Thursday, September 7, 2017

American Fallacy: Health Care

Fact Check.org released "clarification" to all the false argumentation in the media (bloggosphere inclusive).

Now lets examine the tactics of rhetoric used by such false claimants:

PRO-INSURANCE LOBBY;






  • Government Will Decide What Care I Get; Appeal to Emotion (Fear)






  • Private Insurance Will Be Illegal; Appeal to Emotion (Fear)






  • The House Bill Requires Suicide Counseling; Straw Man with a dash of Appeal to Fear (for those who are religiously against suicide)






  • Medicare Benefits Will Be Slashed; Appeal to Fear (in sales we call this Fear of Loss)






  • Illegal Immigrants Will Be Covered; This is tricky... I am going to say in short order this is probably a Masked man fallacy, whereby substituting the word legal with illegal a whole barrage of fear and loathing can be unsheathed by jingoistic elements.


  • PRO-REFORM LOBBY;






  • The Bill Is Paid For; I would put this as a non-sequitur, but it could be more sinisterly interpreted as Irrelevant Conclusion, an argument that diverts attention away from a fact in dispute rather than address it directly.






  • Families Will Save $2,500; Bare assertion fallacy. Even though there may be some savings, the nature of that savings is internal not pocketbook according to the estimates.


  • ------

    So, we can see the Pro-Insurance Lobby is using pretty much a fear (argumentum ad baculum) to countervail the very factual fear invoked by (just one example of the argument) that "Medicare as-is will become bankrupt in less than a decade."

    That raises legitimate fear for someone who is 58 ~ 64 who expects to have a life expectancy of 75 ~ 80 years where the last five to ten years require the most medical assistance!

    The translation to Baby Boomers (all of you) = "Right when you need it the very most you wont have any guarantee for medical assistance or coverage!"

    That pretty much should raise some fears for a generation which hasn't collectively been as kind to their bodies as they could have been (paging Doctor Leary).

    ***

    The Pro-reform group seems, like many Democratic coalitions to have a broad range of messages, but in this instance not very many fallacies. I would not defend misstatements, misleading, misdirection, or, worst, false argumentation, but in this case there seems to be such an abundance of argumentum ad nauseam from the Pro-Insurance groups-- wherein a false thing is repeated over and over without nuance to the discussion, such that fatigue is the result (and by association the false assertion becomes true).

    This morning a former British Minister for Health all but ridiculed the red herring arguments coming from the Pro-Insurance Lobby.

    We in USA (ranked 37th in the World) are painfully misled by poor arguments by those who would interfere with the Hippocratic Principle in our democratic republics hope to become more respectable, lead a more decent lifestyle, and improve the health, welfare and happiness of our citizenry.

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