(1)There's no way of telling when those still shots were taken.
That's right. But except for Fox News -- I tend to believe video/audio evidence of this sort. It might all be phony. Until proven otherwise, it is rational to accept it.
(2) The video and speech were given for emotional appeal which people are tired of hearing.
Only hungry babies are children are so fragile that their crying can be excused. These are grown adults who acted like children.
(3) The women tries to argue that we are forced to absorb the cost of he daughters actions.
Midge Hough, or as you call her "The Woman," lost her daughter-in-law and unborn fetus or "baby" or "child" as you would call it.
Alright, she argues that the cost of treating her uninsured daughter-in-law was more than the cost would have been had she been insured.
American's are forced to pay more than twice as much as the citizens in almost every other nation on earth. We pay just less than twice as much as those in a handful of countries.
Apparently you think that it is just fine to force American's to pay so much more and at the same time American's get much less for each dollar than the people of every other industrialized nation on earth.
(4) What would happen in a single payer system?
Maybe American's are too stupid to manage a single payer system well. This possibility must be taken seriously.
On the other hand we might not be more stupid than all the nations of the world that have a single payer system. If we aren't more stupid than the system should save us just as much money as those countries save and our health care system should improve to the level that those countries enjoy.
All of this assumes we are not more stupid than they are.
(5) People are tired of emotions and want more logic.
I would say, children tire easily. Ms Hough did supply a dose of logic -- you confuse the premise of the argument with absence of logic.
Premise 1: Our current health care system kills people -- such as her daughter and her fetus or her "unborn child" (You would be prefer the emotionally charged term -- unborn child I presume).
Premise 2: Killing ordinary innocent people is wrong and we should avoid it.
Premise 3: A better way of funding health care would prevent many deaths due to lack of health care.
Therefore: Support reform of funding health care.
I guess you think that the canons of logic restrict what can appear as premises in an argument. This is a bizarre view of logic.
Only arguments that begin with "let us suppose", are worthy of our mature adult attention.
Logical arguments of the sort as Ms Hough's argument are typical in social contexts. Her argument begins with a claim that grips our attention: her daughter-in-law died because of inadequate health care.
This is exactly the sort of argument opponents of health care funding reform use.
They start out with a premise such as: health care reform will fund death committees that will kill grandma.
Arguments of this sort were the subject of Stephen Toulmin's 1958 book "The Uses of Argument" which has never gone out of print.
http://books.google.com/books?id=8UYgegaB1S0C&dq=Stephen+Toulmin+%22The+Uses+of+Argument%22&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=SksLS_6IMo-GMvWV0dMC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=falseIf by logic you mean argument that grabs are attention: that is what these people heard from Ms Hough.
Columbus Townhall > Forum > Politics > National > Health Care (Moderators: Peter, CTH Public Relations)
Topic: Health Care Reform
