RUSH: The crux of his message throughout the 21 hours…I think it’s important to point out that in all those 21 hours, he didn’t say one critical or personal thing about anybody, Republican or Democrat. Despite the fact that the only opposition to him was personal, vicious, and mean, he did not sink to that level. Obviously he didn’t need a teleprompter for any of it. But the points that he tried to make over and over again was this legislation, this health care reform is a disaster. It doesn’t deserve to be implemented because it’s so bad.
The Medicare cuts that help pay for this have been delayed.
The employer mandate has been delayed until 2015, which is after the midterm elections. The employer mandate mandates the employer to provide health insurance. Now the employer doesn’t have to! The employer can cut loose employees from health care, and guess who’s gonna get blamed? Not Obamacare, not the government, but the evil corporations. Evil management. They’re free to off-load these health care plans now.
And that’s the idea. The idea is to get rid of as much private sector health insurance as possible. That’s what this plan has as its ultimate aim is for you to have only one place to go get health insurance, and that’s a government the exchange. That is the ultimate utopia. That is the objective of Obama and the Democrats — and hell, I guess even some of the Republican establishment. Subsidy verification?
That was where you go to the an exchange and verify that you qualify for a subsidy. That’s been delayed. Virtually anybody can now go to an exchange and get a subsidy, which, while it might sound good — “Oh, yeah, Rush! That’s free! That’s paid-for health care” — it’s gonna bust the bank. It’s not good.
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RUSH: Donna in Farmington, Connecticut. Great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Very well. Thank you.
CALLER: Oh, my God, this is so great. There’s only two people in this world I want to meet and one is you and the other is George W. Bush.
RUSH: Well, thank you. Appreciate that.
CALLER: You know, I’ve never really been much in politics or anything like that, but when I started listening to you, you really, you do your homework, and you educate us all out here. And I want to thank you for that.
RUSH: You flatter me. I appreciate that very much.
CALLER: I’ve never really been so worried as I am right now with this Obamacare, only because I buy my own insurance and talk to some friends that pay about the same as I do because I have, like, catastrophic, $5,000 deductible and pay around almost four, and theirs is going up to $900. Now, that’s a lot of money. I don’t understand —
RUSH: Let me give you the down-low.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: The Obama administration has finally issued its report on what insurance is gonna cost at the exchanges, and it’s going to be between $260 and $330 a month per person. How many in your family?
CALLER: There’s three of us, but two are on one plan, and I got denied on one so I had to get my own.
RUSH: All right. Well, for those two, that’s gonna be — we’ll use the average — that’s gonna be $600 a month times 12, per year.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: From the exchanges. This is what the regime has announced. There’s two stories on this. One’s from Reuters: “Americans will pay an average premium of $328 monthly for a mid-tier health insurance plan.”
CALLER: Whoa.
RUSH: Another story, this is from Bloomberg. Health insurance under Obamacare will cost individuals $3,000 a year on average. You can figure $3,000 a person is what this is gonna cost.
CALLER: Wow. I don’t know how people are gonna do it. I mean, I work in a doctor’s office —
RUSH: Well, this is before the subsidies. Some people are gonna qualify for subsidies. But that’s the overall price. I’m pretty sure about that.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I don’t know how people are gonna do this either.
CALLER: I mean, we had a patient come in — I work for an eye doctor, and he said his insurance is cash. And, you know, that’s what people are gonna end up doing because they can’t afford it. They’re not gonna have insurance.
RUSH: Well, no, what people are gonna do when they figure this out, they’re gonna pay the fines first.
CALLER: Right. Right.
RUSH: And then self-insure, like you just said.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Because the fine is like nothing compared to that for the first two years. Then the fine ends up becoming as expensive and then more expensive than the insurance. But to start, the fine is very low, and I’ll tell you what the purpose of that is. The purpose is to get people not buying insurance. And when they’re not buying insurance, they’re not buying it from private sector insurance, which means they’re gonna go out of business. That’s the objective, is to make it so that the only place people can go in a couple or three years to get health insurance is the government.
CALLER: Wow. Well, I called my senators here in Connecticut, and I told them don’t vote for it and I signed what Ted Cruz was talking about earlier, the Obamacare to defund it. So I’m doing my job and I’m gonna post it on Facebook and hopefully get some people to follow.
RUSH: Well, put those numbers in there when you have a chance with whatever you post because —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: — most people, for whatever reason, trust Obama. Obama told them they get to keep their doctor, no. Keep their plan, no. Gonna reduce their premiums, $2,500. No. A lot of people have no clue yet. We’ve been trying to get this out for just a number of years, but the mainstream media, when anybody talks substantively about this, starts attacking the people doing that. And like Senator Cruz said, they make it into an issue of personalities. But you know, you saw the hard numbers, and you’re right about it.
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RUSH: I’m looking here at a Politico story, looking for embargo, looking for embargo, looking for embargo. I don’t know if this is it. I haven’t printed it out yet. “HHS Reveals Obamacare Coverage Prices for Federal Exchanges.” Is that the story that you’re talking about? This report doesn’t say what the health plans would cost everybody else outside selective samples. Okay, so here we go. I’ve got two things here, folks. That’s a Washington Post story. Still looking for this embargo thing, folks, I can’t find the embargo story.
“Internal Senate Email Warns Lawmakers Not to Sign Up for Obamacare Yet.” This is the Washington Times. “The Senate this week warned lawmakers and their staff not to sign up for ObamacareÂ’s health exchanges, saying that the administration hasnÂ’t yet finalized the rules for how to keep paying for their premiums. ‘Members and staff are advised that they should delay enrolling in health insurance plans until we are able to offer further guidance as to how they should enroll in these insurance plans for 2014,’ said the Senate disbursing office.”
What is this? Internal Senate e-mail warning lawmakers, don’t sign up for the exchanges yet ’cause the regime hasn’t yet finalized the rules for how to keep paying for their premiums. Members and staff advised to delay enrolling until we are able to offer further guidance as to how they should enroll in these plans.
And then The Politico has a story, “Health and Human Services Reveals Obamacare Coverage Prices for Federal Exchanges.” But the report given to the media, they were told to keep it away from health experts. “The Obama administration on Wednesday released a long-awaited report on premiums in ObamacareÂ’s federal insurance exchanges — the first look at the rates that will apply in the vast majority of states. ThereÂ’s just one big catch: The report doesnÂ’t actually reveal very much about what most people will pay.
“The administration put the best face on the health insurance premiums, emphasizing that the rates have come in lower than expected in the 36 states where the feds will run part or all of the exchanges. That part of the report gives them a snappy answer to the widespread predictions of ‘rate shock’ by critics of Obamacare. ‘For millions of Americans, these new options will make health insurance work within their budgets,’ Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
“But it was a far cry from full disclosure. Want to know what you might pay for health coverage in an exchange next year? Too bad. The report gives lots of examples of the kinds of people who will get good prices — but everyone else will remain in the dark until at least next Tuesday, when Obamacare is supposed to open its doors.”
And the media has been told by the regime to embargo the details from health experts. The supposedly reduced premiums story is embargoed and the media has been told by the regime to keep the details from health experts. Now, why would that be? So on one hand we got the internal Senate e-mail warning lawmakers not to sign up for the exchanges yet. They don’t know how much it’s gonna cost. They don’t know who’s gonna pay for it, how much you’re gonna pay. Don’t sign up yet until we’ve greased the skids. And then another report claims to have the prices but don’t show what we’re saying here to health experts. Well, why not? Maybe because it isn’t true? Don’t want to give health experts time to dissect what the regime is saying so that they can report on it before the exchanges open next Tuesday?
There’s no way, folks, there’s literally no way this thing has any business being foisted on people. The Senate memo is essentially saying, “Don’t sign up until we’re sure how your subsidy is gonna work.” That’s the basic line. In the Washington Times story, don’t sign up until we have determined how your subsidy, your taxpayer subsidy is gonna work. And when we figure out how we can get you the most taxpayer subsidy, then you can sign up. You’re not getting this memo. You’re not getting this advice. You’re not being cautioned to hold out until somebody looking out for you gets you the best subsidy. But members of the Senate and their staff got an internal memo saying don’t do this until we get your subsidy ironed out.
The Politico piece is saying that Health and Human Services is just giving the numbers for best-case scenarios. For young people who don’t smoke — and they’re about as believable as CBO prediction. This is a mess. It’s an absolute mess. And they’re still operating in secret and they’re still trying to give preferential treatment to members of Congress and the Senate. Treatment that you can’t get. There’s nobody looking out for you to get you the best subsidy you can get and urging you to wait. You’re just being told you have to sign up.
Now, this report on the premiums, there’s a story here by Walter Russell Mead, the American Interest. “White House Dramatically Rolls Back Obamacare Expectations.” This story is from yesterday. “HereÂ’s a shocker: the latest predictions from the Obama administration have the Affordable Cart Act insuring only half the number initially expected.” Then Reuters takes over, and here’s the Reuters detail.
“The US Department of Health and Human Services now expects 11 million uninsured Americans to obtain coverage next year.” But wait. The original projection was for 22 million uninsured to get coverage. So here’s some diminished expectations. We’re not gonna cover all the uninsured. That was the only reason for doing this. Well, no. The stated reason that we had to have health reform was to insure the uninsured. It was just not right for a country this big and prosperous and this wealthy to have anybody in this country not to have health insurance. We’ve got to, to be a humane, compassionate society. And others, we told ’em they’re gonna get $2,500 premium reductions. Others were told it’s gonna be free, and for everybody else we gotta make sure they got coverage, these poor people.
But only 11 million will be covered. Eleven million, probably more, will not be covered. And as if the diminished expectations weren’t enough bad news for Obamacare, ” the law is also running into some fresh technical glitches. There have been stories all summer about problems with the software for the online exchanges, but this one seems quite serious.” From the Wall Street Journal: “Less than two weeks before the launch of insurance marketplaces created by the federal health overhaul,” i.e. Obamacare, “the governmentÂ’s software canÂ’t reliably determine how much people need to pay for coverage, according to insurance executives and people familiar with the program.”
So there was always gonna be a software program, that you would show up and you’d tell ’em who you are and you would answers all questions and then the software would determine how much you owe and what subsidy you’re gonna get. And the Journal is saying that that software isn’t ready. There’s no way that people are gonna get an accurate bit of information as to what they owe and what their subsidy is gonna be. I can’t even believe I’m talking this way.
You know, any time there’s a subsidy involved here, it just means your neighbors are paying a portion of yours. It’s all it means. It doesn’t mean the rich are paying. It means your neighbors are. Everybody else is. But beyond that, they’ve delayed the verification at the exchanges for a year so the software glitch doesn’t matter. All you’ve gotta do is show up and claim you qualify for a subsidy, and you’ll get it. And the purpose of that is to enroll as many people as possible outside of private insurance.