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Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)
Ed Brayton also blogs at Positive Liberty and The Panda's Thumb
« Greatest. Headline. Ever. | Main | More GOP Hypocrisy on Health Care Reform »
Posted on: March 14, 2010 9:02 AM, by Ed Brayton
From Rush Limbaugh, promising to leave the country if health care reform passes:
I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica.
Psst. Rush. Costa Rica has universal, nationalized health care too.
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Comments
Well, sure, Ed. He's going to be out of a job and therefore uninsured. He's going to NEED universal health care!
Posted by: BobApril | March 14, 2010 9:09 AM
The irony is immeasurable.
I'm fairly certain his audience is incapable of seeing it though.
Posted by: DJ | March 14, 2010 9:13 AM
Hiya DJ!
Hi all - Where will poor ol' Rush go? Any suggestions?
Perhaps we can E-mail him with the top five locations for a 'man' of his disposition ($ habits). ;) - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | March 14, 2010 9:19 AM
For Americans going there, it does have high-quality, affordable private health care, though. If Obamacare manages to push the cost of domestic health care higher (and who can say they know whether it will) the Costa Ricans will see more business from Americans.
Posted by: lukas | March 14, 2010 9:28 AM
Hey Dingo!
I hear China likes to hear controversial topics such as those Rush likes to talk about. Perhaps he could go there. Or maybe Cambodia... although, the lack of white folks might be a problem for Rush's sensibilities I'm guessing.
Maybe he should just head to Hawaii... I hear the conservatives like it there (even though they have a similar state-run public health option).
Posted by: DJ | March 14, 2010 9:35 AM
When this hit HuffPro the other day, I followed the comments - hundreds of them - almost universally with the sentiment: "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
Posted by: MikeMa | March 14, 2010 9:36 AM
I was talking to someone a week or so ago who challenged me to identify one lie Rush had told. I was unable to remember anything specific he had said, although I suspect nearly anything would have been an example of a lie one way or another.
Posted by: BaldApe | March 14, 2010 9:52 AM
Baldape - the solution: ask "Where his lips flapping?" - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | March 14, 2010 10:14 AM
'were' not 'where' (obviously), sorry I've had a long day. :) - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | March 14, 2010 10:20 AM
I dunno, thought he would pick one of those underage sex islands he likes to visit.
Posted by: Ed S. | March 14, 2010 10:27 AM
BaldApe, you should check out "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot" by now Sen. Al Franken. It's somewhat dated now, but there are numerous lies in there. Two I remember off the top of my head are "There are more Native Americans in the US now than when Columbus landed." In actuality there are less than 3 million Native Americans living in the US now, but were over 10 million pre-Columbus. He also claimed that global warming would not lead to sea level rise for the same reason melting ice cubes do not raise the level of liquid in a glass. This is ignoring the fact that the vast majority of ice sits on continents (i.e. Antarctica and Greenland) and that water expands above 4 degrees C.
I'm sure media matters has plenty more.
Posted by: penn | March 14, 2010 10:40 AM
BaldApe, there is plenty more here.
Posted by: penn | March 14, 2010 10:46 AM
Hold on! China no longer has universal health care. Privatization has spread to the worker's paradise. Woe unto them.
Posted by: Reverend Rodney | March 14, 2010 10:56 AM
BobApril - glad to see a comment from you; I always appreciate the opportunity to consider your thoughts.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 14, 2010 11:06 AM
Only a little OT: Was there any fallout over Palin's (I assume illegal) use of universal healthcare in Canada?
Will she get a bill from the Canadian health ministry?
Posted by: MikeMa | March 14, 2010 11:13 AM
Why would it be illegal, Mike? I presume she paid for it (well, her parents did, she was 6).
Posted by: lukas | March 14, 2010 11:27 AM
MikeMa - I believe that you are billed for your health care services if you don't present a valid health card issued by the province in which you are seeking services -- cards which are only issued to residents of the province.
I, for instance, live in Quebec, so I have a Quebec health card. When I had to make a trip to the emergency room while visiting family in Ontario, I had to fill out some supplementary paperwork to ensure that RAMQ, the Quebec health ministry, was billed. OHIP, the Ontario system, would not have covered me.
Some clinics aren't registered at all with out-of-province medicare systems. In those cases, you have to pay up front and apply for reimbursement to your own provincial government when you get home.
So, short answer, yes, she will have had to pay for services.
Posted by: borealys | March 14, 2010 11:28 AM
Thanks for the corrections to my mistaken impressions of Palin's illegal use of Canadian medical resources. I hadn't the stomach to follow any of the discussion surround this or pretty much anything she's said in months.
So it was the availability, not cost she (her parents) went for. Less exciting but with the same complete lack of self awareness that accompanies most everything Palin says.
Sorry for the interrupt. Back to Rush bashing. Carry on!
Posted by: MikeMa | March 14, 2010 11:35 AM
I wonder whether Rush ever used the old slogan "Love or leave it." I would be wonderful to see a few of his ilk honor their own injunction. It's the best reason I've seen yet to support the health care bill.
Posted by: barkdog | March 14, 2010 12:01 PM
So is this a sign that Rush actually supports Health Care reform? Given that this would be a major incentive to pass such legislation, I can't help but wonder if he isn't doing this in order to get it passed. ;o)
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 14, 2010 1:26 PM
borealys (@17) - Still, even if you had to pay for the whole thing yourself, I'll bet a medical bill for any given treatment in Canada is still 'way cheaper than for the same treatment in the US.
Which, as a proud and patriotic American, makes me want to bang my head against the wall.
Posted by: Molly, NYC | March 14, 2010 3:37 PM
This is a very interesting question -- where will right-wing conservatives go when Barack Obama completes his secret Marxist mission to turn the US into the United Socialist States of America?
After all, liberals had a wide selection of liberal countries to choose from when they were making plans to leave during Bush's tenure, but for the freedom loving conservatives, the options are far more limited.
Switzerland springs to mind -- everyone has a gun! -- but they adopted universal health care over a decade ago. Singapore is quite conservative too, but racially intolerant speech is outlawed (bummer) and, yeah, universal health care there too. Chile? Best economy in South America -- but, yuck, more socialist health care. Japan? Same again.
How about Monaco? Yeah! Private health care only!! The only downside is that you have to be a multimillionaire before you can afford to live there (and before they will let you live there, presumably) -- well, that and it's a monarchy, but I guess you can't have too many scruples about such things when you have no other reasonable choice.
So when you start looking around the world for places where American conservatives would be able to live their ideal conservative lifestyle, you quickly find that there really isn't anywhere else (except for the odd little exception like Monaco) that is a conservative enough *and* still a democratic nation. It just highlights the extent to which American conservatives are outliers in this day and age.
This is why there has been all this talk of secession. American conservatives can't find anywhere else they would be happy to live, so when they are forced to leave America they want to take part of it with them.
Posted by: tacitus | March 14, 2010 3:48 PM
tacitus - actually a lot of populist American retirees have been moving to Mexico for the past couple of decades. There's a particularly large contingent near Guadalajara. And yes, I'm distinctly aware of the irony.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 14, 2010 3:58 PM
Michael Heath, were you refering to this irony,
"Public health care is provided to all Mexican citizens as guaranteed via Article 4 of the Constitution", or to the idea of people who rail against migrants becoming migrants themselves?
Posted by: Matty | March 14, 2010 4:28 PM
Given the historical meaning of right wing the fact that Monaco is a monarchy should be a plus.
Posted by: Matty | March 14, 2010 4:42 PM
Limbaugh also heaped praise on the near-socialized health care he received in Hawaii awhile back. Sometimes I think conservatives themselves don't prefer the world they're fighting for.
Posted by: Scott Hanley | March 14, 2010 4:42 PM
Of course, another lie that right-wingers from Limbaugh to Giuliani love to propagate is that if America gets universal health care, people will have no choice but to use it. Giuliani once famously claimed that if he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer while living in the UK, he would be dead by now.
Of course, the UK -- with one of the most socialist versions of national health care going -- has long had a healthy private health care and insurance sector. I used to be privately insured through my employer in the UK and even had surgery in a private hospital, with not a penny in deductibles or fees to pay. Indeed, since private health care has to compete with the NHS, the fees are usually quite reasonable for those who want to afford them.
In France -- widely acknowledge as having the best system in the world -- the private sector has 35% of the market.
A recent change in the law in the UK allows people to buy top up insurance for when the NHS services aren't enough for their needs. This type of complimentary service is an excellent idea and everyone wins.
Posted by: tacitus | March 14, 2010 5:36 PM
If the health bill passes, of course Rush will back pedal and claim his fans so tearfully pleaded with him at the airport as he was about to embark on his new life in Costa Rica that he was compelled to stay in America after all, and continue the good fight.
Then again, if C.R. has a burgeoning trade in underage hookers and illegal prescription drugs it might prove to be a lure too powerful for even 'old Rushbo to resist.
Posted by: CHV | March 14, 2010 6:28 PM
CHV - Rush started walking back his comment within a day or two.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 14, 2010 7:18 PM
So he said something that he didn't really mean? I'm shocked. Shocked!
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 14, 2010 7:21 PM
It'd be fun seeing him UNEMPLOYED. IN GREENLAND.
Posted by: VikingMoose | March 15, 2010 10:37 AM
This is just one more reason that we must absolutely pass healthcare reform. Limbaugh is just adding another incentive, yet he's too arrogant to realize that many of us would be thrilled to see him go.
Posted by: catgirl | March 15, 2010 11:57 AM
yeah, I read that a couple days ago, and my first reaction was that ironically, the only place he could really go to that didn't have Universal Healthcare would be China :-p
Posted by: Jadehawk | March 16, 2010 4:49 AM