"Look, these doctors approve of Obama's health care plan! That must mean it's good!"
Your opponent probably knows how to use Google, also, and can come up with this one:
"These doctors DON"T support Obama's plan! You should always listen to doctors!"
2 - Discuss Isolated Incidents
"Little Timmy is not covered by this plan - we can't pass it!"
The opposition of this comment can simply say:
"Little Billy doesn't have health insurance - we MUST pass it!"
These sob stories tug at the heartstrings but don't get us closer to knowing what to do.
3 - Quote Pundits Who Agree with YouIf you want to change someone's mind be sure not to do it by quoting people that they will not like. That won't help.
This is useless. No one even has to read their opinions to know what these people will say. Quoting them adds nothing to the conversation and few people abandon their convictions so easily because you found support for your side of the argument.
4 - Discuss How it Works in Another Country
"These Canadian health care workers don't like their system! We should avoid it!"
"The British LIKE their system! We should try it!"
"The British LIKE their system! We should try it!"
Both arguments have been proposed ad nauseam and have successfully nullified each other.
5 - Conspiracy Theories
"Obama is trying to make us a socialist nation!"
"Pharmacautical companies are paying people to protest Obama's health care!"
"Pharmacautical companies are paying people to protest Obama's health care!"
None of these things really matter in this conversation. No one changes their mind about political ideology because a supposedly sinister plan is afoot.
Unless this is your first day on the internet, you already know that Google can back up any point of view that is out there. Let's move the conversation into the more intellectual side of things.
Who will benefit from this plan? How many people are actually not included in it? Is it worth passing this plan even with those risks? Will it lower the quality of health care for those who already have it? Who will run it and what control will people have over the program if we do not like how it is run? How much will it cost and will it help me if I am laid off? These are good questions that are not being discussed in most public forums. Instead, the usual name calling and irrelevant article linking goes on. Think it through.
(Notice that I'm not telling you how you should feel about this issue. That's your decision - I'm just trying to make the conversation better. If you'd rather call Obama a Socialist or claim that the tri-lateral commission is controlling our health than take your conversation back to 4chan or MySpace where it belongs.)
2 comments:
Appeals to logic and intelligence - clearly you are a rabid socialist who will do anything to make sure my grandparents and unborn children die.
You know one of the things I like about you, Adam: you blog well about the things I only think about (or complain about to my wife after watching the news).
Maybe this makes me look dumb (wouldn't be the first time), but I still want to know how the government being involved in healthcare is going to make it better? Also, were would government get such a power, and what would the abuses be if government is given such a power. If we follow the axiom that power corrupts, then the more power we give the government over our lives, the more likely it is to be a corrupted power.
I am afraid that I am a minimalist when it comes to the government. Government is necessary, and it does a few things very well, everything else should be left to private citizens.
What is in our best interest? A government entry into the health care system? We all know about the bureaucracies and red tape that government agencies create, and we have to deal with.
Even if it never becomes like the socialized medicine prevalent in so much of the world, do we really want the government red tape, and bureaucracy, and the expenses of those, to deal with.
Do we really want government officials deeper into our lives? We so greatly prize privacy, what about this, your medical records are now governmental records.
At some point in this, a government official, or a group of them, will make decisions about your health care, and you will have little or no recourse. What then?
If you want to say that health care costs are severely over inflated, I would agree. Last time I went to the doctor, I got to see her for maybe 2-3 minutes. The bill was over a hundred dollars.
Maybe we, as the customers, need to look into the costs associated with providing good quality health care. Maybe we should start paying for health care out of our own pockets, we would notice the exorbitant costs, and complain, or just go somewhere else.
When you take your car to the mechanic, do you get an estimate? Do you find out what work needs to be done, and if you think its too high, do you go somewhere else? Of course. Why not have health care the same way?
We need to investigate why health care costs so much, and find proper solutions for those problems, not just throw money at the big problem and hope it goes away.
To quote some long haired guy, "you might say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one"
My name is David, and I might just look dumb.
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