RUSH: Gwen in Greenwich, Connecticut. Great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. How are you, Rush?
RUSH: Fine. Thank you very much.
CALLER: That’s great. Listen, I’m calling about your saying that we should ask questions at the town hall meeting the first is, ‘What diseases are covered?’ and I just want you to know that my cousin who is a surgeon and I have read through the bill and she calls me back and she says, ‘Gwen, this is Medicaid. This is Medicaid. This runs just as Medicaid,’ because she takes Medicaid patients. She says it’s exactly the same language. So the problem with Medicaid is that they do take preexisting conditions. So they’ll take your preexisting condition all right, but what she says is that they’ll deny you some very needed treatments — which, you know, considering that this is taxpayer funded, is okay because you can’t expect taxpayers to fund every single treatment available to you. It’s just too expensive. However —
RUSH: Whoa, whoa! Hold that thought right there. Who says we can’t expect taxpayers to pay for everything? Do you realize how many Americans do expect that? The people that support Obama’s plan precisely support it because of that. They think everything’s going to be paid for by somebody else.
CALLER: Yes, but that hasn’t been able… Nobody has been able to achieve that. Not in Europe, not in any single-payer system anywhere around the world because what happens is you bankrupt the entire country. So at some point the disincentive to produce that comes from the additional taxation necessary to fund this is so great that they are no longer able to pay for these programs. So that’s not going to happen. At some point they’re going to have to cap it off. And they are capping it off at some point here in Medicaid already. But the problem, Rush, is that if you have… You know, your life is worth something to you, and if you have a problem, and you can come up with the money — ostensibly if you’re on Medicaid, you don’t have very much money. But say you get another job, or your family members scrape it together, or you get it from your church. You cannot, by the rules of Medicaid, pay out of pocket to that same doctor for the procedure. So if everybody’s basically going to be on Medicaid — and that is the intention of the Obama administration — then that means that you will not have the option to pay out of pocket for procedures. That’s highly un-American. It impinges on your freedom.
RUSH: Under what circumstances could someone pay out of pocket for a procedure if they wanted to?
CALLER: Well, right now, if your insurance —
RUSH: As you and your doctor buddy read the bill — because, frankly, let’s take a look at the very wealthy in this country, all right?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Are you saying that they’re all going to be prevented from going to see a doctor for any reason whatsoever if they pay for it out of their pocket?
CALLER: Well, here’s the rub, Rush. Because the problem doesn’t… We’re not sure. It’s not clear to us that private practice will be affected as in, ‘I want to go see my doctor and have my doctor check me out.’ However, where the problems come in is when you need procedures, because they have limited the ability of doctors to open surgeries. Now, I’m not as clear on this — and I don’t know if we’re on the air right now. Are we?
RUSH: Yes, of course we’re on the air!
CALLER: Oh, we are.
RUSH: Oh yeah! Say whatever you want.
CALLER: We’re going to publish these things and I’m not sure because I was told that we’re going to start a blog that’s going to explain all of these details, and I was told that I shouldn’t talk about that on the air right now because, you know, it’s not up and running, whatever. But I’m not the one to talk about this. But a doctor who owned a surgical facility will be able to talk about this. Basically it’s something to do with a certificate of need, which will have to be approved under this bill by the hospital with which you’re trying to compete to open your private medical center.
RUSH: My question was rhetorical.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: (sigh)
CALLER: You will not be able to do that easily because those private surgical centers — those private centers that provide those procedures — will be starved out of business because they will not get the ability to do it. They will not get the okay from the hospitals that they are looking to compete with.
RUSH: Yeah, but the real question is, will doctors have the ability to opt out of this health care system and just have a stable of clients that pay them privately and personally?
CALLER: They probably will. I have doctors like that. In fact, I pay all my doctors out of pocket.
RUSH: You know damn well they will.
CALLER: Of course.
RUSH: Because those are the doctors that the members of Congress and the House and Senate are going to go see.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And that’s whothe Wall Street execs are going to go see and that’s who the Hollywood leftist execs are going to go see.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: There’s going to be a separate system here.
CALLER: Yes. But, Rush, here’s the problem. If I want to go see my doctor — say I get my skin checkup from a dermatological oncologist or something — then that’s fine. He can look at me. But when he has to send me for a procedure that’s where the problem starts, because there will not be the easy ability to open up these surgical centers that serve cash-paying patients. That’s the problem.
RUSH: Yeah, but before you even get to that point you have to have somebody at a federal agency or some health board approve the procedure. Remember, Obama’s blaming doctors for doing unnecessary surgeries to line their pockets. The government’s going to decide who gets what treatment and procedures, as you say.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, folks, I appreciate every one of you. I’m grateful to you. But I do have to ask you a couple questions. Who the hell do you think you are? What makes you think you deserve the same health care as those in Congress in the first place? Don’t you know your place? You’ll take what they give you and you’ll thank them for it!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Here’s the problem, folks, with health care. As all of you know, I’m very grateful for all of you. I appreciate every one of you — and I respect you, as you well know. It’s not an exaggeration for me to say I couldn’t have done this without you. You are the major part of this. But having said that something is bothering me and I have to unburden myself. I try not to keep my burdens inside and stress out. Who the hell do you think you are? What makes you think that you deserve the same health care as members of Congress? What are you thinking? What makes you think that you, your family deserve that? What do you do for yourself that is as important as what each and every day a member of Congress does?
Do you not know your place? You need to sit there and think your family is important as Nancy Pelosi’s family or Harry Reid’s family or Kathleen Sebelius’ family? What demons possess you, my friends? For heaven’s sake, Harry Reid, why, he’s a senator! He’s a senator in the Senate of the United States of America. He is a leader of the United States Senate. What are you? You’re a statistic. You’re chump change. You need to learn your place. You need to understand how irrelevant you are. You think you’re as important as Obama’s family? Much as I love you, my dear listeners, you’ve got a problem. If you think you deserve the same health care as, say, Barney Frank, then your health care problem is mental illness.
Now, I’m, of course, illustrating a point here, ladies and gentlemen. But as I’ve watched these town meetings take place, and as I listen to these things, it’s quite obvious. You know we go through in stages and cycles in this country? Every election that they’re a low vote turnout, the Drive-By Media and the political class starts lamenting the low vote turnout. ‘Oh, this is not good for our democracy! We need people to get engaged in politics. We need people to get involved — and not by being picked up by ACORN in a little yellow bus and driven to the polls every two years. We need people to really get involved.’ Then when you get involved TIME Magazine does stories on, ‘Is there too much democracy now? Are too many people voting?’ They actually did a cover story on that based on me and this radio show’s success back in the nineties.
Is there too much democracy? Are you too involved now? You can see it, at least Sebelius when she stands up and starts getting hell from people, average Americans at these meetings, she doesn’t understand it. She’s from The Government! You are supposed to sit there, be quiet, respectful, and believe everything she says. You just don’t understand. Whenever somebody from Washington comes to tell you how they are going to manage your health care, you’re not supposed to say, ‘Who the hell are you to be managing my health care? You’re not a doctor! You’re not even a health care professional.’ They don’t react well to you saying and thinking that. I mean, the crowd in that Sebelius and Arlen Specter thing, they were shouting. I don’t know if you understood it. ‘You are lying. That’s a lie! You’re lying,’ and Sebelius is totally taken aback, because she knows she’s lying, but she doesn’t know that you know it. She knows she’s lying. She knows that she’s walking out there full of it. Specter knows he’s walking out there full of it. What they don’t think is that you’re supposed to know that they’re full of it. You’re supposed to know your place.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s John in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, as we go back to the phones. Great to have you, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Fellow greetings, Mr. Rush, my pleasure.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I have a scenario here that is probably of great interest. I think in the traditional, third-party payer system, when a claim is submitted the insurance company will review it and they’ll decide either to approve or deny it. And if it’s denied, there’s an appeals process. This occurs both in private insurance as well as Medicare-Medicaid. My question is in the proposed government policies will there be that appeals process if they deny a claim? It seems like you could generate a lot of savings that way.
RUSH: What do you think?
CALLER: Well, you know, there may be an appeals judge, but I have a funny feeling that he probably swings to the left.
RUSH: You know, I’m not sure, I don’t know. But my guess is for the purposes of appearances they will have an appeals process. But I don’t want to ever get yourself involved in it because to get a decision in a timely fashion will be next to impossible. They can’t even run a $1 billion trade-in program for a new car, and you want to get involved in an appeal of some medical procedure? By the way, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is no appeal process. Folks, this is not about health care. It’s not about improving your health care. It’s not about that.