Health Care Reform and its Current Relevance

I will be analyzing the timing of an opinion piece on Barack Obama's health care plans called "Tort reform is a cure for our ailing health care system." It's from The Gazette, a newspaper in Iowa, which I selected out fondness for it while I lived there.

Before I talk about how relevant the arguments are in terms of Kairos, let me give you a brief summary of his article. The author, Duane Schmidt, raises the point that a significant proportion of medical tests are given because doctors are worried about being sued for malpractice. Schmidt claims that health care and health care reform would be less expensive if doctors didn't have to worry about needless tests or their money being siphoned off by litigious patients. He offers the solution of not letting juries who know nothing of medicine being set over malpractice cases.

The issue of health care reform is still in the stages of debate where people are looking for solutions, so this is a good time to give suggestions. Schmidt also takes advantage of the current decreasing approval of Obama by accusing him of pandering to trial lawyers and of putting someone who was formerly a lobbyist for trial lawyers, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, to preside over the investigation. Now is a most opportune time to make such appeals to pathos that invite us to draw derogatory conclusions about Obama without considering whether the facts back them up.

Schmidt's use of the excitement and contention regarding health reform to distract us from his lack of strong logical support for some of his points is most evident in the third and fourth paragraphs, which I will examine more closely.

Addressing Obama, his article says, "Earlier in the summer, you said that you would “never go there” in terms of enacting tort reform. I presume this has nothing to do with the enormous financial support you receive from trial lawyers." Schmidt does not give us any references as to when Obama said the short phrase "never go there," attempting to discourage us from looking at the context of that remark for ourselves. Also he invites us to assume that Obama receiving financial support from trial lawyers means he must be corrupt, without giving any details about the nature of said financial support.

Schmidt goes on to say that Obama has in fact appointed Sebelius to look into tort reform, noting that, "Interestingly, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was for eight years employed as a lobbyist by the Kansas trial lawyers. Is this the ultimate example of the fox guarding the henhouse?" He sets us up to make a generalization about trial lawyers, that all of them must be untrustworthy and focused on swindling doctors out of their money, neglecting to consider that Sebelius' experience lobbying for trial lawyers might make her more qualified for looking into the matter. And he asks the question of is this like the fox guarding the henhouse, but after consideration I have to say, "No. It's more complicated than that."

Then Schmidt says, "We can only guess her findings, and would not wager when, or if, she ever concludes anything," using the plural pronoun to help us thnk we agree with him. I have been using plural pronouns as well, but I feel I am justified in it, because I am trying to encourage you to consider all the facets of the issue, while Schmidt seemed to want us to only consider his side.

As a commentary on my own analysis, I could not refrain from betraying my thoughts about the validity of the arguments I was analyzing, but I did it in addition to looking at how the author uses Kairos.