The health care debate is bringing out the worst in some people, and it seems to me most of those people are on the conservative side. I’m sympathetic to those skeptical of universal health care — I’m a libertarian, after all. But I also know our system is broken and that there should be some kind of government health care for those who cannot afford it.
It’s good to have healthy debate. But some people are not wiling to be open about this issue — it is much like fundamentalists who refuse to question their own faith. When you discuss health care with these people, they stop thinking critically and use labels like “socialism” and “death panels” to stop the argument.
In my experience it’s rare to have rational conversations with people like that — they refuse to even consider what you have to say. Which brings me to this girl who accuses Barney Frank of following “nazism” (aka Obama’s health plan):
How can you get through to someone like that? They’re completely brainwashed. It’s virtually impossible to get them to consider your viewpoint. So we revert to ridicule, which doesn’t convince them they are wrong either.
Is there a better way? Or is that all that’s left for these people?
You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear.
WIN!!!
I liked his answer. When the people like her somehow manage to spread such nonsense there’s just no intelligent way to answer such an idiotic question.
It strikes me as odd that the US doesn’t have universal health care – but then, I don’t know much about how it works over there. Here the gov’t is forced to provide for all citizens, including meds (of course, it’s craptastic, but it’s there).
If Brazil can do it, albeit badly, why can’t the US – a country much richer than ours?
ya know, they lost that train because universal medical health care and education looked too comunist for them.
It’s a different way to understand the government.
In europe, we expect them to help us because they protect us from those monstruos, unethical and satanic transnational companies whose CEOs eat babies for lunch.
In the US the government is only what keeps you away from the true freedom and God and the market laws magically avoids any injustice to happen to you -maybe not to your neighbour, but he deserves it.
“universal medical health care”? sorry, I knew something didn’t look right
Well, can’t argue with the commie implications since Brazil’s gov’t and constitution are socialistic in philosophy (and still manages to be fiercely religious. The wonders of 3rd world countries…).
How does it work in the U.S.? Pony up or die?
The U.S. is a republic. That is, the people are too stupid to govern themselves, but still want a say, so they get to pick the smart people that lead them. Unfortunately as of late, we haven’t been picking smart people to lead us.
For this heath care plan, people are opposing it just because they want something to oppose. These people don’t have ANY idea about what we’re trying to do, they don’t want any idea, and they would oppose anything we come up with because we came up with it. Ultimately, it’s up to Congress to decide what happens with this.
Brazil’s a republic too, yet there we have it.
But yeah, I know what you mean, totally. Different country, same problems…
Are you one of those stupid people or are you one of the smart persons elected to govern? According to your post there is only one of the other.
Not quite. All hospitals are required by law to treat emergencies even if they cannot guarantee they will be paid. However, once the patient has been stabilized, they will make every effort to recuperate the cost, because the government sure as hell won’t cover it. If the patient has no relatives that can pay, the hospital takes a hit, which is a big problem for hospitals in urban areas. Most of those hospitals are non-profit (even, astoundingly, the Cleveland Clinic), and make a substantial portion of their gross from donations.
That said, hospitals are NOT obligated to provide treatment that may be necessary to prolong an unhealthy person’s life if that person is not in an emergency. That is, they might put you on dialysis, but they won’t give you the kidney transplant if you can’t pay for it (even if you are lucky enough to survive long enough to get to the top of the waiting list).
At the same time, insurance companies are very powerful in negotiations with hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, and generally pay FAR less for medical care than the uninsured. The end result is that the people who can least afford it are charged exorbitant fees for basic care. Insurance itself is so expensive, that millions of Americans cannot afford any medical insurance at all.
But socialized healthcare would be a radical left-wing Nazi Communist plot to put bureaucratic Death Panels between Grandma and her doctor . . . or something like that.
In the Commie-Nazi socialist hellhole of Denmark everyone is covered by public healthcare, at a considerably lower cost per capita than what you’re paying in the USA. Nobody has to worry they’ll go without healthcare insurance in case they lose their job or that they’ll have to fight their insurance company in order to get their health expenses covered. You have to pay for some of your medication, and going to the dentist is still expensive, but in general I’d prefer our system to yours any day.
I don’t know the actual cost of the 4-5 months of hospitalization and chemotherapy my mother received for free, but I’m guessing it could’ve been a real problem for an uninsured person in the USA (and apparently for an insured person as well, in quite a few cases).
Ah, Denmark. Can I move there? Please?
Yikes.
That’s all I have to say, really, but on a comparison note:
We have a similar system where it comes to the obligation to attend to emergencies, but there ARE gov’t funded hospitals – that is, if you suffer an accident, any hospital will take you; if you cannot afford it, you’ll be carted off to a public hospital.
The main dilemma is that those hospitals are incredibly bad. They lack funding, they lack staff, they lack equipment and they have to cope with a ridiculous amount of people who depend on them – but they exist, at least, which means there’s at least some hope of treatment (like you said, transplants, and dialysis, and such things are covered by gov’t hospitals, or should be, as well as meds; the gov’t required to pay for cancer, AIDS and other meds that are not widely available in Brazil). For the middle class (like me) it’s more common to have an insurance (expensive), which suffers of the same problem you wrote about.
OTOH, most companies (including gov’t itself) have to provide health care insurance for their employees, which helps somewhat in most cases. The larger the company the more likely better the insurance will be.
It’s interesting how different things evolve in different countries – history does take its toll in the deal.
I am not a Barney Frank fan and I disagree with his health care reform position, but this video improved my image of him. Well done ! We can still admire the good traits of those with whom we disagree !
My arugement would be;
“Why do you WANT death panels and all this horrible shit in the bill? It’s not. We’ve told you it’s not. We’ve outlined and explained how it’s not in there. But you still claim that it is, contrary to all evidence. Why do you WANT this in the bill? You’re a horrible person, and should be ashamed.”
Our current president once had a pastor who believed the emperor on Rome order a “hit job” on Jesus and that the CIA created the AIDS virus
Yay, non sequitur!
I had some crazy pastors too. So?
I’m sure you don’t have had connections to people that you disagree with, right?
My point is that there are plenty of crazy people on the left too.
The point of the post wasn’t to say that “there are only nutjobs on the right,” as any person can see at a moment’s glance that there are nutjobs that fall under any label. The point was to bring up a discussion about how to deal with someone (anyone) who has disconnected themselves so far from reality that reasonable discourse seems implausible.
Thanks for the laugh though…
MarkD.
Our previous president thought we were in a cosmic battle between good (Jesus) and evil (Islam). He thought there were demons roaming the earth, causing mischief.
As a child, I went to a church where the priest fondled little boys (not me, BTW). Does that make me a pederast?
Um, totally, Craig! ;-)
Frank Barney rules!
Just one bullet.
I saw a comment somewhere that said “Ridicule is lawful where reason has no hope of success.”
I suppose someone, somewhere on the Internet is whining that Frank’s utter dismissal of Miss Wackaloon was just too mean and that we won’t ever win over the birthers, truthers, freepers and every crackhead in between with sarcasm and that because of Frank’s comments, health care reform will never be passed.
Barney Frank’s response to the ” LaRouche” follower was right on time. Barney Frank has been one of my favorites as far as politicians go for a while now. I saw Barney Frank completely destroy Bill O’Reily intellectually one time and never raise his voice once
“Ridicule is lawful where reason has no hope of success.”
That’s about right (and that’s about the situation Rep. Frank was in).
Though, people tend to give up on reason awfully quickly and then use that as an excuse.
From Frank Rich’s in today’s NYT:
“Should Obama fail to deliver serious reform because his administration treats the pharmaceutical and insurance industries as deferentially as it has the banks, that would be shameful. Should he fail because he in any way catered to a decimated opposition party that has sunk and shrunk to its craziest common denominator, that would be ludicrous.”
I love Barney Frank. I don’t know too much about his policies, but he’s seems like a rational, likable guy. He’s usually very clever.
IMO, he’s got good instincts when it comes to personal freedoms. Not so much with the economics. I actually met him about five years ago when he spoke at the local university; an interesting guy at the very least.
A friend of mine coined the term “Buzz Aldrining” for this as a shorthand for either public ridicule or hilarious violence after assessing that rational discourse is impossible.
Buzz Aldrin punches moonlanding conspiracy theorist.
Buzz Aldrin’s Conspiracy Smackdown
While Frank did a good job beating down the loony LaRouchie, I don’t think that equates to a good defense of health care reform as envisioned in HB3200. Honest and honorable people can still be against the changes proposed for very good reasons.
I’m not suggesting anyone has done this here, but it would be a mistake to paint all opponents of health care reform with a too broad a brush. What is being proposed is very complicated and very expensive; there are plenty of good reasons to oppose it without defining oneself as a greedy, corporation-loving, baby-eating, monster.
… he says with baby flesh hanging from his corporation loving teeth. WE KNOW ABOUT YOU GUYS!!!!
Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. It tastes like veal.
I think in another thread we determined that it’s even Kosher as long as you don’t eat it with cheese.
I think the appropriate description is “finger-lickin’ good”. But only if you have the special sauce.
Who’s painting with a broad brush? It was an insult directed at a purposely ignorant fearmonger.
Who’s painting with a broad brush?
I think this is in reference to comments such as this, above:
“For this heath care plan, people are opposing it just because they want something to oppose. These people don’t have ANY idea about what we’re trying to do, they don’t want any idea, and they would oppose anything we come up with because we came up with it.”
That’s a pretty broad brush.
BZZZT.
If he was talking about an above post it could have been said.
“I’m not suggesting anyone has done this here, but it would be a mistake to paint all opponents of health care reform with a too broad a brush.”
Read more carefully. I said “comments such as this”. I choose my words pretty carefully (which often gets me accused of “playing word games” and “picking nits”), but I think precision in language is important (i.e. “words mean things”). And it is indeed comments such as the one I quoted that he was complaining about, namely comments that implied or outright accused opponents of this health care reform bill of not having honest or honorable intentions in their opposition.
I have to say, I’ve never been game-show buzzered on teh Internetz before. :-)
“I think precision in language is important (i.e. “words mean things”).”
This seems to run counter to your accusations of ‘Prescriptivism’ when someone points out failures in word usage.
You are not the first philosophy student I’ve talked to that is capable of holding both ideas in their head at the same time, but I still find it odd.
Fair enough. I don’t think that words are given definitions intrinsically, or that stability of a language is in itself a good. However, at any given time in any given context, words have basically stable meanings (otherwise communication would be very problematic). Some subsets of language are far more stable than others; technical argot is preferred by experts in whatever field precisely because the person can be confident that the words’ definitions are (as) precise (as human language can be) within that field at that moment. In these technical areas, prescriptivism is a necessary adjunct to that stability.
On the other hand, when it comes to vernacular language, I tend to think that prescriptivist impulse isn’t so much wrong as pointless, because words in the vernacular are molded primarily by their users, and since they are used by so many different users in a diverse range of malleable contexts, setting a one-size-fits-all rule would be practically impossible. And even if it were possible, nobody would follow it. But even in vernacular, “words mean things” as teased out from their context. When a person uses a specific word, it is reasonable to assume they meant to communicate a specific concept; how successful that communication ends up being depends on how careful the person is who constructed the communication, as well as how perceptive and intuitive the person is that attempts to decode it.
Practically speaking, this woman can’t be convinced, but people watching this meeting who are on the fence might be brought back to reality by her strangehold on reality being mocked exactly as Frank did. 100% appropriate. Net effects of rhetoric are mostly the result of how bystanders react.
I’m a student nurse working on hospital wards for the NHS. I mention this for context.
How can the same Wrong Whingers, who spout shite about kind and gentle Jeeeeebus and claim Christian virtue as being all their own work, also think that allowing people to suffer and die because they’re poor and ill is preferable to universal healthcare?
I genuinly cannot get my head around that kind of unthinking, hypocritical cruelty. They want people to suffer and die, and they also want people to think they’re the good guys? That dog just ain’t gonna hunt!
I do not understand any first world country where, if I get hit by a car and injured badly, I won’t get fixed up for free. The US is the only such country, to my knowledge.
Nicely put. I often think about the same hypocrisy with republicans / conservative christians. They donate tons of money to convert people in other countries to Christianity, then authorize spending our tax dollars to build infrastructure in other countries (sometimes b/c we already spent money blowing it up), but don’t want to spend our tax dollars in our own country to actually help our own people?
Another right-wing nut….
A while back I posted an article about the “religious left” who are supporting health care reform. A conservative friend of mine re-posted the same article, but in opposition to reform, and he argued that the goal of reform is not affordable health care but rather universal, “free” health care. He then played the socialism card.
To which I responded:
1) And what’s wrong with “universal free health care” in a country that can afford it?
2) Since when does socialized medicine (even though the public option doesn’t even go that far, at least universally) equal socialism? As I see it, we’re still a free market economy, still a constitutional republic, etc., etc., but with a public option in place for health care — and that’s a long way from being socialists.
Ridicule isn’t the answer, although that’s certainly the temptation. If you ever figure it out, let me know.
*posted on Facebook
Don’t you know that governments actually helping their less fortunate citizens makes baby Jesus cry? What kind of Christian are you?
Maybe ridicule IS the answer, but you don’t like it because you can see that your beliefs are easily ridiculed.
I’ve gotta say that I would classify Barney Frank’s reply here as an appropriate response to a ridiculous statement. No ambiguity there.
I’m mystified by the whole US healthcare debate. As a non-American living in a country with both public universal basic healthcare and private health insurance, I completely fail to understand why there is any opposition at all to the idea of a publicly funded scheme, let alone a huge controversy. I find it completely bizarre. I don’t suppose anyone could enlighten me?
The psychological and political scars of the Cold War are deep in the US, esp. among the generations that were of age during that ideological conflict. A great deal of reflexive fear is felt towards anything that is socialist in any way since three or four generations were fairly thoroughly taught that that was the ideology of the enemy and therefore un-American. Socialism, thus, remains a powerful political epithet to throw at any government interference into the marketplace, whether it be justified or not.
The accusations of fascism, on the other hand, are just plain wacky, even here.To some extent, since the 70s or so fascism has been the go-to generic wacky-political-attack-label, used by the left and the right at wildly inappropriate times, but it never, ever makes any sense.
Thanks. That makes at least a little more sense.
I don’t get it, here in Belgium we have that kind of healt care as long as I know.
I am rarely sick but I don’t care to pay an insurance for those that do need medical attention.
How selfish can you be of not caring about others.
And one day you too or your partner might lose your job and become sick and need health care. What then?
I don’t know the complete details but In Belgium we get a fee for the insurancy I guess it is only 200 euros/year for me. But when you get into hospital only part of it gets paid, like only a room with 4 people. So you can get a second insurance that covers anything that does no get paid with the first general medical insuranc.
It does not mean that all of my medical things are free, only thos that are acceptde by the insurancy company. So if you have a rare sickness, and need special medicine it could be that you have to pay it for yourself.
Also if you fall ill, and cannot work, this insurancy will pay your wage, much less than your job but at least you have an income.
Come to think of, these religious people actually have no need of a medical health care. It is a waste of money. All they need is prayer and a miracle. So maybe we exclude them from the healt plan.
lol like talking to a dining room table!!! reminds me of when I was a kid praying to walls – or crappy paintings of non-existent figures.
To a lesser extent, my parents are like this (not in their insanity, but in their refusal to calmly argue or provide/discuss any facts). As someone who has read through both bills circulating congress right now (for work, not for personal enjoyment), I’ve found that the easiest way to “get through” to someone is to remain calm and present to them the most concrete facts you can. It’s frustrating, of course, but that is the only way I’ve found to remain sane. Have a rebuttal for every “fact” they throw at you; use empirical data to support your claims; lay things out in a simple-to-understand way.
Now don’t get me wrong; some people are just “too far gone” to be reasoned with, but I’ve been surprised at how many flag-waving chest-pumping socialism-hating conservative friends of mine have responsed first with anger, then with confusion, then with (minor) concession, to me when I actually know what I’m talking about. Because of my job, health care is the one area where I feel I can chime in and contribute facts, point out fallacies, and generally facilitate a nice talk.
It also helps to point out legitimate arguments against the legislation. Then you can at least find some sane ground to agree on.
My experience frequently. I can listen, and in the past have been open to ideas – which had me at a distinct disadvantage in the unequal discussion!
It must have taken decades to get the shocking idea through my mind that some other people weren’t even remotely like me. They were not going to let themselves be confused by any facts! Or reasoning.
Scott D. Weitzenhoffer obviously had similar experiences:
“Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.”
- Scott D. Weitzenhoffer
What would you expect someone to listen to reason when their views are not based on reason?