GOP Says Medicare Good, Obamacare Bad, But Both Are Government-Run Healthcare

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – As a matter of fact, the same party that says government shouldn’t be running healthcare, the Republicans, are probably now the most staunch defenders of the biggest government healthcare program known to ever exist in the history of the universe, Medicare. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  It was the Republicans that made sure that Medicare would live on in infamy.  Here we are today, 2013.  Anyone who can read an actuarial table and knows what an actuarial table is, which is used in the insurance business to gauge risk and then assign rates or premiums to mitigate that risk should you have to call on insurance, anyone that can an actuarial table and then read a simple spreadsheet of incomes and disbursements — this is especially true of you physicians out there that have to deal with this.  You know of what I speak.  You know that this thing is broke.  It is broken beyond repair.  It is going to crash and burn of its own weight, yet you will not hear a peep from those that say [mocking] “We can’t let the government take over healthcare with Obamacare.”  Why not?  You let them take it over with Geezercare.  As a matter of fact, the same party that says government shouldn’t be running healthcare, the Republicans, are probably now the most staunch defenders of the biggest government healthcare program known to ever exist in the history of the universe, Medicare.

Think about that and then come back to me and tell me just how precisely devoted you think your “conservative” member of Congress is that’s a Republican.  He or she is no more devoted to ending government-run healthcare than earthworms about to be put on the end of hooks to go fetch a couple of bass or crappie or whatever.  I don’t buy any of this.  Are there good guys in Congress that actually see the folly of this and know that the only hope for geezered citizens to maintain some kind of the healthcare, or health insurance more specifically because it’s not about healthcare, it’s about insurance.  The only way for those geezered citizens to maintain that is to be by breaking the program up and let the individual states run it.  Some states are just going to choose they’re not going to be able to, not in the manner it’s being run today.  I think the end result of that will be a net positive.  Take that from what it’s worth of someone in the next 15 years who will actually have to live under some kind of government-imposed medical system simply by virtue of my age.

The whole thing about defunding Obamacare because we don’t want government-run healthcare, Republicans are being besieged by Tea Partiers to not let government run our healthcare, again I just ask the dubious question: Why then is it okay for the government to run almost every facet of aged care, which is medical care, which is healthcare for geezered citizens?  No one seems to have an issue with this.  You can’t have it both ways.  If you think they’re going to go to the wall for this, it’s not because as a “conservative member of the Republican Party” that you oppose government-funded healthcare.  That’s just a lie.  It may be because you want people to think that you oppose government-run healthcare because it sounds good when you go to campaign about one year from today.  That’s my analysis of this.

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If the defund initiative has any chance of survival, it is now not a legal one, although it could be as I explained on Tuesday’s show.  To me, now it is more of a political one.  I don’t believe for one nanosecond that most of the people that are getting up on television and granting interviews and telling their constituents they oppose government-run healthcare and what have you, I don’t believe that for one minute, and most of you probably don’t believe it either.  You can’t demonstrate it in a laboratory.  Pretend you’re in introductory chemical science or physical science in high school and you have to prove your hypothesis.  Use Medicare as the proof for your hypothesis and you will see the light of day.

We do have one more day of debate.  Just a couple other housekeeping things on this, some of you may be confused as to why there was one vote yesterday that Ted Cruz did vote for and then why there will be another one maybe today that he probably will not vote for.  Tim Carney at DC Examiner explains this to us.

[reading]

Earlier today, after Ted Cruz spoke for 21 hours, the Senate voted 100-0 on the “Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed” to the bill funding the government.

This has confused some journalists. For instance, New York Times Congressional correspondent Jonathan Weisman wrote:

Mr. Cruz even voted to open debate. After the vote, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah and a Cruz ally, said Mr. Cruz never intended to oppose the motion to take up the bill, a position contradicted by his words and procedural motions for days before the tally.

And on Twitter, Weisman threw in an “Ahem” about Lee’s explanation, arguing that Cruz had said the opposite.

But Cruz, all along had promised to support the motion proceed, but to filibuster the next cloture motion — the Motion to Invoke Cloture on the resolution itself. In other words, Cruz favors moving into debate on the CR, but not cutting off debate on the CR.

Here were Cruz’s words last night:

The central vote the Senate will take on this fight will not occur today and it will not occur tomorrow. The first vote we are going to take on this is a vote on what is called cloture on the motion to proceed. Very few people not on this floor have any idea what that means and even, I suspect, a fair number of people on this floor are not quite sure what that means. That will simply be a vote whether to take up this bill and to begin debating this bill. I expect that vote to pass overwhelmingly, if not unanimously. Everyone agrees we ought to take this up, we ought to start this conversation.

Mike Church Show Transcript – Senator Cruz’s Filibuster Should Be About Obamacare Ushering In An Oligarchy

The next vote we take will occur on Friday or Saturday and it will be on what is called cloture on the bill. That is the vote that matters. Cloture on the bill, the vote Friday or Saturday, is the vote that matters.

[end reading]

Mike:  So today is Thursday.  I suspect they will continue the debate over all this today and possibly tomorrow, maybe even into Saturday if someone decides to filibuster this.  I believe the countdown clock is at four days.  Is that what I heard today?  The fiscal year ends on September the 30^th.  Monday the 30^th would be the last day any of this could get done before the fiscal year ends and the government runs out of money.  Oh, please.  It’s not going to run out of money and it’s not going to renege on its debt obligation as I hear some people out there chortling about.  You have four days of this left.

If you had to predict today what you think is going to happen twixt now and Monday, Mr. Gruss, and you’re in a Vegas casino and you can put your money on a marker and get some odds, I’m going to give you 30:1 that the Republicans hold the line, that they reject the Senate bill.  I’m going to give you 8:5 that the Republicans don’t hold the line and accept some portion of the Senate bill in a conference committee compromise.  Where do you put the AG marker?

AG:  I think they’ll eventually accept some parts of the reformed Senate bill, whether it be the medical tax device being repealed or different aspects of the bill. I do not see a shutdown occurring on Tuesday morning.

Mike:  So you’re with me.  You’re putting your marker on the 8:5.  We’re going to take the easy money.

AG:  As terrible as those odds are, we’re not making a lot of cash on it, but yeah.

Mike:  If you’re not into parimutuel, which is the state robbing horsemen of their purses — once upon a time you used to be able to race horses and you would just race for pink slips or cash.  Then the State went [mocking] “Whoa, you guys are racing horses and making money and we ain’t getting a cut?  How about no, no, no?”  They invented this thing called parimutuel, meaning statist code for you can’t make any money without giving us our respect.  So 8:5 is you make $8 on a $5 bet, which is awful.  It’s less than 2:1.

The 30:1 shot, I may put $30 on the 8:5 and then $3 on the 30:1.  There is a possibility I could be wrong and House Republicans could grow a spine.  From what I have gathered over the tenure of John Boehner as Speaker of the House, with his faithful companion and Whip by his side, Eric Cantor, there’s nothing in the historical record that would suggest that either of those two are even interested in trying to totally derail and defund the Affordable Care Act.  There may be another possibility.  There may be the prospect that looking ahead into electoral crystal balls, that Boehner and company might be convinced that it is in the party’s, not the country’s best interest to at least shut the government down for a little while, call the Democrats’ bluff, call Obama’s bluff — I think the legislative branch should do that anyway.  If you’re asking me what I think they should do, I think they should defund the whole thing, defang the NSA and much, much more.  They’re not going to do that because they’re not going to abide by their oath.  That’s what I think they should do.  What has a realistic chance of actually happening is a different story.

Mike Church Show Transcript – The Fate Of Obamacare Lies In The Hands Of State Legislatures

AG, think about this, too.  I haven’t actually read it.  I think you might have brought this up a time or two.  There is the possibility, there is a plan out there authored by former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.  I’ve heard some people saying: We’re gonna hold the line on this and make them come to the table and negotiate with us, basically replace Obamacare’s significant parts with the Ryan plan.  You may be thinking: That’s government-run healthcare.  Sure it is, but it’s run by Republicans and that’s okay.  Of course, Paul Ryan had his roadmap plan, very famously, as he pushed grandma over a cliff.  His plan does at least attempt, it makes a head fake at trying to deal with some of this stuff.  That’s a third option.  There’s a fourth option.  They could bargain for a one-year delay in implementation.  What do you put the odds of that at?  It’s 8:5 they make a deal, 30:1 they hold the line and say they won’t fund it.  I don’t know what the odds on the Ryan plan are, and I don’t know what the odds on the one-year delay are.  What do you think the one-year delay’s odds are?  Are they higher or lower than 30:1?

AG:  They’re probably a little bit lower, like 25:1.  If you’re asking are they going to propose that —

Mike:  I think they already have.

AG:  Of it actually happening, I would say slightly less likely than the holding the line and going to a government shutdown.

Mike:  What about the Ryan plan?  Holding the line and saying: We’ll negotiate with you guys.  Steny Hoyer was out there yesterday, the minority whip, saying: They haven’t even come to us and asked us to negotiate.  We haven’t even talked to their leadership, according to Hoyer.

AG:  I think that’s a terrible idea politically to do.  I just don’t see it happening either.

Mike:  Basically we’re down to three choices: delay it for a year, defund it and hold the line and see what happens, or make a compromise deal and get it over with.  Folks, we’re not strategists here.  We’re not soothsayers.  I don’t have a crystal ball.  I know the same amount of stuff that most of you know.  Politically speaking, I may have a bit of an insight because I fancy myself a student of human nature, and human nature is telling me that Boehner and company see great things in the future with Obamacare actually implemented.

If you’re wondering what I mean by that, I can explain that very quickly.  What I mean by that is the Republican Party would mightily benefit from the existence of Obamacare because it gives them something to campaign against forever.  They can be bitching and whining forever about the atrocities committed under the Affordable Care Act.  [mocking] “If you just elect our kids and give us the majority, you let our kids get on that field and we’ll show you.  Mitter Church, you just wait and see.  When we get back in there, we’re gonna take care of this because we know about all the bad parts of Obamacare.  We’re not Democrats.  We don’t think the government ought to be running healthcare.  If you elect us, we’ll get in there and fix it.”  Some of you are thinking it’s an electoral bonanza for the Republicans and the Republican Party to defund and deny.  It’s not.

Mike Church Show Transcript – 1833 Senate Debate – No Funding Authority Then, No Funding Authority Now

The long-term bonanza is for them to allow the damn thing to go into effect and then campaign against it till the end of time, just like Republicans campaigned against Social Security forever before adopting it, like they campaigned, as I pointed out earlier, against Medicare forever until they adopted it, like they used to campaign for shutting the Department of Education down before they grew to like it, like they used to campaign for shutting the Department of Energy down before they grew to like it.  In other words, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to just let it happen and say that there was nothing they could do about it. That’s why this awful excuse of: We only run one-half of one-third of the government.  Yeah, but your one-half of one-third spends every nickel the government spends.  If you don’t let them spend it, if you don’t tell them they can spend it, then they can’t spend it, end of story.

Very intriguing times we live in here, ladies and gentlemen.  If I’m laying the politics of this out for you, not the constitutional aspect, not the legal aspect, just the politics of it, think about it.  Search your feelings.  Luke, search your feelings.  You know that I’m speaking truth here.  Party bigwigs and party bosses are salivating at the chance of this.  Besides, I would hazard a guess and put a wager with it that much of what is major medical, big hospitals, big pharma and what have you, are as deeply entrenched and in bed with Republican politicians and lobbyists as they are with Democrat politicians and lobbyists.  It’s a big game here, folks.  It’s called corporatism.  Both sides play it in equally corrupt manner.  No side has an upper hand in any of that.  That’s your rundown of Obamacare and the possibilities over the course of the next couple of days here.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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