Radio host Rush Limbaugh ripped into Donald Trump for supporting Obamacare’s insurance mandate, arguing that “you can’t talk about repealing Obamacare and like the mandate.”
“Mr. Trump is out there saying that we have to support and he likes the Obamacare mandate. Folks, you can’t,” Limbaugh said on his Friday radio show. “I’m just going to tell you something. You can’t talk about repealing Obamacare and like the mandate. The mandate is everything in Obamacare.”
“Well, I like the mandate,” Trump said Thursday during a CNN town hall. “OK, so here’s where I’m a little bit different. I don’t want people dying on the streets. I say this all the time. The Republican people, they’re wonderful people. They don’t want people dying on the streets. We’re going to take care of them through maybe concepts of Medicare.”
Trump later said he would repeal and replace Obamacare. (VIDEO: Trump: ‘It’s Not Single Payer’ — My Health Care Plan Is Called ‘Heart’)
Limbaugh responded, “Uhhhh, I’m just not feeling this, folks. In the first place, people are not dying on the street. … Where does this come from? … There aren’t any Republicans saying that. If anybody’s saying that, it’s got to be a bunch of Democrats.” (RELATED: Trump Promises To Save ‘People That Are Dying On The Street’ Through Healthcare Plan)
“But here’s the question. ‘Mr. Trump, if Obamacare is repealed and there’s no mandate for everybody to have insurance, why would insurance companies insure somebody who has a pre-existing condition?’ … That question entails everything wrong with Obamacare from premise to implementation,” Limbaugh claimed.
“It’s not insurance when you cover people with pre-existing condition,” Limbaugh argued. “We’ve got to call that something else. That’s not insurance. If you don’t have homeowner’s insurance, and all of a sudden your house catches fire you can’t call the insurance company, ‘Hey, I need some insurance here.’ Too late, pal. You didn’t insure it for fire beforehand. So we’re not talking insurance here. We’re talking about some other. Now, I know that this is a sensitive issue to a lot of people.”
“But it isn’t insurance. Words matter to me, and the premise of this question: ‘If Obamacare is repealed …?’ So in other words, the only way we’ve got people with pre-existing conditions covered is to have Obamacare? Sorry, the whole premise here blows up,” Limbaugh argued. “‘If Obamacare is repealed and there’s no mandate for everybody to have insurance?’ Everybody doesn’t have insurance now! There’s still 29 million uninsured despite the mandate. We have laws against murder, but they still happen. We have laws against robbing banks, but people still rob banks.”
Later, Limbaugh suggested, “The only reason the insurance companies are bothering to pay for people with so-called pre-existing conditions is because of that mandate. The reason the insurance companies went along with Obamacare is because of that mandate. The mandate making it a matter of law that you have to have health insurance? The insurance companies would have been foolish to fight that. Here’s the federal government mandating they don’t have to advertise anymore, mandating that everybody have their product, mandating you have to go buy their product.”
“What industry wouldn’t sign on with that kind of crony corporatism? It’s exactly what’s wrong — it’s just a microcosm of everything that’s wrong in the way we’re going about dealing with health care. We’re going farther and farther and farther away from market forces having anything to do with the way things are priced and what things cost. ‘I like the mandate, but I’m a little different; I don’t want people dying in the streets.’ I don’t get the connection between the two either. People are not dying in the streets because of lack of health care,” Limbaugh argued.
After the commercial break, Limbaugh said, “Mr. Trump is out there saying that we have to support and he likes the Obamacare mandate. Folks, you can’t. … I’m just going to tell you something. You can’t talk about repealing Obamacare and like the mandate. The mandate is everything in Obamacare. That’s what the Supreme Court case … that’s what John Roberts turned himself into a pretzel in order to find that it was constitutional, when before Obamacare it wasn’t.”
“The federal government cannot mandate that you buy anything,” Limbaugh said, “Until now.”
“Without the mandate, there is no Obamacare. Obamacare can’t survive without the mandate. Without the federal government requiring by law that you have to buy this product or else you’re going to be fined, it can’t exist,” Limbaugh suggested. “So I don’t know how you say you’re going to repeal this and start over, and at the same time keep the mandate.”