RUSH: Here’s Joyce in Dayton as we head to the phones. I really appreciate your patience. Thanks for waiting, and welcome to the program.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s an honor to speak with you.

RUSH: I appreciate that. Thank you.

CALLER: I’ve been screaming at the radio and the TV and everything else. I don’t understand why people aren’t mentioning whether it’s one million, seven million, 10 million, 50 million people. They’re all marching like going into the gulag with a gun to their head. I’ve had so many people approach me, “Are you gonna sign up?” It can cause you anxiety that you need insurance to go to the doctor, because you’re under fear, you’re under duress. You know that you’re gonna get a penalty. You know that you’re going to go to jail, as you said earlier. If you’re a law-abiding, try-to-do-the-right-thing person, that’s what you would do, you would follow directions and do the best you can. I am infuriated, and every client I’ve talked to today is infuriated that the government, in America, a free country, is forcing you to do something that you don’t want to do, buy something you don’t want to buy, telling you what is best for you.

RUSH: I know. It’s appalling.

CALLER: I am so angry. And so is everybody that I talk to.

RUSH: You said clients. What do you do?

CALLER: I’m a group instructor and a personal fitness trainer.

RUSH: Oh. So you’re in shape?

CALLER: I am in shape.

RUSH: So you probably don’t need a health insurance policy?

CALLER: Well, I need it. I think everybody needs it, but I truly —

RUSH: Anyway, you know, it’s a good point. The people of this country, aside from the obvious few exceptions, are law-abiding and this is the law of the land. I think you’ve hit on something. People are scared to death of government today.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: I think they’re scared to death of what’ll happen to them if they don’t comply. With all this talk about the government spying on people and all these phone records and the metadata, people think that the government’s watching ’em, and they know if they’re complying or not, so they’re trying to sign up. When you look at it that way doesn’t it seem to you that there would be more than seven million signing up?

CALLER: Absolutely. I heard somebody on the radio yesterday say, “Well, we’re just a country of procrastinators.” No, we are not. If I wanted it, I would have gotten it the first day. And so would any of my friends or my family members or anybody else. If that’s what I wanted to do, I would by golly go do it. That’s how we Americans run our lives.

RUSH: Well, but people found out there’s nothing to get. There’s no back end. They don’t know if they’re actually signed up when they finish the process.

CALLER: Well, that’s true. But, again, they can tout and sing the highest praises of all this that they’ve got seven million signed up. I don’t care how many it is. A certain percentage is under duress. It’s because they’ve lost their insurance because they think they have no choice and that’s a shame in America.

RUSH: I think that’s exactly right.

CALLER: They have no choice.

RUSH: I think your under duress point is one worth pounding. The fear, the under duress, the fear of noncompliance of what might happen to you.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: And it’s just un-American to force people into something like this. This is not —

CALLER: It is. By principle alone —

RUSH: — constitutional.

CALLER: — I wouldn’t want to do that. Whether I need it or not, I would not want to do that, because I will not —

RUSH: Were you unhappy with your health insurance before?

CALLER: No. And right now I don’t have any health insurance because when I switched jobs, I don’t have the hours right now —

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: — to get insurance —

RUSH: Exactly the kind of circumstance Ted Cruz is talking about. Well, Joyce, great points. I’m glad you called.