RUSH: Here’s Therese in Detroit. Therese, glad you called. Great to have you. Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi. How are you?
RUSH: Superb. How are you?
CALLER: Well, our accountant came in today for a visit, and we always talk about Obamacare, and he told us that he got a letter from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. He lives in North Carolina, but he does business in both states, and for him and his wife and two kids, the premium went from $800 a month up to $1700 a month, and his deductible went from $3,000…
RUSH: Whoa ho!
CALLER: It jumped up to $24,000 for a deductible.
RUSH: Whoa! Because of Obamacare?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: His deductible went to $24,000? He lives in North Carolina?
CALLER: Yes. So we said, “We need to call Rush and tell him.”
RUSH: Well, I knew it was bad. In fact, I’ve got a whole Obamacare Stack here with examples, but nothing that outrageous.
CALLER: Yeah, and when he said that, I said, “$24,000?” and he said, “Yes,” and then he said, “Did you ever think that anything like this would ever happen in America, that any of us would feel the way we are feeling?”
RUSH: Well, here’s the thing: Yes. The moment Obama was elected I did, and that’s what this whole program’s been about ever since, exactly that. To be honest with you, I did. I sure did.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Our last caller was unbelievable. The woman called and said she’d heard from her accountant. Her accountant found out what his Obamacare obligation gonna be: A $24,000 deductible! She asked me, “Who would have ever believed that?” and I said, “I would have.” Now, I want to clarify. I didn’t mean to intimate that I knew that deductibles were gonna go to 24 grand. I did know what was gonna happen to this country. I did know what Obama intended to do with the health care system, because he told everybody.
We played the audio here — a lot of other networks did, too — but the Drive-Bys didn’t. But in 2007, Obama was talking to the Service Employees International Union, and he’s telling them about single payer, and he said (summarized), “We all want to get there and this is how we’re gonna do it. We can’t do it overnight. The country would reject it overnight. We’re gonna have to build up to it. It may take 10 years; might take 15 years. But we’re all gonna get there.”
It wasn’t even hidden. Look, I didn’t need Obama telling the SEIU what he was gonna do. Obama is an Alinskyite radical. Obama doesn’t like the way this country was founded. Obama is a socialist. Obama is a collectivist and a big government redistribution guy. There was no mystery. Folks, you say you get frustrated the Republican Party? I understand that. You think I’m all happy-go-lucky and having fun here, and I do.
But I can’t tell you how frustrated and angry I’ve been last five years over what the people of this country don’t know, when it’s clearly available for them to know. The overall ignorance, the low-information, I can’t tell you how that ticks me off. All of this need not have happened. None of this is a surprise to those of us who know liberals, who studied and know Obama. None of it is. That’s why those of us who knew what’s in store for this country were so ecstatic that Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and whoever else finally stands up from elected politics and tries to stop, or at least tries to educate people about this.
The Republican Party should have been doing this for five years, ads like the ad we played for you running in Virginia for Cuccinelli. This should have been going on for five years. People need to be educated. They need to be informed. The media’s not doing their job. Somebody’s gotta pick up the slack. We can’t do everything here. I wish we reached everybody, but we don’t. Our quest is to always grow, but there isn’t a single media outlet or program that ever does reach everybody.
Not even the Super Bowl reaches everybody.
Somebody’s watching One Life to Live repeats when the Super Bowl’s on. Somebody’s watching the Home Shopping Network when the Super Bowl’s on. Nobody ever watches everything, or everybody never watches everything. That’s what the purpose of the political party is, so they hid behind these excuses. “Well, nobody would cover our press conference.” Run ads! You guys have money. You’ve been fundraising. That’s what frustrates me. It’s all been out there.
This need not be a surprise to anybody. This is why I have really… I get so ticked at conservatives in the media for bailing out and going soft on liberalism, in the name of intellectual understanding or whatever gunk. All of this was known. Everything Obama was gonna do could be predicted. That’s easy, when you know who liberals are. When you know what a collectivist is, when you know what a redistributionist is. Really all you’d had to do is listen to Obama during his campaign.
I mean, he talked a good game, he hid this somewhat, but he didn’t always. But since he’s been elected, it’s been the Limbaugh Theorem. Supposedly trying to create jobs? Supposedly trying to reduce the debt? It’s all been BS, and it’s so easily knowable. So I join you in being frustrated, maybe over different things. But here we are on the precipice now. The greatest health care system in the world is over.
Well, there will be other opportunities, but it’s just gotten harder. It’s gonna continue to get harder, and it’s so unnecessary. It need not have happened. But Obama did win the election by hook or by crook. However it happened. But that needn’t have happened, either, and I really resent our side saying, “Well, you know, Rush, you just gotta accept elections have consequences.” When was the last time the Democrats dealt with a loss that way?
“Oh, well, we lost! I guess we’re just gonna let the Republicans have whatever they want.” Never! So it really is maddening, and I was not speaking flippantly when I said I coulda told you. I coulda predicted $28,000 deductible. I could have and did tell you. It’s why I said, “I hope he fails.” This, everything that’s happened here — the debt, the economy, no jobs, no infrastructure repair — nothing that he’s promised has he done. It’s by design! That’s why I hoped he failed. Substantive policy reasons.
So let’s go to the Health Care Stack. First up from Reason.com. Drudge headlined this one all day today. Sorry. This is not the one Drudge headlined. The one Drudge headlined is this from the Wall Street Journal: “Health Website Woes Widen as Insurers Get Wrong Data. Insurers say the federal health-care marketplace is generating flawed data that is straining their ability to handle even the trickle of enrollees who have gotten through so far, in a sign that technological problems extend further than the website traffic and software issues already [blamed].
“Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments…” Oh, really? Duplicate enrollments? That would be the purpose of that, I wonder? How accidental are duplicate enrollments? It’s kind of like duplicate voter registration. Think of it that way, because that’s exactly what this is, in part. “Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children…” Why would that be done? I know that the people filling out the form got it wrong. It’s that the software is getting it wrong.
But is it? “Emerging errors include duplicate enrollments, spouses reported as children, missing data fields and suspect eligibility determinations, say executives at more than a dozen health plans.” Some of these might not be mistakes. I mean, men can now marry men, so spouses… But here’s the point, folks — and even in this story, the Milquetoasts at the Wall Street Journal have to get in a dig at Ted Cruz at the end of this story.
Ted Cruz isn’t the problem, just like the United States isn’t the problem; it’s the solution. Ted Cruz is the solution. He and Lee, what they’re fighting for, that’s the solution. I don’t even want to waste time telling you what they said about Cruz. The bottom line is that there’s more wrong with this than just people not being able to sign up. People that are signing up, their data is all wrong. It isn’t secure.
Then there’s this: “The Fast Emergence of Obamacare Frauds.” This from Reason.com. “Scam artists have seemingly found a friend in Obamacare. Reports are emerging that shysters are using Tennessee residents’ relative lack of knowledge about the new health care law to defraud them. Scam artists, for example, are making calls claiming they need Social Security numbers to sign people up for a new Obamacare insurance card, according to a statement from the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance.
“‘We’ve been made aware of one scam, in particular,’ said TDCI spokeswoman Kate Abernathy. ‘One of our navigator agencies let us know that there was an individual calling people saying that he or she could have walked him through the application process for $100 for a navigator certified application counselor service, but that information is completely incorrect. That is a free service that is supposed to remain free.'”
This is the tip of the iceberg, by the way, on identity theft kind of fraud that’s going to happen in Obamacare. Here are a couple pull quotes: “As previously reported, TDCI implemented registration requirements and criminal background checks on people who serve as Obamacare navigators or certified Obamacare application counselors in Tennessee. Such people are responsible for handling the financial or medical information belonging to other individuals,” the navigators.
“Strangely, last month, mainstream media outlets such as the Washington Post seemed to condemn Tennessee and other states for implementing these policies, saying they were getting in the way of progress. ‘There is a very palpable concern … that anti-Obamacare state government people will find ways to gum up the works,’ the Post quoted Leonardo Cuello, director of health reform for the National Health Law Program, as saying.”
So Tennessee, trying to keep fraud out of the system a couple weeks ago, was accused of trying to gum it up! Now, speaking of the navigators, we had a story from earlier this week. Headline: “Obamacare ‘Navigator’ Stormed GOP Official’s Property — A Kansas Obamacare ‘navigator’ stormed the property of the Republican secretary of state earlier this year… ‘It is shocking that the Obama administration has hired as a navigator a person who has been caught trespassing and attempting to intimidate a public official,’ Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach …
“‘This kind of thug activity is bad enough, but giving this person federal tax dollars is sickening,’ he added.” It is not “shocking,” is my point. It is not shocking that the regime would hire anti-Republican activists, pro-Obama activists as navigators to intimidate Republicans and others who seek to sign up with this thing. Here’s another one. This is New York Post: “Doctors Worried Sick Over Obamacare — New York doctors are feeling queasy about Obamacare — and many won’t participate in the new national insurance program because they fear they’ll go broke, The Post has learned.
“‘Obamacare is going to send me more patients to see and then cut the payments to provide the care — that’s what’s going to happen,’ predicted Donald Moore, a primary-care doctor in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. ‘I will not accept it.'” I’ll tell you, folks, it’s what I meant earlier. This Stack today is what tells me that this thing, they’re gonna have to… The regime is going to have to do something here, because the exchanges aren’t ready.
The two model states, Vermont and Maryland, are delayed and nowhere near ready. These are the models! Those states supposed to show how it’s to be done. Doctors thinking this, they’re not gonna make it, navigators being corrupt, all the fraud that’s setting in? They may have to delay this thing. I don’t want to predict that and get people’s hopes up, but this isn’t working. It can’t work. It’s an outright disaster, and now people are learning about what their costs are gonna be, and a lot of ’em thought it was gonna be free or cheaper.
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