Understanding Liberalism 101

RUSH: Now back to the health care bill. Nobody is talking much about what’s going on in the Senate, how it will affect people in the House. Let’s say that this bill in the Senate does pass with no public option, with no Medicare expansion, and no re-importation of drugs at cheaper prices. You go over to the Senate — I know Pelosi has said she’ll sign anything — but there still has to be a conference. And the people in the House, they don’t want anything that has no public option in it. They want full-fledged public option. They want single payer el quicko.

We have a quote from Anthony Weiner, and we mentioned this yesterday, in the New York Times: ‘The problem that a lot of us face is that we feel like all the compromises have been going in one direction,’ and he cited three examples. ‘The tougher anti-abortion language added to the House bill; the Senate’s proposed tax on high-priced insurance policies, which the White House has endorsed; and the most recent decision to eliminate the public option. Mr. Weiner noted that dozens of House Democrats had signed letters taking the opposing position on those provisions and that the House approved its bill by a narrow vote of 220 to 215. ‘You don’t have 30 votes to deal with here,’ Mr. Weiner said. ‘So there are a lot of people who have staked out pretty hard positions that they are going to have to go back on. Now, I have been careful not to draw lines in the sand. I think this is going to be a very difficult collection of compromises to get people to swallow.”

And that is the big deal. Everybody is focusing on the Senate right now because if they can get something out of the Senate before Christmas, then both houses will have signed something, and then the PR machine can get into gear, ‘Obama got a bill! Obama did it! Obama pulled it off; the Democrats pulled it off; real, meaningful health care reform,’ blah, blah, blah, blah. But then they have to take this turkey over to the House where there are many more leftist radicals than there are in the Senate who are not going to sit still just to give Obama a victory. See, these people look at this as personal to them. These are hardcore leftist radicals. They want a bigger government. They want freedom taken away from people in the private sector. They want corporations punished. They want the government in charge of every aspect of people’s lives. Health care is how you get there. But if there’s no public option, and if there’s no expansion of Medicare, and if whatever they do with Ben Nelson on abortion, you throw in the re-importation of drugs, can you imagine that conference committee? So it’s not a bed of roses out there for these people.

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RUSH: Richard in Hillsboro, Texas, your turn. Hello.

CALLER: All right. You know, you hear all the talk about insurance for everybody. Just what is the insurance going to cover? If the insurance doesn’t cover enough, what good is it for you?

RUSH: Well, it’s a good question. You’re going to be forced to buy it. If you don’t, you’re going to be fined. You could be put in jail. The fine, it’s much less than the premium is going to cost. A lot of people are going to choose not to have insurance and simply pay the fine. The government will ration care. They’ll have no choice. They’re admitting it in any number of indirect ways. You know, people who are elderly, who come down with some disease that some bureaucrat says, ‘You know, it’s not worth treating. It’s not worth treating and prolonging your life because you’re not going to live that much longer. It’s a dread disease,’ this is how it’s all going to work. So the question is good, folks, because it illustrates: The government doesn’t do anything of this kind that it tackles right. Social Security was supposed to provide a little bit of retirement for people. The original price tag was $35 million. Now we’re up until the trillions that it costs, and it still doesn’t accomplish what its express purpose was. So it’s a good question. I’m glad you called, I’m glad you get through.

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RUSH: Here’s Paul in Chicago. Paul, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Hey, Rush! Merry I-got-a-thrill-going-up-my-leg-to-talk-to-you dittos from cold Chicago.

RUSH: (laughs) Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Well, there’s a very, very small piece of the first tape you played about an hour ago of the clerk reading the bill that tips off what this amendment is. What it is, to me, is it sounds like the government’s creating an HMO because if you listen closely she says it is a ‘capitated plan,’ meaning that enrollees would be capitated — meaning that the physicians who see those patients are paid a certain amount of money each month or each year to have those people enrolled in the network if they see them or not. So not only would the government be directing payment, they would also be directing care, because they control the gatekeepers. They control the primary care physicians who then dole out specialty care and surgical care and wellness care. So it’s more control is what it sounds like. Not just the single payer but a single controller of health care and that to me is a bit more scary.

RUSH: Well, that’s where they’re headed regardless of whether they’ve taken single payer out or public option. Regardless whether they’ve taken on you mending expansion to get this passed. You’re exactly right: That’s where they all want to go. That’s where the liberal Democrats all want to go is: Have the government be in charge of who gets what, who gets paid for what, and where one goes to get it. Pure and simple. Now, the news, ladies and gentlemen, is all over the place that… For example, there’s a headline: Tom Coburn Forced the Clerk to Read the Sanders Amendment — The terrible GOP, the mean-spirited GOP! Now, what this is designed to do is to get the Republicans to stop this. They know — the Democrats and the media know — this is effective and what they’re gonna try to do is scare the Republicans into stopping, because they’re going to say, ‘You guys are now running a risk of not winning reelection,’ and I think what’s finally happened is the Republican leadership in the Senate understands that nothing is more important than stopping this.

If we are to preserve this country as we have always known it, it must be stopped — and I certainly hope they’ve got the guts and the courage to ignore all these attempts by the media and the Democrats to portray them as obstructionist and mean-spirited. ‘Making the clerk read the bill, forcing the clerk to read the bill.’ Rosa DeLauro was on MSNBC saying that Joe Lieberman should be recalled. Michael Moore is threatening to boycott what? (interruption) Michael Moore is threatening to boycott going into the state of Connecticut because Lieberman got what he wanted here? Well if I lived in Connecticut I’d go (clapping), ‘All right! All right, mama! Michael Moore’s not coming here? Cool.’ So they’re out for Lieberman, they’re out for Lieberman’s wife, and now they’re out for the Republicans for ‘forcing’ the clerk to do the clerk’s job. This is not something extra-parliamentary. This is in the procedures. Here’s Mark in San Diego. Mark, welcome to the program. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush, and Merry Christmas.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I did want to say one thing: Bo is an excellent and a professional call screener. But I’m in a big hospital in San Diego that begins with an S (there’s several of them) but our cancer committee — it’s an accredited cancer center — looked back in the last four years from 2004 to 2008 to the number of cancer cases we had and those people under 50, we came up with 1,100 people that showed up having cancer (breast cancer or something similar) and above that, the total for all years from 20 to 99, they determined there was 3,990 total. So that makes about 28% of the people we screened came up being under age 50, and California has just said that they’re not going to pay after 2010, 2010 for uninsured to have those screenings below 50.

RUSH: Well, then, what do we have here? We have a death panel, don’t we?

CALLER: Yes. It’s a tax and kill, not unlike we had in the early seventies when we didn’t have enough dialysis units and had to choose who couldn’t get it.

RUSH: Tax and change; tax and kill. Exactly right.

CALLER: Rush, what’s Canada going to do when we start taking all their medicine if that part of the bill passes? They’re not going to be able to have their prices raised because of scarcity.

RUSH: Well, see, the dirty little secret about that is that the prices are going to seek their own market level anyway, even after they’re re-imported.

CALLER: Yep. Price fixing, setting also leads to scarcity, as we know.

RUSH: Of course. Exactly right. Fixing prices you get less of the product that you’re controlling.

CALLER: Well, I just wanted to let you know and have a great Christmas that 28% of our women here in the Southland are under 50 and found to have cancers. Not all die but you miss one and it increases the death rate by 15% —

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: — for missing it early.

RUSH: You’re talking about mammogram screenings?

CALLER: Mammograms, yes.

RUSH: Mark is a doctor in San Diego, by the way. Thanks so much for the call.

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RUSH: John in Phoenix, great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, how are you? Mega dittos and Merry Christmas to everybody at the EIB Network.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: And I just wanted to say, you mentioned real quickly I was driving, I didn’t hear it all, but something about one of the newscasters was saying yet again someone was throwing a tantrum, and it made me think of the fact that when Newt Gingrich and the boys won back in ’94, that Peter Jennings referred to us Americans as throwing a tantrum. It seems like any time someone stands up for liberty and freedom the media refers to it as throwing a tantrum, and personally I guess it’s wearing on me a little bit.

RUSH: Well, it shouldn’t. You have to learn to accept certain things as they are, and the media not liking you and the media impugning you and the media doing everything they can to defeat the things that you believe in is something that is, it just is, and it’s not going to change. You have to have boundaries, wear some imaginary armor and let the stuff bounce off of you and understand what they mean. They’re the ones upset, they’re the ones mad, they’re the ones that know that our efforts have been effective, and they’re simply trying to impugn the results by doing that. It’s actually a sign of victory when they run around and start saying things like, ‘Ah, the voters had a temper tantrum, they’re just a bunch of little kids.’