RUSH: To Charleston, South Carolina. That’s two days in a row that we’ve had calls from Charleston, South Carolina. A couple of members of Team Vodka are from Charleston, South Carolina.
CALLER: Hey, Rush.
RUSH: Hey, Matt, welcome.
CALLER: I’ll tell you what, you are on fire, absolutely on fire the first hour. I loved it. I disagree with Ernie from Harlem in regards to Palin. We can get into that if you want to. But the reason I called is that here in South Carolina all the big insurance companies have stopped writing policies for all children, sick or healthy, front page article the other day, family where the husband switched jobs, went to a small business, were gonna buy a private policy, insurance broker told ’em for the adults, husband and wife, good to go. For the healthy six-year-old, no. Insurance company spokesperson said, just like everybody thought, they don’t want people not paying premiums coming in for the mandated coverage at the last minute, after the kid gets sick. They pay out and go broke. Can anybody say, duh?
RUSH: How could they do this? Obama said you’re going to be able to keep your coverage and your kids get covered ’til you’re 26 and it’s free.
CALLER: Well, that’s not what’s happening.
RUSH: And that’s in Charleston, South Carolina?
CALLER: Front-page news, or front page on the Post Courier last week.
RUSH: Wow. Well, Matt, thanks very much. There’s a story in the Boston Globe, I have it right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. From the White House website, WhiteHouse.gov, ‘You Can Keep Your Own Insurance.’ Linda Douglass who’s gone — she split the scene, too, by the way. Linda Douglass formerly of ABC News and CBS News, NBC News and Radio Moscow and so forth and the White House. She has now left the White House, she was the health care communications babe, but while she was there. ‘Linda Douglass of the White House Office of Health Reform debunks the myth that reform will force you out of your current insurance plan or force you to change doctors. To the contrary, reform will expand your choices, not eliminate them.’ That’s on the WhiteHouse.gov website.
Now we move to the Boston Globe today: ‘Harvard Pilgrim Health Care,’ by Robert Weisman ‘has notified customers that it will drop its Medicare Advantage health insurance program at the end of the year, forcing 22,000 senior citizens in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine to seek alternative supplemental coverage. The decision by Wellesley-based Harvard Pilgrim, the state’s second-largest health insurer, was prompted by a freeze in federal reimbursements and a new requirement that insurers offering the kind of product sold by Harvard Pilgrim — a Medicare Advantage private fee for service plan — form a contracted network of doctors who agree to participate for a negotiated amount of money. Under current rules, patients can seek care from any doctor.’ But no more.
So Charleston, South Carolina, no insurance policies as of now being written for children. In Boston, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Harvard Pilgrim notified customers it’s dropping Medicare Advantage. Meaning they’re dropping their plan. You have no choice. You’re losing your coverage. It’s going just as planned, folks. We warned you that this was going to happen. Just as planned. Obama said it, not just Linda Douglass. No. If you like your doctor, you can keep it. Well, not if you are with Harvard Pilgrim. You’re out. You are done. All of the evil insurance companies are dropping coverage for children, single policies for children. Now, we must specify something here. Getting health care coverage after you are sick, that is with a preexisting condition, is not insurance; it is welfare. This whole preexisting condition stuff has always been a joke, because it’s not insurance. When you get cancer, oh, you have to insure me and you have to pay,’ it’s not insurance. By definition it isn’t insurance. It’s welfare.
The insurance companies simply can’t afford to cover people with preexisting conditions, which leaves me to a pretty good piece, National Review today online, ‘The Anatomy of a Hostile Government Takeover.’ Six months after Obamacare was crammed down our throats by the minority, what do we have? A pull quote from the story: Massive bureaucracy, disinformation campaigns, blatant power players, the politicization of decisions that should be made with a focus on patient care, the use of government power to threaten citizens and their livelihood. James C. Capretta, author of the piece, ‘Obamacare in Six Months. —
‘During the long national debate over the future of American health care, President Obama frequently chastised his opponents for launching exaggerated attacks on his plan for ‘reform.’ He took particular exception to the criticism that the changes he was pushing amounted to a government takeover of the whole health sector. He knew full well that this kind of criticism might derail the entire effort in Congress, because most Americans recoil at the thought of a distant and bureaucratic federal government running the health-care system for everyone. So Obama vigorously denied that his program would lead to any such thing. In his Aug. 8, 2009, radio address, he described the ‘takeover’ accusation as ‘outlandish’ and characterized his approach as a mainstream and moderate attempt simply to reform the nation’s private health-insurance system. It’s now been six months since Congress passed Obamacare — not a long time given the sweeping nature of the legislation and the long phase-in schedule for its most significant provisions. Even so, it is already abundantly clear that Obamacare’s critics were dead right: The new health law has set in motion a government takeover of American health care, and a very hostile one at that. The Obama administration’s clumsy and overbearing behavior since its passage proves the point.’ The piece goes on to detail all of this, every example of government takeover of health care to date, plus what’s coming.
Toward the end of the piece: ‘In the meantime, busy beavers in various corners of the federal bureaucracy are laying plans for new fiefdoms. Thousands of new employees are planned for various offices in HHS, including the new office to regulate private health insurance nationwide. The IRS is gearing up both to enforce with tax penalties the requirement that everyone carry government-approved insurance, and to help administer the massive new entitlement program that will require income verification on tens of millions of applicants. States will also be forced to build new bureaucracies to carry out the scores of tasks the federal government will be ordering them to perform. Massive bureaucracy. Disinformation campaigns. Blatant power plays. The politicization of decisions that should be made with a focus on patient care. The use of government power to threaten citizens and their livelihood. This is what Obamacare has brought us. And that’s just in its first six months.’
James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004. Ladies and gentlemen, this must be repealed. Obamacare must be repealed. Now, the Republican Pledge says we’re going to do that. They mentioned repeal and replace. But have you asked yourself, what is the real desire on the part of a lot of Republicans to really walk down that path and repeal this? In the past we’ve gotten lip service. ‘Oh, you want to repeal it?’ ‘Hell, yeah, we agree, yeah, yeah, we’re going to repeal it.’ But then, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear them say, ‘Well, we actually can’t. Have you ever seen Social Security repealed? Have you ever seen Medicare repealed?’ Republicans are telling us, ah, yeah, we want to repeal it, but it may be very tough to do, and they say we can’t really do it ’til we get the White House back. So is there a real impetus to repeal this or is it just lip service from the Republicans?
Now, people at the Independent Women’s Voice have put a website up called Repeal the Pledge, and it’s a site that people can go to and sign an electronic petition. There’s no ‘donate’ button on this site yet, so don’t worry here, this is not a trick to separate you from your more than. These are just people who believe that the Republicans need to be held their feet to the fire. Okay, you say you want to repeal it? Sign the pledge. Sign the politician. You say you want to repeal health care, sign something, not some vague pledge. Sign a specific petition that says you are going to repeal or make an effort to repeal health care, starting for good in 2013. What is the Web address? Darn it, I’ll have to get the Web address up there to Koko because I just have a link to it in the story, doesn’t actually give out the address, it’s just the link. But it is a place where candidates will also be asked to sign the pledge, kind of like a ‘no new taxes’ pledge, that kind of thing.
Now, a lot of people think, a pledge, petitions, who’s going to do this? These don’t mean anything. Internet petitions. And, I know, there’s some people that want to get traffic to their websites and so forth. But nevertheless people involved here do care about this. This health care reform really is — we said it before it was voted on — ball game, in terms of you nationalize one-sixth of the US economy, the amount of freedom that’s lost, usurped, the massive growth of government to handle all this, the inefficiency with which it will be handled, the worsening delivery of health care itself. This is a disaster. The whole regime is a disaster. But I’ll find the link to this website if you want to go visit it, you might want to think about signing it. It’s a petition. They’re working hard at this site to get candidates to sign it as well, just to try to get some feet held to the fire on this rather than just a bunch of words. ‘Yeah, yeah, we want to repeal it.’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Dan in Wichita, Kansas, great to have you on the EIB Network, sir, hello.
CALLER: Rush it is an honor to talk with you, been a listener from day one, home school dad of nine. Hey, I just wanted to add to something that you’ve been talking. I’ve been frustrated. We got a letter in the mail the other day from a big insurance company stating that we will be having our insurance rate raised 30% due to the new Obamacare and all the unforeseen things that are happening, but mainly related to the kids staying on your policy ’til 26 years old. And even kids that are married up to that point can —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — stay on your policy.
RUSH: Right. Bunch of leeches.
CALLER: So, you know, I was paying $833 a month, now it’s a thousand seventy-seven. I told my wife the other day there’s just no way, how can we do this? I never thought insurance would be more than my mortgage payment would be, so —
RUSH: It wasn’t supposed to be. It was supposed to be free. That was Obamacare. It was millionaires supposed to be paying for this, Dan, not you.
CALLER: Yeah, absolutely. Nothing is free, period. It just doesn’t work that way.
RUSH: I tell you people are going to end up hating Obama even more. Let me tell you why. Why do kids go to college? There are a lot of reasons. One is to get away from their parents. They go to college to get away from their parents, go away to party, go through the motions of getting educated, go through the motions of getting a job, right? Parents love the kids going away because they want ’em out of the house. Then Obama comes along and says, ‘Guess what, you can keep your kids on your policy ’til they’re 26.’ No parent wants that.
CALLER: (laughing) No. But it’s been a blessing. I’m a small businessman. We run a lawn service, and all my kids run the business in the summertime —
RUSH: I don’t know what’s going to happen here, Dan, because Kathleen Sebelius has announced the White House is not going to tolerate any insurance premium increases. They’re just not gonna tolerate it. Have you called her?
CALLER: No, I have not.
RUSH: Well, call her.
CALLER: I do plan on it.
RUSH: Snerdley, get his number, before you hang up, Dan, let us get your number, I want you to call Health and Human Services. You won’t get through to Sebelius, but you tell ’em that your insurance company’s raising premiums and Sebelius said it wasn’t going to happen. And you demand action, and you call back and tell us what they said.