RUSH: Guess what? Health care premiums and costs are going to skyrocket. From the American Spectator Prowler: ‘The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care ‘reform’ law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken. ‘The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,’ says an HHS source. ‘Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.”
So everybody knew. Everybody knew that Obamacare would ratchet up the cost. That news was suppressed. Sebelius didn’t want to read it on purpose, saying she ‘didn’t want to affect the vote,’ all of which is true. She knew the vote would be affected. There’s the problem with this now. Well, it’s a problem if the Republicans are on the game. The problem is that there are a lot of vulnerable Democrats, some in the Stupak coalition, others not. There are some who said specifically they voted for Obamacare ‘Because the CBO doesn’t lie. We looked at the numbers. It lowers premiums, it lowers costs, and it lowers the deficits.’ There’s about 12 to 15, maybe more Democrats, who said that — over and over and over again. They are on record. Jim Geraghty, Campaign Spot, National Review Online, has a list of these guys and women and their quotes.
So now, their own administration, their own regime has undermined them. As long as the Republicans are on the case and are able to go out and run very effective TV commercials with the simple truth: ‘Hey, they knew a week before the vote that the costs were going to skyrocket, and they didn’t tell their own Democrats.’ Now, let me ask a question, getting back to amnesty for just a second here. How does that help create and save jobs? Cause isn’t that the laser-like focus of the Obama administration, creating jobs, a laser-like folks? And amnesty does that how? Amnesty creates and saves jobs how? A lot of people say, ‘Rush, how come the CBO numbers are different from the Medicare actuary’s numbers?’ That’s a good question, and the answer is very simple. The Medicare actuary does not have to work with the numbers that Congress gives them. The Congressional Budget Office does.
The CBO can only use the numbers Congress gives them to score the costs, and that’s why the whole process is filled with fraud and is flawed: Because the numbers were cooked in order to get the favorable score in the first place. The Medicare actuary can use the real numbers, and obviously has, and has come to the conclusion that we all knew that this is going to ratchet prices up like crazy. It can’t do anything else. Wall Street Journal: ‘ObamaCare Mulligan — About those lower insurance costs we promised. … When President Obama signed his health-care reform last month, he declared it will ‘lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government.’ So why, barely a month later, are Democrats scrambling to pass a new bill that would impose price controls on insurance?’ Did you know they’re doing this?
‘In now-they-tell-us hearings on Tuesday, the Senate health committee debated a bill’ a new piece of legislation ‘that would give states the power to reject premium increases that state regulators determine are ‘unreasonable,” just like Massachusetts has. But they didn’t do it in the first bill. They left it out. ‘The White House proposed this just before the final Obamacare scramble, but it couldn’t be included because it violated the procedural rules that Democrats abused to pass the bill. Some 27 states currently have some form of rate review in the individual and small-business markets, but they generally don’t leverage it in a political way because insolvent insurers are expensive for states and bankruptcies limit consumer choices. One exception is Massachusetts: Governor Deval Patrick is now using this regulatory power to create de facto price controls and assail the state’s insurers as cover for the explosive costs resulting from the Obamacare prototype the Bay State passed in 2006.’
And it is a prototype, and even Obama refers to it as that. ‘National Democrats now want the power to do the same across the country, because they know how unrealistic their cost-control claims really are. Democrats are petrified they’ll get the blame they deserve when insurance costs inevitably spike. So the purpose of this latest Senate bill is to have a pre-emptive political response on hand. … [J]udging by the study released last last week by Richard Foster, the Obama Administration’s Medicare actuary. Mr. Foster predicts net national health spending will increase by about 1% annually above the status quo that is already estimated to be $4.7 trillion in 2019. This is one more rebuke to the White House fantasy that a new entitlement will lower health costs.’
There’s not one truthful thing Obama said about his bill that will lower costs or anything else. From the Associated Press. The AP is now trying to shame the Republicans into fixing the mess that the Democrats left us with. First sentence of the story: ‘What’s it going to cost me? That’s the single biggest unanswered question about President Barack Obama’s new health care overhaul law — and its weak spot. Many experts believe the law falls short on taming costs, and that will force Congress to revisit health care in a few years.’ Well, we already know that costs are going up and that that news was hidden from members of Congress before the vote. ‘While it seems hard to believe now, Republicans might want to participate in a debate over costs, perhaps opening the way for limits on malpractice lawsuits and other ideas they’ve advocated.
”Now that the baseline question of coverage has been answered, it would be irresponsible if we didn’t come back and try to do more on costs,’ said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. … ‘I think there is going to be a debate in the Republican Party on whether they should waste all their energy on repeal or make an effort to do something on cost containment,’ Warner said.’ Now, see, this is a head fake, folks, because this is not about costs at all. Zilch, zero, nada. There are a hundred other reasons to can this whole pile of manure. But the Democrats’ procedure now — their strategery — is to have us think that the Republicans have a say, that they have role and a responsibility to make their mess smell better. If they have to now make the bad bill good, it should never have been passed in the first place, period. Which we all knew.
So now all of a sudden that they got cost problems, guess what? Mark Warner wants the Republicans to come in and help fix the crisis. Therefore, help share the blame. It’s a trick to get ’em to give up on this repeal notion. And he’s dangling the carrot of malpractice reform. ‘Hey, if you come back here and help us get these costs under control, why, why, we’ll talk to you about that. We’ll talk to you about medical malpractice reform, tort reform.’ (interruption) How did I know the costs were going up before the bill was passed? Well… (interruption) Oh, and it was hidden from the Democrats? Well, it’s a good question. It’s a good question. In other words: If I knew the costs were going up, everybody should have known the costs were going up and yet the Democrats lied and acted like they believed all the CBO numbers. This is why Democrats are Democrats, and this is why liberals are liberals. Universe of Lies. The Four Corners of Deceit. They were lying through their teeth, Snerdley, when they told us costs were going to go down. So was Obama. There’s no way you can add 32 million people to coverage and have costs go down. There’s no way that you can let people only opt in for insurance when they get sick or have the car wreck and then opt out of it after they’ve been treated and have costs go down. There’s no way. There’s no federal entitlement that has ever reduced its cost or spending. We were scammed from the get-go, led by the president of the United States. At any rate, these are all rhetorical questions, but I deigned to answer them anyway.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So back to health care for just a second because I wasn’t through making a point about this. They passed health care reform, the Democrats did through reconciliation. I want you Republicans to listen to me on this. Passing health care reform through reconciliation was the Democrats’ way of telling you in the Republican Party to go to hell, that you weren’t needed and that your opposition didn’t matter and basically (blowing a raspberry) you. Now all of a sudden, lo and behold, now that health care reform has been passed, and now that it is confirmed that it’s going to cost far more than it ever 
promised, now all of a sudden, led by Mark Warner, the Democrats need the Republicans to be responsible, they need the Republicans to help them out. That’s right. The Democrats want the Republicans to be responsible in what? Helping destroy the insurance industry by giving power to the states, like in Massachusetts.
To review this, Deval Patrick has the authority in Massachusetts to tell insurance companies, ‘Hell, no, you can’t raise rates, you’re going to sell at the price I tell you to.’ The Senate is working on that same language as an addendum to Obamacare. They want the states, all states, to be able to tell private insurance companies, ‘Nope, you can’t raise your rates,’ because right now they can, and they will, because they have no choice. So what they’re asking after telling Republicans to go to hell by going to this through reconciliation, they now are begging the Republicans to come back, be responsible, and join them in helping to keep the insurance companies from raising their rates, thus putting them out of business. If you have to accept all these new enrollees and their prior preexisting conditions, and you can’t raise their insurance rates, then you will destroy the insurance companies, and this is what the Democrats are now asking the Republicans to do, rather than repeal the bill, come in here and be responsible. It’s a typical trick. The Democrats want the Republicans to get their fingerprints on destroying the insurance industry across this country so they can say that that was bipartisan. In fact, before it’s all said and done, it will all have been the Republicans’ fault by the time the media and the Democrats get done with this down the road.