Building A Progressive Future

Media Matters for America is doing an excellent job documenting and exposing Rush Limbaugh's antics, along with the rest of the right-wing noise machine.

But, I was listening to Rush myself today, doing some research for our upcoming online campaign.  I thought I’d report the following comments from Rush about health care that I heard with my own ears:

On Preventative Medicine:

Preventative medicine “does not save a dime…all this is a myth…it’s bullfeathers.”

Apparently Rush doesn’t think that preventing more people from getting diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases will save us any money.  Experts and economists disagree.  One 2007 study estimated that by 2023 we can save more than $1 trillion every year through prevention (including direct costs and economic productivity).  And Senator Harkin has noted that “we don’t have a health care system in America; we have a sick care system.”

On Fixing Health Care:

“Fixing health care is simple…the simple fix for health care is like it used to be…when the patient pays what it costs for health care that’s when the costs come down.”

Rush is revealing here that he doesn’t believe in the basic concept of health INSURANCE.  The whole idea behind insurance is to spread risk (and cost) over a large population so that any one person getting sick isn’t catastrophic for that person’s finances.  If each person had to pay the costs of a heart transplant or chemotherapy or a two month hospital stay then only multi-millionaires like Rush would be able to get the care they need.

On Covering Everyone:

“In order for us to have universal health care, we’ll have to stop being Americans.”

I think this came from a promo clip rather than today’s show.  So, Rush is pretty proud of his firm stance against providing quality, affordable health care for all Americans. 

Slightly off topic, he also insisted to a very informed caller that eating refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup like is found in cola and other processed foods is the same metabolically as eating an orange—because it’s all sugar.  Sounds like Rush needs to read some Michael Pollan and learn a bit about whole foods versus processed, refined foods.