republicans.
Well, Buck, it's you know, it's the battle of the metaphors.
You're either drinking out of a fire hose or jumping on a speeding train, but either one is accurate.
Uh this is gonna be a session where we're gonna get things done, and and we're going to, in just a matter of hours, vote on the Reigns Act, finally having Article One mean something, and and Congress taking its roll back in regulations and making law from unelected bureaucracies.
We're gonna end that.
Um we're gonna move on to the budget next week and uh start to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which has just devastated my home state of Minnesota as well as the second district that I represent.
So, yeah, the first hundred days are gonna be a whirlwind, but you know what?
That's why I ran, and that's why they elected us.
Tell me what the game plan is to the extent that uh it's sort of been been shared and seems like it's reasonably settled, though I know in in politics, right?
Uh there's there's always always changes that are coming that nobody particularly expects.
But to repeal Obamacare, right now it's it's on the budget side of things, right?
It's about funding, and then eventually it will be the actual regulations and the foundation, the sort of guts of the law itself.
Is that how it goes?
Well, the Democrats and in the press are trying to make a big deal that you know you're not going to do this in one day.
But what we don't want to do, Buck, is exactly the way the Affordable Care Act on Obamacare was implemented, shoved down the throats of the American people and Congress.
We are going to repeal what we can through the budget process, reconciliation and all of that, and then we're going to do uh do right by the American people by making certain we've got an alternative plan that works.
Uh we're not going to rush to judgment like the Affordable Care Act did.
And look at the mess we're in.
In my home state of Minnesota, the Federal Exchange there, Mincher is a debacle.
You've got a hundred thousand Minnesotans that will not have a choice of health care plans.
They'll be shoved into something that they did not approve, contrary to the president.
Even the Democratic governor of Minnesota called the Affordable Care Act now unaffordable.
My own family premiums, Buck, and the Lewis household uh tripled while I was on the individual market under the Affordable Care Act in the last few years.
So you know, I I get a kick out of our friends on the other side saying, oh gosh, what about access?
The point is the Affordable Care Act has denied access.
Higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher copays.
Um that is not good quality health care, and we're going to change that.
And going forward, you you mentioned the Reigns Act regulation.
Oh, that's going to be a big part of what the Congress is expected to do by those who voted for you out of Minnesota's uh second district and and many others across the country, uh, that the Republicans have a a mandate from those at least who voted for them to go forth and strip away the regulations.
Uh when are you guys gonna get to taxes?
When are we gonna start to see that happen?
Yep, and and and you've just outlined the Jason Lewis campaign.
We we ran on first and foremost, fixing health care, so people, especially young people can buy the health care plan they want, not the kind that the government thinks they ought to have, which is price them out of the market.
Then we're going to move on onerous regulations like the water of the U.S. rule, which hurts so many farmers and uh in in Wabashaw and Goodhue counties in Minnesota that I represent.
And then we're going to move on tax reform, a flatter, fair tax code that is going to allow the engines of economic growth to finally allow this economy to grow past one percent GDP.
People forget, you remember, I remember, but during the Reagan administration, when we had five straight quarters of seven percent growth, when we had twenty million new jobs created, median household income is still what it was or below what it was before the recession of 07 and 08.
Um we do not have a robust economy, and that's where tax reform comes in.
Now Democrats are already promising.
They're they're not they're not hiding at all.
They're promising to obstruct as much of the Republican agenda and the Trump administration's uh follow through on promises as possible.
Uh where do you think that there could be some problems here?
Or and also where do you is there anywhere let me actually reverse this for a second.
Anywhere where you can see Democrats actually coming along with Republicans on this.
Probably not.
Um we were hopeful we would get a little more cooperation, but uh sadly the uh it looks as though they're going to be the party of no and and obstruction.
I mean, but look, we've got eighty-two thousand pages in the Federal Register when it comes to rules.
Uh we've got thirty, four hundred new rules or regulations issued by Federal Agencies here.
That's one new rule every two and a half hours, Buck.
They want to be the party of over regulation.
Uh we've got more pages in the Federal Register now since 1936.
So uh, you know, yeah, we're going to remove onerous regulations, and the mother of all those regulations is oh is Obamacare, and we're going to address that.
Um and if they come along, great, we'd love to have them.
I'd love to work across the aisle.
But um so far the the omen has not been good, I guess.
Yeah, the signaling I'm getting from Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi isn't that there's gonna be lots of hugs and uh hugs and high fives between Democrats and Republicans going forward here, but we will have to see.
I am hopeful, uh, but I don't expect much.
I'm hopeful though.
Uh Congressman, because as the President elect said, they own the Affordable Care Act.
And so I I guess, you know, Can I also uh Congressman, I just want to say that uh Mr. Snerdley here is saying that the EIB is so proud, so proud that you are an alumni of the EIB and now currently representing Minnesota Second District down in DC in our Congress.
Uh we got it, we gotta go.
We're in a hard break, as you know.
But Congressman Jason Lewis of Minnesota, former EIB host, EIB alumni taking his seat.
Thank you, sir, and we will be right back.
Buck Sexton here in for Russia on the EIB.
We've got a whole bunch of calls lined up.
800-282882, if you want to get in after we knock some of these down.
Colleen in Oceanside, California.
You are on the EIB, you're speaking to Buck.
Hi, Buck, how are you?
Good, how are you?
Good.
Well, I wanted to call because I'm in the industry uh as an independent contractor uh in the insurance industry, and I um I'm just very concerned that really nobody's talking to the industry because 99% of the problems that everybody says the Republicans are gonna have, the industry is already solved.
The the problem with Obamacare was that the government, the federal government decided to step in and try to take over.
And what the Republicans should do is is get rid of the government takeover.
That's all they have to do.
The companies know exactly what they're doing.
The programs have been in place with all kinds of free clinics for people that could not afford health care.
The preexisting conditions have always been covered under group plans and could and there was a very, very easy solution in most states.
There was a drop-in plan already in place for the temporary individual plan that might have pre-existing condition that somebody wouldn't be covered under as an as a pre existing condition.
They could get a little drop-in plan that would cover it for the period of time.
Usually there was a waiting period of maybe six months.
So there's just so many lies that have been told that the public and the media believe.
And frankly, you know, most doctors and lawyers don't understand their insurance.
And now we have politicians who but hold hold on a second, Colleen.
If I may, doesn't that mean that our insurance policies are too complicated?
If if doctors and lawyers can't understand their insurance plans, I think there's a problem, right?
I mean, this is like the tax code.
We should be able to file our taxes ourselves, that many of us can't is really not an indictment of our math skills, it's an indictment of the 70,000 page tax code.
Well, I wouldn't wouldn't necessarily agree.
Uh yes, you know, uh it is complicated, but I will tell you it's much more complicated when the government tries to take it over.
The plans could be simplified easily.
But most of the problems supposedly that these plans were put in place to solve when you listen to uh what they've said about, well, you know, what about preexisting conditions?
There were already solutions for that.
These were all, as far as I'm concerned, and I've been in the business, you know, over twenty-five years.
You know, it was a uh a gigantic manipulation of the American people.
And now for the Republicans to take the bait and think that somehow they have to come up with a new government plan to solve this, that's a problem.
They're making a huge mistake by stepping into that.
They should send it back to the private sector.
It's always been regulated by states.
But Colleen, isn't that isn't that what Trump has promised to do eventually?
It's just gonna take some time.
I mean, they making it making it more free market and more pri uh more private sector, I I believe that is the end goal of of the maneuvers that the Congress is currently undertaking.
I mean, it's gonna take some time, but uh I my understanding, and look, this is going to change even from what I think the Congress plans to do, right?
And and who knows where the Trump administration is really gonna come down on all this stuff, but I think they are trying to make it more competition or more competitive, and uh you'll be able to choose more and and that's supposed to be how this all ends up.
We'll see.
Uh but Colleen, thank you for calling thank you for calling in from California.
I do appreciate it.
I heard the dog barking in the background.
I think the dog agrees with me personally.
The dog was like, that's right.
Buck knows.
Buck's laying it down, madam.
Uh Mike in Roanoke, Virginia.
Great to have you, sir.
Talking to you.
Good talking to you, but let's talk.
What's up?
All right.
Well, I just, you know, it's it's uh like the lady said, nobody's talking to to the insurance companies, nobody's talking to participants such as I with the uh Obama Affordable Care Act.
Um, you know, my experience was a year and a half ago, uh, and as the Congressman said prior to her.
Um, you know, it it's not an option.
It was a mandate, it was forced down my throat.
I became unemployment about a year and a half ago.
I had no option.
I was obligated to participate because if I didn't I would have been penalized on my income tax and and we don't hear any any conversation about that particular subject in itself.
As this this isn't an option.
Uh if you become unemployed, um and or at least that's what I was you know led to believe.
And and then when I do participate um the whole thing is a farce.
Tell us why.
I mean is it let me guess you've got super h super high deductible, very very narrow doctor networks.
I mean give us some of the specifics, Mike.
Well well exactly exactly what you just said, but more so you know I'd be interested in knowing if the majority of the people that participate are like I who took the the lowest package available with the highest deductible simply to honor what was being crammed down my throat.
You know and that and that's the thing.
When you force somebody to do something, they're gonna rebel.
And I think you know that's part of what's going on.
We're led to believe that not enough young people are participating and that's what's forcing the cost of the program up but I'd be interested in knowing the analytics in regards to how many how many people are participating with the lowest tier taking the lowest copay just so that they fulfill their mandated obligations by Obama and so that they don't receive any penalties on their income you mean the low the lowest premium with the highest co-pays is the lowest premium,
highest deductible my deductible was seven thousand dollars.
See this is what this this is what I don't think the the Democrats are well there's a lot of areas of this where I don't think they're honest.
But when they talk about people being covered yeah if you have a chronic uh very serious very expensive health issue and were out of the insurance market before because of preexisting conditions, you may be one of the few cases uh in the sort of when we look at the aggregate numbers where this thing works out for you.
But if you're just somebody who is forced now as you say to get health care, I mean it's seven thousand a seven thousand dollar deductible this is catastrophic insurance but it's catastrophic insurance that they also are adding a bunch of things that other people right I mean you you have to pay for things that you don't want.
So and and whether you I don't know if you're getting a subsidy or not but a lot of people via the subsidies are propping up this insurance program or these these these insurance policies off of the exchanges that offer things that they would never want to be a part of, right?
But that's uh so you you don't get choice you have a huge deductible everyone that I've talked to personally and I talked to a number of people because guess actually plenty of people that work in journalism, radio, TV, believe it or not, uh are in the individual market and uh are are struggling trying to get healthcare coverage.
They say the plan is terrible.
So Mike you're not alone on that I appreciate you calling in from Virginia to share uh your thoughts on it and uh thank you for your time today.
Uh it's just it's just not good insurance.
Uh you know I I doctor's offices here in New York City you walk into them and they have a sign up there.
And we do not participate in anything that comes off of the exchange.
They just don't want to they just don't want to deal with it.
But then again all of this is based upon what is it is it uh Bastiat the law that uh socialism is the is the fiction not socialism but that uh the state is the fiction where everybody lives at everybody else's expense sorry not social but I think that's I think that's more or less from the law it's true, right?
The fiction that every statism is the fiction that you can everyone can live at everyone else's expense, something like that.
Maybe getting the quote wrong who knows.
James in Texas you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show you're speaking of Buck.
Yes, sir.
Good afternoon, Buck.
I just had a simple question from a simple man.
I don't know how many insurance policies are in force out there, but if the average extra cost of premiums is $4,000 a year, if you multiply that times, say, 100 million policies, that's $400 billion in additional health care costs incurred over the last three years per year.
Where does that money go?
Because as a percentage of the population, I don't think health care is...
hospital attendance sickness and all that stuff is going up that dramatically so where do the where's the money going?
Well you're saying why do health care costs keep going up?
No, sir I understand inflation and new technology and and stuff like that.
My question is if we have such a dramatic rise in annual costs for your premiums.
Yes.
Around $4,000 a year on average.
If you have 50 million outstanding policies out there or a hundred million, you multiply that times four thousand.
That's the one.
Hold on a second, James.
Specifically on the uh the policies you buy off the exchange.
And keep in mind that a lot of people are uh people who are paying full freight are subsidizing other people, right?
And particularly the young and the healthy are subsidizing the older and the sick uh through the way this whole thing is structured.
Obamacare is a giant scheme for the redistribution of wealth via the healthcare healthcare system.
That's really what it boils down to.
And when you see the way that it is structured and the way that it's functioning, this is why there are these huge shortfalls in cash flow, because you've got people who are staying out of the exchanges that would rather pay the fine because they know they're getting a raw deal, and you've got people that are using a lot of uh a lot of health care or you know,
a lot of healthcare resources who are obviously not paying for what they are getting, uh, and you have people that are subsidizing others in the programs, and including those who are getting government subsidies to buy the plans in the first place, right?
So it's just sort of putting the costs off onto for a lot of people, it's putting the costs off onto other people.
So if you're in that individual market, especially if you're buying uh a program or you're buying coverage off the exchange, you're someone who may be subsidizing other people in that market.
Uh so the the money's going around.
You gotta watch what the other hand is doing because some people are getting a good deal out of this, a lot of people are not.
But James, thank you for calling in.
Good to have you on the EIB.
Going to a break here, Buck Sexton in for Rush.
We're gonna hit that story out of Chicago in the next hour, the Facebook Live torture video and the way the media is reacting to it, underreacting to it in some cases.
We'll see.
That and more coming up.
Buck Sexton here in for Rush.
You know, when you're scouring the headlines uh in the morning preparing for uh radio show, sometimes you come across things and you think to yourself, wait, this can't be.
Is this is this fake news?
It looks like it's real.
Is is is this fake news, but it's not a serious issue.
I thought this had to be fake, but it turns out I guess it's not.
I just want to share this with you, although this is probably going to be yet another uh arrow in the quiver used to attack self-indulgent, self-loving millennials, of which I'm theoretically a part, I think.
Just just hit the big uh the big three five.
Uh self-marriage is a is apparently a thing now.
And I when I say apparently I did not know about this before, it is a small but growing movement.
According to good housekeeping.com, an article, why I married myself.
Oh wow.
Now, first, some some stats on this, or some stats about marriage in general that are cited in this piece.
Uh marriage, in parentheses, they write, to another person, which now that needs to be specified, it seems, is on the decline.
Barely half of all adults in the U.S. are married, a record low, according to a 2011 study from the Pew Research Center.
In 1960, 72% of adults age 18 and older were married, while today just 51% are wed.
Uh people are waiting longer to marry as well.
The median age at first marriage is at a new high for brides, 26.5 years, and grooms 28.7 years.
And in New York City, it's like gotta be late 30s, I'm guessing, because you know, all the people I know.
Uh but this is now uh being met with a new and new technique, I suppose.
A new sort of do we call this self-actualization?
I don't know what the terminology is one would use.
Um although I'm sure we could all sit around and make up lots of interesting jokes about the idea of marrying yourself.
Uh you know, who takes out the trash, who sleeps on what side of the bed.
This is a real thing.
Uh there are even those who are going forward and having ceremonies for their self-marriage.
They send out wedding invitations.
I guess it's a party.
And they don't, it's not like a ventriloquist act thing from what I can gather.
You don't sort of sit on the one side like, do you, you know, Bob?
And it's like, I do, and then you run over to the other side, you put a veil over your head, and do you, Susie?
I do.
It's not that weird.
It's just uh a thing that people do that, as they say in this good housekeeping article says yes to me.
Yes to me.
We've gone from yes we can to yes to me.
Yay.
Yay, America.
Look, look what you've done.
Yeah, I I don't know.
What happens when you get to when you get tired of yourself?
I guess we move on to self-divorce.
Um but you know, I think also there are some who would point out that this is all just a function of the dissolution of marriage as an institution, the expansion of marriage to include many different things.
And uh it's not a legal process yet, though.
That should be cited.
You will not get, and the piece points this out again, good housekeeping.com.
Who knew I'd be here on the Rush Limbaugh show, speaking about good housekeeping?
But you know, I'm a I'm a man of I'm a Renaissance man.
I've got many different facets.
Uh unmarried, but many different facets.
I don't know much about how any of these things work.
Uh, but you won't get a tax break for marrying yourself.
Quote, it's more a rebuke of tradition, says Rebecca Traester, author of All the Single Ladies, Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.
All the single ladies.
I could start singing to you all now, but that would probably be a bad idea.
Um, but that's a beyond that was a Beyonce reference she made there, for those of you who didn't know.
And if you want to get really uh want to see what a digital social media pylon looks like, you just say a couple of things about how you think Beyoncé is maybe not just not amazing.
She's good, she's just not amazing, you will get annihilated.
And if you were to say, point out that Mariah Carey should perhaps evolve her act a bit, uh, maybe a little more graceful and tactful in the way she presents sometimes as a lady of some experience in the industry.
Wow, I'm dancing around this one.
Uh yeah, you also might get some people a little bit agitated at you.
But back to self-marriage, a small but growing movement.
Uh just goes to show that I suppose people always find creative ways to force others into the justification and acceptance of whatever their lifestyle may be.
In this case, it's um I'm there's even a website, I married me, and you buy a do-it-yourself marriage kit for fifty dollars, you get a sterling silver ring, ceremony instructions, vows, and twenty-four affirmation cards to remind you of your vows over time.
For two hundred and thirty dollars, you can get the kit with a fourteen karat gold ring.
So you yeah, you you can actually go through the whole process.
I know, Snurdley, it is this weird.
Some weird stuff.
But it's a growing movement.
It's becoming a bigger business.
And exactly, who do you who do you blame when there's no anniversary present?
I mean, there's a lot of stuff that a lot of stuff that happens here.
You know, I mean, do you watch the real housewives or do you get to watch that NFL game?
There's a lot of stuff that's gonna go a lot of a lot of unanswered questions I have about the self-marriage movement and a lot of jokes that I also cannot make about the self-marriage movement.
Uh, but I will leave it there for now.
Buck Sexton in for Rush.
I will be right back.
Buck Sexton here in for Rush on the EIB today, eight hundred two eight two eight eight two, if you want to call in.
I don't know if you saw this, but earlier in the week, a group of eleven hundred law school professors sent a letter to Congress urging them or urging to the Senate to reject Senator Jeff Session's nomination for attorney general.
Uh I just cite this to point out we were talking about the Intel community before and how there at least is among some a leftist bent that influences both the thinking and the actions of those who are in senior positions in the Intel community.
Uh law schools are just like leftist factories now.
I mean, they're just churning out uh card-carrying Democrats one after another uh across the country, particularly the sort of more elite or elitist uh law schools are j you better believe in a living constitution, think Scalia was evil, and believe that you know the law is really just an instrument for social justice, or else well, you're not even gonna get into these places.
And once you're in, you're certainly going to be further indoctrinated into all of that.
And we see this from these 1100 law school professors that are worried, uh quote, we are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation's laws and promote justice and equality.
Law schools also infiltrated and taken over by the progressive left, the loons are running the things over there.
All right, hour three coming up, buck in for rush.
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