RUSH: There is hysteria across this country, and across the pond in Europe. There’s just hysteria everywhere you look, and a lot of it is rooted in a panicked, hysterical need on the left to protect the legacy of Barack Hussein Obama. Pretty much everything of the Obama administration is being pared away — or trying to. The severe efforts. Obamacare, the first stage of the repeal has taken place, and the panic that has ensued over this… Are you aware — and I tried to mention this. I warned people over the weekend that this was coming. They looked at me like I’m nuts.

I said, “Are you aware — and, if you’re not, you had better be prepared to hear starting very soon — that the Republican health care bill that passed the House of Representatives now treats the cause of rape as a preexisting condition in order to deny rape victims and the victims of sexual abuse health insurance?” When I tell you that, does that make any sense to you? I mentioned this to the people at dinner one night this weekend, and they looked at me like, “What are you talking about?” And I didn’t blame ’em. It sounds like… I know it sounds nonsensible.

You have a bunch of hysterical leftists, hysterical leftist women that are running around… This story has now gone viral. There are versions of it in the Washington Post. It started in, I think, New York Magazine with a woman writing that the Republicans want to deny everybody with preexisting conditions any insurance. That’s lie number one. And now they’re trying to deny rape victims and sexual abuse victims health insurance on the basis… None of this is true! It is literally… I mean, it’s worse than made up. It’s worse than lies.

This is insane hysteria. It’s literally made up for the Drive-By Media to pick this up and run with it. And literally what they’re claiming is that the cause of rape — whatever that is, the circumstances that led to rape and the rape itself — then equal a preexisting condition. And the cause could be post-traumatic stress disorder, any number of things, and these evil Republicans want to deny the victims of rape and sexual abuse health insurance on the basis that it’s a preexisting condition.

Never mind the fact that the Republicans are bending over backwards to include preexisting conditions in virtually everything. But, as is often the case, here’s a premise that’s put out. It’s kind of like the global warming premise was put out there. And what do we do? We validate the premise by accepting it and trying to reject it intellectually and logically. There are already pieces saying, “This is not right. This is wrong,” with intellectual reasons why.

And I’ll share it all with you as the program unfolds. Rather than just say, “You’re insane!” Rather than just say, “You’re a lunatic!” Rather than just say, “This is absurd!” and laugh at it and move on, no! “We must tackle it intellectually.” Like climate change. There’s no science in climate change. What do we do? We developed our own science answers to it, and it all ends up deep in the weeds. Nobody can keep track of it and they don’t care to because all of this is emotion based, not issue or intellectual-reason based.

So it just… Listen to it a second time. Does it make any sense to you? How could anybody even think this way? What do you have to be doing after the Republicans passed their health care bill to start thinking, “Well, you know, that bill has rape victims listed as victims of preexisting conditions, and, therefore, the Republicans want to deny them health care!” How…? How do you even think this?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me show you some of this hysteria. You ready? “Bette Midler…” Song stylist extraordinaire, Bette Midler: “GOP Are Homegrown Assads, Gassing Their Own with the Health Care Bill.” I’m not making this up. When the House passed Obamacare replacement bill — the American Health Care Act, whatever it is — last Thursday, Bette Midler tweeted that the Republican Party was “gassing their own people” by repealing Obamacare. So the homegrown Assads in the Freedom Caucus want employers to not have to offer health care to employees, are like gassing their own people.

Here’s another headline: “Health Act Repeal Could Threaten U.S. Job Engine.” (repeats) “Health Act Repeal Could Threaten U.S. Job Engine”? You know, have you seen the news that the Republicans have committed suicide with this health care repeal? Well, not so fast on that. Let me present an alternative today as the program unfolds. But I genuinely want to deal with something here. This hysteria over the Republican health care bill is grotesque, and it is nothing more than the media’s desperate attempt to keep Obama’s key domestic achievement alive, at all costs.

If you didn’t know any better, you would think Obamacare the most beloved piece of federal legislation ever, that it had a 100% approval rating, that everybody was happy with it, that nobody was suffering from it, and the Republicans have come along and want people to die. The Republicans want to kill people. The Republicans want to deny rape victims access to insurance because rape and the cause of it equals a preexisting condition. The truth about Obamacare is it’s killing jobs; it’s killing the U.S. economy.

And as long as Obamacare is in force, I don’t see how our economy can ever grow beyond 3%, with the federal government owning one-sixth of the U.S. economy and making a mess of it, with premiums skyrocketing beyond any hope of people being able to pay for it. And, of course, all of this is a direct route to single payer. Now you have Obama’s big supporters like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and Charlie Munger all out now supporting single payer after the Republican health care passes the House.

You notice it’s these very wealthy people out there pushing for single payer? They know they will never have to enroll in that eventuality, with the government running health care. They’ll never have to be governed by it. So it’s easy to gain points and political favor by talking socialism and government taking care of everybody when they’re never gonna have to suffer the consequences. It’s typical of what they do.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So the Republicans are slowly but surely wiping the Obama presidency off the map, and if you don’t necessarily agree with they’re being successful with that, you have to admit that there is an effort underway to do just that. And if you don’t find it within the halls of Capitol Hill and the Congress in the House and the Senate, you do find it at the White House. There is a serious effort to wipe the Obama presidency off the map, and the big signature claim to Obama’s presidency is Obamacare, and the first step has been taken.

This has caused Obama now to show up in public and to try to tamper with this effort — which was predicted. He’s now claiming that it’s a courageous thing to have done Obamacare, and we must muster courage to stop what the Republicans are trying to do. Democrats of all stripes have rejected and continue to reject Trump as president. But more than that, they are apoplectic over the prospect of a diminished Obama legacy. Obama’s just applied for certification and tax status of his future Obama presidential library.

And, by the way, he has attempted to set it up the same way the Clintons set up the Clinton Crime Family Foundation, which became the Clinton Global Initiative. The whole Clinton operation began as the president’s Library and Massage Parlor thing in Little Rock, and everything about it grew from that well beyond the limits of the law in terms of what you can do raising money, spending money, tax consequences. Obama’s model is almost identical to what the Clintons did except Obama’s not gonna spend six years in the transition from the presidential library to the vacuum cleaner that the Clinton Foundation became in accepting foreign contributions for who knows whatever.

Obama’s in the process of setting up the same thing. And of course the presidential library is the first thing, and that’s where all the great achievements are and all the presidential papers signaling the great work and the brilliance — and here come those rascally Republicans right on the day and the month that Obama’s establishing his library, trying to wipe out his signature achievement! So they’re apoplectic about this. They’re apoplectic over the prospect of a diminished Obama legacy.

And make no mistake. You know, if Trump unwinds Obama’s Iran deal, we’re gonna hear how the world is coming to a quick and bloody end. It’s gonna be the same list of catastrophes. “People are gonna die! People are gonna get murdered! People are gonna get sick.” It’s a never-ending litany that really comes under the umbrella, “Republicans are killing people! Republicans are starving children!” And it’s gotten to the point now that it’s lunacy. There’s an effort to wipe the Obama presidency off the map. This has triggered a metastasizing rage.

Democrats are saying, “Who in their right mind wouldn’t resist change to Obamacare?” Well, it’s exploding right before our very eyes. Even the Drive-By Media can’t avoid reporting that. The end of Obamacare, folks, is bigger than the bill itself. It represents a rejection bigger than the voter rejection of Hillary Clinton. If Obamacare is repealed, if Obama’s name is taken off whatever is substituted for it… If it becomes Trumpcare, Ryancare, I don’t care what it becomes.

If it happens because Obama has been taken out of it and enough of his signature legislation has been repealed and replaced with something else, that is gonna cause a new wave of hysteria and panic. And I think what’s happening out there in many sectors is the left is coming to grips with the prospect… This isn’t guaranteed by any stretch, but they are coming to grips with the prospect — of reality crashing into the Obama presidency. They are horrified at the thought, literally horrified at the thought that the Obama legacy could unravel and be untangled.

If you listen to the left’s predictions of what sounds like a Republican-triggered genocide, you’d think we’re all fetuses in a Planned Parenthood waiting room! This is the way they’re trying to characterize all of this. Let me come back to this story that, folks, it defies common-sense understanding. New York Magazine. “Early Thursday morning, New York Magazine published an online item which claimed that ‘rape is a pre-existing condition‘ under the health care bill which [Republicans] passed in the House.” Sarah Spellings: “In Trump’s America, Rape Is a Preexisting Condition.”

Now, listen to this: “An amendment in the GOP health-care-reform bill will allow states to deny coverage for preexisting conditions, including sexual assault. Pre-Obamacare rape survivors who sought treatment for their injuries could be denied health care later on. Under Obamacare, preexisting conditions were guaranteed to receive coverage — among them, sexual assault. The American Health Care Act is going to change that. The new MacArthur-Meadows Amendment will allow states to discriminate based on medical history, reportedly without addressing the subsequent high cost of health care for millions of Americans.

“In addition to rape, postpartum depression, cesarean sections, and surviving domestic violence are all considered preexisting conditions. Companies can also deny coverage for gynecological services and mammograms.” How many of you are under the impression that in the Republican health care bill, preexisting conditions have been wiped out? In other words, how many of you are aware that they had to add $8 billion to an already existing $130 billion fund to cover preexisting conditions? The Republicans bent over backwards keep preexisting conditions in, because they were afraid of stories just like this!

Although they didn’t anticipate preexisting conditions that are rape and abuse related. So that original story runs, and then the next day in the Washington Post, a column: “I Was Raped. Thanks to Republicans, I Could Be Denied Insurance for Surviving — Surviving sexual assault is already expensive. Now it could be even worse.” This is by Carly Mee “a staff attorney at SurvJustice, where she provides direct legal representation to survivors of sexual violence in civil, campus and criminal systems.”

“When I learned that the most recent version of the American Health Care Act allows insurers to classify rape as a preexisting condition (and thus puts survivors at risk for increased costs and denial of coverage), my initial inclination was to pull out a calculator.” Can I…? Before refuting this factually, there is something here that it needs to be pointed out, and it is this. What is really at the bottom of all of this is an abject fear of having to pay for your own stuff in life. That’s what this really, really comes down to.

Not just in this specific case here, but it boils down to this idea that when it comes down to health care, “I shouldn’t have to pay for anything! I shouldn’t have to pay a dime for anything, no matter what happens to me if it requires any kind of medical attention, somebody else should pay for it.” I’m just here to tell you that if that maintains, there will never be any reform of health care and there will never be any return to 4% economic growth in this country. Because as long as people end up paying every dime of their disposable income for health insurance premiums, well, you can say good-bye to rising tides lifting all boats.

If there isn’t some modification to this idea that when it comes to health care, you pay nothing… How silly is it when you look at how high the cost of premiums is and how high the deductibles are? But when it comes to out of pocket, people do not want… These people on the left, at any rate, do not think they should have to pay for a thing. So now they’re running around trying to classify every activity that they consider to be suffering or whatever as a preexisting condition so that they can say that the Republicans want to deny them health coverage. Now, the claim — substantively — is wrong. But it pains me to even have to go there to refute this, because it accepts their stupid, fool premise.

But I’m gonna do it, just to make sure I dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s.

And that is coming up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One of the headlines or narratives of this whole story that the Republican health care act eliminates preexisting condition coverage for rape victims and sexual assault victims. “White Men Made Rape a Preexisting Condition.” (interruption) No, it’s all over. It depends on where you go. Daily Kos, didn’t matter what blog you choose. This is “White Men Made Rape a Preexisting Condition.” Now, wait just a second. Now, wait just a second on this. First of all, I thought everybody wanted everything to be a preexisting condition. What, did I miss something here? Everybody wants everything to be a preexisting condition because that way you can’t be denied insurance, right?

So what are these people afraid of? Well, if rape is a preexisting condition, these people are trying to tell everybody else the Republicans want to eliminate preexisting condition coverage, and they’re focusing on rape as the issue because that’s a hot-button issue for young leftist Millennial women. But it’s all bogus! The whole thing is bogus. A woman named Elizabeth Brown in Reason took this on substantively and illustrated how none of this is true. She said, “The latest less-than-truthful meme about Republicans’ American Health Care Act (AHCA), passed by the U.S. House on Thursday, is that it makes rape a ‘preexisting condition’ for health-insurance purposes.

“According to a host of women’s publications and an army of outraged tweeters, sexual assault and domestic abuse survivors could soon be forced to disclose their attacks to insurance companies, which could subsequently deny them health-insurance coverage because of it.” The theme here is the insurance companies are mean-spirited and evil, that if they can get out of covering you, they will! And if they can say that you’ve got a preexisting condition then they don’t have to cover you! And so what they want you to do is have to report that you’ve been raped and been sexually assaulted so they can deny you coverage!

This is what’s going around out there. Except “None of this is true. Like, not even a little bit” of this is true, and I ought not even have to say that it’s not true. It ought to be an automatic conclusion that whoever’s running around saying this is gone. They’re literally out of their minds. “And the fact it’s not just being shared by shady social-media activists and their unwitting dupes but by ostensibly-legitimate media outlets [like New York Magazine and the Washington Post] is another sad indictment of press standards these days,” says Elizabeth Nolan Brown.

“Nothing in the new Republican health care bill specifically addresses sexual assault or domestic violence whatsoever. What it does say is that states can apply for waivers that will allow insurance companies, under certain limited circumstances, to charge higher premiums to people based on their personal medical histories — that’s it.” Zip, zero, nada! That is it. And the reason for this is to lower premiums. Premiums are out of control, and if you want to know how the Republicans can win big politically with this, it’s very simple.

If they end up passing something like what the House passed, if the Senate doesn’t butcher this — and the odds of that are pretty big. The Senate’s gonna butcher it. I mean, listening to Susan Collins, it’s not a good sign. But if… Just to play “if.” If this bill actually went to Trump’s desk in similar form, insurance premiums would fall dramatically. If that were to happen, why, my friends, that’s the only thing people will notice about the health care bill is that it finally has been made cheaper and is more affordable and that the Republicans did it.

That is the upside about which I spoke in the first half hour of the program. So okay, here’s your question. So what if states are allowed to raise rates for rape survivors? Okay. Well, this same woman, Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote that in the 1980s. Some companies considered domestic abuse a condition for denying care. But — are you ready for the numbers here? “By 2009, however, all but eight U.S. states had passed laws directly prohibiting the practice, and as of July 2014, all but six states had. Even if Obamacare is replaced by the [this Republican bill] tomorrow, insurers in 44 states will still be barred by law from considering domestic and sexual abuse a preexisting condition.”

This narrative that is running around the mainstream media that has co-opted a bunch of don’t-know-any-better Twitterites is a 100%, purposeful lie. In 44 states, there are already laws on the books which prevent exactly what is being promoted and threatened here in the Washington Post and in New York Magazine! This is just one example, a microcosm of how much full-fledged BS and outright lies are circulating as mainstream news about everything!

The French election, the Trump presidency, the Russian tampering with the election and all. There are so many lies and so much BS circulating as mainstream news, that it establishes my new theory that it is the media running the show for progressivism and liberalism, and that the Democrat Party is simply that entity which implements it legislatively and votes on it in Congress. But the actual intellectual energy and movement for all of this progressivism, all of these lies, all this hysteria is, in fact, the mainstream media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What I said was — and, by the way, you know, Snerdley has a caller up there who disagrees with me. Do you know how I’m looking forward to that? Folks, I don’t know if it’s like this with you, but nobody ever disagrees with me. I don’t want them to say, “Yep, that’s right. Yep.” I mean, some people try to point out some things I’ve missed, but no. I never have anybody disagree with me. You know how not fun that is? So I’m ecstatic. We have somebody up there who disagrees. It’s about the French election, but at least it’s somebody who disagrees with me.

Greetings, and welcome back. Great to have you here. Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882. What I said was, if you listen to the Democrats and the left’s predictions of what sounds like a Republican-triggered genocide, you’d think that we’re all fetuses in a Planned Parenthood waiting room. That’s what I said. I had some people ask, “What did you say about fetuses and Planned Parenthood?” That’s what I said. It was part… Everything that the Republicans do is gonna kill people. If you listen to the left, there is a Republican genocide underway, as though we’re all fetuses in a Planned Parenthood waiting room.

I think it’s a great analogy. But I admit, the brilliance might have been obscured because I rolled through that so quickly as part of another point that I was making, which is this gross and grotesque hysteria that has greeted to the House Republican health care bill.