Friday, January 08, 2010

In Which Rush Gives Us Clarity

Wow. I had no idea healthcare in Hawaii is so affordable, and offered on understanding installment plans! Rushbo counts himself among the uninsured in America, and helpfully tells us all why we should all strive to be uninsured. Because if he can pay for two days of inpatient testing, why, anyone can!
Limbaugh made the argument that healthcare is actually cheap, "You hear here that multimillionaire, only Limbaugh could afford it, that's such a misrepresentation of the truth. I'll just tell you if you can afford a car, you can afford what I did in the hospital. If you can afford a pretty expansive media room, you can afford what I spent in the hospital, and with all the tests and everything else. If you can afford an SUV, could have gone to the hospital 3 or 4 times for what I, it's just a matter of choice, what you want to budget for and pay for, Rush we got to have a car to get to work, and we got to have a house, yeah but everybody says they got to have healthcare too. The people don't prioritize it the way they do other things."

Well now. It seems I can afford a hospital stay like Rush's, because it would work out to the price of my "expansive media room" (2-year-old flatscreen from Sears, just recently paid off at $100 a month) and my car ($266/month for the past two years, with three to go). Oh. Wait. Maybe when he said "afford a car" he didn't mean the lowest monthly payment you could wring out of Toyota Financial after scraping together a down payment from friends and having a stellar credit score only because you've never been able to afford purchases major enough to default on. Maybe he meant paying cash for a new car, which in Rushland probably doesn't mean a used pickup or a new economy hatchback, since he keeps six or so rides in his garage that each push the half-million dollar sticker price. And since I have yet to hear of a two-day inpatient excursion at the level Rush enjoyed coming in at under the sticker price of my Matrix--and since I have an operating brain that is connected to reality--I have to go with the "paying $450,000 cash" possibility.

Let them eat cake and jaw-dropping unexamined privilege don't even begin to scratch the surface here. And the saddest part is that legions of Rush's barely-scraping-by listeners just sat back and said you tell 'em, Rush.


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