RUSH: From the NBC website, First Read. It is NBC News’ version of an early-morning summary of the news, supposedly the news. NBC’s version of what’s happening, what has happened, what’s important. There are many paragraphed items there, and here is one about four or five into it.
“Another tough health-care story for the White House: Another day, another story about how the White House was warned for weeks, if not months, that healthcare.gov had flaws. This one comes courtesy of the Washington Post: ‘Major insurers, state health-care officials and Democratic allies repeatedly warned the Obama administration in recent months that the new federal health-insurance exchange had significant problems, according to people familiar with the conversations. Despite those warnings and intense criticism from Republicans, the White House proceeded with an Oct. 1 launch.’ The White House continues to claim all of its web site problems are simply traffic related but there are clearly plenty of folks who think, itÂ’s more than that, that it was designed poorly.”
What does this mean? It means that the regime knew that HealthCare.gov wasn’t ready. They knew it couldn’t handle the load. It also knew that its structure was flawed. Even if it could handle the load, it was not right. They went ahead and did it anyway because it doesn’t matter. I’ve gotten blue in the face, and I know if you’re a 24-year-old frightened woman, this is gonna scare you, but the fact of the matter is Obama himself doesn’t care about details like this. He doesn’t care what it ends up costing people. All that matters is what he will say about it and what will be reported about what he says and therefore what you will be told to believe.
The reality is he doesn’t care. He really doesn’t, and he hasn’t for a long time. Because Obamacare is not about improved health care or cheaper insurance or better treatment or insuring the uninsured, and it never has been about that. It’s about statism. It’s about expanding the government. It’s about control over the population. It is about everything but health care. And that purpose has been served. It’s the law. So now it doesn’t matter whether it works. These are little details that we’ll flesh out as it unrolls. It didn’t matter whether it was ready. It didn’t matter whether all the promises made were kept. That is irrelevant. Selling it, getting it passed and signed into law was all that mattered. Ditto the sequester. Ditto anything else.
The president hasn’t told the truth about much, and yesterday in his press conference he continued. The whoppers yesterday, folks, I can’t let go of this. He talked yesterday in his press conference about the default and how it’s gonna happen. We’re not gonna default. We take in sufficiently more money every month via tax revenue than we are required to pay to service the debt. That’s about $18 billion. And we take in $250 billion. We’re nowhere near a default, even if we don’t raise the debt ceiling. He knows it, but it doesn’t matter. The truth is not what matters. What matters is what he can make you think, along with his media friends, of the Republicans. That’s all that matters.
When it comes to Obamacare, what it is, in reality, is irrelevant. The fact that it doesn’t work doesn’t matter. It’s the law now. It’s an achievement. It’s an accomplishment the Democrats have sought for 50 years. Doesn’t work. Even the media is on to it. Washington Examiner: “Obamacare Still Broken: Website says try back ‘in a few days’ — Over a week after Obamacare kicked in, the HealthCare.gov computer system is still blocking insurance applicants due to major glitches and traffic, prompting a live chat room host on the governmentÂ’s website to suggest that it would be best to ‘wait a few days.’
“Secrets,” that’s the name of the column here, “attempted again on Wednesday to enter the system but within two minutes a red line crossed the computer screen reading: ‘Important. Your account couldn’t be created at this time. The system is unavailable.'”
Another story from something called The Federalist: “Obamacare Rollout A Case Study In Government Ineptitude.” Let me just read you three pull quotes from this story. The first one. “The HealthCare.gov snafu illustrates the core incompetency of the federal government: because of how it is structured and who it attracts, it is simply incapable of doing much of anything that the private sector can do. If the private tech sectorÂ’s motto is ‘Faster, better, cheaper,’ then the federal governmentÂ’s would have to be, ‘Slower, worse, and crazy expensive.'”
Second pull quote. “So what gives? How is it that the president who gave us an unquestionably brilliant campaign tech team couldnÂ’t deliver the goods for a simple government-run website that lists health care plans? ‘ItÂ’s pretty simple,’ one federal IT contractor told me. ‘The government is not exactly hiring the best of the best to manage and develop these projects. ItÂ’s not like theyÂ’re bringing in people from Facebook or Google.’ The private sector gets the best, and the government gets the rest.”
Another pull quote. “Another major problem goes beyond the tech talent itself to the people who manage the developers. One common complaint I heard was unclear, yet constantly changing contract requirements. ‘I canÂ’t tell you how many times IÂ’d be 90 percent done with one requested task, only to have it changed at the last minute to something completely different,’ the contractor told me. ‘Most of the time I never had the chance to go back and finish that last 10 percent.'”
It is an utter disaster.
The Weekly Standard: “Obamacare Marketplace: Personal Data Can Be Used For ‘Law Enforcement and Audit Activities.'” Obamacare has not-so-hidden provisions that allow them to give all of your health information to the police and to the IRS anytime they want. And all your e-mails to Obamacare about private matters, those will be shared by the government as well.
Jacksonville, Illinois, Journal-Courier news: “Growing concerns about identity theft and fraud have led the Illinois Department of Insurance to issue a public warning, just as the new health insurance exchanges enter their implementation phase. Concern focuses on those charged with assisting Illinoisans with enrollment to the new health insurance exchanges, the so-called ‘navigators.’ … This will give navigators access to individualsÂ’ personally identifiable information: the information necessary for identity theft.”
It’s an utter disaster.
CBS News has piled on now. Washington Post has piled on. NBC, at least they’re reporting it. They’re not condemning it, they’re just reporting, and they’re concerned, they’re worried. See, these are the true believers. The Obama media people actually believe this was designed to work. They actually think it’s gonna be the best thing going. They actually think it’s gonna lower costs. They actually think it’s gonna ensure the 30 million uninsured. They actually believe all the crap that they’re told, because they’re good people. They have big hearts. And they have good intentions. And they have lots of compassion.
They believe all this tripe. They believe the government does it better than anybody else. They believe the government should. So here comes a smooth talker like Obama promising the moon, they eat it up. Then when it doesn’t happen, they’re genuinely worried. They don’t want their guy to look bad. They don’t want Obama to look bad. They don’t want the Democrat Party to look bad. This is not the way it was supposed to be. And they’re like anybody else, they go to any website, private sector, and it works. Amazon, iTunes, you name it, they go there, it works. This doesn’t. This just doesn’t work.
Ashley Dionne is a 26-year-old Michigan University student. She sent a letter to Dennis Prager, my old buddy from Los Angeles. She said, “My name is Ashley Dionne and IÂ’m a 26-year-old recent graduate from Michigan. The phony Obamacare signup poster boy made me want to send a message about how Obamacare is really affecting people.
“I graduated from The University of Michigan in 2009. In my state, this used to mean something, but even with a bachelorÂ’s I was told I was too educated and wouldnÂ’t stay. I watched as kids with GEDs and high school diplomaÂ’s took the low-paying jobs for which I applied. I went back to school and got a second degree and finally found work at a gym. I work nights and only get 32 hours a week for eight dollars an hour. IÂ’m unable to find a second job at this time. I have asthma, ulcers, and mild cerebral palsy. Obamacare takes my monthly rate from $75 a month for full coverage on my ‘Young Adult Plan,’ to $319 a month. After $6,000 in deductibles, of course.”
What Ashley Dionne is describing here is what happened to her when she left the nest, because all kids eventually become 27 years old, and at that point they’re no longer covered by mom and dad. They are finding that with Obamacare they’re going broke. And this woman wrote Prager a note about it.
“‘Liberals claimed this law would help the poor. I am the poor, the working poor, and I canÂ’t afford to support myself, let alone older generations and people not willing to work at all. This law has raped my future. It will keep me and kids my age from having a future at all. This is the real face of Obamacare and it isnÂ’t pretty.’ In a statement to Campus Reform, Dionne clarified her reason for writing the letter. ‘I wanted to get my message about Obamacare out, because I’m being directly and negatively affected by it, but I know it’s not just me. Obamacare will make my life more difficult. It will hurt more people than it will help.’ Ashley Dionne is a 2009 graduate of the University of Michigan and a 2012 graduate of Baker College.”
She can’t afford it. She can’t find work that pays more than eight bucks an hour and 32 hours a week. The new America. I don’t know if she voted for Obama or not. It doesn’t say. It doesn’t sound like she did. It sounds like she was predisposed to knowing what this was all about but maybe didn’t realize how bad it was, but I’m just guessing. I don’t know who she voted for. I probably shouldn’t speculate.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, ladies and gentlemen, do you remember Maxine Waters? She was on I think CNN, Roland Martin still worked there then, and now he’s somewhere else at like Media One or Media One and a half, I don’t know where he is, but he was at CNN, and she was a guest on his show, and she said — and we had the audio — Cookie, you don’t need to go get it. She said (paraphrasing), “The president has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life. It’s gonna be very, very powerful. And that database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before. And whoever runs for president on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with that database, and the concerns of those people, because they can’t get around it. And he, Obama, he’s been very smart. It’s very powerful, what he’s leaving in place.”
You remember that? You know, Maxine screws up every now and then and let’s the whole cat out of the bag. She’s talking to the oil executives one day. “We want to take over your companies.” They had to send the mayor of Washington to her apartment, say, “Shut up. We don’t say that in public.” But she did. As I’m listening to Joanne talk about all this, I’m remembering Maxine Waters talking about this massive Obama database that he’s setting up that nobody’s ever had before. The point that she was making, any Democrat that runs against him is gonna just be humiliated and embarrassed if they try to unseat him, ’cause they’re gonna know every bit of dirt that there is. And then he’s gonna have this thing in place, he’s gonna leave it to the Democrat Party when he leaves, and they’re gonna have access to it.
We just learned from The Politico, when you go to HealthCare.gov and you’re just looking around, one of the first things you have to do is set up an account. And once you do that, you can never delete it. Politico is reporting, once you set up your account, and that means your user name and password and all of your vitals, that’s what’s setting up the account is, all the questions, you can never delete your account. And everybody’s signing up at HealthCare.gov. This is the database that Maxine’s talking about. HealthCare.gov, you set up your account, and you can’t delete it. It’s your permanent record, folks. Even if you just go there to play around and see what this thing is, before you can do that, you have to set up your account, and once that’s done, you can’t delete it. It is there forever.