Who's Dying in the Streets, Mr. Trump?

Friday - February 19, 2016

RUSH: The Pope is backin' away from what he said, and Trump is backin' away from what he said. Trump's backin' away from a couple of things that he said! Trump's going moderate on the Pope, and now Trump is backing away from his allegation last Saturday that George W. Bush "lied" about Iraq. What's that going to do to the Democrat outreach plan? ... There is all kinds of confusing stuff going on out there, folks. And you are at the right place to have it all untangled.

There are intricately woven webs of deceit no matter where you look out there.

Grab audio sound bite number eight. I can't wait on this. I can't wait for this to come in the order in which it was given to me. I do not... This is the second time now that I have heard this, and I'm not... (sigh) It's last night's CNN Republican town hall, the second night. The first night was Ben Carson and Rubio and Cruz. Last night it was Jeb, Donald Trump and Governor John Kasich. Anderson Cooper said, "Mr. Trump, if Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre-existing condition?"

I don't believe this.

TRUMP: Well, I like the mandate. Okay, so here's where I'm a little bit different. I don't want people dying on the streets. I say this all the time. The Republican people, they're wonderful people. They don't want people dying on the streets. We're going to take care of them through maybe concepts of Medicare. We have hospitals that aren't doing well. We have doctors that aren't doing well. You cannot let people die on the street, okay? Taking care of people that are really, really sick and are going to die. That's not single payer, by the way. That's called "heart."

RUSH: Uhhhh, I'm just not feeling this, folks. In the first place, people are not dying on the street. Where does that come from? That's the second time that I've heard Mr. Trump say this. Where does this come from? Who is out there saying, "We can't let people keep dying on the street"? There aren't any Republicans saying that. If anybody's saying that, it's got to be a bunch of Democrats. But I don't know if any Democrats are saying it. It isn't happening! So where's this coming from? And "I like the mandate"?

Now, understandably there was the question asked here, but this is the second time that Trump has said he doesn't want people dying in the street. I think it's the second time he's come out and given a mandate. Maybe not. Maybe this is the first. But here's the question. This is to Trump. "Mr. Trump, if Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre-existing condition?" That question is exactly entails everything wrong with Obamacare from premise to implementation.

The idea that the only way...? People who are...? (sigh) It's not insurance when you cover people with pre-existing conditions. We've got to call that something else. That's not insurance! If you don't have homeowners insurance, and all of a sudden your house catches fire you can't call the insurance company and say, "Hey, I need some insurance here." "Too late, pal. You didn't insure it for fire beforehand." So we're not talking insurance here. We're talking about some other thing. Now, I know that this is a sensitive issue to a lot of people.

But it isn't insurance. Words matter to me, and the premise of this question, "If Obamacare is repealed...?" In other words, the only way we've got people with pre-existing conditions covered is to have Obamacare? Sorry, this whole premise here blows up. "If Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance...?" Everybody doesn't have insurance now! There's still 29 million uninsured despite the mandate. We have laws against murder, but they still happen. We have laws against robbing banks, but people still rob banks.

So we have now a mandate that everybody have health insurance, but not everybody does.

Some people say, "I don't want to pay what it costs. I'm 24. I'm not going to die. I'm going to roll the dice. I'd rather have a flat screen and go out and enjoy my life rather than have to comply with your silly, stupid law. I'll deal with it later. What's the fine?" The purpose of Obamacare was to cover everybody -- well, the uninsured. (snorts) We could have covered the uninsured for one-25th of what it's costing to do Obamacare and we would not have had the government take over the health care industry to do it.

Before the mandate? The mandate? I don't care what the Supreme Court said is unconstitutional. The mandate? The government forcing everybody -- and then here comes Anderson Cooper. This is classic. The libs all think there's magic in intentions. "But if Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre-existing condition?" The insurance companies are in... (sigh) This whole thing... This shows how flawed this is.

The only reason the insurance companies are bothering to pay for people with so-called pre-existing conditions is because of that mandate. The reason the insurance companies went along with Obamacare is because of that mandate. The mandate making it a matter of law that you have to have health insurance? The insurance companies would have been foolish to fight that. Here's the federal government mandating they don't have to advertise anymore. Mandating that everybody have their product. Mandating you have to go buy their product.

What industry wouldn't sign on with that kind of crony corporatism? It's exactly what's wrong! It's just a microcosm of everything that's wrong in the way we're going about dealing with health care. We're going farther and farther and farther away from market forces having anything to do with the way things are priced and what things cost. "I like the mandate, but I'm a little different; I don't want people dying in the streets." I don't get the connection between the two either. People are not dying in the streets because of lack of health care.

They might be dying in the streets because of liberalism, which has brought about poverty and any other bunch of sorts of misery. Untold illegal immigration, any number of things could be causing it. But I don't think it's even the case that people are dying in the street from anything. Where did this get started? I haven't seen any videotape on it. It's not happening on TV; so it must not be happening. I haven't seen a news report on some schmo dying in the street and here's the news at 10, videotape at 10. I haven't seen that. So where did this get started?

I know what it is: "Well nobody wants people dying in the street." Who is going to get up and oppose that, right? "You mean you're for people dying in the streets?" Well, no. It isn't happening. And the mandate isn't going to matter a hill of beans whether people die in the street or not, because we have the mandate and we still have 29 million uninsured -- and Obamacare doesn't cover illegal aliens. (snorts) Theoretically it doesn't. That's another thing. Supposedly Obamacare doesn't cover illegal aliens. But (chuckle) I bet it does. They show up at the ER.

So who is dying in the streets?

I'm going to circle back to this, folks. I had this at audio sound bite number eight; I told a broadcast engineer, "You keep that near the top of the Stack because I don't know if I'm going to be able to put this off."

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, during the break at the bottom of the hour I did some research here on people dying in the street. As I said, Mr. Trump is out there saying that we have to support and he likes the Obamacare mandate. Folks, you can't... I'm just going to tell you something. You can't talk about repealing Obamacare and like the mandate! The mandate is everything in Obamacare. That's what the Supreme Court case... That's what John Roberts turned himself into a pretzel in order to find that it was constitutional, when before Obamacare it wasn't.

The federal government cannot mandate that you buy anything.

Until now.

Without the mandate, there is no Obamacare. Obamacare can't survive without the mandate. Without the federal government requiring by law that you have to buy this product or else you're going to be fined, it can't exist. So I don't know how you say you're going to repeal this and start over, and at the same time keep the mandate. But then "dying in the streets." I haven't seen any news on that. I haven't seen stories. So I went and looked. I just wanted to make sure, and I found... What's this? ThinkProgress. It's a liberal website.

And the headline: "Cold Weather Has Already Claimed the Lives of the Homeless." Two thousand people died on the streets in 2014 alone. Now, this story has nothing to do with health care. This story says, "An estimated 2,000 homeless people died on the streets..." Estimated. "Estimated" means they don't know, just like they estimated the number of homeless at 3 million. They finally did a homeless census. Some of you may not remember this; some of you may be old enough.

But starting in the mid-80s all the way forward, there was this guy, Mitch Snyder, who was a homeless activist in Washington, a guy that slept on sewer grates at night to show his compassion for the homeless. Sewer grate in the wintertime just to try to relate. And the homeless didn't like it. "What do you mean, you're kicking me off the sewer grate? It's the only way I can stay warm!" And Mitch Snyder said, "I need to show that I care. I need to show that I'm advocating for you. You go find someplace else to sleep tonight. I am taking your sewer grate tonight."

I mean, that's what passed for compassion.

So anyways, this is about the same time that we're letting the homeless live in shopping carts they steal from Publix and we're calling that compassion. Mitch Snyder is running around saying, "Three million people in America are homeless! Three million!" It caught on and the media started using it. And I, in the early days of this program, asked, "Could someone back up that number for me? How do we know there are 3 million homeless? Who says? How do we get there?" Lo and behold, a homeless census was taken.

They actually hired census people to run around and count people on the streets wherever they were, which was usually bad neighborhoods. They found them at night. I mean, that's when you're going to find people really without a home is at nighttime. And the number was less than 500,000. Not that that's acceptable. But it wasn't anywhere near 3 million. But here we are again with ThinkProgress: "An estimated 2,000 homeless people died on the streets [in 2014], according to those who memorialized them."

So we are going to take it on the authority of "those who memorialized them" that 2,000 people died on the streets. But I looked here. None of them was because of health care. Homelessness. And where is homelessness rampant? It's usually where Democrats run the city. San Francisco may be the worst homeless situation in America, outside of New York. Then you go to Detroit, any number of these cities. Why are the homeless hanging around in bone-cold cities in the middle of winter? Why don't they all end up in San Diego?

Or in Miami?

Or in Hawaii?

I know what you're saying: "How are they going to get there?" How did they get where they are now? This country has done more, we've given more, we have offered more, we have spent more on our downtrodden than any country in the history of humanity. This idea that people are "dying in the streets" as a reason why the government has to get bigger or the government has to stay in control of health care? I looked it up: 2,000 people, all of them homeless.

Okay. It's a brief timeout here and we'll come back, check and see who is up on the phones and if there's anything there we'll go there. Hang in and be tough, folks.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: That's a good point. In New York, New York City spends more than a billion -- that's "billion" with a B. New York City spends more than a billion dollars a year taking care of the homeless. If anybody is dying on the streets in New York, it's not because nobody cares. It's not because we're not spending enough money. It's not because of Obamacare or lack of it. It's because... Well, I don't want to oversimplify it, but I'm telling you: Those are the kinds of things happen when liberals are in charge of things.

I don't even want to waste time explaining it again.

If you don't believe me, look at where these problems exist in the greatest numbers and you'll find they're run by liberal Democrats. It's no more complicated than that. But the point is: People are not "dying in the streets" because people in this country don't care. People are not "dying in the streets" because they don't have attention, they're not getting attention, or we're not spending money on them. No truth to that whatsoever. Nowhere in any of this is the issue of personal responsibility ever mentioned.

Because to do that? Why, that's coldhearted! Oh, yeah. You can't talk about personal responsibility. People are mentally ill, sick, whatever. Well, if that's the case, what are they doing on the streets? See, the liberals are the ones that close down these institutions, folks. "It's not right! We don't have the right too keep the mentally ill incarcerated. They may have a right to be on the street doing this." Okay, if they have a right to be out there, then fine. Stop complaining about what happens to them out there. If they have a right to be there... You cannot winning with these people.

Let's go to the phones, Blaine in Shepherdsville, Kentucky. It's great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: What I wanted to say was I hope that Mr. Trump did not mean "mandate." He did mention that there are doctors and hospitals that are underperforming. Maybe funnel the uninsured people and the people with pre-existing conditions to those locations.

RUSH: Well, what do you think he meant if he didn't mean "mandate"?

CALLER: Well, maybe it was a faux pas. I'm not sure. Because they use the word "mandate," maybe that's why he used the word "mandate."

RUSH: Okay, and in the question he might have been responding because the question had the word. Let's listen to sound bite number 8.

CALLER: Hopefully, he did not mean "mandate."

RUSH: I do too. Let's listen to the whole thing, again. Grab number eight. This is the question from Anderson Cooper: "Mr. Trump, if Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate..." And, folks, I'm telling you: Without a mandate, you can't have Obamacare. It can't survive. That's what the whole first Supreme Court case was about. That's why it's asinine what happened in that case. It's just... just... The Supreme Court rewrote the law! John Roberts rewrote the law to make it constitutional. The whole argument whether it's a tax or a mandate?

The government can assess taxes, the fine aspect of Obamacare. It's such a mess. Anyway, I distract myself. The question again: "Mr. Trump, if Obamacare is repealed and there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance...?" So mandate is defined in the question. "If there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre-existing condition?" And here's just the first part of Mr. Trump's answer. We're not going to listen to the whole thing.

TRUMP: Well, I like the mandate. Okay, so here's where I'm a little bit different. I don't want people dying on the streets. I say this all the time. The Republican people, they're wonderful people. They don't want people dying on the streets. We're going to take care of them through maybe con...

RUSH: Stop the tape. I want to tell you, Blaine, how I interpret that; you tell me if I'm wrong. "I like the mandate," Trump says, "Okay, so here's where I'm a little bit different. I don't want people dying in the streets. I say it all the time. The Republican people, they're wonderful people. They don't want people dying on the streets." You know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like Trump believes that Republicans... (sighs) It sounds like Trump believes the image that Republicans are coldhearted, mean-spirited, extremist, people are dying on the streets, they don't care.

So he says: (summarized): "Well, I like the mandate because I don't want people dying in the streets -- and let me tell you something, my Republican voters, they also don't! It may surprise you." He didn't say that, but it's implied. "It may surprise you, but my Republican voters, they don't want them dying in the streets, either!" So it sounds to me like Mr. Trump is a Republican here and is trying to, uh, beat back this image that Republicans don't care about people. And so saying, "I don't want them to die in the street," may be his technique or way of doing that. What do you think?

CALLER: (unintelligible) that Republicans are unfeeling, uncaring, heartless people by saying that. Maybe he would create something like a catastrophic health care, which could insure those with pre-existing conditions and also be voluntary for those people that don't have insurance. Not make it a mandate but they could line up for it if they wanted it.

RUSH: Well, but, see, here's the problem. Here's the problem: "He didn't say that." We can sit here and say, "What he meant was," and, "Maybe what he's going to do is," and, "What we hope he's going to do...." The problem with this now, this pre-existing condition stuff... In fact, let me review a little history. Can I remind you what happened with this? When they set up the pool... The way they handled this in the early days of Obamacare, there was a pool that you had to sign into that would allocate coverage for you if you had a pre-existing condition.

And everybody was shocked at how few people actually signed up. Remember that, folks? Everybody was stunned because it's like every other myth. It had been talked about for so long that everybody in this country everybody thought everybody had a pre-existing condition! And the insurance companies were so mean and so rotten and so unfair that they weren't covering anybody. And therefore, people with pre-existing conditions -- a hell of a lot of them -- were not being treated, couldn't get insurance... and may have been dying in the streets, who knows?

So they set the pool up, because they had to go about this... Because this isn't insurance. They had to set up an entirely new way of dealing with this, which is basically they set up a new welfare program, if you want to get down to brass tacks. It's a welfare program. It's not insurance. By definition, it's not insurance. I don't mean to offend anyone, but it isn't insurance. Anyway, the number of people supposedly so-called with pre-existing conditions that signed up, shocked everybody how few it was.

It was nowhere near what everybody had been led to believe, because of the never-ending press coverage. So it turned out to be not that big a problem, and it certainly wasn't a big enough problem to totally overturn and up-end the American health care system, just like insuring the uninsured wasn't. But that didn't matter. Reality didn't matter; perceptions did. Perception was there were gazillions and gazillions that didn't have health insurance and gazillions and gazillions with pre-existing conditions that the insurance companies were being mean to.

And it was largely bogus.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Associated Press, October 3rd, 2009: "Health Overhaul Centerpiece Endures Growing Pains -- [T]he Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan started this summer isn't living up to expectations." They had the money. They didn't have nearly the applicants they thought they were going to have. It turns out to be not an emergency, a crisis.