RUSH: We had a call from Louis in Houston, a liberal, who acknowledged my insightfulness, saying, "Why not just one free checkup for every American a year? Since the health care profession tells us that if we would just tackle preventive maintenance on our health, it would reduce costs considerably." All right. So the question is a very seductive question, and I'm sure a lot of people are saying, "Yeah! Yeah! Why not a free checkup, Rush? What can possibly be wrong with a free checkup? Well, how do you want me to attack this first? You want me to go to the practical or the theoretical? Which would you like first? The practical? Let's do the practical first. How do things work in our country? Let me give you an example. I was in Sacramento as many of you know, during the mid-eighties, and back then, homelessness was all the rage because Ronaldus Magnus was in the White House and they were blaming him for it. They opened a homeless shelter somewhere downtown that had never been there before and they started giving away free food and, the beat cops down there noticed far more people than ever before starting to show up. So you theoretically -- and, by the way, theoretically there's nothing free. We'll get to that in a minute. The practicality is you offer something free, and you are going to have more takers and more demands.
One free health care visit will then lead to two. You have to understand out there, Louis, what the objective of liberals proposing health care is. This is a practical explanation. They want as many people as possible to be totally dependent on government programs and politicians for their needs in life. Unfortunately, it has evolved as such that health care is now a need, and it's also evolved to the point, dangerously, that too many Americans think that it's an American entitlement to have health care paid for by their neighbors, by the government, by somebody else, or their insurance, or what have you -- in some cases both insurance and treatment. So one free health care visit, if we ever agree to that, Democrat politicians (probably some Republicans, too) will say, "Let's make it two! Let's go every six months." We're already halfway there with the Breck Girl and Hillary demanding that you've gotta go get a checkup. "You gotta do it. You've gotta go to the doctor once a year." What will be the penalties if you don't? It boils down, Louis, to freedom, and the simplest way to explain why this is a bad idea is freedom. This is going to be a mandatory thing, and you're not left to your own devices. We have freedom in this country: freedom to do stupid things, freedom to have accidents, freedom to screw up, freedom to be brilliant, freedom to do the right thing.
We have freedom, and it's under assault. I'm not talking about constitutional freedoms. I'm talking about everyday life decisions you want to make just in the privacy of your own life, living the way you want to live. We have restrictions on what you can say now. We have restrictions on what you can eat. We have restrictions on what and where you can smoke. We're going to have restrictions soon on the kind of car you drive based on the mileage that it gets! We have restrictions on whether or not you have to wear a seat belt or a helmet when you drive a motorcycle. These little things, they happen very slowly, and they encroach, and people don't notice them in the context of losing freedom because it's always presented to us as "improving the quality of our lives" and "making us safer" because we, of course, are too stupid to make ourselves safe, and we're too stupid to know what to eat and what not to eat. I don't know about you, Louis, but I don't want anybody telling me what I can eat and not, what I can eat and drink. I don't want somebody telling me that, especially the government. I don't want a bunch of ninny nannies who live in my neighborhood telling me what the color of my house has to be. I don't want them telling me how far I can build it back from the ocean. But these things exist. It's happening all over the place.
So you start talking a free checkup, it's going to become two free checkups, and that's going to lead to expanded coverage. "Well, why are we only offering a free checkup? We need to offer free tonsillectomies. We need to offer free this and free that." Once it starts -- once liberalism starts, Louis -- it never stops. There is no liberal solution to a problem. Their so-called solutions only create new ones. Once we're going to give away a free checkup, then we're going to give away two checkups because two is better than one. Then we're going to expand that. If you need a tonsillectomy, if you need an anal exam, we're going to give you that, too. (Everybody needs an anal exam now and then, especially you people who don't get yours from the Drive-By Media. You have no idea what one's like until you get one of those.) Family leave? The Family Medical Leave Act. Let me give an example, Louis. "Yes, we need to have mothers and fathers to be able to take 12 weeks away from their job in order to raise the newborn child and take the dog to the vet and deal with these emergencies." When that happened I made a prediction. I said, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Who in the world out there can afford three months without a paycheck? Folks, do you realize what's going to happen? The next stage will be paid leave, mandatory 12 weeks paid leave."
By gosh it's happening. It's starting to happen now, state by state. The feds are going to propose it at some point, the Clintons. They'll pay you not to work, pay you to take time off, and who's going to object?
"The employer ought to pay me! I hate my employer. He's not fair and never gives me a raise. It's about time he had it socked to him!"
This is the attitude they've created, class envy: everybody hates the boss. Of course, everybody hates the boss. You don't need government to make you do that. I'm not hated as a boss, but I've had bosses that I thought were idiots. We all have.
So here come these brilliant politicians, "I'll help you get even with that brilliant boss. I'm gonna make sure you can take 12 weeks off when the dog gets sick, when grandma needs to go to the old folks home, when the soup gets spilled or whatever -- and your boss is going to pay for it."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah!"
People lap it up, and 12 weeks is going to someday become 15 weeks, and then that will someday become 18 -- and, if you have twins, 24 weeks of paid leave. If you have triplets, you'll get a full year of paid leave. There's no end. Once you start this stuff, Louis, there's no end to it. On the theoretical side, the whole concept of "free" is something -- Louis, you're going to have to learn this -- there is no such thing. When you say one free checkup, I assume that's the doctor of your choosing, or are you going to let the government tell you which doctor you're going to go to for this checkup? Are you going to want gasoline money to get there, since they're telling you? What happens if you have to wait a whole day in line because everybody else in Houston's going there that day, or if just one-tenth of 1% of Houston is going that day for their checkup? Oh, folks, the government's going to have to mandate when you go so that we don't have a run on and overcrowding of the various government health centers where the checkup is going to take place.
And if you go to get the checkup, and they tell you, "You know what, we've just discovered here that you have diabetes, type-two diabetes," whatever, then what do you do, Louis? That ain't going to be "free." Well, you'll think it's free, but it isn't, Louis, because your neighbors make it "free." If you want to understand the concept I'm talking about, Louis, do this. Pretend that we didn't even have your plan in place yet -- because we don't, but you want it to be. So I want you to go walk up and down the street in your neighborhood. Knock on the doors of your neighbors, especially those that you don't know, and I want you to tell 'em you're going to the doctor for a checkup, and you want 20 bucks from them to help defray the cost, and you go to as many of your neighbors as possible and get as much money as you need for the checkup. You go and you knock on their doors and say, "I'm going to the doctor. I'm going to get a checkup, and I want you to pay for it so it will be free for me."
"Well, that's not what I'm talking about."
It's exactly what happens. Somebody's gotta pay for this. The doctor has to get paid. Have you ever thought about doctors? Is the doctor going to give away the checkup to every American once a year? What about the nurse? What about the doctor's office utilities bills? What about his equipment and supplies? What about the bills for the free clinics? What about the recordkeeping, Louis? You have somebody in there in a computer or something that's going to record the results of your checkup, because you gotta have a medical file, and who's going to pay that person when you go in to get your "free" checkup? There is no such thing as "free" anything. I don't care. Somebody is paying for a service to be provided or a product to be manufactured and distributed and sold. The concept of "free" is relevant only if you are selfish and think as long as it doesn't cost YOU anything, then it's "free." But it's not free. You're being totally selfish -- and another question, Louis, that you might want to think about is this. Who is going to pay for the free lawyer you are going to demand when the free checkup fails to find your health problem until it's too late? Who are you going to find to represent you for free as you bring your malpractice suit against the doctor who didn't get paid, who misdiagnosed what you have, who gave you an anal exam and found out that you were full of it and couldn't do anything about it. You exploded later on and had big problems like Castro. You need to go get redress for this free checkup that failed!
Who's going to give you your free lawyer?
lawl
Just in case you missed it the first time
We have freedom in this country: freedom to do stupid things, freedom to have accidents, freedom to screw up, freedom to be brilliant, freedom to do the right thing.
