Mandate "Flexibility" is Regime's Sleight of Hand on ObamacareMarch 1, 2011
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RUSH: The New York Times -- let's see, I guess it was yesterday -- had a story: "Obama Supports Easing Health Law Mandates for States." Now, we're being set up all over the place here. The purpose of this story, it says here: "Seeking to appease disgruntled governors..." Seeking to appease disgruntled governors! You don't really need to read any more after this. The mandate is where this bill has been found to be unconstitutional. So here's "Obama Supports Easing Health Law Mandates for States," and then the Politico has a companion story. Folks, I gotta tell you: Politico, you guys, why don't you start running last week's weather forecasts, because that's about how relevant the stuff that you're talking about is.
Here's the point. Guess what The Politico just figured out? The purpose of the mandate, if you take this at face value, is to get 32 million uninsured Americans to buy health insurance. This creates an even larger "pool," and this is supposed to make premiums go down. However, however, there is another provision. If you don't buy a policy, you pay a fine. Guess what The Politico just discovered? The fine is barely 10% of the cost of a policy. Guess what else The Politico just learned? They learned that people would probably pay the fine rather than buy the policy. We pointed this out for over a year. I know.
That's why they ought to start running last week's weather forecasts at The Politico, 'cause they're running this as though it's breaking news. They're running this as though they just figured this out. There's one thing they still haven't figured out about this, though, and that is: The whole point of having the fine lower than the price of the policy is to make sure people don't buy insurance so that ultimately they have to go to the government to get it. It's all about charting a course to get to single-payer. Well, The Politico has just now figured out --- or whoever wrote the story. I've got it here buried in the stack.
Whoever wrote the story has just figured out that the reason Obama's relaxing the mandate is because they realize that the fine is cheaper than the mandate and people paying the fine does not accomplish the objective of the bill -- which is to get 32 million people who are uninsured, insured. Well, shazam! So they have no clue. They're so wrapped up in being stenographers. (The Daily Caller blog has an entry today about how The Politico reporterette covering Michelle Obama is simply a flack, not even a reporter. You know, particularly covering Moochelle on her dietary advice for everybody else, they're stenographers.) So again the elements: 32 million uninsured, mandate, require 'em to buy insurance, make sure everybody gets covered.
Insurance companies love that, 32 million new customers. Ah, ah, ah! You don't really have to 'cause there's a fine you can pay, and the fine is much, much less (up until 2014, 2015). So you pay the fine rather than pay the money for a policy. Millions do not get insured. Objective is not met. "Damn! Aw, damn. It isn't working," which is the point. So on down the line, this leads to the only obvious solution, which is just get rid of the insurance companies and force everybody to the government to get their insurance. Obama has said it I don't know how many times: It could take ten, 15 years to finally get to single-payer.
That's the objective, but they gotta start out small. It's hilarious. They really think they're onto something here. They've just discovered this at The Politico, and now you've got this New York Times story: "Obama Supports Easing Health Law Mandates for States." You know why? Because they just discovered there's a fine in there, and the mandate really is not a mandate because there's always a chance people could not buy the policy, go ahead and get the fine done, and then they're still abiding by the law.
So all this means is that Obama has recognized they're on the losing side of a Proposition here. They have to hedge their bets. They have to act like they're gonna lose this if it goes all the way to the Supreme Court and lose on the constitutionality of all this. They have to plan for that. They have to think of a way around it because they're not going to give up the golden goose here, which to them is single-payer, government-run health care. So how do they get there? Well, one of the things they do is change the image.
They're trying to make it look like Obama's moving to the center. We got audio sound bites. Jack Welch, former GE, says, "Well, he's not moving to the center. He looks like it, but he's not," and this is part of that trick to make it look like he's moving to the center by relaxing some of these things. It's all about creating an image, but it's all phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock 'n' roll stuff, which we will demonstrate as the program unfolds, plus continue to focus on what's happening in Wisconsin, all of the civility that's taking place there from people on the left. It's funny to watch.
BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Let me just summarize very quickly what that New York Times story yesterday was all about. It's very, very simple, folks. This "compromise" with the states, "Obama Supports Easing Health Law Mandate for the States," in a nutshell what Obama is offering with this great compromise is waivers. The states will have three years longer before they have to start taxing the uninsured. The fines. But in order to get that waiver they'll have to meet Obama's quota for the number of people they coerce into buying health insurance.
It's up to them how they do it, but that's what this little Obamacare "compromise" is really all about. It's not a compromise; it's a quasi-waiver, and it's all for show. It's all to make it look like Obama moving to the center, willing to compromise on this mandate. "Mandate's unconstitutional? Okay, let's move the mandate as the centerpiece here that we're talking about, and let's bring it back to insuring the uninsured." It's all a trick! One thing leftists will never do is lose sight of their goal. In this case it's single-payer, government-run health care. This is just, "Okay, we gotta change the route to get there now," but that's what's up.
So anyway we're gonna go to the phones. People have been waiting since the show started and we haven't yet taken a call so we'll start in Napa, California. Eric, great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: Hey, what a pleasure. I really enjoyed hearing you talking with Donald Trump there. Thank you for sharing that.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: Hey, the reason I was calling: In talking yesterday with the president speaking to the governors, I really felt like that entire speech that he gave was just a socialist manifesto. We should just keep replaying clips of that until the next election. But even in the president trying to give a very backhanded compliment to the private sector and to private industry and to entrepreneurism as a whole, he made the comment -- he said that -- well, he understood that it was gonna be the businesses in the private sector that led to the resurgence of the economy. He said that it was the research and development that was really the roots and the foundation to that growth and that it was the government that led the way in research. And it was just a total of: Well, it's the benevolence of the government that even gives the business the ability to make the economy grow.
RUSH: That's what people like him think. They believe that government picks and chooses winners.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: They believe that government somehow funds research and development. Somebody like Obama really does believe that everything great has a link to government somehow.
CALLER: To people like myself, it almost makes you sick to your stomach when you hear that. More so when you hear it and it's not challenged anymore, and that's what was so frustrating in listening to that.
RUSH: Challenge it? Who did you expect to challenge it?
CALLER: (laughing) Well, I saw Chris Christie sitting in the audience. So you hope he woulda stood up and said something. No, that wasn't the place to do that.
RUSH: Some of those... Chris Christie down the line might. Look, these guys are not gonna openly speal up. You know, Obama shows up; let him speak and get out of there. They're not gonna prolong the guy's visit. They don't want to be get into a debate with him. They understand it's a pro forma thing. At the National Governors Meeting, the president has the show up. I mean, have you ever gotten an invitation to something, you agreed to go to it and the day of the event, "Why did I say I'd go? Ah, I don't want to do this! Why did I agree to show up?" Well, that's what this is. It's pro forma, it's perfunctory.
So, okay, you go. The president shows up. Get him in, get him out as quick as possible and whatever he says deal with it later on your terms and your forum. They know they're not gonna be able to debate the guy. So if you're waiting for Chris Christie to respond, at some point he will, or somebody else in that audience will, or as you have now. You didn't even need a governor to respond. All you needed was the EIB Network, and luck, and Snerdley being in a good mood putting your call up. So it all worked out for you. Happy as you can be. That's the way it's all worked out. I guarantee you're not gonna have these guys stand up and take issue with the president a thing like this.
It sometimes happens. I remember the president showed up at a Republican retreat, congressional retreat in Baltimore the first year or at the health care summit. Remember, Paul Ryan and a couple guys at the White House tried to speak and Obama just stared daggers at 'em and moved on. You learn that that event is not the forum for rebuttal and getting it done. Anyway, you can see even when Obama speaks to the governors you can see what his priorities are: All the jobs from the stimulus go to the union workers. He's out there still praising the stimulus today. He's still got a bunch of bunk analysis of the stimulus, how wonderful it was and the jobs that it created. All those shovel-ready jobs had to go to union shovelers. We know what happened. The money laundering just continues. These governors all know it. As I say, the time to speak up about it is gonna be one of their choosing.
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