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.

People have this "give it to me" mentality - including a few conservatives. You know, it costs too much so just let the government pay for it. That won't fix anything and will make a bad situation even worse. The mess with health care is not going to improve with the government taking it over and running it for you. Free people are supposed to run their own lives and make their own decisions. That's the American way. If we surrender that, then we become slaves on a plantation like the slaves in Cuber. And few of us would be happy with that for long. People need to wake up - nothing in life is free and what we think is free would cost us a great deal more than we would like to pay. As Dr. Rush Limbaugh goes off on his golfing vacation tomorrow, its worth thinking about. Just remember: before you think someone should give it you, it bears reminding oneself "SOCIALISM IS NOT THE ANSWER!"

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

I definitely don't have a "gimme" mentality. I know that government sponsored health care doesn't work, but we're paying for our own insurance, and it's a fortune. We were spending more than $8000 for basic insurance with a $500 deductible. It came to $720 per month. To save money we switched to a $5000 deductible, which is $340 a month. That's great, but the minute we darken the door of a hospital, emergency room included, we are 100% on our own until that deductible has been met. So, we're gambling we won't have to go to the hospital.

Medical bills are one of the top reasons families file a bankruptcy. We aren't anywhere near that, but at times it seems we are on a high wire, hoping that the four of us stay well and healthy. It does seem that insurance is either for the rich, those in professions that offer it, or are destitute and covered by tax dollars. Health insurance IS a mess, I'd never vote Democrat no matter WHAT, but it has to be addressed.

One more thing. My family and friends who take health insurance for granted because it's part of their employment benefits have NO idea what it's like to have to pay for it on your own or even QUALIFYING for it. At this point we pretty much have to stay with Blue Cross because both dh and I have pre-existing conditions. Nothing major, all mild, but if you check off more than two items on those lengthy "Have you ever had any of the following in the past TEN years..." lists, you're automatically disqualified.

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

They are large enough in size

It could be a non profit type deal like a co-op

I am sure there are enough business types that could set it up and administer it --Pay them salaries but no stock holders etc

Rush Limbaugh is no longer relevant and had lost whatever minuscule credibility he once had. He's worth listening to for a short while each day just to laugh at his abysmal ignorance or his being patronized by a political hack scraping the bottom for votes. Every ill, irrespective of cause or nature, always has the same villian and the same asserted rote remedy.

To save money we switched to a $5000 deductible, which is $340 a month. That's great, but the minute we darken the door of a hospital, emergency room included, we are 100% on our own until that deductible has been met.

Same as if your transmission goes out on your car. It could cost you thousands. Never heard of saving up?

You expect WHO to pay?

Having the federal government pay for health care does not lower costs. It encourages unnecessary procedures, unnecessary prescriptions, and other forms of care, because providers know that Uncle Deep Pockets will pay the bills. The answer to increasing costs is more competition.

That's true and the reason I think is because the system is insulated from market forces. My own experience is fairly typical in that I don't know what the real costs are. Probably close to $50,000 but I could ignore because I knew the HMO would foot the bill. That kind of bill is higher than most of us would pay on our own because we can't shop for the best service at a decent price. I submit if nothing is done to introduce market competition into medical care, we will probably wind up sooner or later, with single-payer government run health care. Its already being considered in California.

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

I'll take him over the Drive By Media any day because he says a lot of things that we all know make sense but they will never appear anywhere else. You can read any newspaper, you can tune in any news channel, you can listen to Air America and it all comes out the same. With Rush, you get a different perspective and people say, "I do agree with that and I wondered if it was only me thinking the Drive By Media view of reality is skewed or incomplete." Well, now we do know.

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

The reason why religious organizations cannot offer a group plan is that it would not conform to the rules that allow qualified group health plans to be sold. Membership is not enough, there must be an employer-employee relationship to establish group coverage.

Religious groups used to offer association type plans to those who joined their associations, but this always a situation where the sick and chronically ill would buy a plan with a guarantee of issuance. This would drive up claims and the insurance carriers would sever their contracts with the association. The two best examples of this in California were the California Bar Association plan and before that, the B'nai Brith plan. Claims due to easy acceptance drove the insurers out of the market place.

Anytime you see a plan offered through an association, union, or religious organization that requires no health questionaire nowadays, it usually is some sort of fraud.

I live in a relativly rural part of TX and Ive discussed this with my doctor.
He tells me that he never got into medicine to get rich, he wanted to practice in rural Tx in order to serve people and make a fair living.
When he started his practice people paid for services and he often bartered for services with folks that couldnt pay.
Your a plumber? I have some plumbing work that needs done.
Farmer? a side of beef may be made as payment.
And so on.

Today He cannot make those trades because of HIIPA.
Today his costs in malpractice insurence are through the roof.
In short, the gubmint has made his practice expensive and limited in scope.

Yep...been there, done the same thing. But there is a saving grace; your hospital (and you'll want to check it out in your company's list of providers to confirm) probably will accept - even though it comes from YOU and not them - the negotiated rate.

A "sticker price" of 3500 zops might well cost you only 10 percent of that. It's always been my personal opinion that they go ahead and bill those higher prices so they can 'write off' the "loss".

You may not like Rush but he is right on target with this issue.

Please tell me one thing that the government runs without bureaucracy and inefficiency? Please tell me one country where socialized medicine works (good care, good access)? Please tell me what right the government has to enslave an entire professional population of people?

The only thing that Rush should have added was tort reform b/c the cost of liability greatly adds to the cost of medicine. If people want for the costs of medicine to go down then doctors have to stop being treated like they are running lottery offices.

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