Rep. Weiner: "Healthcare is not a commodity"

A great blog by Rod Dreher - a conservative that is usually good at thinking with logic and facts.

Why I'm in favor of health care reform - Tuesday August 18, 2009

In the great new book "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture," Ellen Ruppel Shell explains how psychological research has proved that "as a rule humans tend to push aside difficult questions in favor of simpler questions that they can answer easily." We're all like this; it's in our nature. She also talks about how research shows that both logic and emotion are necessary to decision-making, but that emotion is by far the more powerful deciding factor.

The question then becomes, which questions (and which answers) connect more effectively with our emotions? In a sobering interview with Guernica magazine, a former top insurance executive named Wendell Potter explains how he worked to fugaboo and manipulate the public on the matter of health care reform.

Guernica: The Times story really attests to the power of opponents of healthcare reform; don't most Americans favor reform and some type of universal coverage?

Wendell Potter: They are in favor of it, yes. But the industry knows through many years of focus group testing what messages scare people. And the term you mentioned a few minutes ago, "government takeover," is one of those terms that they've tested and know will scare the bejesus out of people. They know that in the past, people have been so afraid of anything that approaches socialism that you'll hear that comparison all the time; that if we go with reform, we will have a government takeover of healthcare; that we'll be on the slippery slope toward socialism."

Read the entire blog for some enlightening information.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/08/why-im-in-favor-of-health-care.html#more

julie, thanks for pointing out yet another reasoned post by dreher.

i wonder how long it will be before he's a conservative-turned-democrat. there are many high-profile, former republicans who have turned their back on their party and the shenanigans of big industries (like oil, tobacco, and insurance) who have the money and the means and the power and the research to bend public opinion their way. these companies can buy their political safety by manufacturing "science" and by setting up these test groups to know what words to use and how to use them by way of marketing.

"emotion is by far the more powerful deciding factor"

which is exactly why limbaugh and fox news are out there to rile up the people into hysterical frenzies. we saw this during the campaign, try to scare people with racial issues, lies about raising taxes on the middle class and small business, throwing out words like "communist" and "socialist" and calling obama a terrorist. michele did all of those things on this very blog, and she's doing it still, even though not one of their earlier nightmares has come true.