RUSH: Livonia, Michigan, our next stop as we stick with the phones on Open Line Friday. Hello, Ken. Welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Hello, Rush, and thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Yeah, I wanted to bring up Obamacare, and I wanted to show you more evidence that not only is Obamacare harmful to the nation, but it’s also unaffordable health insurance. Now, currently I pay out of pocket. I buy my own health insurance through a major national insurance company.

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You buy your own health insurance, not through your employer, but just as if you were going to go buy auto insurance, you buy your health insurance as a single individual?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: Now, the insurance I have happens to be a cheap policy, happens to be the lowest policy they have.

RUSH: Why? Why did you do that?

CALLER: Because that’s all I can afford.

RUSH: What do you get for it?

CALLER: Okay, for $180 a month, my current policy has a $1,000 deductible.

RUSH: For crying out loud, you got $1,000 deductible and you’re paying 180 a month?

CALLER: It’s the best I can afford, Rush.

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. I wasn’t passing judgment on it. I’m not doing that. I’m calculating in my head here. At $180 a month, it’s $1800 plus $360 for twelve months. You’re spending over $2,000 a year for a $1,000 deductible.

CALLER: I know. Isn’t that insane?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Here’s what I want to show you, Rush.

RUSH: All right, okay.

CALLER: Well, because of Obamacare, my plan — and the insurance company told me they have no choice, it’s because of the new laws, new regulations — is being discontinued. If I want to continue to have a similar deductible, a similar plan because of Obamacare, my premiums have been doubled plan.

RUSH: Wait. No. Obama said if you like your plan, you get to keep it.

CALLER: Well, Obama lied, Rush. Am I shocked? No. Obama said I could keep my plan. He lied. He said I could keep my doctors. Well, we know that’s not true be with either.

RUSH: He said that your premium was gonna go down $2500 a year.

CALLER: Well, he lied on that, too, Rush.

RUSH: Wow. Who knew?

CALLER: Who knew. And, Rush, a lot of people are getting notified right now, and over the next few weeks I think more and more people are gonna see the truth that Obamacare is not affordable.

RUSH: Let me ask you this, though, seriously. Seriously, Ken. How many people will know that? You know enough to know that Obamacare is responsible for this, and your insurance company is telling you, right?

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: Now, how many people — the ignorant that Richard Stengel was praising for voting for Obama, how many of them — might be told the same thing and are gonna claim, Yeah, the insurance company is lying to us! They’re blaming it on Obama but we know it’s not him because he really cares about us. Obama said my premium wasn’t gonna go up.” How many of them are gonna actually end up blaming the insurance company, do you think?

CALLER: Well, I think the insurance companies are doing the right thing and when questioned — because I did call my insurance company — they told me point-blank that it’s because of national health care. So anybody that questions the insurance companies, Rush, will find out the truth.

RUSH: They’ll find out the truth. Whether they will believe it is another thing, and I’m not trying to be negative here. But it’s much easier to hate an evil corporation. The Democrat Party’s been working on people for a hundred years to do that.

CALLER: You’re right about that, Rush. The Democrat Party has been brainwashing the American people to hate the rich, to hate corporations.

RUSH: Exactly. So when the insurance company comes along and says, “Well, I’m sorry. Your premium’s going up because of Obamacare,” they’re gonna say, “Well, no! Obamacare is supposed to be cheaper. It’s free, he told us. You’re screwing us!” Don’t be surprised if not as many people as you think blame Obama for this. That’s all I’m saying.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to go back to our last caller, Ken from Livonia, Michigan. He buys his own insurance. He’s not part of a company policy. He actually went to a health insurance company, said, “I want health insurance.” Now, I don’t know if they pooled him with a group of other like-minded people or not, but it was not part of a group, as far as he knew. He wasn’t part of employee group or any of that, and he bought what he could afford, $180 a month with a $1,000 deductible.

I don’t know how extensive his insurance is.

I didn’t get into that with him.

The point is that his company told him his prices are skyrocketing, at least gonna double, and it’s because of Obamacare, because of the requirements being brought to bear, the pressures being brought to bear on private insurance companies. The objective of Obamacare is to slowly force them out of business, and the way you do that is zap ’em with a bunch of rules and regulations that up their prices beyond what their customers can afford. If the customer can’t afford it, and there’s no subsidy, you’re gone. They’re out of business, and that’s the objective, to shrink the private sector insurance market and thereby force people into the state-run exchanges or the federal exchanges.

Now, there technically is not a federal exchange as per the law, but they’re gonna have to do something because not all states have agreed to set up an exchange. It’s a mess. So he was calling just to warn people that are in the same situation he’s in about what’s coming, and he also opined that when this starts happening to people, that finally people are going to see what Obama is causing and they’re going to be mad at him. I reminded him, “Don’t think that. Don’t be so quick to make that conclusion.”

If we can have record high unemployment, record job loss, and just an absolutely anemic economic recovery because of Obama’s policies, and he’s not blamed for it, what makes anybody think he’s gonna get blamed when an insurance company starts doubling their premiums? People are gonna blame the insurance company. They’re not gonna blame Obama. They’re not blaming Obama for anything else. Although actually, Obama’s approval numbers are down.

You’re not seeing this reported widely, but his approval numbers are falling, and in some places, dramatically. In one poll, support for Obamacare is under 40% now. In the same pol. I forget what it was. Obama’s performance, job performance approval rate is just over 40. He’s not at 50% approval in any poll. That’s why they’ve stopped reporting it, by the way. When’s the last time you saw a presidential approval poll? Off the top of your head. You can’t remember, right?

Because it’s not worth reporting.

They’re covering it up.

Obama’s job performance is plummeting. So, it’s the same old argument. If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody’s there, does it make a noise? Well, if Obama’s job approval is plummeting but nobody knows it, are they going to realize it? And the answer is no. By the same token, the Democrat Party has an enemies list, and it’s anything that has to do with capitalism. So any big corporation or industry — Big Oil, Big Plastics, Big Tree, Big You Name It, have been targeted and have been enemies for years.

Big Insurance? Everybody hates the insurance companies. They despise ’em. So Ken thinks that people gonna walk in and find their premiums doubled, people in his shoes, and then they’re gonna finally blame Obama, and then people are gonna get mad, and that’s gonna be the tipping point, and I’m not so assure people are gonna blame Obama. Think Obama’s trying to help. They think Obama is great.

I mean, Obama said their premiums are gonna come down. The way he set this up, he promised people they can keep their doctor, promised if people they like their policy, they get to keep it. He promised people their premiums are gonna come down. When none of that happens, why would they blame him? They’re gonna blame the insurance companies for savaging the first black president.

The insurance companies are gonna be called racist or Republican, mean because they’re trying to harm Obama when all he’s doing is help people. I’m just warning you, don’t be surprised. Some people blame Obama, it’s gonna increase, but it isn’t gonna be this blanket tipping point that people think. Now, Ken’s problem, people in Ken’s situation. The Wall Street Journal has a piece about this today, about the self-insured. Thanks to Obamacare, more and more companies are going to just stop offering insurance to individuals.

So there’s gonna be even less competition, on top of the increase in premiums because of all of the Obamacare mandates. Those are what’s driving prices up. Just about every week we see some insurance company announce that it’s going to stop selling individual plans in some state or another, and there just aren’t that many health insurance companies to begin with. If they drop out, then the universe of options that people have shrinks — and competition, obviously, is lessened, which means prices rise.

Now, the skyrocketing of these premiums is going to be somewhat disguised by the taxpayer subsidies that are available over at the exchanges. Another reason Obama’s gonna get praise. The evil insurance company is gonna tell you if you’re a self-insured person, that your premiums are doubling. Then you go over to the exchange, and you find out, “Oh, wow. It’s not gonna cost that much?”

“No, Obamacare has set in!”

“Oh, really? Obamacare is saving my bacon,” is how some people are going to look at this. This is how it has been structured. Now, most self-employed people do not qualify, won’t qualify for taxpayer subsidies. It’s really is an assault. You would think that the self-employed, that the entrepreneur, they’d be the ones getting the break, but they don’t. They are not gonna be able to access subsidies like employees will be.

But it’s the taxpayers that are gonna have to pay for the higher premiums. We’re all gonna be paying through the roof here one way or the other. Everybody is.