Letter: Health care letter had 2 key errors

From: Mike Zieles

Columbus

I feel it is necessary to respond to key logical errors in Kermet Merl Key’s letter, with self-fulfilling headline “Confusion becomes norm in regards to health care.” It starts the issue on health insurance and of cost increases in past health insurance versus Obamacare. There are two errors in the opinion piece, which is decidedly pro-Obamacare and expanding central government control of everyone’s health care.

First of the logical fallacies is the use of dimensionally unequal mathematical comparisons. The 1999 to 2009 health insurance costs rise of 130 percent (over 10 years) was then compared to the recent Obamacare cost growth rate of 36 (annually). Thus, blindly comparing 130 percent as higher to a 36 percent, then making the claim Obamacare increases are lower, which is incorrect. Applying the 36 percent yearly Obamacare growth and calculating a 10-year total, the answer of 10-year percentage increase is a 1,490-percent increase. Or if we calculate the yearly growth rate for 1999 to 2009, we get 9.7 percent, far less than the 2013 to 2017 annual rates of 36 percent.

Note: It is best to ignore any metric about years 2009-2013 since Obamacare did not actually kick in on mandating a new common co-op in place of real insurance, which began in 2013. The use of unequal dimensional comparisons was hoping to sway any uncritical reader by stating that facts were used. This fallacy was then used to sway others that the Republicans will be bringing higher cost health insurance, by repealing Obamacare. I can only say if they repealed the entirety of Obamacare, by the example stated, health insurance will be lower. Apologies to those who were responsible and lost the more cost effective health insurance plans that big government politicians said you could keep.

The second logical fallacy was claiming the answer is for everyone to have a freebie, of receiving Medicaid coverage and not see that program’s total cost go up. This is playing a game of pretending that adding everyone to a program that pays for a small part of society will not result in further confiscatory government tax increases. The leftist endgame here is to turn a majority of health providers into answering to a government bureaucratic entity, over the free market value judgment demands of society. You can get what you’re asking for by emigrating to Canada, the UK, or try Bernie’s Sander’s forgotten socialist idyllic of Venezuela.

Many people from foreign countries come to the USA for new, more effective and available healthcare, which a profit-motive society provides. Going the way of socialists is a craven choice for security and equality of lower availability and lesser outcomes. We’re the land of the free, and we need more of the brave. Oh, and we need more people with desires for truth and critical logical thought, as long as the majority of the media continue making “news” and opinion with specious rhetoric for more government.