RUSH: Salem, Wisconsin, this is Larry. Great to have you, Larry. Hi. How are you?
CALLER: Great. Thank you so much. I’m fine. Hope you’re doing well as well.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: But the reason I’m calling is two very quick points and then I’ll get to my main point, the reason I called. That comment that I heard a number of times about Obama talking about the elderly lady? You know, that is the most disgusting, despicable thing, and you know why? Because all the elderly — especially the elderly that are ill — are considered by this person simply a charge to the state, and as soon as they are no longer living, then this provides the state a little bit more dollars and they don’t have to pay out for these people.
Two. I’d like to bring up Obama’s comments concerning people just being one paycheck away from financial ruin. There’s something else in the works here that’s gonna bring them less than a paycheck from financial ruin, and that is this. Any CPA or corporate CEO that has any kind of integrity will confirm this, which I have already myself. But the IRS is getting ready… People need to starting looking at their W2 forms, in block 14, which is, quote, “the other box,” labeled “other box.”
They possibly might be seeing two initials in that very soon, a double DD. They’ll be told that that’s for informational purposes only. What the IRS is getting ready to do, probably after the 2014 elections, is to assign a value to the insurance premiums being paid by employers for employees, but assign that tax liability to the employee. What that’s gonna do… I don’t know how it’s gonna treat the employers, whether they’ll be able to still continue the adjustment on their profits. But what it’s gonna do is increase the tax liability of the employee. So if someone’s making —
RUSH: Well, now, I know this has been talked about forever, taxing employee benefits and adding the equivalent income, but have they decided to firmly do that?
CALLER: They’re being briefed by CPAs and the insurance companies know of this already, and —
RUSH: No, everybody knows about it in terms of a possibility, but has the law been passed that they’re actually gonna start taxing employer benefits — not just health insurance, whatever the benefit is — as income, and they’re gonna starts adding that to your adjustable gross income? Has that law passed and he signed it? That’s actually gonna start happening in 2014?
CALLER: He has not been signed it yet but it’s in the works and it will happen, yes.
RUSH: Well, that’s been in the works for a long time. I have no doubt that it is going to happen at some point, just like I think the mortgage interest deduction’s gonna go by the wayside because the entire concept of home ownership is changing. More people are renting. They can’t afford it. Look at the housing market and so forth. I think we’re in the midst of all kinds of things. We’ve got this massive national debt. What do they do?
Raise taxes!
There’s gonna be a value-added tax. You know, the more Democrats win, the more of this there’s gonna be. The more any Washington establishment candidates win, this is where we’re headed. If the Democrats get their way, I don’t know how long it will be after the 2014 or 2016 or 2018 or 2020 elections, but at some point they are going to start attaching the income value to your benefits and add that to your AGI and you’ll pay taxes on that, not just your gross salary.
I’ll give you an illustration. Let’s say that your salary is a hundred grand, just to pick a number, but your benefit package is worth $25,000. The way the government looks at that all right now is you’re getting $25,000 free income that they’re not taxing. So if your benefit package, health care and whatever else that you get from where your job is adds up to say $25,000 in this case, that’s imputed income. You never see it, it’s never in your take-home pay, it’s not there on your gross.
But it’s gonna start being and you’re gonna pay taxes based on that — a massive tax increase. They also want a carbon tax. Meanwhile, three million Britons cannot afford to pay their energy bill because massive carbon taxes have been imposed while they were getting rid of fossil fuels as energy sources, because the left wing believes this silly climate change/global warming hoax. They’re using windmills and solar and all this, which doesn’t provide enough electricity.
So they have to use fossil fuel/coal as a backup, but they’ve deemphasized it and therefore there’s less supply, it’s more expensive. Now three million Britons can’t pay their utility bills. That’s coming here. But they need the money! Even with all the QE3, QE4, the national debt isn’t going down. The national debt’s getting bigger. The deficit isn’t coming down appreciably and not consistently. The Democrat dream is a value-added tax, and imputed income on your benefits that will be taxed.
They’ve been threatening that for 20 years. That’s gonna happen someday. The mortgage interest deduction? You know as well as I do that every election that comes up, somebody proposes it, some candidate somewhere, and he always goes by the wayside. At some point, these Washington establishment types keep winning. They will implement this and make it happen. So all this stuff is desired, and the odds of all of it happening are increased exponentially if Democrats win.
This is what they do, and their excuse is, “Well, we still have the uninsured that we have to pay for, even despite Obamacare. We got massive deficits! There’s still a wide income gap. We gotta take more money from the rich. It just isn’t fair!” They keep saying the same things, and they’ll make you think your taxes aren’t going up. “It’s only the rich. You’ll be safe.” So just keep a sharp eye on that. Whether they’ve done it yet or not, they want to.
Here’s Andrea in Chicago. It’s great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi there. How are you?
RUSH: I’m fine. Thank you.
CALLER: Great. This is the first time I’m calling, so I’m real excited about talking to you. My question, Rush, is where are the insurance companies in this? Why aren’t they speaking out, for better, for worse, whatever. I hate to use the word but I’m really pissed off at my insurance company because I did get one of those letters of cancellation, and I really like my insurance program for me and my daughter, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do now. I’m just really mad because the insurance companies aren’t are not talking. You know, where’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Aetna and all those big companies? Why aren’t they saying something?
RUSH: Well, one of the reasons is that they were co-opted into supporting all of this back in 2007 and 2008, because they were told that Obamacare was going to require everybody to have a policy and that the uninsured were going to be covered. So they saw 30 million, whatever the number was, brand-new customers. They saw a government making everybody get insurance, and they thought, “Well, my God! How can we not sign on to this? We don’t need to spend another dime in advertising. We got a government that’s gonna make people become our customers,” and now I have to think, Andrea, that the insurance companies are just starting to realize that they’re going to lose big.
I don’t understand it, either. I don’t know why they didn’t see that the objective is to put them out of business in 10 to 15 years. I am sitting here and I am flummoxed. I’m amazed. I understand the lure of the crony capitalism, the lure of being brought in, being close to power. But why don’t these people see that Obama wants to ruin their industry and eliminate it and replace it with the government?
I’m at a loss to answer your question.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Don’t forget, when it comes to the insurance companies, the regime is ordering them not to talk to the media. Remember that? This is Tuesday. It was either Monday or Friday we had the story that the regime is ordering insurance companies not to divulge the number of cancellations they are making. And you might ask, “Well, how can they do that?” Don’t forget, these people were all bought off, folks. Hospitals, insurance companies, they were given money and preferential treatment if they ran adds supporting Obamacare, remember? And the insurance companies, they thought that millions of brand-new customers were coming their way. This is what continually flummoxes me.
Folks, let me tell you something. The best way to explain all this is, we say that what’s going on here is socialism and so forth, and to an extent, yeah. But what really is happening here is crony — I don’t even want to say capitalism. There’s no capitalism. What is happening here is that the regime is simply buying and luring support from businesses that people would think are oriented toward capitalism and free markets and free enterprise. It’s like GE. They’re giving GE and all these Solyndra people and the green energy people, they’re literally given federal money in exchange for loyalty to the regime.
What you have is a melding, if you will, of the government with corporations. And the corporations go for it because they have close ties, they’re right next to the seat of power. In many cases they’re bought off with money and grants or what have you. In the insurance companies cases, they’re promised new customers. How in the world they don’t see who they’re dealing with in Obama — maybe they do and they don’t care, just look at the here and the now in the next three years and make hay while they can, and if they go out of business, so what. Just score what they can.
It’s all anathema in terms of common sense. You know, that’s a good way to put it. Every one of these corporate entities is trying to be the last one eaten by the alligator. They’re all giving the scorpion the trip across the pond. The scorpion is promising they’re not gonna sting ’em. And before they get cross the pond, the scorpion will sting ’em and the CEO of the insurance agency, “Why did you sting me, Obama?”
“What am I? I’m a scorpion. What do I do? I sting you. It’s your mistake for believing me.”
They all think that they’re gonna be the ones untouched by all this. And they fall for it because they refuse to admit who and what Obama is. He lied to them. He lied to the insurance companies. They’re not reaping a windfall profit under Obamacare. They’re gonna be thrown into a death spiral. Single payer’s coming! They’re out of business! I don’t know how they don’t see it, but they don’t see it.
Or maybe they did see it and they said, “Okay, we know that our days are numbered so we’re gonna score what we can while we can, and get out with as much money as we can by the time we get stung.” Whatever, there’s no fight-back. This is my point. This is the reason for the second hour monologue. There’s no push-back and I’ve lived all these years under the idea that I’m on a team fighting back trying to stop this and reverse it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Tina in Jupiter, Florida, right up the road. Great to have you. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call. I am a hardworking medical professional, mother of five. I’m also married to a hardworking professional with a good income. Never in a million years dreamed that next year we would need to be concerned about our health coverage. My point is, I would really like to see a situation where we get a grassroots group of people starting to turn, where they don’t wish to be part of the Obamacare process, willing to take the hit of the penalty, somehow getting conjunction with insurance companies who are also be sideswiped by this process, and establish a system where we can be independent of the government involvement.
RUSH: There is. It’s called cash. I’m not kidding. You find a doctor and a hospital that’ll take cash or your credit card. They’re out there. I’m not being facetious. When I say cash, I mean, write a check, just don’t have an insurance plan, put it on a credit card, but pay ’em directly with no insurance company middleman. There are more doctors leaving Medicaid than you can shake a stick at because they’re not being reimbursed properly, timely, or sufficiently, and they want to stay in business, and they’re working to create clientele that’ll just pay ’em directly for service, like you would any other service. You go to a lawyer, you don’t have lawyer insurance, do you? You don’t have hotel room insurance, do you?
There are doctor’s trying to set up businesses exactly like that, with a limited clientele that’ll pay cash, and the service is immediate and so forth, same thing with the hospitals. That’s one of the most elementary free market solutions there is. The problem is that most people have now, since World War II, just been accustomed to insurance paying everything, not paying for it themselves. They are. They don’t write a check to a doctor. Well, maybe they do out of pocket or before the deductible is hit, so it’s maybe not that bad in terms of the mystique of living under the illusion somebody else is paying for everything. But I think that’s the solution.
CALLER: The problem comes in when you develop a catastrophic illness, or you have an accident that causes a hospital stay that runs into $1.1 million. You know, your average American citizen doesn’t have that disposable cash for those kinds of medical expenses.
RUSH: This is true. This is true. How often do those things happen, at the same time?
CALLER: It only has to happen once (chuckles) in the individual life.
RUSH: Right, but that’s another thing. What I’m trying to suggest here is that for the other expenses — for lack of a better term, let’s call it “day-to-day health care — pay for it out of your pocket. If you need a checkup, a test, or things of this kind, pay for it. The catastrophic accidents, my guess is… No, I shouldn’t guess it. I don’t know if it’s gonna be illegal for insurance companies to exist outside of Obamacare after…
I happen to think there’s gonna be a black market for exactly kind of thing you’re talking about, just like there’s a black market for cigarettes. When things get too expensive and the system is what it is, people find ways around it. When there are people with money who want to find ways around things, there are people who will sell. Offshore health care is developing. Costa Rica is a great example of a country where they have it.
They do it under the guise of tourism, but they’ve got doctors down there that will sell you this kind of catastrophic insurance if you need it. Now, that may not satisfy your needs. If you’re in a car wreck here, how do you get to Costa Rica? I understand all the objections to it. But what you’re doing is illustrating exactly how this whole system has become just blown up and bastardized. ‘Cause what you ought to be able to do is go to the doctor for your standard, ordinary, everyday health treatment and have insurance for nothing but catastrophic, for if that happens.
But because of Obamacare you can’t do that. You’ve got to sign on to the whole kit and caboodle. You’ve gotta sign on where people are getting free birth control pills, free contraception, free condoms, free whatever — all these left-wing wet dreams thrown in — where everybody else is paying for it, jacking up your premiums for things you’re never gonna use and never gonna access but other people do and you’re being asked to pay for it.
CALLER: Yes. I liken this to being told what kind of car I have to buy and that I need to have.
RUSH: That day is coming.
CALLER: I have to have a sun roof and power windows, when I don’t really need them or want them. It’s no different; you’re just transferring those demands to health care environment.
RUSH: You are exactly right. You are taking free will away from people, and you are mandating that everybody live as numbers on a ledger. You are not an individual anymore. You’re just a number with a set of statistics, and a computer and a health panel are gonna determine what happens to you based on the data that is input about you. All this in the name of efficiency and fairness and what have you.
This is why, folks… I may be beating myself up against brick wall, but this is why I have so admired what Cruz was trying to do, not give up and fight back against this however we do it, ’cause the alternative are just unacceptable. The circumstance that Tina describes here — this woman with gallbladder cancer, Edie Sundby — these are unacceptable circumstances. There’s no reason for any of this to be “reformed” like this. There’s no reason for this change.
There’s no reason for this health care system to get worse like this, other than to enrich the Democrat Party, and that’s not good enough for me.