Health Care Costs Money, So Buy It! (Dr. Rush Limbaugh Slams "The Give It To Me" Mentality Alert)

RUSH: Larry in Bourbonnais, Illinois, training location for the Chicago Bears. It's nice to have you on the program, sir. Welcome.

CALLER: Hi, Rush, how you doing? Long-time listener, long time Republican, ever since Reagan was elected.

CALLER: If Hillary or any other Democrat runs for president this next time around and offers some sort of national health care, I'm voting for them.

CALLER: Serious as a heart attack. You know, I'm tired -- I got the kids here at home -- well, they're grown up now, just young starting out on their own, want to start a family, they did everything by the book, they go into school, went to trade schools, and trying to find a decent job that offers any kind of health benefits is just damn near impossible.

RUSH: No, it's not. Now, come on. Finding a job that offers health benefits is impossible?

CALLER: Well, they offer some sort of health benefits but the portion that you have to pay, well, I got one son, the portion he has to pay would take about probably a third of his monthly income goes just to he health care.

RUSH: All right. Okay. You really stand by the assertion you've been a Republican since Reagan? Because what you're saying here doesn't jibe with what you should have learned and agreed with in those days.

CALLER: Oh, yeah, man, long time, just here in the last few years, I've seen how these kids are struggling now, and competition out there is strong, and you look at it, and you see, well, you know, people that are retired, they got health care, and people that don't want to work, they got Medicaid. They have Medicare for somebody that's retired, but somebody that's just starting out in life, they want to start a family, they got nothing.

RUSH: Not yet. Well, then they don't need it. It is elective. This is one way to look at it. Of the 45 million reputedly uninsured in this country, a large number of them are uninsured by choice. Kids just starting out --

RUSH: Wait. Kids just starting out are just starting out. "Just starting out means something;" retired means something. There are other concerns other than health care when you are young. But let me get to the nut of what you're saying here, because I'm trying to think of a great question to ask you. You would vote for a Democrat if the Democrat promises something close to universal health coverage.

RUSH: You ought to know that that doesn't work. You ought to know that everywhere it's been tried around the world -- Canada, Great Britain, it doesn't work, and they still end up with two systems where people who can afford it pay for it themselves, they get the best coverage. Everybody else waits in line for an appendectomy. Now, if the government ought to by your health care, how come the government shouldn't buy your kids a house?

RUSH: That's my point. Why should he have bought it? Why don't you hold out for the government to buy the house?

RUSH: Well, now, wait, why is it his way for the government to buy his health care?

CALLER: If he was an illegal he would just go down to the hospital and get taken care of and let the taxpayer cover it. But he's not that way, either, he's not going to go down there. He's going to pay his bills when he has bills.

RUSH: No, he's not. He's not going to pay his health care bills. For some reason --

RUSH: -- wait a minute. For some reason his neighbors and others in the community ought to pay his health care bills. Who do you think pays for health care for all these people?

CALLER: But I'm paying for coverage for the people that are retired. I'm paying for coverage for people that have no job. I'm paying for coverage of people that aren't even citizens of the United States --

RUSH: No, no! You're caving in. You're giving up. You're saying sayonara. I can't believe you're saying this. That's not the way to fix this. That's not the way to deal with this, is to make it worse.

CALLER: Well, why should I give up? Our president wants to let 12 million of them stay, 12 million illegals stay in this country, they just go to the hospital and get their health care.

RUSH: Yeah, and it's got people roiled, and there are going to be people paying for that dearly at the next election. You wait.

RUSH: I guarantee you, you start voting for Democrats you're not going to change any of this. You start voting for Democrats, you're going to be paying more than you are now for everybody to be on health care, and it's going to be so restrictive it's not going to be worth it.

CALLER: At least somebody from my family and my side will benefit from it, you know?

RUSH: I can't believe you. You gotta be putting me on, Larry. You can't possibly be... You're a professional provocateur. You cannot be this shortsighted. You're coming across as two things, someone who has totally given up, you can't beat the system and now you want to game it yourself.

CALLER: Well, I've just about given up, Rush. You know who our senators are here in Illinois?

RUSH: Well, if you vote for a Democrat for president, you're waving the white flag.

CALLER: We've got one person here in our state, one representative in our district, Jerry Weller, Republican, is the only one that's got a clue as to what's really going on.

RUSH: No, no. They all know what's going on. What you're up against there are people who are trying to make you give up. They are liberal Democrats. They want you to give up out of frustration. They want you to turn over your life and your kids' lives to them so that you are totally and utterly powerless, so you never have the chance to provide for your own health care. Just like you buy your own car, your own hotel rooms, your own gasoline. Why shouldn't the government buy your gasoline? Where does this kind of stuff stop?

RUSH: Let me see if I can tackle this, because I'm getting lots of e-mails. "That caller was right, there are fewer and fewer companies offering health benefits, and it's getting tougher and tougher for young people to go out there and get health coverage." It's at time like these, ladies and gentlemen, that my soul is tried. Into my 19th year, to still have such ignorance in this audience. I understand it may not be total ignorance. A lot of it is emotion. So what I'm about to say will be considered cold-hearted, mean-spirited, and cruel. First to those of you saying, "He's right, Rush! If the government's buying all these illegal homes and giving them health care, why not us?" You people know better than that.

The idea to fix the problem is to get rid of the government paying health care for illegals and giving them housing and all of that, not for everybody else to get on that gravy train! I am shocked. I am stunned that some of you people want to actually do that. You are giving up. I understand the frustration out there, but get with the program. This stuff never ends. It's an ongoing battle. It's called defeating liberalism and liberals and their way of thinking. They want as many people dependent on them -- i.e., government -- as possible, and I cringe when I hear so many of you people begging to get on the same dole simply because you're bitter that others have it and you don't. I am shocked. That's not what people in this audience are made of, and I will not tolerate it.

The fix for this is to fix the illegal alien problem and to stop all this liberalism and the growth of government. Number two. For those of you who say that fewer and fewer employers are offering health benefits, what is the purpose of a job? To get health coverage, or to get a job to be productive and advance in life so that you can buy whatever you need -- not want, need -- on your own? Since when is it American to transfer your needs to somebody else? Is that the purpose of a company, an organization, a small business sits there for the express purpose of providing your needs? It's bad enough when you think they ought to buy your VCR, but now they ought to buy your needs? I am sick. I am sad. I am disappointed.

What a way to send me off on my golf trip vacation, thinking of myself as an utter failure with some of you people, in 18-plus years. If fewer and fewer companies are offering health benefits, wake up and ask yourself why. Don't conclude it's because they're cruel and mean and greedy and selfish and want you to get sick and suffer. If they hire you, they want you to be productive. They don't want you going to the doctor every damn day. Did you ever stop to think that maybe, if you're taking a look at what's happening at General Motors and Ford, companies have been providing endless benefits for decades, not the only for people who are currently employed but for those who are retired. Do you think this golden goose can't be killed?

The pension programs at General Motors are in trouble because they don't have the money. And so guess what? Good old Uncle Sam is going to take over. So now people are going to be dependent on the government for their pensions! This idea that a company exists to give you health care, where did this come from? I know it's expensive, and I know catastrophic health care is devastating. I'm fully aware of it. I have been there. But the idea that somebody else should pay for that aspect of your life has got to stop, otherwise your kids are going to grow up thinking that somebody else ought to buy their car and that somebody else ought to pay or partially pay for their house, 'cause those things are expensive, too.

Then someday somebody is going to assume that somebody ought to pay for their vacation. Where does this stuff stop? When people are young and just starting out, my thinking is that they need to have a little sense of perspective and proportion, demanding when they're 21, 25, first and foremost that they get health care coverage. I understand people want security. They want to be covered in case something catastrophic happens. The odds of that, to people who are young and youthful are very low compared to people who are aged and older. If it is so important -- pardon me for shouting; I am revved up. If it is so important, how about buying one car, or not buying three plasmas, and going out and buying your own health care plan, finding a group to join, if it's that important?

I understand you're all Americans, and you expect, as Americans, that what is necessary, particularly for health, should be available just because we're Americans. But it costs. It has, as does everything, a price. We have, as human beings, priorities. Now, if you are really at the top of your list, concerned about health care, and you're working for someplace that doesn't provide it, then I would think the responsible thing to do would be to go out and buy it for yourself and do without something else. But I realize those two words infuriate many of you, "do without." It is a concept that many young people don't understand anymore.

Yeah, well, when I was 21, 22, we all did without, and a lot of people are still doing without, but they still strive. But this notion that because the illegals get health care free -- and, by the way, if you -- if you go to places where this is happening, 11 emergency rooms in southern California have closed and shut down because they weren't being paid. They had by law to cover, but they couldn't keep operating. So we're short 11 emergency rooms, and this is from the Los Angeles Times about a year ago. We're short 11 emergency rooms. What you look and see as the grass being greener is not, almost in all cases, is not what it appears to be. The grass is seldom greener because everything is relative. I understand as well as anybody the frustration over illegal aliens and the fact that they get -- well, I don't know about housing.

I don't know where that comes from, but the medical care and so forth and so on, and I understand for young people starting out that you can't afford the house that you grew up in. "It's so unfair. It just isn't right." This is what I mean, folks, when I have said, and when I've been saying over the course of many recent months here, that we have a society that's so affluent -- and we really, really do -- that the expectations that people have are through the roof, and that's fabulous, and that's great. But you have to understand at the same time that the expectations are just that. If you expect X, it's also expected of you that you are going to get it, and when I hear you expecting it to be given or provided you, I will admit to you, I feel like an utter failure, if you have been in this audience longer than two years and saying these things.

As to health care: For years, responsible people like me have been proposing a fix to this. Why is it that a hospital bed should cost more than somebody can afford for it? Hotels can't do that. Hotels can't charge themselves -- can't charge a thousand dollars a day, Motel 6, Holiday Inn, take your pick, they can't charge a thousand dollars a day and then have the government come in and pick up a room insurance program for people that want to go on vacation or stay in a hotel. They have to price it according to the ability of the chosen customer base to pay for it. Medicine doesn't do that. Does anybody wonder why? Anybody wonder why hospitals get away with a thousand, $1500 a night for a hospital bed? It's because somebody's paying for it. Government, insurance companies, or somebody is. You realize what's happening with all this? Do you really think that a Band-Aid costs ten bucks in a hospital? The reason it does is because somebody's willing to pay it without asking. It's absurd. So how do you fix this? Well, you bring competition back into the marketplace, make going to the doctor -- we're not talking about catastrophic. That's a different thing here. But you make going to the doctor for checkups competitive, so that patients can go out and shop for it or price it just like everything else.

But no, we've got HMOs, got these other organizations, and you're given a field of doctors to go through, and go to, and then that's the price you pay. Even at that, we have the world's best health care system. There's no doubt about it. But the idea -- and this is what stuns me the most, wounds me to the heart the greatest -- the idea that because you don't have health care insurance means you don't have medical coverage is absurd. You can go to the doctor and you can pay him. (Gasping.) What a concept. But for some reason the thought of paying medical care, just unacceptable. No, the company ought to pay for that. And there ought not be any copay, and I ought not have to pay a portion of it. I don't know where this comes from, but you have been trapped and you have been lured and you have been screwed into believing the liberal concept of life, that somebody else has to pay for it or else you can't have it. Now, wake up, folks.

Why can't the religious organizations offer some type of Health Care Insurance etc to their congrgations

This is a different issue but when I have gone on benevolence visits on behalf of my church I have been amazed that these people who need help have the full gamut of cable or satellite and usually have a hundred channels more than me, the latest stereo, large screen TV, the latest gizmos for their kids (computers, ipods etc). They have money for beer and ciggies, which is fine by me as long they have the money...their own money.

Even a guy at work whose daughter just graduated from college complains about having to subsidized his daughter's health insurance, yet she doesn't pack her own lunch for work and has money for dining out a half dozen times a week money for cigarettes and money for vacations and buying gifts for her friends.

I recall when I graduated from college for years I drove a used car, then a cheap new car. It was years before I bought a new the latest and greatest anything that wasn't a necessity.

I guess I'm not very sympathetic because I am handicapped and put myself through college and found my own job...

I guess my point (which I left out) is that we seem to live in a society of instant gratification. Right out of high school or college we have to have a new stereo, a new big screen TV, a new car, palatial digs and then say we don't have enough money for necessities.

Pretty much the opposite extreme of my 90 year old mother-in-law who still saves every scrap of tin foil and twisty-ties off every loaf of bread even though she has no money worries.

..."sample them up"...

Don't fault the patient, they were told by Good Housekeeping to ask their physician for samples to reduce their costs for prescription medicines. At the rate we throw out expired medications around here that our doctor doesn't hand out, it wouldn't hurt to have some patients remind him that we have FREE samples!

I plead guilty to the charge of not responding to the posted article. I considered the actual transcript to be both unremarkable and non sequitur. My response was directed at the pretentious, arrogant, condescension, feigned omniscience, obnoxious persona and faux sincerity of herr Limbaugh. To him truth is a fungible concept to be molded and selectively asserted to suit his purpose dejour, the context and underlying purpose of his selected anecdotal examples being unimportant to his wished for conclusions. I trust in the axiom that when all evil is argued to exist in one place and all beneficence in his favorite political place, there probably really nothing to his arguemnts other than storm and fury.

Employers still deduct the amount from our paycheck. And in a single payer system, the government will deduct it from your taxes. Nothing in life is free. If it was, every one would sign up for it!

( No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo!)

I never said anything about money. Interesting that you (Mr I'm going to lecture you b/c I think that I know you) made that assumption. I said that I (actually my husband and I) worked to build a business, I followed my dreams, I worked for an education and those things make me successful.

Your most laughable assumption: the country club old money thing. I have the same obligations as you and I don't have the rich family that you imply that I have..as a matter of fact I clawed my way out of poverty. (grew up living in a trailer on welfare, step father made 10K/year with 10 other kids living in the "house"--boohoo.), but hey you assume that I started with some sort of advantage b/c of where I am today. You have no idea who I am comfortable talking/hanging with. Your assumptions are a joke and doing them under the guise of being a regular Joe/blue collar guy is pathetic.

I don't' look at others and want what they have even though many have more material things than I do. I don't compare myself to others b/c that is class envy no matter how you spin it and it is counter productive. The fact that you are aware of the "different lifestyle" of people on the radio doesn't jive with your assertion of not caring what other people have.

BTW: no one forces you to listen 'all those demographically unlike me' people on the radio. There is a thing called a dial---you have the freedom to turn it off.

Won't get an argument from me

Todays Americans haven't the faintest idea of what hard times are and the young generation is spoiled rotten

I was born during the depression and God help this current lot if hard times ever come they won't know what hit them

You were in fat city back in my day if you had chicken for Sunday dinner

Now you can go to McD's and gorge all day on it for peanuts

Yeah, I know about that pre-existing condition thing. I actually can't get insured by the company I sell for. I can also sell Blue Cross through Farmers Insurance, for which I'm a property/casualty agent, but Blue Cross is just so much more expensive. Also, check and see what your co-insurance deductible is, also. That the one where you have to pay after your first deductible. You pay 20 or 30 percent up to a certain amount -- there's a ceiling to it. Most people aren't really aware of that.
But like one of the posters said in the this thread - If you think health care is expensive now - just wait until it's free! (In Canada they pay 75 cents on the dollar for their health care and it's lousy. They come to the U.S. to get health care!)

That's true and the reason I think is because the system is insulated from market forces.

Of course it is. Health insurance providers need more profit, they raise rates or restrict deny coverage. That's much cheaper to their bottom line than auditing individual bills, which in my limited experience are 50-150% overcharges.

I think Rush is out of touch on this one. A large number of members in my family are in the HC profession. It is waaayyyyy screwed up because of federal regulation and law. Now you will say that that needs to be fixed - I agree - but it isn't going to change in the next 50 years. Medicare pays $12/day for a hospital stay. Your insurance pays about $800 - why doesn't that work? HA! Illegal patient care costs millions that are not reimbursed by anyone to counties and state.Unfunded mandates that cost you and your employer billions of dollars.

Seem like I may have touched a raw nerve. Then again it proves just what I said, those that have preach their set of guidelines to those who are not in their position. I am truely happy for you, just don't preach to me when you no nothing about my life and what trials I have gone through. Anyway have a great day and enjoy the fruit of your labor.

The message is right on but you refute it based on the amount of money that you believe that the messenger has. That is ridiculous. Some of us are sick of the stealth socialism...60% of the US budget is for entitlements! How much higher does it have to get for people to wake up?

Some of us know that socialized medicine, the enslavement of an entire professional population and the loss of freedom that it would mean for all of US is a bad idea. Some just want others to carry more. What is going to happen when Atlas shrugs?

Spare the life trial speech...at some point all of us have been handed a pile of dung by life.

Ive already decided it will not inslave me. I will quit practicing medicine. Oh I know how it will be done. At first the payments will be very good like they were to lure physicians into accepting Medicare ( Did you know the AMA was very aganist this and actually put out an album preaching aganist socialism but they caved). Give it a few years and then the regulations and papyment cuts and bundling, and DRG's and on and on and the paper work grows and nobody is happy. Physicians are just barely holding on to theor profession by a string. They will eventually just be another Fed employee and believe me those in the system will treat their patients like the DMV clinic does. I dread it and hope I am long gone from the earth. The would be nothing so awful as being elderly and being cared for by a Federal DMV provider.

I will quit practicing medicine.

I am hearing that a lot. I have several people close to me that are saying the same thing. And Atlas shrugged.

And the scenario that you lay out is right on...it will be presented as wonderful initially in order to entice, it will sustain for a time and then the games begin.

I worry b/c trying to dig out from under socialism is close to impossible. I figure that I will be officially entering old age right about the time it begins to hit the fan. sigh.

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