RUSH: This is Louis in Houston. You’re next, sir. Nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Pleasure to speak with you, Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I will admit that, yes, I am a lifelong liberal, but I have been listening to you since you had your television show back in the early nineties, and although I may not agree with everything you say, I do find you very insightful.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: That being said, I have a question regarding the health care situation —
RUSH: I want to ask you a question. I’m not being insolent here and I’m not being a wise guy.
CALLER: No problem, Rush.
RUSH: I love understanding how you think.
CALLER: If you’re going to ask me how I became a liberal, sir, I’ll be honest with you. It was primarily because my parents were liberal, and, therefore, I was raised in a liberal household, but as I’ve gotten older, I also have developed the ability to completely think.
RUSH: Well, then you won’t stay liberal long. You won’t be a liberal long if you start to think.
CALLER: Well, I always base my decisions based on all information.
RUSH: Yeah. Now, the question I had for you —
CALLER: I’m sorry.
RUSH: — you’re a good liberal, you assumed you knew what I was going to say, you assumed you knew. My question is, you just called me insightful. That is a compliment about my ability to see the truth in things, and yet you told me you disagree with me most of the time, so how can I be insightful?
CALLER: Well, may I say, I enjoy your insight. The way I look at it is, you’re not — okay, I don’t necessarily agree with you all of the time, but I don’t also disagree with you all of the time, either.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: That being said, you say things on any number of occasions that not only I have seen to be true, but that actually make sense, and then you also say things that I say —
RUSH: Hot damn.
CALLER: — I’m striking my head, ‘Oh, my God, what is the man saying, where is he coming from? Is he insane?’ That doesn’t mean that you’re not insightful, it just necessarily means that I don’t necessarily agree with that particular issue.
RUSH: Or understand it.
CALLER: Well, perhaps. Or understand it as you understand it. My question is —
RUSH: Time is dwindling and I don’t want to argue here over the —
CALLER: No, no, I wasn’t trying to argue —
RUSH: — of words. Disgronificator is loaded anyway. What was the real reason you called?
CALLER: Well, as a fellow Missourian, yeah, we would argue all day long. But my question was this: understanding that American health care system is considered to be the best in the world, yet there — you know, on the conservative view, best in the world. On the liberal view, it’s broken and needs to be fixed. My question was, as I stated to the gentleman who screened the call, it’s generally accepted in the medical profession that checkups prevent problems. Why not have the government pick up the tabs on one? One free health care checkup per year. Any future problems, if you can afford it, you pay to get it fixed if you have insurance, because, as it stands now, you can’t be denied health care in an emergency situation because of your ability to pay.
RUSH: That’s right, I gotta run because of time, but we got the question. The question is: Why not a free medical checkup once a year for every American?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We had a call from Louis in Houston, a liberal, who acknowledged my insightfulness, saying, ‘Why not just one free checkup for every American a year? Since the health care profession tells us that if we would just tackle preventive maintenance on our health, it would reduce costs considerably.’ All right. So the question is a very seductive question, and I’m sure a lot of people are saying, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Why not a free checkup, Rush? What can possibly be wrong with a free checkup? Well, how do you want me to attack this first? You want me to go to the practical or the theoretical? Which would you like first? The practical? Let’s do the practical first. How do things work in our country? Let me give you an example. I was in Sacramento as many of you know, during the mid-eighties, and back then, homelessness was all the rage because Ronaldus Magnus was in the White House and they were blaming him for it. They opened a homeless shelter somewhere downtown that had never been there before and they started giving away free food and, the beat cops down there noticed far more people than ever before starting to show up. So you theoretically — and, by the way, theoretically there’s nothing free. We’ll get to that in a minute. The practicality is you offer something free, and you are going to have more takers and more demands.
We have freedom, and it’s under assault. I’m not talking about constitutional freedoms. I’m talking about everyday life decisions you want to make just in the privacy of your own life, living the way you want to live. We have restrictions on what you can say now. We have restrictions on what you can eat. We have restrictions on what and where you can smoke. We’re going to have restrictions soon on the kind of car you drive based on the mileage that it gets! We have restrictions on whether or not you have to wear a seat belt or a helmet when you drive a motorcycle. These little things, they happen very slowly, and they encroach, and people don’t notice them in the context of losing freedom because it’s always presented to us as ‘improving the quality of our lives’ and ‘making us safer’ because we, of course, are too stupid to make ourselves safe, and we’re too stupid to know what to eat and what not to eat. I don’t know about you, Louis, but I don’t want anybody telling me what I can eat and not, what I can eat and drink. I don’t want somebody telling me that, especially the government. I don’t want a bunch of ninny nannies who live in my neighborhood telling me what the color of my house has to be. I don’t want them telling me how far I can build it back from the ocean. But these things exist. It’s happening all over the place.
So you start talking a free checkup, it’s going to become two free checkups, and that’s going to lead to expanded coverage. ‘Well, why are we only offering a free checkup? We need to offer free tonsillectomies. We need to offer free this and free that.’ Once it starts — once liberalism starts, Louis — it never stops. There is no liberal solution to a problem. Their so-called solutions only create new ones. Once we’re going to give away a free checkup, then we’re going to give away two checkups because two is better than one. Then we’re going to expand that. If you need a tonsillectomy, if you need an anal exam, we’re going to give you that, too. (Everybody needs an anal exam now and then, especially you people who don’t get yours from the Drive-By Media. You have no idea what one’s like until you get one of those.) Family leave? The Family Medical Leave Act. Let me give an example, Louis. ‘Yes, we need to have mothers and fathers to be able to take 12 weeks away from their job in order to raise the newborn child and take the dog to the vet and deal with these emergencies.’ When that happened I made a prediction. I said, ‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Who in the world out there can afford three months without a paycheck? Folks, do you realize what’s going to happen? The next stage will be paid leave, mandatory 12 weeks paid leave.’
‘The employer ought to pay me! I hate my employer. He’s not fair and never gives me a raise. It’s about time he had it socked to him!’
This is the attitude they’ve created, class envy: everybody hates the boss. Of course, everybody hates the boss. You don’t need government to make you do that. I’m not hated as a boss, but I’ve had bosses that I thought were idiots. We all have.
So here come these brilliant politicians, ‘I’ll help you get even with that brilliant boss. I’m gonna make sure you can take 12 weeks off when the dog gets sick, when grandma needs to go to the old folks home, when the soup gets spilled or whatever — and your boss is going to pay for it.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah!’
People lap it up, and 12 weeks is going to someday become 15 weeks, and then that will someday become 18 — and, if you have twins, 24 weeks of paid leave. If you have triplets, you’ll get a full year of paid leave. There’s no end. Once you start this stuff, Louis, there’s no end to it. On the theoretical side, the whole concept of ‘free’ is something — Louis, you’re going to have to learn this — there is no such thing. When you say one free checkup, I assume that’s the doctor of your choosing, or are you going to let the government tell you which doctor you’re going to go to for this checkup? Are you going to want gasoline money to get there, since they’re telling you? What happens if you have to wait a whole day in line because everybody else in Houston’s going there that day, or if just one-tenth of 1% of Houston is going that day for their checkup? Oh, folks, the government’s going to have to mandate when you go so that we don’t have a run on and overcrowding of the various government health centers where the checkup is going to take place.
And if you go to get the checkup, and they tell you, ‘You know what, we’ve just discovered here that you have diabetes, type-two diabetes,’ whatever, then what do you do, Louis? That ain’t going to be ‘free.’ Well, you’ll think it’s free, but it isn’t, Louis, because your neighbors make it ‘free.’ If you want to understand the concept I’m talking about, Louis, do this. Pretend that we didn’t even have your plan in place yet — because we don’t, but you want it to be. So I want you to go walk up and down the street in your neighborhood. Knock on the doors of your neighbors, especially those that you don’t know, and I want you to tell ’em you’re going to the doctor for a checkup, and you want 20 bucks from them to help defray the cost, and you go to as many of your neighbors as possible and get as much money as you need for the checkup. You go and you knock on their doors and say, ‘I’m going to the doctor. I’m going to get a checkup, and I want you to pay for it so it will be free for me.’
‘Well, that’s not what I’m talking about.’
It’s exactly what happens. Somebody’s gotta pay for this. The doctor has to get paid. Have you ever thought about doctors? Is the doctor going to give away the checkup to every American once a year? What about the nurse? What about the doctor’s office utilities bills? What about his equipment and supplies? What about the bills for the free clinics? What about the recordkeeping, Louis? You have somebody in there in a computer or something that’s going to record the results of your checkup, because you gotta have a medical file, and who’s going to pay that person when you go in to get your ‘free’ checkup? There is no such thing as ‘free’ anything. I don’t care. Somebody is paying for a service to be provided or a product to be manufactured and distributed and sold. The concept of ‘free’ is relevant only if you are selfish and think as long as it doesn’t cost YOU anything, then it’s ‘free.’ But it’s not free. You’re being totally selfish — and another question, Louis, that you might want to think about is this. Who is going to pay for the free lawyer you are going to demand when the free checkup fails to find your health problem until it’s too late? Who are you going to find to represent you for free as you bring your malpractice suit against the doctor who didn’t get paid, who misdiagnosed what you have, who gave you an anal exam and found out that you were full of it and couldn’t do anything about it. You exploded later on and had big problems like Castro. You need to go get redress for this free checkup that failed!
Who’s going to give you your free lawyer?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Rockford, Illinois. This is Mary. Welcome, ma’am, to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello, Rush.
RUSH: Hi!
CALLER: My question goes back to the HillaryCare problem, or her program. You mentioned earlier how people who made over $250,000, if they wanted to get their own insurance that there would be better plans out there than what she’s operating. How about the doctors? Where are they going to go? Aren’t they going to be wanting to make the most money? Aren’t they going to go where they can make money? The best doctors will be wanting to get into the best clinics. So what are we going to be stuck with for those of us who can’t afford our own insurance, stuck with Hillary Care, what kind of medical care, what can kind of doctors are there going to be in those programs?
RUSH: Yeah. (laughing) The cast of Grey’s Anatomy will be doing your surgery.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: These are all very relevant points that you’re making, and, by the way, everything you’re asking has happened.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: In Canada and Great Britain, this exact thing has happened. By the way, Mrs. Clinton, I should say, Wall Street Journal brings this out in their editorial. Mrs. Clinton is very shifty about this. If this thing ever happens, she is not going to immediately get rid of the employer-provided insurance program. The ‘strategy now…is designed,’ the Journal says, ‘to cause minimal disruptions to current private insurance coverage in the short run, while dressing up the old [HillaryCare] agenda with slightly different mechanisms and rhetoric. Rather than fight small business,’ like she did the last time around, ‘this time she is trying to seduce it with tax credits for small companies that provide insurance,’ for their employees. Only later when costs rise will the credits shrink or other taxes rise.’ So there’s a bit of a stealth aspect to this. The end result is not going to be how it starts. It will just fade into that or evolve into that, purposely, by the way it’s set up. This is being done to make it more difficult for people — like me and others — to oppose what she wants. ‘No, we’re not changing anything! We’re just going to make it more efficient. We’re not changing anything at all. It’s just going to be much, much more efficient.’
But then if you read all the details, she might not be changing the current structure right off the bat, but when you have to go out and have a policy — that you have to have coverage — before you can get a job interview, and with penalties if you don’t do this and that, it’s pretty breathtaking. Your questions are exactly right. You’re going to end up with inferior medical care providers. The other thing you bring up that’s a really good point is the whole question of doctors in this. It takes lot of time and a lot of money to become a doctor, and you have a lot of bills to pay after you’ve gone through your schooling and whatever else that you do when you first set up wherever you go to work. You have a lot of expenses. I want to know: What are the financial incentives for doctors in this plan? I want to know. I think what we need to hear from Mrs. Clinton is: ‘Are doctors going to be allowed to make money?’ I don’t mean will they not be paid. ‘Is the profession going to be enticing enough for good people to go into it, once your plan is in full effect? ‘Are you going to end up like you did in 1993 or ’94 telling doctors where they have to go and what specialty they can study? Are you going to allocate the health care provider resources, according to what you think is needed where? And if so, what’s in it for the doctors?’ There has to be something in it for the doctors. ‘What are we going to do about malpractice insurance? Mrs. Clinton, could you do something very simple for us here at the beginning? Would you tell us what medical services are going to be provided in your plan and which ones aren’t, and which drugs are going to be covered and which ones aren’t? Will you just take this down to the basics?’
She’s the expert here!
Do you realize, folks, how literally obscene it is for any of us to think of Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, I don’t care who — or name a Republican — the expert on health care in this country? Is that not scary that so many people think that that makes sense?