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Health Care Reform Bill and the Town Hall Meetings

I am annoyed by the recent town hall meetings with some U.S. senators and representatives. With angry citizens who are clearly misinformed by the conservative media and conservative politicians, rational discourses regarding Obama’s health care reform bill seem impossible. How can one have a rational discourse with anyone who is overwhelmed by his or her irrational impulses, in addition to deeply held false beliefs? They are misinformed considering that their claims are drawn from fallacious inferences (e.g. slippery slope, red herring, straw man, ad hominem, etc.). They are moved by their fears, prejudices, paranoia, insecurities, false assumptions, etc. Of course, conservative media (like Fox News) and conservative politicians (like Sarah Palin) are responsible for fanning the flame with fallacious, sensationalist, exaggerated, and caricatured claims about the proposed health care reform bill. Loud mouths with messages lacking in substance usually work in inspiring the masses. Substantive messages are usually communicated by people who cannot even connect with the masses. So, we are now in a big mess. I wish that people who listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, and Beck try to listen to Maddow, Olbermann, Matthews, Stewart and Colbert, in order to balance their opinions regarding this matter. I’m aware that both groups have their specific biases that shape the ways they view the issues.

As a matter of fact, it’s more annoying to hear Christian leaders who support right-wing conservatives in spreading fallacious, sensationalist, exaggerated, and caricatured readings of Obama’s health care reform bill. Many of such leaders are involved in politically partisan churches. They twist the proposed bill in such a way that they turn it into something that is suspiciously unchristian, in order to satisfy their politically partisan biases. As a Christian, I am embarrassed to be associated with such Christian leaders. Instead of engaging in intellectual discourses regarding the issue, they stoop so low by incarnating into annoying jesters.

Of course, the bill is possibly impractical, considering our current economic condition. But we need to be clear on the general issues that we need to address. Firstly, we need to address the issue of whether the proposed bill is generally beneficial to Americans. Secondly, we need to address the issue of whether the U.S. has enough resources to fund the applications of the proposed bill. We need to address the issues in that order. If it is not generally beneficial for us, then there is no reason to determine the sufficiency of our resources for funding its applications. I am assuming that the two issues can be objectively addressed. There are sufficient reasons for believing that it is generally beneficial to Americans. However, it is not clear whether we have enough resources to fund its applications.

Comments

Unknown said…
Here I am going to present a "lesser of two evils" argument:
If the bill is generally beneficial to Americans, then it can be reasonably justified to continue our pattern of spending by which we (through our legislators) usually allocate resources to pet projects regardless of whether there are enough resources to fund it. So, I would argue that while it would be best to reform both health care and fiscal spending patterns, perhaps we can be content to reform health care in a way that is consistent with our current (flawed, unsustainable) fiscal spending patterns. Subsequent to this, we may be able to focus on reforming that element of government.

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