healthcare reform and the appeal to emotion
“There are actual sick people with actual families feeling actual pain and facing actual tragedy because of this grotesque, wasteful, perverse, immoral, evil system that we labor under. Health care reform is a necessity because this is true and the fact of its truth tells us that change has to come.” ~ Freddie, on the healthcare reform
Freddie is right and he is wrong in this post. He is right because there are some opponents of healthcare reform who really don’t care about the human cost of all of this, about the real, suffering people out there who are, as Freddie put it, being “raped” by our current system.
These calloused, uncaring people Freddie is talking about really do exist. Many are a subspecies of the population known as politicians. Some are another subspecies known commonly as pundits. And of course there are many, many people who are ill-informed enough by their political leaders and news sources to think that the real threat is not a lack of affordable insurance but rather some creeping government takeover. I personally think that this is a bit of a dramatic position to take, whether or not there is some truth to it (and there is).
I think the human cost is very real and very troublesome, and writing it off because the government may become more involved in our insurance is just silly, though we should be honest about the repurcussions of more government in anything (rationing, restriction of choice, etc.). These are necessary parts of government involvement in anything, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing all the time. I have personally benefited from Medicaid and realize full well that the government can be a force for good. It can be a piece to the societal stability puzzle.
But Freddie is also wrong in that he is conflating the reality of the debate with the caricature of the debate. Or rather, he is taking the caricature of his opponents and leveling an accusation against that caricature rather than at real people. Admittedly, the leadership on the right makes this very easy to do, but doing it is nonetheless wrong. It leaves no room for honest opponents. [Read more →]
November 30, 2009 45 Comments
