Rush Limbaugh, out of hospital, spews the same old lies about American health care

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I didn't weigh in on Dear Leader Rush's rush to hospital in Hawaii on Friday -- three of us did: see Carl, Fogg, and JTD -- but I can't let what he said about the care he received go by without comment:

The treatment I received here was the best that the world has to offer. Based on what happened here to me, I don't think there's one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy...

I just feel very grateful and thankful be an American and have this happen to me.

Right, because, of course, we Canadians, for example, like the British or the French or the Japanese or the Australians or the South Africans or any other non-Americans, with our non-American health-care systems, just would have let him die.

Or perhaps our supposedly terrible system would have killed him -- forget that health care in Canada ranks higher, like health care in many other countries, than health care in the U.S.

Perhaps, just perhaps, he would have been taken before one of those non-existent death panels and denied treatment.

Seriously, I know this is Rush Limbaugh we're talking about, and I know he's a jackass, but what the fuck?

I don't wish ill health on anyone, let alone death, but this is exactly why so many people have absolutely no sympathy for the man.

Does he honestly believe that there is nothing at all wrong with America's health-care system?

Does he honestly believe that all is "fine" and "dandy," that he wouldn't have gotten similar if not better care anywhere else?

Does he honestly believe that the treatment and care he received are the same any American would receive?

Well, who knows what he honestly believes, if he believes anything honestly at all, or what is just more of the same partisan nonsense he spews through every pore on this body. This is what he claims to believe, what he says, what he wants his followers to swallow, and its just the sort of poisonous dishonesty that compels many to live in utter ignorance, that has come to define today's conservatism, and that has been perhaps the biggest barrier to genuine and meaningful reform of a system that is expensive, corrupt, unfair, and unjust.

No, I don't wish ill health or death upon Dear Leader Rush, but it would be awfully nice if he were forced by some twist of fate to live like an ordinary American, to suffer like an ordinary American, to see what his great system is like for those who are on the outside, those without insurance, or even for those with coverage who are essentially required to beg for treatment, those who struggle to pay their bills, to put food on the table, to provide for their children, those who go into massive debt because an illness to them or to someone they care for requires treatment they cannot possibly afford, those whose requests for treatment are turned down by an insurance industry that puts profit, profiting off perpetual sickness, before all else.

Rush Limbaugh is a sickeningly rich man. He gets what he wants.

And he doesn't have a fucking clue, because he doesn't fucking care about anything except what benefits him. He's a disease on the body politic of the United States, and he's one of the very last people who should have anything to say about a system that, we hope, is soon to be reformed for the better.

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Update: For more, see Alan Colmes, who notes that "Hawaii has been a leader in health care reform, having instituted the kind of reforms Limbaugh has railed against. Ninety percent of the population has relatively generous benefits, and reform in that state has led the way to innovation."

Steve Benen has more.