Thothblog

The other day I had a very lively and spirited conversation with a friend of mine who is very much an enigma.  This is a guy who loved Ron Paul and would have voted for him in a heartbeat.  On the other end, he had no love for John McCain (many didn’t) and so when it came time to cast his vote he, like 52% of Americans, voted for ol’ Barry Obama.  I respect that he felt he was voting for positive change and hope in a better future.  Idealism is great and it can’t fully die or things like hope go away.  However, this is a guy who 3 month’s into the new regime is loving Obama’s policy changes and what is the most amazing thing? He is a business man by trade.  Unfortunately, his heart is bigger than his head.  His feelings and emotions control and supersede his more rationale thinking.  Typical debates evolve like this:

Liberal: “I love what Barry is doing because I want poor people to have healthcare and this is the best way to do it! And you won’t have to pay as much.”

Common Senser: ALERT ALERT…About to Leave Rationale Thought Zone!!!  At this point the Common Senser is thinking to themselves, what avenue do I go down first since we have 3 treacherous roads.  There is of course the “What do you mean this is the best way for everyone to get Healthcare?” or the “How am I going to pay less?” or the very dangerous, “Well, yeah everyone having healthcare is great but…”.  I believe we are all familiar with a similar line “I want everyone to own a home..”  That worked out well.

I generally begin with, “Currently I can walk into any hospital in the United States and by law, regardless of my economic standing, they have to treat me.  So you want to offer everyone free healthcare in addition to this, by increasing the budget by 680 billion dollars?  On top of that, I am going to pay less in taxes towards healthcare by doing so?  And the government is going to manage this entire system?”

This is always said with some skepticism and thus we begin the logically fallacious responses the average liberal will make:

1. Appeal to Emotion:  Poor people having health care makes people feel good, therefore this plan is good.
   When someone goes down this road, stop them damn quick.  This is a major one, because they like to invoke the”You don’t want socialized Healthcare for everybody, do you hate people?”  If you are attempting to have a discussion and this is the other side’s argument, stop the discussion now. You won’t get anywhere with them.  These people are too narrow minded on the helping people is good idea to actually contemplate the good and bad ways of accomplishing such a feat.
2. Appeal to Common Practice:  Europe has socialized healthcare therefore it is good.
   This is one of my favorite ones, because to an untrained eye it does make a little bit of sense.  Wow, if Europe is doing it and also Canada, Cuba, China and Russia, everyone else can’t be wrong, right?  WRONG!  Sadly, the fact that a majority of people choose to do something does not make it right.  Healthcare or really any governmental discussion worth having is too complex to resort to “But other people do it”.  When presented with this argument, try to get into the roots of that idea. Yes, many places may have socialized healthcare, but that doesn’t mean it works well or is better than the US system.  Get some facts in the quiver! Arm yourself with sources! You should be good to go.
3. Straw Man:  “You say we shouldn’t socialize healthcare?”  ”Why would you want to treat the poor people that way?”
   In this tactic, the liberal will change the argument of socialized health care being bad to not helping poor people is wrong.  The problem with this is that a Common Senser is arguing not that helping people is bad, but that socialized healthcare is a poor way to do it.  When this rebuttal flares up, bring it right back to center as quickly as possible.  Interject if you have to, but make sure to force the point that you are not discussing helping people, but socialistic healthcare is bad.
4. Ad Ignorantiam, the Burden of Proof:  “If socializing healthcare is so bad, what’s the better solution?”
   This is a tricky one because I have seen many a Common Senser get lulled into defending their position of why an idea is bad by having to defend some secondary idea that is “better” than the first.  Don’t let liberals do that.  Whether or not you have a better idea that is erroneous to the current topic of Socialized Health Care being bad.  Don’t get caught in this web. Politely remind your fellow discussee that the merits of your idea do not relate to the merits (or lack there of) of their idea.
5. Apogogical argument or Reductio ad Absurdum:  “If socialized Health Care is bad, then how come Cuba had one of the best healthcare programs in the world”
   This argument would normally apply to just a simple factual fallacy.  However, some of the arguments I have heard are so ridiculous that I have stretched slightly the reductio ad absurdum argument to include these statements.  This kind of argument is where you have to break out the knowledge on their ass.  I appreciate that people love to treat Michael Moore films as documentaries and fact check on Wikipedia.  This however is bad practice.  For the sake of this road I am going to map out some key points.

How do we meet the ridiculous statements epitomized by something like: Cuba has one of the world’s greatest Health Care Systems.
For that particular statement, try any of the following:

The Cuban government appropriates currently a smaller percentage of its budget to healthcare than Jamaica, Costa Rica, or the Dominican Republic.
Cuban Healthcare has been dubbed Medical Apartheid and is well established in “health tourism”
Check Section 1705 of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992. Turns out the US embargo does NOT apply to medicine and associated supplies.
Now, those who really like to get into it, they may try the numbers game, so here are the numbers:

Cuba’s gross National Income per Capita is not available, Cuba doesn’t release that info, US is 44,070
Life Expectancy at Birth M/F:   Cuba is 76/80.  US is 75/80
Healthy Life Expectancy at Birth M/F:  Cuba is 67/70. US is 67/71
Probability of Dying under 5:  Cuba is 7.  US is 8
Probability of Dying between 15 and 60:   Cuba is 127/82.  US is  137/80
Infant Mortality rates are identical as of 2000.

Here are some sources too:
World Health Organization
Pan American Health Organization
Cuban American national Foundation