RUSH: I have received e-mails today from people who have heard about West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. What Joe Manchin has said today is that he might break ranks from the Democrats and vote for a funding measure that delays the individual mandate. Now, the employer mandate has been delayed until 2015, but the individual mandate has not been. The employers got a one-year waiver from being required to provide insurance for their employees. But the individual citizen is still required, mandated to have insurance, or pay a fine. And Manchin has said that he is willing to break ranks and vote for a funding measure that delays Obamacare’s individual mandate.

Now, this, folks, is all well and good, but I want to remind you of a little history. I was reminded of it this morning in a very persuasive way, and I want to pass that on to you. While you might get all excited about Joe Manchin saying one thing or another, don’t forget that he’s for Obamacare. He voted for it. And keep this in mind as well. There are Republicans, by the way, in reaction to Ted Cruz, who disagree with what Cruz did and Cruz’s whole strategery. You’ve seen it. You’ve heard it. Republicans, operatives, consultants, elected officials out there say, “Go ahead, let this thing get implemented. Just let it fall apart ’cause it’s gonna fall apart. Let it collapse, and it’s gonna be on Obama, and it’s gonna be on the Democrats. And let’s get these Democrats on the record supporting this.”

It seems to be a frequently heard Republican strategery, “Let’s get these Democrats on the record supporting this now because it’s gonna collapse.” Let me tell you something about this. It may collapse. You think Obama’s gonna get blamed for that? Who’s gonna get blamed when it collapses? Who assigns blame in America? The media. The states are gonna get blamed if they got Republican governors, and Republicans in Congress are gonna get blamed for all this that’s going on now if it collapses. But there’s another aspect of this that’s a little bit frustrating to me.

I mean, the idea that we can’t stop it so just let it collapse is akin to, “Go ahead and let the Democrats win and let people see how rotten the country gets and they’ll never get reelected again.” That was a strategery that people wanted to employ with Clinton in 1992. It never works. It assumes that every voter is top-flight informed and is aware of the ideological differences in the two parties — and they aren’t.

They’re not aware of the ideological differences, many voters, and many of them are low-information anyway. But can I take you back to 2010? Do you remember how Obamacare passed? When you stop and think about this and relate it to what’s happening today, this is what can really rub you raw. In 2010, Obamacare passed, and it passed with only Democrat votes.

For every Republican consultant and every Republican strategist and every Republican commentator who’s out there saying, “Let’s get these Democrats on the record supporting it,” they already are! They voted for this. In fact, they were the only ones who voted for it. Now let’s add insult to injury. What else happened in 2010? The Tea Party. The 2010 midterms resulted in a Democrat Party shellacking.

They lost nearly 700 elected seats all over this country, from the House of Representatives, the state legislatures, and all the way down to mayor and town council. They got drubbed, and it was because of Obamacare. All the way back in 2010, a majority of the people of this country didn’t want it. They’re already on record. So when you hear a Republican say, “Well, let’s get these guys on record,” they already are!

My point is, there has been enough evidence to hang an albatross around the Democrats’ necks for the last three years. The Republicans have just chosen not to do it. Instead, they’ve been cozying up on amnesty and been fearful of a government shutdown. So when a guy like Manchin comes along, it’s, “Hey, Joe Manchin says he will break ranks to vote for funding measure that delays Obama’s individual mandate! Hey, hey.”

This thing only became law because of Manchin and everybody else!

He already voted for this. The idea that there’s a Democrat now that’s opposed to Obamacare? He’s not renouncing his support for Obamacare . It may be a fine point, but the fact of the matter is, every Democrat is already on record supporting this because they’re the only ones who voted for it — and despite that, the Republicans the last two years have still felt it necessary to attack the Tea Party and not the Democrats.

This week the Republicans have felt it necessary to attack Ted Cruz and not Obamacare. Ted Cruz didn’t vote for it. The Tea Party didn’t vote for it. The Republican Party owes its majority in the House of Representatives to the Tea Party and the midterm elections in 2010. Yet Cruz ended up being the target of genuine anger from people like Senator McCain and others on the Republican side.

The only reason we’re here today talking about this, the only reason that we face this fundamental transformation of this country is because of the Democrats, who are being given a pass. Now, all of a sudden, one of ’em comes out and says, “You know, I might support a measure that delays Obamacare,” and we want to applaud a damn Democrat while we still crucify one of our own. Mind-boggling, it is. Yeah, I know. The measure to defund or delay the individual mandate hadn’t even been written yet.

The Democrats know you don’t like this. They know that vote that they extended for this is a big problem for some of them in the 2014 midterms, so a bunch of them are gonna say this to get on record. It’s much like the Republicans said that they’re gonna do everything they can to get rid of this, until the moment of truth came, and then they didn’t do everything they could to get rid of it. But they said they were going to.

So here comes Manchin saying he might — he could, it would possibly happen — break ranks and vote for a measure that delays the Obamacare individual mandate. The fact is, Obama’s still out there selling this. The fact is that the people he really needs even now for this thing to be fully implemented he’s buying off by giving them waivers or offering them subsidies, such as members of Congress and their staff. The fact that he’s out there selling it is clear indication even now that there is nowhere near any popular support for this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, as I was perusing the news doing show prep today, it was really striking to note how many stories, how many articles that are out there this morning that detail all of the problems in Obamacare. It’s nothing you don’t know. You’ve heard it all. We have gone to great lengths since the beginning days of this. You know all the details. But what’s fascinating to me as I went through show prep today is how many articles are out this morning with new and troubling details about Obamacare.

That, to me, shows that the Drive-By Media now think Obamacare is totally safe from being repealed or defunded and now it’s time, for whatever journalistic reasons, to get all of the truth, the details, the news about Obamacare out there. Now, as I say, most of the news is information that the regular daily listener of this show has known about for more than three years, but the media has never reported it.

You know, all of these details, all of the waivers, all of the exemptions, all the fines. The hard numbers, all of these things have never been in the Drive-By Media, but it’s starting to show up. All of a sudden we’re now being told about it so that when people start seeing Obamacare up close and personal starting next week, the Drive-Bys can say, “Well, we reported that.” The news media are now covering their assets, if you will, and they’re doing it as late as possible.

Again, this tells me that they think it’s safe now to tell everybody about it. It’s amazing, all of these reports on how the true costs of Obamacare do not include the high deductibles or the out-of-pocket expense for treatment and medication. I mean, they’re things that we’ve talked about here for three years but the Drive-Bys are just now getting around to reporting it. It’s so they can say, “Well, we told you about this. This shouldn’t surprise any of you.”

Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal today says that next Tuesday when Obamacare begins its final and full implementation, what will happen is “the discrediting of the entitlement state.” In fact, his line in his piece today the Wall Street Journal is, ” The discrediting of the entitlement state begins next Tuesday. Let it happen,” and what he means is, this can’t work. It’s going to collapse.

People have expectations based on what Obama is telling them even today of how cheap it’s gonna be, of how plentiful it’s gonna be, how easy it’s gonna be, and none of that’s gonna be — and it’s gonna collapse, and people are gonna be livid and outraged. The theory goes that as it collapses, people will all of a sudden realize that government can’t do this better than the private sector, that all of this has been a lie, that all of this has been trumped up, and that we should no longer trust government for this.

I’m sorry, but that’s not the history of liberal entitlements. This stuff has to be beaten back. If the theory that it discredits itself worked, FDR would not be in the top five greatest presidents ever in as many people’s minds as he is in this country. If liberalism discredited itself, Obama woulda never gotten elected, and the New Deal woulda gone by the wayside, and LBJ woulda never gotten the Great Society. Liberalism does not discredit itself. It has to be explained and beaten back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: An e-mail I checked at the bottom-of-the-hour break said, “Come on, Rush! Give us appear example of what you mean that the Drive-Bys are reporting things that we already know.” Okay, here’s something, for instance, from The Politico. “Exchanges May Have High Out-of-Pocket Costs.” We’ve told you over and over who is running the exchanges. They are left-wing activists like the NAACP and unions, gay rights groups.

They’re the ones getting the money to staff the exchanges — both the brick and mortar and the websites — where you’re gonna get to get insurance, and they’re siphoning off some of the money. It’s a slush fund. The exchanges are slush fund monies, they’re payoffs to the Democrats from their supporters. That’s one thing. But we’re now told that they’re going to have “high out-of-pocket costs”?

Yeah, and we’re also told that the software isn’t ready to go.

Well, we told you that a couple of weeks ago. It’s just now showing up in the Drive-By Media. In The Politico, from their article, “Consumers may have to dig a little deeper into their wallets to pay for health care in the Obamacare insurance exchanges, according to a new analysis by Avalere Health. The study of six states suggests that consumers could face steep cost-sharing requirements — like co-payments, co-insurance and deductibles — layered on top of their monthly premiums.

“The health law sets exchange enrollees’ maximum annual out-of-pocket costs at $6,350. But many people won’t get near that limit, and deductibles for typical exchange plans can run twice as high as the average employer-sponsored plan. It’s a reminder that despite news trumpeted Wednesday by the White House, suggesting exchange premiums will be lower than expected, consumers will have additional numbers to crunch.”

But see, it was important for the White House and their media minions to trumpet those bogus estimates so that nobody would listen to the lunatic Ted Cruz, who was telling everybody the truth in his speech or filibuster. So the regime puts out this notion yesterday that the costs of implementing Obamacare at the exchanges are gonna be very low and so forth, and the media duly reports it.

But then today when Cruz is finished, here comes the truth about all these add-on costs, which we’ve told you about over the past few months. Here’s more from The Politico story: “[T]he report estimates that a silver plan would have a deductible ranging from $1,500 to $5,000, which is higher than the average deductible ($1,135) for an employer-sponsored plan. ‘Consumers will need to balance lower monthly premiums against the potential for unpredictable, expensive, out-of-pocket costs in plans with higher deductibles,’ Caroline Pearson, vice president of Avalere Health, said in a statement.”

Well, if you’ve been listening to this program regularly, you knew this was going to happen because you had been given the data and the documentation of how all these costs were being underestimated and undersold so that Obama could carry on this notion that Obamacare was gonna be cheaper for everybody. “The study also suggests exchange enrollees,” which is everybody, “could see higher drug co-pays and co-insurance than those in employer-sponsored plans.”

But wait a minute! You were gonna be able to keep your employer-based health care if you liked it! No, you weren’t ever gonna be able to keep your employer. We told you that, too. Anyway, all of this stuff is starting to show up now in the Drive-By Media. But this little story about the additional costs at the exchanges? (sigh) This is why the theory is out there that this is ready to collapse, that people are just totally unprepared for the absolute mess that awaits them.

And that when they’re confronted with it, there’s nobody to blame but government, because the government did this, and who is the government? Obama! This is the theory among those who say let it collapse, because then the entitlement state will be discredited. Now, Daniel Henninger again, the Wall Street Journal, “Obamacare’s Achilles’ heel is technology. The software glitches are going to drive people insane. Creating really large software for institutions is hard.”

This has been delayed, by the way, because Sebelius said it isn’t going to work.

But this is why the regime has eliminated any verification for subsidies. This is why the regime has eliminated so many requirements so that the problems will not be faced. So we’ll have to see on this collapse business. I’m not so certain, using intelligence guided by experience, as I say. It’d be really nice, folks, if all this, when it collapses, people immediately pointed a finger at Obama and the Democrats because they’re the only ones who voted for it.

But, the Republicans all this time have not been educating people on what’s wrong with this, and instead they have been portrayed as opponents, naysayers, negativists. It’s Obama who’s appeared positive in all this. “Oh, this is gonna be wonderful! Oh, it’s gonna be cheap.” So when it collapses, the media, you think they’re gonna support the idea that it’s Obama’s fault? Who they gonna point to?

They’re gonna be pointing to the naysayers, the negativists, the Democrats, the Republicans, “who didn’t want it to work” and all this sort of stuff, and the governors in the Republican states where these exchanges are. So the task to properly assign blame for this is going to be Herculean for us once again because of that natural conclusion. See, over the course of the recent past, if there’d been the ideological argument…

I had a guy send me a note last night who wants to possibly advertise on the program. He’s a very, very intelligent guy, and as he closed his note, he said, “Can you believe ever believe…? This guy’s IQ is about 230, by the way, okay? He’s written countless books, is an accomplished historian, although it’s not his profession. He says to me, “Did you ever in your wildest dreams think Obama would be this bad?”

I wrote back and I said, “Look, I don’t mean to sound braggadocios, but, yeah. It’s why I said ‘I hope he fails.’ I mean, he told us what he was gonna do five days before he was inaugurated. He said, ‘The fundamental transformation of this country begins in five days,’ not ‘a’ fundamental, but ‘the’ fundamental. He’s told us he is who he is. He was never a moderate. He’s always been a radical.”

This note from this guy that I got, I think, summed it up for a whole lot of people on our side. From the get-go, he’s just another Democrat, just the latest Democrat to win. He’s actually gonna be someone moderate, they thought. Now they’re a shocked and stunned, which I intellectually don’t understand. My IQ isn’t half what this guy’s is, and I said to him, “We wouldn’t even be here now, we wouldn’t be hoping for a popular uprising against all this if we had properly identified this guy ideologically for people.

“But we didn’t because we were afraid to.” I am the only one. The Republican Party didn’t want to get anywhere near it. Very few people on our side really wanted to talk about what a radical leftist extremist Obama was. They were all afraid to. So when I say “we,” I’m exempting myself. Of course I didn’t. But it’s such a lost opportunity. Now the same people are waiting for everybody else to figure out, when this collapses, that the entitlement state doesn’t work and that statism doesn’t work and liberalism doesn’t work.

Well, if Obama hasn’t been blamed for anything yesterday that’s gone wrong, for the economy, for jobs, for the debt –if he hadn’t blamed for any of that — why is he gonna get blamed for this? The answers is, “Well, it’s a natural conclusion to make, Rush. It’s Obamacare! It’s his law and so forth.” Well, I hope that they’re right. I hope that if it collapses, people properly understand who’s to blame for this. I’m not trying to be a negativist. I’m trying to be a realist.

I’m the mayor of Realville here. We’ll see. Time will tell. Here, from the AP. Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar. “Administration officials are quietly telling key interest groups to expect initial glitches signing up online for coverage under” Obamacare. ” Two sources tell The Associated Press…” This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve known this, that they’re just now, at AP, writing stories about there might be trouble here.

“Two sources tell The Associated Press that small businesses will not be able to enroll online starting Oct. 1 when new health insurance markets go live. Instead, one of the sources, a person who was briefed on the situation, said business owners will initially have to mail or fax their information so that they can enroll. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement hasn’t yet been made.

“Separately, the [regime] told Hispanic groups that the Spanish-language version of its HealthCare.gov website will be not be ready to handle enrollments for a few weeks. An estimated 10 million Latinos are eligible for coverage.” Nothing is ready! Not one aspect of this is going to work. You all know that. This is exactly what I mean about the media all of a sudden now getting people ready for what’s coming.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, let me give you the conclusion of The Politico piece that I cited mere moments ago as evidence of the media all of a sudden detailing for everybody what’s wrong with Obamacare. The Politico article ends with a warning that higher out-of-pocket expenses are going to keep people from going to the doctor. Well, then why did we do Obamacare again? Politico says this. This is the regime’s mouthpiece. “Higher out-of-pocket expenses.” Do you remember, folks, that the cap on out-of-pocket expenses has been delayed? There is, in Obamacare, a limit on how much you will have to pay out of pocket. Those caps, those limits have been delayed for a year.

So there’s no limit on out-of-pocket expenses. And The Politico says that they are sizeable enough that they might keep people from going to the doctor, just won’t have the money to afford it. Why are we doing this again? Why are we doing Obamacare? If it results in costs to individuals so high they can’t afford them, then why are we doing this? Was it to insure the uninsured? Was it to make it more affordable? Was it to make health care coverage more plentiful? Why are we doing this? Remember, this is not me analyzing. This is The Politico, ending with a warning: Higher out-of-pocket expenses are gonna keep people from going to the doctor.

Everything we were promised about this has turned out to be untrue. It has not lowered costs. It is a new tax. We cannot keep our plans if we like them. We cannot keep our doctor if we like him, and even if we could, he may not still be working. He may quit! Even if you get to keep your doctor, good luck in finding him. He might be at the cabin fishing for salmon. This law, this whole thing should go down in history as the biggest bait-and-switch ever.

The Politico, by the way, does not mention that the caps on out-of-pocket expenses have been delayed for a year. They don’t mention that. These caps were there to protect you. These caps were in there to make sure that you don’t get raped by evil insurance or evil doctors or evil pharmacists or evil whoever. And they’ve been delayed for a year. So there’s no limit on what you can be charged above and beyond for out of pocket things not covered by your insurance. And they’re still gonna end up at the end of all this, 30 million people uninsured even after it’s implemented. Why are we doing this again? Well, why did we do this again?