Rush Limbaugh has promised to leave America for Costa Rica if "all that stuff gets implemented."  He is vague on what "all that stuff" means, although the run-up to this statement talks about doctors not being able to opt out of the federal medical care system.  Basically Rush seems to be saying that if private doctors (ones who choose not to practice on the hypothetical new federal system) are outlawed, he will move to Costa Rica.

This is of course hilarious, because Costa Rica has a nationalized system of health care.  Although admittedly Rush would have a hard time finding a country in the world without a nationalized health care system.  They are pretty rare on the ground.  The United States is the only developed nation without health care, so the next runner-up would be developing nations like those of sub-Saharan Africa.  I hear Sierra Leone is lovely this time of year!  (Not.)

Costa Rica has two health care systems: public and private.  You can pay more to get private health insurance, and go to private doctors and hospitals.  Or you can go to the public doctors and hospitals, which are operated on taxes.  Costa Rica's private hospitals offer top-quality medical care at a tiny fraction of the cost for equivalent procedures in a comparable American hospital.  This has lead to a significant increase in "medical tourism" in Costa Rica, where Americans travel there for medical treatments at a huge relative discount.

Rush blurting out the name of Costa Rica just makes it clear that he doesn't actually know anything about anything.  For example, he refuses to recognize that Hawaii, the state in which he recently proclaimed having gotten "the best health care in the world"?  Is one of the few states in America which has universal health care.  I wonder if Rush would have been so generous in his praise if he had known that he was benefiting from universal health care?

Another question we have to ask is, why will Rush move, instead of staying here and fighting it out?  Rush has previously been extremely critical of people who made the same vow, like liberals who swore they would move to Canada if Bush was elected for a second time.  

But Limbaugh has already voted with his feet in the past, announcing last year that he would sell his part-time home in New York City when they raised taxes beyond what Rush felt was appropriate.  Instead of remaining in New York and using his residency as a platform for protest, he simply abandoned the city in a dramatic gesture, what's known on internet forums as a "flounce."

Rush may also have miscalculated the effect of his words upon the American population.  His audience is small and growing smaller, and a lot of people would vote for just about anything if it meant that Rush Limbaugh would leave our shores, never to darken our airwaves again.

I look forward to Rush's correction on this issue, once he finds out that Costa Rica has universal health care.  Well, but he never corrected anything he said about Hawaii, he just counts on his audience being idiots with short-term memory loss.  So don't hold your breath.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user Stuck In Customs