During the January 13 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh described a Maryland bill requiring for-profit companies with 10,000 or more employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payrolls on employee health care as the “government-sanctioned rape of an American business.”

Limbaugh speculated that the bill, vetoed by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), with the veto overridden by the General Assembly, was designed “to snare Wal-Mart but not many other[] [corporations],” given the bill's applicability to only companies with 10,000 or more employees. As The Washington Post noted on April 6, 2005, three employers besides Wal-Mart meet the bill's employee threshold -- Johns Hopkins University, Giant Food, and Northrop Grumman Corp. -- but they already meet the bill's requirements for 8 percent (corporations) or 6 percent (nonprofit institutions) of payroll to be spent on employee healthcare.

From the January 13 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: I think this -- we've talked about this at great length on this program. This is nothing else -- it's nothing other than a government-sanctioned rape. This is a government sanctioned-rape of an American business.

[...]

This -- you -- yeah, we just had hearings in an all-powerful Supreme Court. You going to take away a woman's right to choose? Are you going to do that? Are you going to do this? What the hell is going on in the state of Maryland?

[...]

Probably, the only such company in this size, in the -- in the state. I mean, there's a reason they went after companies with 10,000 or more employees. It was -- it was a way to snare Wal-Mart but not many others.