This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by Camp Crystal Lake
By Simon Maloy

Before we get started, you'll have to forgive us if we seem a little freaked out, but today is Friday the 13th, and Limbaugh's guest host is named Jason...

Anyway, it'll be a truncated edition of the Limbaugh Wire this afternoon as Jason Lewis will be hosting only one hour of Rush's program. The final two hours will be a replay of Rush's CPAC speech. So let's get to it.

Lewis kicked off the show blaming Obama for “spik[ing] a rally in the stock market,” noting that Obama spoke about the economy today and the Dow is (at the moment) slightly down after a three-day rally. Of course, Obama spoke about the economy yesterday, and the Dow rose a couple of hundred points. You'll recall that Lewis credited yesterday's rise to Warren Buffett speaking on CNBC about mark-to-market accounting.

From there, Lewis took a cue from Rush earlier this week and aimed a few shots at NBA great Charles Barkley, specifically Sir Charles' golf swing, comparing it to Tourette's Syndrome. Then it was time for some stimulus bashing, attacking House Speaker Pelosi and Rep. David Obey for leaving open the possibility of a second stimulus package, and attacking Obama for saying yesterday that “if we see money being misspent, we're going to put a stop to it, and we will call it out and we will publicize it.” Lewis claimed that the entire stimulus is money misspent, pointing specifically to “1.1 billion [dollars] for health-care rationing. Oh, there I go again. Well, let's give you the title -- it's actually a study of comparative effectiveness research of medical treatment.” Actually, the comparative effectiveness provision of the stimulus bill doesn't “ration” health care or restrict the prescription of treatments.

Coming back from the break, Lewis took his first call, during which the caller agreed with Lewis on Barkley's golf swing, comparing it to Obama's economic policies. “It's a metaphor!” Lewis exclaimed. A little later, another caller indicated to Jason that a lot of his friends who voted for Obama are now thinking they made a bad choice. Lewis called this a “cultural phenomenon” and “almost a manifestation of what Shelby Steele calls 'white guilt.' ” He then professed to speak to the thought processes of those guilty, gullible Obama voters: " '[L]ook how tolerant I am'; '[L]ook how hip I am.' And so it became this sort of, you know, edition -- political edition of American Idol -- instead of the seriousness of a political campaign. "

Lewis returned from the next break to blame the entire housing crisis on Rep. Barney Frank, Freddie and Fannie, and affordable housing initiatives. Kinda feels like we're fighting the tide here, but it's worth another shot -- no, Barney Frank is not the evil mastermind behind the collapse of the housing bubble, and no, Freddie and Fannie did not cause the collapse of the housing market.

Lastly, Lewis returned to health care, offering his solution to make it “affordable overnight” -- people should have catastrophic coverage for the “big diseases,” but for everything else, you should buy health care like you would groceries. According to Lewis, people who “use health care a lot” should be charged more, “just like the guy that drives recklessly.” You know you've hit on something when you can compare a trip to the doctor to running a stop sign.

That's it for the Limbaugh Wire for today. The replay of Rush's CPAC speech should have started by now. We're fairly confident the speech is still as false and offensive as when he delivered it two weeks ago, so we're going to use these two hours to rest, recuperate, and prepare for the return of real-time Rush on Monday. Have a good weekend, and be sure the check out Media Matters' continuing Limbaugh coverage.

Ch-ch-ch-ah-ah-ah...

Highlights from Hour 1

Outrageous comments

LEWIS: Well, that didn't take long, did it? I mean, how to kill a rally in just a couple of comments. Leave it to the president to spike a rally in the stock market. The Dow -- down 71 right now, the very day that Barack Obama says, “Hey, don't worry. The economy isn't as bad as we think.”

What? Do we got a president that's short-selling or what? I'm kind of confused.

[...]

CALLER: I've noticed a lot of people that I know voted for him are sort of regretting their unintelligent decision. They were just angry at Bush.

LEWIS: Well, that's true, and I think this was also a cultural phenomenon. It is what -- almost a manifestation of what Shelby Steele calls “white guilt.” People were patting themselves on the back for voting for a black president.

CALLER: Yeah.

LEWIS: That was fashionable. It was the in thing to do and “look how tolerant I am”; “look how hip I am.” And so it became this sort of, you know, edition -- political edition of American Idol -- instead of the seriousness of a political campaign.

[...]

LEWIS: We can make health care affordable for young healthy people. We can it affordable overnight -- overnight. The way to do that is not -- is not complicated, it is just politically difficult. If you go back to the model of insurance instead of pre-paid medicine -- we don't have health insurance in America, we have pre-paid medicine. People go to the doctor and they expect their first dollar to be covered. They demand no co-pays. They demand no deductible. Well, how many other insurance products offer you that? Your house? Your car? Your car -- your automobile insurance doesn't pay for oil changes. Your health insurance shouldn't pay for your kid's physical before the basketball season.

You need -- what you need to do quite simply is go back to a real catastrophic insurance model where the big diseases -- heart disease or cancer or car accident -- don't bankrupt you, but other than that, you're paying for health care like you're buying groceries through the year, and maybe the deductible is 5,000, $6,000, what have you, then what happens is people shop around for that physical for the basketball program or what have you, and you put the consumer back into health care. Then you redo the tax code so that I can deduct the premium I pay as a single purchaser in the individual market and not have to rely on my employer.

Now Bush and McCain, to their credit, had similar proposals, and unfortunately, they didn't get any traction. That is a clear way to level the playing field. You take community rating out; you tell people if you're going to use health care a lot, you're going to pay a higher premium, just like the guy that drives recklessly -- you do that and you tell young people that if you don't use it a lot, your health care premiums are going to be cheap. They're not going to cover everything, but you don't need coverage. You don't need coverage for acupuncture. You don't need coverage for substance abuse, the vast majority of people.

America's Guest-Truth Rejector

Repeated false claim that comparative effectiveness research is “health-care rationing”:

LEWIS: We're talking about directly what President Obama, and Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid put in the stimulus package: 1.1 billion for health-care rationing. Oh, there I go again. Well, let's give you the title -- it's actually a study of comparative effectiveness research of medical treatment.

Now, why would the federal government want to spend a billion dollars to study which medical treatments that they consider to be effective if they don't plan down the road to deny those? Of course they will, because if we have nationalized health care, there will be an unlimited demand for free care. Anything that's free raises demand and the only way the global budget can prevent from being burst, the only way you can't -- you can't -- can handle this without blowing the budget -- a hole in the budget -- is to ration what's available. So they'll simple say, “Look, we can't give everybody free health care that everybody wants, so this will be OK. This won't be OK. This will be OK.

The issue in health care is pretty simple, folks. Either we will allow the price mechanism -- the hallmark of a free economy -- freely floating prices to ration care, and it does, or we will allow people like Tom Daschle to ration care. It's the rule of law, the rule of markets versus the rule of men.

Echo chamber

Cited Betsy McCaughey on health care, again.