This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," April 1, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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O'REILLY: In "Back of the Book" segment tonight, the President celebrated the Affordable Healthcare law today, saying it had met expectations.
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As we told you last night, it's kind of bogus because the law hinges on two things, cost and whether it disrupts the medical industry. And those things will not be completely --
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-- defined for a few more months. Joining us now from Washington with his take on ObamaCare in the long run, Political Analyst Charles Krauthammer.
So, I said last night, the whole thing is a ruse. I think they don't really care how many people signed up, they being the Obama administration. It's just basically a stop on the way station to full government control of the medical industry. Am I wrong.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it's sort of an intermediate step. Actually, it would have been much cleaner had they gone all the way to full government control.
A single payer plan, like they have in Canada, like they have in Britain, would make a lot more sense than this insane mishmash which is government-controlled but through these insurance companies.
And these numbers that they are touting are phony numbers. What you're getting is them telling you 6 or 7 million have signed up. That's like saying, anybody who goes on Amazon, orders a nifty stereo set and puts it in the shopping cart has purchased the stereo set.
I can assure you, it's not going to show up at your house until you paid for it. They can't tell you how many have actually paid the premium, so they don't know.
O'REILLY: But they don't want to tell you. They don't want to know that information. I think that the overarch is just what you said.
They knew they weren't going to get socialized medicine in this country. The Obama administration knew that wasn't going to pass Congress.
It wasn't going to get it. So, they did this, as you put it, mishmash. And it's chaotic. But the goal is that, OK, well, maybe this -- we could do this better by having what you just said, a single payer system.
Because that's what they want. They don't want to give you stats. They don't care who pays. They don't care about any of that.
KRAUTHAMMER: Look, it's hard to know what the motive was other than they decided it was a great liberal idea or a great liberal objective to get national healthcare. And they would get it any way they could.
They had a temporary majority in 2009 and 2010. They were going to exploit that majority to shove this down the throats of the Republicans and, now, the American people. And then they would work it out later.
The irony of this is, I love the way Democrats say, "This is the law of the land and you can't change it." There is no law of the land. This is a 2,500-page bill.
Do you ever hear anybody citing provision, you know, Section 627 or whatever. No, because nothing that's written in the law matters.
They decide what the law is every Wednesday morning. They've changed it 38 times. The employer mandate is out. Remember the great debate in the country for two years over the individual mandate.
The individual mandate no longer exists. They haven't said so officially, but if you want out of the individual mandate, do you know what you've got to do.
You have to say that this is a hardship. There are hardship exceptions. It means it was meant to me.
If there's a hurricane or a tornado and you're living out of the back of a pickup truck, you can opt out. All you have to do now is tick off the box that says "hardship" and you're out.
O'REILLY: Yes, you don't even have to explain it.
KRAUTHAMMER: You don't have to explain --
O'REILLY: And it can be as simple as "I don't know how to work the computer, so I can't get it."
KRAUTHAMMER: Right. When you have an anonymous bureaucratic computerized system and then you use the word "honor system," as the way of describing, you are deliberately misusing the language.
O'REILLY: OK. I think the evidence is overwhelming that you're correct. But, now, let's advance the story into an area that is extremely serious for every single American.
I said that there are two things that will define this. And, remember, President Obama's entire --
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-- historical legacy is riding on this, everything, all right. Number one, the cost of it, which I believe --
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-- may overwhelm the taxpayer, all right. But, number two, and even more importantly, what it does to the medical industry.
The anecdotal evidence is that the doctors are going to flee, all right, and that the medical services will then be provided by physicians' assistants and nurse practitioners, so that the whole medical industry we have in America is going decline pretty quickly and pretty drastically. Do you believe that's going to happen.
KRAUTHAMMER: Absolutely, I believe it. And I -- look, I went to medical school years ago. I talked to some of my ex-colleagues, as the people who were students with me.
And they say, "How did you know to get out of the business 30 years ago." Well, I didn't. But they're getting out. They're trying to retire desperately.
They've lost their autonomy. They've lost their independence. They've lost their authority. They are working twice as hard because of government reimbursements.
They know it's going to be even worse. They can barely keep up. And a lot of the practices, if you notice and look around, are going out of business.
I mean, the irony is this. We have, without a doubt, going into ObamaCare, the best medical system on earth. However, it was the most expensive. There's no doubt about that.
But rather than attacking the main cause of that added expense, which is the totally insane malpractice system which only exists in this country and nowhere else. A study in Massachusetts found that fully one quarter -- one quarter, Bill, of all referrals, hospitalizations, procedures and treatments, and tests were done for legal reasons, instead of --
O'REILLY: That's right. Unnecessary.
KRAUTHAMMER: -- fixing that. There is not a line on charter reform in 2,500 pages. They're going to save the money by destroying the system. And that's what's going to happen.
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