Rush Limbaugh: The Ostrich Treatment for the Faithful

Talk radio is a wasteland.  There are very few people on the air today who know how to hold a civil conversation without shouting at or talking over their opponent.  Fewer still are the people who actually do their homework before conducting an interview.  Journalism has taken a back seat to persuasion, “telling” people what to believe rather than dialoging with them to come to mutual understanding.

Some are better than others when it comes to at least pretending to be objective.  Glenn Beck and Michael Smirconish are some of the better ones.

But when it comes to the real blow-hards, the ones who couldn’t care less who they offend, names like O’Reilly and Hannity come to mind.

Then there’s Mr. Oxycontin himself, Rush Limbaugh.

Years ago I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh.  I once considered him a credible, thoughtful voice of the conservative right.

Not any longer.

Today Limbaugh left such a stench on my speakers that his last name might as well have been “Limberger.”

I tuned in quite by accident.  Last night, while driving home, I had been listening to the pre-game festivities for Game 5 of the World Series.  Coincidentally the Phillies network is carried on Rush’s local affiliate.  Today, while running out to drop letters at the post office I was confronted with Rush pontificating yet again about the evil charlatan that is Obama.

I honestly don’t pay much attention to Limbaugh or any other talk radio personality these days.  I’m more the NPR and CNN type.  I like to be given facts from both sides of an argument that help me synthesize my own opinion.  I really can’t stand being led around by the nose by people like Limbaugh, for whom an unrelenting agenda equals reality.  Oh, and in case you were wondering, the same level of disdain goes for people like Racheal Maddow, Al Franken, and Keith Olberman.  I may find them funny on occasion, but after a while I always make a bee line back to CNN where I get a more consciously neutral treatment of the news.

Limbaugh’s hubris and lack of intellect caught my attention today when he went on an extended riff about how the “New Deal” and “Great Society” had already provided all of the things that Obama now wants to give people under his “socialist” agenda.  I missed the first part of the conversation – or perhaps it was a letter that Limbaugh had received – in which the writer had pressed Limbaugh to explain why Obama’s approach to health care wasn’t better than McCains.

I wish I could share the complete tirade with you.  Anyone with even a remote desire to walk a mile in a fellow human’s mocassins before passing judgment on them would have vomited.

One thing I do remember, though.

Limbaugh was countering Obama’s argument for the need to create a universal healthcare system for all Americans by saying that such a system already exists.

“I can’t wait to hear this…,” I thought to myself.

Limbaugh started…

“If you need healthcare you can walk up to any hospital and get the care you need for free.”

Really?

“If you can’t afford your drugs, there are all kinds of drug companies you can apply to to get your drugs for free.”

Really?

There was much more to his points than just these two, but I think you get the idea.  And then he concluded with this line…

“So you see, there are already systems out there to do everything Obama says he wants to do.  They came about under the New Deal and The Great Society.”  (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, respectively.)

The depths of Limbaugh’s insensitivity and ignorance can only be plumbed by the average North Sea drilling platform.  This guy’s arrogance and hubris have completely detached his intellect from any sense of accountability for the power of the airwaves he commands.

Do you honestly believe that just “showing up at the hospital” and getting free care is an option?  Consider the 1000′s of people annually who try to get free care at the hospital only to find out that to pay for the 10′s of thousands of dollars of care they must liquidate all of their assets, mortgage their house, and go on welfare.  That evidence isn’t anecdotal, gang, it’s factual.  The BBC recently did an extended essay on the horror stories of the US healthcare system and the hundreds of thousands of people who are forced to live at the fringes because they simply can’t afford to pay the freight for their health care bill.

But Limbaugh doesn’t give a damn about these folks.  When he pontificates on his “solution” as if he knows from first hand experience that it is viable one can’t help but wonder…  “what planet is this guy on?”

Let’s flip the page for a moment, though, and consider this from the hospital’s side of things.  Let’s say an indigent person shows up on the doorstep and asks for care.  Yes, the hospital is obligated to provide emergency care at no cost.  The Hospital is not obligated, however, to provide on-going care at no cost.  Once the patient is stabilized most state laws indicate that the hospital can ship the person home.  Follow-up care is definitely not included in the “free” offering of services.

Even at that limited level of emergent care that still doesn’t mean someone isn’t paying.  Someone is definitely paying whether Limbaugh believes so or not.

The cost shows up somewhere on the balance sheet because the hospital needs to write it off.  It then shows up in your insurance costs, my insurance costs, and the next co-pay increase we all get hit with on our company plan as the unfunded expenditure gets allocated across departments and divisions until it is fully absorbed.

Hospital care is not free, folks.  Someone is paying.  The costs are just hidden from the eyes of the taxpayer and employee lucky enough to have insurance, hidden beneath the guise of a “rate readjustment.”

How about those drugs Limbaugh mentioned?  As it turns out, drug companies are under NO obligation to provide free drugs to a person.  The process is also arcane, different from company to company, and there is often no guarantee of success.  So for the impoverished patient with no advocate on their side this is no plan at all.  Yet again, a hard truth about the dollars and cents of such plans is avoided.  Someone is paying.  It may not be the person getting the drugs, but that cost passes on to those of us paying full freight for our prescriptions.

Limbaugh’s solution is far from a single card, single payer system whereby a person in need can walk into a hospital and know that they will get care of a quality comparable to that offered the CEO of AIG.

For the Republican faithful Limbaugh can speak no lie.  But for those of us who take 5 seconds to think through the implications of his “solutions” the sad truth becomes evident.   All he offers is window dressing that avoids the central issues of a healthcare system in crisis.  His alternative to do nothing and live with the status quo avoids the hard reality that to implement a truly fair plan might just entail a degree of shared sacrifice and collective will.

It’s time for Limbaugh to stop pretending as if the problems of our country don’t exist just because he says they don’t exist.  It’s time for him to actually do some homework for a change and offer credible solutions that go beyond putting his head in the sand, hoping that the problem will be gone once he comes up for air.

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