Bad analogy of the day
July 01, 2009 3:47 pm ET by Jamison Foser
ABC's John Stossel enthusiastically endorses this health care nonsense from a Wall Street Journal op-ed:
"We need a public plan to keep the private plans honest."
But then why stop there? Eating is even more important than health care, so shouldn't we have government-run supermarkets "to keep the private ones honest"? After all, supermarkets clearly put profits ahead of feeding people. And we can't run around naked, so we should have government-run clothing stores to keep the private ones honest.
Supermarkets make money by selling people food. Clothing stores make money by selling people clothes. If they don't give people food/clothing, they don't get money.
Insurance companies, on the other hand, make money by selling people insurance -- and they make even more money by selling insurance, and then denying claims.
Surely even John Stossel can see the difference.
Let's see. We have 50 million Americans without healthcare--most from working families. So, under Stossel's the Clown's reasoning, what if we had 50 million Americans who didn't have any food?
Oh, never mind.
It could also be that his future income depends on not grasping the difference.
Health problems lack the voluntary nature of buying boats. No one plans on a heart attack. Health is therefore fundamentally different from other types of expenditures that one makes under capitalism. Ergo, one can't use a system for covering health that works perfectly well for buying boats.
"Thanks for your payment, but we've decided it's not in our best interest to give you these shoes today. Make sure you come back and see us again!"
Teabaggers and bad analogies go can hand-in-hand. ....paging princess...
He's afraid his taxes might go up a little.
One HUGE difference between Grocery Stores and Insurance Companies is that Grocery stores don't lock out millions of potential customers because of "pre-existing conditions". If they did, then maybe the Government would have to step in.
Even the precious Republican "free market" argument fails when it comes to Health Insurance. In the free market, you should be able to buy a product if you have the money. That is not always the case with insurance. I, like many others, have the money for premiums, but I cannot buy Health Insurance on the open market as an individual.
it is fascinating. Countless times at this site, I've tried to make analogies (some pretty good, some not so great) to illustrate a point that a conservative was having trouble with. Usually it involved applying their logic to differetn specifics, a topic that wasn't so emotionally charged for them.
The response I got most often was either "That's not exactly the same thing!" (of course not, then it wouldn't be an analogy, it would be a redundancy), or "You're changing the subject!" (Meaning that the abstract thinking needed for an analogy was just too much for them).
I wish people would stop comparing healthcare to other commodities.
Insurance companies, on the other hand, make money by selling people insurance -- and they make even more money by selling insurance, and then denying claims.
Surely even John Stossel can see the difference."
Probably he does... but since he is a paid for corporate whore... he ignores the facts and speaks the talking-points like the a good little minion.
A person cannot perform surgery on himself.