RUSH: Now, here are two stories that constitute journalistic malpractice to me. Here the first one, from Forbes. “Why Healthcare Costs Are About To Explode — Word out of Washington is that Obamacare is finally fulfilling its promise to bend the nationÂ’s healthcare cost curve. Unfortunately, it’s bending it the wrong way. … This increasing cost of care … is projected to rise dramatically as the [Obamacare] is fully implemented.
“In California, for example, it was recently reported that the cost of insurance on the [Obamacare]-mandated health insurance exchange will be more than 100% higher, than current rates, for the healthiest young adults.” Let me give you the number. This was the story we had two weeks ago that young Americans, because of their age and their relative health spend on average $584 a year on health care — actual care, actual treatment.
Their insurance premiums are gonna go up, mandatory, $5500 a year. Young people, mandatory minimum $5500 a year — or they can pay a fine for a couple of years that will be less than that. But not for long, and then the fines eventually catch up. The young are going to be forced to pay these exorbitant premiums that they don’t need nor would they ever want, in order to help defray the costs of the elderly. So it’s sort of a reverse redistribution of wealth. Actually it’s not. It’s the same old thing.
Young, able-bodied people will be highly taxed, to fund retirement and health benefits for the seasoned citizen population. Anyway, that’s the 100% increase the Forbes story here is talking about. They’re not wrong, and they also point out that the reason these costs are gonna skyrocket is because competition is gonna plummet, because Obamacare is effectively gonna end the private sector health insurance market, taking away those options for customers to buy, leaving only the exchange to go to.
When the exchange is all you’ve got, and you’re required by law to have it, you must pay whatever they charge — and they will not be subject to the competitive forces of a free market. Therefore, everybody is gonna get soaked. Everybody! Now, my friends, my point is, everything I’ve just told you was known a year before the vote on the bill was taken. Forbes could have written this story the month before the bill was voted on.
What woulda happened had they done that? And it’s not just Forbes. Every news organization was capable of learning what was gonna happen with this bill. They either chose not to inform themselves — or after they informed themselves, they ignored it so as not to harm the regime, because they are in the back pocket of Obama. The news media in this country is just a branch office of the Democrat Party, and so they were there to aid and abet Obama’s quest.
But they knew, folks.
Now, you knew because we knew. We had delved into it, we had dug deeply and we found out the details in these 2200 pages, and we knew about the fine system, and we knew what the costs were gonna be. We knew that the under $1 trillion estimate was bogus. We knew everything about this bill. We knew more about what was in this bill than Obama knew because the bottom line is Obama didn’t care.
All he wanted was the transfer of the nation’s health care system the federal government. The details? Eh, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if it’s gonna cost you $5500 or $10,000. He’s gonna go out there and tell you how wonderful it is your premiums are going down. He doesn’t care. He got the bill. He got it out of Congress, was able to sign it. The details? You know more about it than he does. Still to this day. You probably know more about it the media. My point is the media knew this before it was voted on.
This is journalistic malpractice.
The American people could have been informed. They could have been told they were being lied to. They could have been properly informed about what this legislation really was and what it was really going to mean to them. They could have been told all of that. It was known. It’s in the bill! Pelosi said, “We have to pass it to find out what’s in it.” No! We knew what was in it before it was voted on. The truth of the matter is most of the people who vote for it did not read it.
Ditto, Gang of Eight immigration bill.
Most of the people that voted on the Gang of Eight immigration bill did not know all that’s in it. Max Baucus was famous last week for not knowing (I forget specifically what) something really crucial about the Gang of Eight bill. He did not know. More and more, doesn’t matter, apparently! The second story is this. You people all for gay marriage, guess what? The federal benefits? They’re really are not that different. They’re not that big.
“Like other married couples, same-sex couples are about to learn that federal benefits for being married might not be all they’re cracked up to be.” Really? Really, you tell us this now? These are our good old buddies at the AP. So guess what? The primary reason, the primary inequality, the primary inequity, the primary unfairness, federal benefits — that’s why we must have gay marriage, because gay couples are being denied federal benefits — guess what? We’re about to learn that “federal benefits for being married might not be all they’re cracked up to be.”
So you better be getting married for love, otherwise — ha-ha-ha-ha — ever heard of the divorce rate?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m not making this up.
“Like other married couples, same-sex couples are about to learn that federal benefits for being married might not be all they’re cracked up to be,” and again, this was known before all of this went down. “Social Security benefits for spouses can be generous, but only for couples with big disparities in their incomes. … ‘The poor gay couples, particularly if they’re raising children, are going to face the same huge penalty structure that’s now faced by low-income households in general,’ said Eugene Steuerle, a former Treasury official who is now a fellow at the Urban Institute.
“‘In that case, they may have won the court battle but are still stuck in a social structure where the government basically tells them, do not marry or you’re going to lose a lot of money,’ Steuerle said.” In fact, gay couples, married gay couples at the top and bottom of the income scale could face significant tax increases. Did you know that? Did you know any of this, any of you gay couples planning on getting married now?
Did you know any of this, that federal benefits for being married are not all that big, not all it’s cracked up to be? This was all known, just like Obamacare expenses exploding, it was all known. So the agenda passing and being advanced is all that matters. That’s all that matters. Notches in the belt, government getting bigger and more powerful, that’s all that matters. Real world experiences and all that take second fiddle.
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