RUSH: We will get into some of the March 31st deadline for Obamacare — and what a joke it is. By the way, an Oklahoma reporter rendered Kathleen Sebelius speechless. An Oklahoma reporter told her how unpopular Obamacare is, and she had nothing to say. He said to her, “At last check, 64% of Oklahomans are not buying into the health care plan. They don’t like Obamacare. They’ve been pretty vocal about it.

“Now, that’s gonna still continue to be a tough sell, but we’ll see how that plays out over the coming months,” and waited for Sebelius to reply, and she had no reply. Seven seconds of dead air. Finally the reporter broke back in to say, “Okay, Secretary Sebelius, thank you so much for being with us this morning. I think we’ve probably lost sound here or something.”

“No,” she says. “No, no, I can hear you, but thanks for having me.” So there was not a technical glitch. She just didn’t know what to say when confronted with the fact that 64% of Oklahomans are not buying it and don’t intend to and don’t want it. Because, of course, she’s been sent out programmed to speak about how popular it is and how gangbusters it’s going. And when she hears data that’s totally contradictory, she’s lost. She doesn’t know what to say.

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RUSH: We’ve now got that sound bite where Sebelius was rendered speechless. It’s Stan Miller — an anchor at Oklahoma City Eyeball News, KWTV News 9 Eyeball — and he’s interviewing Kathleen Sebelius, and this is how it went…

MILLER: At last check, 64% of Oklahomans aren’t buying into the health care plan. They don’t like Obamacare, and they’ve been pretty vocal about it. Now, that’s gonna be a — still continue to be a tough sell but we’ll see how that plays out over the coming months.

SEBELIUS: (long silence)

RUSH: One, two, three, four, five…

MILLER: All right, Secretary Sebelius. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. I think we’ve probably lost sound here or something.

SEBELIUS: I can hear you, but I —

MILLER: Okay.

SEBELIUS: Thanks for having me.

RUSH: She didn’t know what to say. “I can hear you.” She should have shut up and let it be assumed that they’d had a technical glitch. She didn’t know what to say. This is my point. I’m telling you, she’s robotic. She doesn’t know anything, this woman. I know she’s a card-carrying leftist, but that means she’s basically ignorant, when you get down to brass tacks.

She’s been sent out with this story to tell, and the story is, “Oh, yeah, six million people are enrolled! It’s going gangbusters, and people who’ve never had insurance will have insurance and we’ve never seen anything like this! We’re so gratified; we’re so happy! We’re finally we’re bringing affordable health care to all Americans.”

“Uh, Miss Sebelius, 64% of Oklahomans aren’t buying into it, don’t like it, have no intention of buying into it. It’s gonna be interesting to see how this plays out.”

Three, four, five, six…

She had nothing to say, literally nothing to say. I wonder how many of these high-frequency trades were made on the stock market during her six seconds of speechlessness. I wonder how many billions of dollars were made in that six-second span of time.
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RUSH: This is Ted in Tampa. Ted, great to have you. Welcome to the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Yes, sir. Thank you for taking my call. I just had an interesting thought. I know over the years you’ve said that you don’t have insurance, you pay as you go like in that incident in Hawaii a few years ago. But now as a private citizen, like the rest of us, you are required to either get coverage or pay a fine, which I believe is a percentage of your income. So, based on that, I would like to know if you could comment on your thoughts or your financial peers’ as to the potential political, economical, or moral conflict at having to pay so much money or just get a bare bones policy.

RUSH: Well.

CALLER: To comply with the law.

RUSH: Well, you comply with the law by paying the fine. I mean, if you pay the fine, you are complying with the law. The law accommodates both. Here’s the thing on the fine as I understand it. The fine is 1% of your income or a formula. However, the maximum fine no matter your income, the maximum fine is the cost of the highest gold-plated, whatever plan there is out there.

Now, 1% of my income would be far more than that, so I don’t think I’ve gotta pay really 1% of my income. I think the most that I’ve gotta pay in the form of a fine is whatever the most expensive policy is. But I have my accountant looking into it. But you know what your gonna do, we’re probably just gonna dump an amount of money into what we’re call the Obamacare fund just so we can tell the IRS, nope, we’ve paid into it. This is gonna be a preventive measure. What that amount’s gonna be, don’t know yet. Got ’til April 15th to figure it out.

But I do not want to get an insurance policy because my choices are gonna be so limited after I do that, I don’t want to limit my choices. By that I mean the hospital I want to go to might not be in the network based on the policy I’m able to get, or the doctor might not be. I want to be able to go wherever they’ll take me as long as I pay them. Here it is. The maximum penalty cannot exceed the national average yearly premium for a bronze plan.

CALLER: Oh. Okay.

RUSH: So, you see, it’s not punitive in that sense. You were thinking, me and my financial peers, you were thinking I was looking at 400 grand, right?

CALLER: At least, yeah.

RUSH: No. It wouldn’t be. A maximum penalty cannot exceed the national average yearly premium for a bronze plan. And that is from Obamacare’s individual mandate. The bronze plan is the cheapest. I was wrong. It’s not the most expensive that is the max. The bronze plan is the cheapest, but I’m reading that from Obamacare. However, they might change that rule when they find out it’s me, just like the governor of New York. So you still may have a point before it’s all said and done, Ted.

CALLER: It’s the rules de jour, yeah.

RUSH: Exactly. The rules of the day, however they make them and want them to be.

CALLER: That clears it up. I appreciate that. Thank you so much there. Keep up the good work.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Let’s see. I’ve got a health care Stack. I told people I was gonna get to it. It’s the March 31st deadline, you know, big whoop, yip yip yip yip yahoo. It isn’t. Let’s see, what could I have here up first? Oh, a New York Times story: “Repercussions and Reprieves at Health Insurance Enrollment Deadline.” Hmm. What’s this?

“AmericaÂ’s health insurance marketplace closes on Monday night.” Bull. It doesn’t. The first sentence in this thing is: “AmericaÂ’s health insurance marketplace closes on Monday night, the deadline for most people to obtain coverage or face a penalty.” Even that’s not true. Anybody can claim a hardship. We had this two weeks ago. Anybody can claim a hardship in dealing with HealthCare.gov. The hardship does not have to be economic. The hardship is, “I can’t work the website. It isn’t working for me,” or “I don’t have time to go to the website.”

Folks, there is no deadline. There’s all kinds of ways out of it, and it’s because whatever it takes to not make you mad is what Obamacare is this year, as best they can make it, because it’s an election year. So they’re gonna delay anything that would really make you mad until after October or November. And this article even points this out later on. This first sentence is such BS. The article goes on to point out that anybody can claim a hardship in dealing with the website and get an extension. There’s no proof required when you claim a hardship. “I don’t have time, it’s too hard for me. I don’t know yet what I want.” Just claim it, don’t have to prove it, and you’re granted the waiver this year ’cause they don’t want you mad.

The Times article says: “The confusion and uncertainty of the last six months appear likely to continue as consumers, including some who have never had insurance, begin using new policies for the first time. Here are answers to some frequently asked questions.” This article has gotten a lot of attention from the rest of the Drive-Bys, even though it doesn’t have anything new in it except for a detail that the Drive-Bys are not bothering to mention, and it’s buried at the bottom of this piece in the Times, and this is it.

“With all the exceptions and adjustments, an insurance executive said, ‘open enrollment could go on for the rest of the year.'” (gasping) Open enrollment meaning on-demand whenever you have time, whenever you want to sign up, there is no deadline. Open enrollment could go on for the rest of the year. In other words, there is no sign up deadline for Obamacare this year, which means you can wait until you need insurance before signing up, just as we always said would be the case.

Let me go to the audio sound bites here just for a second. F. Chuck Todd on the Today show today, F. Chuck totally in the tank for Obama, he’s all happy today. Matt Lauer said, “Hey, Chuck, let’s start with a simple question. Are they cooking the books with these numbers, six million enrollees? When you talk to people in neutral corners of Washington, what are they telling you?”

TODD: No, nobody’s saying that they’re cooking the books here. I mean, the six million is pretty real. Getting to where they’ve got, it means the law is un-repealable, Matt. It means that it’s here to stay. So then we’ve advanced to the next part of the debate is, okay, then how do you fix the problems that people think are there?

RUSH: So it is an open question. They don’t know how many have enrolled and they don’t know how many of those who have enrolled have actually paid. They don’t know that. There isn’t a back end on the website. Well, I know this may be hard to believe, and you may be thinking, “Well, you can just say whatever you want,” which is true, I can come here and say whatever I want, but I have no intention to mislead you, and there’s nothing in it for me to do that. There is nothing ever in it for me to lie to you about anything. I don’t gain a thing by doing that. I’m telling you, they may have had six million people that have gone to the website and logged in and provided them with data, but they don’t have six million people that have paid.

What they’ve got is a million who have paid, and what we really know is that four out of five are subsidized! Four out of five Obamacare policies are being paid for by neighbors and other people in the community, subsidized. It’s just a transfer of wealth, is what’s happening. This is not new insurance. It’s just a direct wealth transfer, is what Obamacare boils down to when you strip everything out of it. Four out of five of these new policies are subsidized, and the latest number we had last week was that it was four million or five million that signed up, and only one million of them, 25% of the people who’ve enrolled, were uninsured. And that the vast majority are seasoned citizens who are being subsidized, and the people who need to sign up to pay for those subsidies are not signing up, the youngsters out there.

But here’s good old loyal F. Chuck. “Well, what it means, Matt, is it’s un-repealable. So now, Matt, we now go on to the next phase, how do we fix it? Once they’ve got six million, it’s un-repealable.” Why? We can’t take something away from six million people without there being a revolution? What does that mean? (interruption) Well, I know, the Florida midterm election, that special election. Alex Sink lost on the notion that we don’t need to repeal it; we just need to fix it. She got skunked.

You know, here’s some things. This is what I think F. Chuck Todd and the Drive-Bys ought to be asking about these Obamacare numbers. And if for some reason, if somehow this were a Republican idea, questions like this would be asked. A Republican would never do this, I understand that, but just speaking hypothetically. The first question that F. Chuck ought to be asking the authorities: “How many of the six million are for insurance and not Medicaid?”

“How many people who bought actual insurance got subsidies from their taxpayer friends and neighbors?”

“How many of the people who actually bought insurance have made a payment?” It seems to me to be fundamental.

“How many of these people did not have insurance previously?” If any decent website of any achievement at all in this day and age would be able to tell you that within seconds. It would be in the database.

“How many people lost their insurance because of Obamacare?”

Why didn’t F. Chuck run around and ask that question or any of these? The White House is now claiming six and a half million sign-ups, which means — I don’t know. I don’t know how many would have had to sign up in the last two weeks, because what did they say the number of sign-ups was? (interruption) We had something like four million would have had to sign up in the last two weeks. Well, that’s the point. Why should anybody believe it? Why can’t the government prove it instead of just running around and asserting it and then having some sycophant media member repeat it? The real question is: when have they not lied about Obamacare?

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RUSH: I actually think what we’re dealing with here is a tiny number. You strip everything away… Follow me on this, now. The grand total of people who did not sign up for Medicaid — I mean, actually signed up for Obamacare, not Medicaid. I’m talking about these six million people they think they’ve got. How many of ’em did not sign up for Medicaid?

How many of ’em did not have insurance previously, were uninsured, and are not getting any taxpayer subsidizes and are actually gonna make their payments? I’ll betcha we’re talking less than half a million people that have actually signed up and are gonna be making payments to Obamacare. I’ll bet you it’s less than half a million. And even if it’s all six, think of how small the number is.

So they say, “It’s beyond repeal now. Yay!” It is such a tiny number. I’m telling you, the number of people who’ve actually signed up, and who are actually signing up for Obamacare with an actual Obamacare policy and actually making the payments and not being subsidized? I’ll bet you that number is less than a million. I want to go back to this program, me, June 20th, last year.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Now, the Investor’s Business Daily editorial written by Betsy McCaughey details what the health care exchanges in Obamacare really are about. And she focuses on California, because they’re getting $910 million to set up the exchanges in California. It turns out these exchanges are just being used for Democrat Party outreach. The NAALCP is getting $600,000 from the California exchange. The AFL-CIO is getting one million. The Service Employees International Union is getting two million. And for what? To go door-to-door, to register voters, to show up at community centers and make presentations on the Democrat Party and sell the Democrat Party agenda.

RUSH: Dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut! Right here it is from the ABC San Diego affiliate, KGTV: “Local Couple Upset After Receiving Pre-Marked Voter Registration Card From Covered California.” Bingo! It’s exactly what we warned people was going to happen. “A local couple called 10News concerned after they received an envelope from the state’s Obamacare website, Covered California.

“Inside was a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with an ‘x’ in the box next to Democratic Party. The couple … received the letter and voter registration card from their health insurance provider Covered California, the state-run agency that implements” Obamacare. Can you imagine how mad Obama’s gonna be when he finds out about this?

When Obama finds out that his navigators at Obamacare are actually using this to register Democrats, imagine how mad… (interruption) Well, isn’t that what most people say? “Well, how did this happen? What’s Obama gonna do when he finds out? He’s not gonna be happy.” It’s like Obama doesn’t know any of this stuff going on. But there you have it. This is just one couple.

I mean, how many of ’em do you think there are who have gotten their pre-registered voter registration card sent to them after signing up for Obamacare in California? “Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Toby Cosgrove told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures that three-quarters of Obamacare signups have higher premiums,” costing more than what they were paying. Yes, 75% are seeing premium increases.