RUSH: Steve in South Bend, Indiana. Welcome, sir. It’s great to have you here. Hi.

CALLER: Yes, good afternoon, Rush. Thank you for taking my phone call. Long-time listener, first-time caller. In fact you mentioned Hillarycare earlier, and it’s around 1993 that I think I first started tuning in, when Hillarycare debacle was going down. One thing I might add is, if you recall, C. Everett Koop supported Hillarycare. In fact, if you remember the red carpet ceremony with Hillary walking into the joint session of Congress, I think she was joined by C. Everett Koop, who lent his weight behind her plan.

That’s not why I called. Okay, 2010 when Obamacare was passed, they went to the states and wanted the states to offer extended Medicaid. The promise was that the federal government would pay for it for two years — and the bait, of course, was that the states did not have to pay for it. It was free Medicaid for two years. But then, of course, once they get everybody hooked into their entitlement then the federal government pulls the rug out from under it.

But everybody’s hooked so, you know, the states have to continue it. What I can foresee, what I predict with Obamacare rollout 2.0 is they’re just gonna jack up the subsidies. They’re gonna get everybody hooked in who lost their health care by overly subsidizing them, get ’em hooked and — you know, for a protracted, limited time, a year or two or whatever — and once theory hooked, they’re hooked. And you just mentioned the taxpayer subsidy would probably be a possibility. That’s what I see happening.

RUSH: Yeah, well, I think that’s what Jay Carney means when he quotes the president as saying he doesn’t like people put in a position where they can’t afford a better plan. So here comes subsidies. That’s the Democrat solution to everything, is buy them. The fact that we don’t have the money is irrelevant. The fact that they’re still being lied to is irrelevant. We’ll just buy them. We’ll just buy their love. We’ll just buy their support. And we’ll use the federal Treasury to do it.

There’s a guy who writes a piece in The Politico today named Jonathan Gruber, and he practically admits — let me read a little excerpt here. “The White House is ‘just reacting to one broken promise by imposing a much larger and harmful one: our promise to insurers that if they priced fairly, we would deliver a broad pool of insured. If you allow the healthy enrollees to stay out in their old policy, the insurers lose money and the program falls apart.'”

So, in other words, if insurers are allowed to keep their plan, Obamacare will fail. If you get to keep your plan, if we try to dial back the clock and everybody gets to keep their plan, it won’t work, because the insurers will lose money and the program falls apart because they won’t stay in business that way, whereas the federal government can. Jonathan Gruber was quoted. He didn’t write the piece, but he was one of the architects of Obamacare. He practically admitted that if insurers are allowed to keep their plans, that Obamacare will fail. Meaning, if you’re allowed to keep your plan, Obamacare fails. This has been my point all week. You cannot keep your plan and have Obamacare at the same time. Obamacare, by definition, gets rid of your plan and replaces it with health care run by the federal government.

Now, the caller is right about Medicaid. Remember, they tried to off that to the states, and a lot of states said, “Wait a minute, we don’t have the money to pay for this.” But Obamacare wanted to off that expense to the states to reduce the overall cost as reported to the CBO. Keep it under a trillion dollars and get it approved and everybody thinks, “Oh, wow, it’s a net wash, we’re replacing the Iraq war with health care, no loss, no gain.” The whole thing was a lie. The states said, “We can’t afford Medicaid. We can’t print money. We can’t accept it.”

So now it’s coming back, and Obama, the theory is, “Well, we’ll just subsidize people,” and like the caller said, “We’ll get ’em hooked,” and once people are hooked with the government paying for things for them, that’s it. But they’re subsidizing it with money they don’t have. But that’s the story of this whole administration. There was a stimulus that we didn’t have. A green energy program for money that we didn’t have. We’re subsidizing everything Obama is doing with money that we don’t have. But the beneficiaries don’t care. The people getting the money don’t care that we don’t have the money. In fact, you tell ’em we don’t have the money and they say, “Yes, we do, I just got it.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Gruber quote, just to be clear, he’s one of the architects of Obamacare, it’s in a Politico piece. Gruber is reminding people that we cannot go back and give people their old plans. We will not have Obamacare if we do that. We can’t turn back the hands of time. We cannot turn back the clock as a fix for all the people that are losing their policy, losing their doctor, we can’t just now say, “Oh, okay. Well, here it is back.” The reason is, the White House is just reacting to one broken promise by imposing a much larger and harmful one. And the original promise to the insurers, not the insured, the original promise to the insurers, the insurance companies, was that if they priced their policies fairly, that the regime would deliver a broad pool of uninsured that were mandated to buy.

This is how they hooked the insurance companies in. These idiots thought that they were guaranteed 30 million new customers. (interruption) Well, they are. What else explains this? So they sit there, and of course it’s the president, I guess you meet with the president and he tells you something, you automatically believe it. That’s what I don’t get. But anyway, they did, they bought it. And they were salivating, 30 million new customers and all we’ve gotta do is price our policies fairly. Well, now they can’t offer what they were offering at the same price because of the new mandates and all that in Obamacare.

The bottom line is, it isn’t easy to repair this broken promise, that millions of consumers would be able to keep their insurance coverage. And, by the way, the Politico, in random act of journalism here, they’ve gone out and they found a bunch of industry experts to say so. You can’t repair this broken promise. The reason I’m making a big deal out of this is Jay Carney was asked by AP today if Obama agrees with Clinton. You know, Clinton said (Clinton impression), “I think he ought to honor his promise. He said that people can keep their plan, I think he should do that.” You can’t! It doesn’t work. The only way you could do that would be a total repeal of Obamacare. There are just too many mandates and requirements on everybody. That is why people got canceled in the first place.

Your insurance company didn’t cancel you ’cause they hate you. They didn’t cancel you ’cause they want you to get sick and die. They didn’t cancel you because they’re Republicans, they don’t care about people. They canceled you because they couldn’t offer what you had at the price you were paying and stay in business, which was the design. Obamacare, to get where Obama and the Democrats want it to ultimately end, requires that the private sector health insurance industry cease to exist. This is the first step, is practically requiring them to be unable to provide you with the policy you’ve always had, because there are other mandates and requirements they have to conform to that makes it impossible to over to you the coverage you had at the price you were paying.

So the only way to get your plan back is not to fix a broken promise. Now, they may try a subsidy, but the only way is to repeal Obamacare, folks. This is what this architect is basically saying, as is The Politico.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, here’s the money quote from Jonathan Gruber: “If you allow the healthy enrollees to stay out in their old policy, the insurers lose money and the program falls apart.” The program is Obamacare. You cannot have people stay in their old plans and have Obamacare. It’s exactly as I’ve been saying.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I don’t know, folks. I still can’t get over Clinton telling Obama to honor his commitments and not break his promise. You know, I famously said, “I hope he fails.” Clinton is admitting Obama failed and demanding that he fix it. The guy who lied to a grand jury telling the sitting president to be honest.

Folks, this Politico piece that I just stumbled across here during the program, if I don’t mind saying so, is a huge See, I Told You So. I have been — and I hate that phrase, by the way, “I’ve been saying.” You hate it, but I hate it when other people use it because it implies that nobody’s listening, and I know you’ve heard me say this. It’s almost an habitual thing to remind people that they’ve been told of something.

I’ve been trying to make the point now — I really hammered it yesterday with a caller — ever since people started bellyaching about losing their policies. I mean, I’ve practically been pounding my fist on the table here telling people that you have to lose your policy if there is going to be Obamacare. I don’t want to have to go through this again. By the way, I need to really apologize to you all for being all over the ballpark today. I’m just really fatigued. I’m just worn out, tired — and it’s not assisted by being rudely awakened by my kitten.

Well, you know, what I mean by that is I’m saying silly things, like, “Why do people not remember?” I know the answer to these questions I’m asking. I just let my guard down. I’m asking stupid questions to which I already know the answers. I’m just basically saying, “Gee, why can’t it be some way else?” and I know that that’s silly. You know, wishing for it to be otherwise is silly, ’cause it is what it is. But this is big. I’m telling you that’s why this lie that he told is so fraudulent.

You mean, it’s impeachable what he’s done here, because there’s no way anybody was ever going to be able to keep their plan, and yet he made that the number one selling point. Without that lie he might nota been reelected, and without that lie we might not be saddled with this albatross. The American people have been deceived and defrauded. You let Richard Nixon try this and see what happens.

Bernie Madoff is a piker compared to the fraud, including the money, compared to what Obama has done with that one lie, because it was never true. There was never going to be a way that you or anybody could keep your plan — and the simplest way to understand that is he’s out there telling the entire nation, “If you like your plan, you can keep it,” and for the most part, the vast majority of people liked that characteristic of Obamacare.

That’s why they supported it.

Do you think he would have been reelected if he would have told people that this is what was gonna happen? If he were to campaign now, “You’re gonna lose your plan, and the replacement’s gonna cost you three times as much, but we have to do it to insure the uninsured,” do you think he would have been reelected? Do you think we would have to deal with this? As Joe Biden once said, “This is a big F—ing deal.”

You were never gonna be able to keep your plan, and the fact that he made it the number one selling point, and that they knew! The Federal Register admited that 93 million people were not gonna keep their plans. They knew that, and they’ve known it since 2010, when this all started. The fact that he made that the number one selling point for this, stop and think for a second.

If everybody keeps their plan, then what the hell are we talking about? Why do we need Obamacare? If you like your plan and get to keep it, what’s wrong? The only thing that anybody could say is wrong, well, the insured. Now, I realize that especially may have not liked their plans because they believed there was something better, and that was the second lie that was told. “Do you like your plan? You can keep it, but the alternative is gonna be even better for you.”

The scope of this fraud is incalculable and almost unimaginable. That’s how big it is. So for this Obamacare architect — a man by the name of Jonathan Gruber, in The Politico today — to be admitting this is a huge See, I Told You So. The See, I Told You So is specifically what I drilled home to a caller yesterday, that these canceled policies will never be brought back. Now, you’re gonna hear Democrats talk about reinstating your lost policy.

And you might hear some idiot Republicans talking about wanting to support that, and you might hear the media talk about it. But it’s not possible. Your policy cannot be restated, or restored unless Obamacare is repealed, and that isn’t going to happen. Obama will not do it. Saul Alinsky, that might put the fire out in hell. That would never happen. Repealing this thing, that’d be one of the biggest embarrassment ever. I know that they might delay the individual mandate.

They might try to do a bunch of things here to limit the pain, or to move the pain to after the 2014 elections, but these plans cannot be brought back. They were canceled precisely because Obamacare doesn’t permit them, financially and with regulation. That’s why you’ve been canceled. It’s not because the insurance companies hate you. It’s not because they want you to get sick and die. It’s not ’cause they’re a bunch of Republicans and they’re trying to save money. It’s none of that.

They can’t stay in business with your old plan. They’re not gonna be in business anyway by the time this is all said and done. Now, The Politico piece also has this. “The Huffington Post reported that the [regime] is considering providing subsidies to those who lost coverage but wouldn’t qualify for subsidies otherwise under the law.” So they’re gonna buy you off. You’ve lost your plan and you can’t get it back.

So they’re gonna cover the difference with a subsidy. Now, if you’re the Republicans, I don’t know how you deal with that. If you oppose that, what can they say about you? “Well, you want people to starve! Oh, you don’t want people to have health care? Oh, you want people in pain?” Once you get to the point where the federal Treasury becomes the number one weapon before for a political party to stay in power, I don’t know how you battle that. I really don’t.

I don’t know how you battle that, given how many low-information voters we have, given how many people are already on food stamps and dependent, how many people are already in poverty. I don’t know how you re-instill a sense of self-reliance. And particularly when it comes to health care, I just don’t know how you do that. And that is why I am sounding wistful here in wishing for fantasy, ’cause it is fantasy that people understand and remember how devastating liberalism is. They just don’t.

They fall for it every time it’s pitched to ’em.

Well, maybe not. They had to be lied to big time to fall for this.