Scare tactics. A tool for manipulation.

[ar81]

I have noticed that scare tactics are the trick that has been used lately to manipulate public opinion.

After 9/11, it seems that fear of everything has been systematically implemented by media.

Scare tactics about health reform seems one of those ways to sabotage US government programs. If you study enough, you may realize that the model of health system Obama is after, is similar to UK system, which works far better than US system. And as far as I know UK government is not socialist, but the place where western capitalism was born. The "experiment" of Obama has already worked for UK.

So it seems that informed decisions based on evidence, instead of listening yellow journalism is the best path, unless you may like to be emotionally manipulated again. Fear makes animals to attack, and US citizens are not animals who can be tamed with scare tactics. US citizens deserve more respect.

[YourHumbleNarrator]

And the NHS is running out of funds and it has to ration care. I'll agree that fearmongering is a dirty tactic and it's shameful so many fall for it, but I disagree with the plan that's been proposed. I want to see a real solution, not a quick-fix that leads to bigger problems later.

Really, any talk of expanding government programs is ridiculous. They need to get the federal deficit under control first.

[Strem2]

Originally Posted by YourHumbleNarrator

And the NHS is running out of funds and it has to ration care. I'll agree that fearmongering is a dirty tactic and it's shameful so many fall for it, but I disagree with the plan that's been proposed. I want to see a real solution, not a quick-fix that leads to bigger problems later.

Really, any talk of expanding government programs is ridiculous. They need to get the federal deficit under control first.

There is no plan yet because the Senate needs to be involved and they can't come up with anything....

So, you have plenty of time to send your suggestions off to your Senator. Write him. I wrote to mine.

I think everyone should be involved proactively. This shouting down of explanations is not American. It is more like the British House of Commons, and not the American way that listens to everyone.

[Strem2]

Originally Posted by ar81

I have noticed that scare tactics are the trick that has been used lately to manipulate public opinion.

After 9/11, it seems that fear of everything has been systematically implemented by media.

Scare tactics about health reform seems one of those ways to sabotage US government programs. If you study enough, you may realize that the model of health system Obama is after, is similar to UK system, which works far better than US system. And as far as I know UK government is not socialist, but the place where western capitalism was born. The "experiment" of Obama has already worked for UK.

So it seems that informed decisions based on evidence, instead of listening yellow journalism is the best path, unless you may like to be emotionally manipulated again. Fear makes animals to attack, and US citizens are not animals who can be tamed with scare tactics. US citizens deserve more respect.

Great points!

[ar81]

Originally Posted by YourHumbleNarrator

And the NHS is running out of funds and it has to ration care. I'll agree that fearmongering is a dirty tactic and it's shameful so many fall for it, but I disagree with the plan that's been proposed. I want to see a real solution, not a quick-fix that leads to bigger problems later.

Really, any talk of expanding government programs is ridiculous. They need to get the federal deficit under control first.

Health market has 2 sides: Supply and demand. Healthcare services are supply, and patients are demand. Unlike other markets, having high demand is undesirable, for it means less productive workers, and of course American citizens who suffer.

If you increase supply to satisfy demand, you may rise expenses. But if you lower demand, you reduce the need for supply and therefore you cut expenses. So I figure out Obama is after reduction of demand and therefore a cheaper system that would REDUCE DEFICIT.

People are concerned about deficit because they think Obama aims at solving supply only, but they do not understand how demand can be reduced to reduce costs.

Healthy Americans could buy more, instead of paying premiums. And that should become higher revenue taxes and higher profit taxes collected from other more efficient markets that make more profit with the same amount of money, instead of putting the money in an inefficient health market that reduces government income.

There are several techniques to achieve more efficient healthcare structures than the heavily inefficient one that current health care system has in US.

The more ill, the most expensive it is to treat an illness. The more ill, the less productive companies will be, and countries with better and cheaper. If you classiffy patients according to seriousness of illness, you may send them to different levels of health care that require different costs.

When you contact a call center, usually the guy in the frontline has basic training, a basic troubleshooting guide, and he is a cheap worker. If your problem can't be solved there, a more expert worker will take your call, and if it is serious enough, it will be passed to the experts. This structure is used in UK and it improves costs. Right now Americans are going directly to private experts, even if they do not need it, and that causes health system to be very expensive and inefficient. The problem of having too many specialists is that there are no doctors who can see the overall picture, so a diagnostic may need a gathering of many specialists, making the system very inefficient. Inefficiencies are passed back to Americans as highest premiums, and also businesses see a chance to fix higher and abusive profit margins.

Also, right now there is no real competition, or profit margins would not have achieve record highs, since those profits do not come from higher efficiency but from merely abusive price rise. Government systems use to be more competitive than private services, as they create a network structure with a more efficient cost structure, like a call center on a national level, instead of pinpoint solutions here and there. Private systems in US are very inefficient and ineffective and they can solve specific problems in specific areas.

A government structure allows to attend national problems with a macrovision of the overall problems of a country.

If you have hospital A and B, and both have equipment to treat cancer, but you are affiliated to one hospital only, it means that when hospitals bought equipment, customers of both hospitals had to pay for the purchase of 2 machines, instead of a single one required for national level care where customers of the two hospitals may be served. No need of duplicity and higher costs. So there are many sources to save money when you implement a networked government health care system. Health care centers will have to compete with government then.

If you do enough research with experts you will see that premises of normal people regarding normal markets do not apply. A single healthcare center is not a health system, and better health care does not involve more money (that leads to deficit) but better use of money.

[Dreamline]

It reminds me of the Equal Rights Ammendment which, I swear, was derailed because the fear mongerers convinced young, stupid women voters that it would mean that women and men would share restrooms from then on and women would be forced into the armed services.

It was a last minute rush of a similar brand of idiocy we are seeing now with healthcare.

Arguments based on zero facts and people too dumb to realize they were being played.

Jennifer

[ar81]

Source: BBC NEWS | Americas | Obama tackles healthcare critics

Page last updated at 19:23 GMT, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 20:23 UK
Obama tackles healthcare critics

President Obama: ''We are closer to achieving health insurance reform than we have ever been''

US President Barack Obama has accused some opponents of his healthcare reform proposals of trying to "scare the heck" out of people.

Anti-reform campaigners had created "bogeymen out there that just aren't real", he said at a town-hall style meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Passing a healthcare reform bill is Mr Obama's top domestic priority for 2009.

But in recent weeks, opponents of reform have been making serious accusations about his proposals.

The former Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, said last week that the president wanted to set up "death panels" of government officials with the power to determine whether disabled or elderly Americans are "worthy of healthcare".

In fact, under proposals drawn up by the US House of Representatives, the government would pay for elderly Americans to receive voluntary consultations with doctors to discuss their end-of-life care.

"The rumour that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on Grandma because we've decided that its too expensive to let her live anymore," said Mr Obama.

"Somehow, it has gotten spun into this idea of death panels. I am not in favour of that, I want to clear the air here."

Meetings disrupted

Some 47 million Americans currently do not have health insurance, and rising healthcare costs are a major contributing factor to America's spiralling budget deficit.

But there is disagreement about how to go about reforming the system.


HEALTHCARE IN THE US
47 million uninsured, 25 million under-insured
Healthcare costs represent 16% of GDP, almost twice OECD average
Reform plans would require all Americans to get insurance
Some propose public insurance option to compete with private insurers

Q&A: US healthcare reform

Democrats in the House of Representatives have reportedly reached a deal on a bill that would mandate all Americans to take out health insurance, with subsidies for the less well-off paid for by a tax on families earning over $350,000 a year.

The House bill would also offer Americans who do not get coverage through their employer the chance to join a publicly-run scheme.

But in the Senate negotiations have stalled, with moderate senators expressing opposition to both the tax and the public plan proposed by the House.

Both chambers need to agree on a bill before it can become law.

Mr Obama had called on the Senate and the House to agree their own versions of a bill before the August recess, but lawmakers missed the deadline.

During the recess, a number of healthcare "town-hall" meetings hosted by Democratic politicians have been targeted by conservative opponents of reform.

The opposition has sometimes been quite vocal, with anti-reform campaigners chanting slogans and shouting down supporters of reform.

Proponents of reform say the protests are being organised by well-funded lobby groups, while opponents say they are a genuine expression of anger at Mr Obama's proposals.

At the New Hampshire meeting, which did not feature any angry scenes, the president called on his opponents to temper their behaviour.

"I do hope that we will talk with each other and not over each other," he said.

Polls suggest that a majority of Americans support many of the administration's healthcare proposals.

You also may like to read this:

BBC NEWS | Americas | Are US healthcare protests genuine?

[Strem2]

Originally Posted by Dreamline

It reminds me of the Equal Rights Ammendment which, I swear, was derailed because the fear mongerers convinced young, stupid women voters that it would mean that women and men would share restrooms from then on and women would be forced into the armed services.

It was a last minute rush of a similar brand of idiocy we are seeing now with healthcare.

Arguments based on zero facts and people too dumb to realize they were being played.

Jennifer

Ohh, I'm so glad someone else remembers this.

Where I lived, they said that "if the ERA passes, young women will have to go to war and fight on the front lines..."

And, guess what? Young women are fighting on the front lines, and being raped by their commanding officers, and they still don't have equal pay when they come home if they are able to work!

Usually, they're treated for PTSD and get 100% disability along with their male counterparts.....

[Dreamline]

Originally Posted by Strem2

Ohh, I'm so glad someone else remembers this.

Where I lived, they said that "if the ERA passes, young women will have to go to war and fight on the front lines..."

And, guess what? Young women are fighting on the front lines, and being raped by their commanding officers, and they still don't have equal pay when they come home if they are able to work!

Usually, they're treated for PTSD and get 100% disability along with their male counterparts.....

Yes but there was no draft, let's remember, and they are all there because they volunteered to be and hopefully weren't expected roses and butterflies. That is a harsh, harsh life. The abuses have been revealed and now it's up to the women experiencing them to step up and do something about it. That is the only way it will change. Women, from the Garden of Eden up 'til now have had a tough row to hoe and that still is the case in areas that are not typically "female" careers or jobs. The only way things have ever changed for women is when one (or twenty, or a thousand) said "this sucks and we aren't going to take it anymore." I personally don't think the ERA would have changed much for women or women in the military. That kind of change comes on an individual level. When the abuser changes their perception. Or is forced to. Or the abuser-type mentality is just bred out of humanity by perpetual familiarity.

And the only time men and women use the same public restrooms is when the women go in the men's room because they don't want to wait in long lines. I love irony.

[ar81]

Abusive behavior as I see it reflects lack of mental health.
A happy person does not need to abuse anyone.

An abuser may have physical advantage (physical force, a weapon, etc) but if you do not give the chance of having psychological superiority, you will keep the abuser somehow off the limits, which means a greater chance to escape and/or survive.

Abusers do not like that, so they will try to impress you, but even if you are freaking scared to your bones, you should not show fear. Fear is a tool abusers use to their advantage.

Also, avoiding abuse is about avoiding being cornered. If cornered, the choice to survive is to attack or to run.

[Dreamline]

Well, insofar as the military abuses of women, they still have one choice: remain silent or speak out. One will change the issue, one does nothing to change the issue. There are pioneers in every paradigm shift. The pioneers never have it easy.

But let's not forget what the military is, at it's essence: soldier creators. They have to take nice boys (and now girls) and turn them into killing machines. Boys have the advantange. Testosterone and other male androgens have them halfway there. Those are also the same hormones that make women unsafe near these hyper-ized men. You are using a man's own chemistry against him, in these cases. So it really is a lose/lose scenario except for the absolute toughest, strongest women who take no sheet from anyone.

Anyone who enters the military and doesn't expect this has lied to themselves.

Jennifer

[ar81]

I get your idea. People trained to be violent.
When colliseum was created, roman emperor feared that citizens were becoming to peaceful, so he added violent games to keep their fighting/violent spirit to fight wars.
No experiments have been conducted to prove if violent games make violent kids, because the ethics of those experiments.

Nowadays the one who gets a benefit from a dead son in a war is the weapons manufacturer and weapon dealer.
And wars are usually a chess game played by a politician with too much spare time, for his personal amusement, using taxpayers money.

As for abuses and recruits who enter because of wrong reasons...
Probably they expect a Wing Commander type of job.



Or perhaps a Top Gun job

[Brutha]

No experiments have been conducted to prove if violent games make violent kids, because the ethics of those experiments.

Where did you get that idea?
There are for example experiments that show that playing ego shooters can help girls to increase their spatial intelligence.

You can also do a lot of obervastional studies because there happen to be a lot of kids who do play video games.

[ar81]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Where did you get that idea?
There are for example experiments that show that playing ego shooters can help girls to increase their spatial intelligence.

You can also do a lot of obervastional studies because there happen to be a lot of kids who do play video games.

Yes, the goal is to study spatial intelligence or other things, not violence. If you design an experiment centered on determining what makes a person violent, you may find a problem.

[Barcs]

You are correct about fear tactics. It's not really just recent though. Governments and organized religions have used fear to control and manipulate people for thousands of years. Fear is one of the main reasons Christianity is so popular right now. Back in the middle ages it was imposed upon everybody with the penality of death for blasphemy if you disagreed. Countless people were tortured and killed in the name of religion, even if they did nothing wrong. Even believers were killed, simply because they did something "different" than the rest. It was used to justify WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Iraq, etc etc. It's just a shame that so many people go right along with it and don't even question what they are told.

[ar81]

Originally Posted by Barcs

You are correct about fear tactics. It's not really just recent though. Governments and organized religions have used fear to control and manipulate people for thousands of years. Fear is one of the main reasons Christianity is so popular right now. Back in the middle ages it was imposed upon everybody with the penality of death for blasphemy if you disagreed. Countless people were tortured and killed in the name of religion, even if they did nothing wrong. Even believers were killed, simply because they did something "different" than the rest. It was used to justify WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Iraq, etc etc. It's just a shame that so many people go right along with it and don't even question what they are told.

Those who caused fear do not understand that God lends power (a moral debt) to politicians, and then he demands welfare of people in return. But it seems that politicians in human history think that government was an invention designed for their amusement. So they play chess with military toys, and behave like spoiled kids, instead of being busy using the money to develop the country.

[neomonk]

Originally Posted by ar81

I get your idea. People trained to be violent.
When colliseum was created, roman emperor feared that citizens were becoming to peaceful, so he added violent games to keep their fighting/violent spirit to fight wars.
No experiments have been conducted to prove if violent games make violent kids, because the ethics of those experiments.

Nowadays the one who gets a benefit from a dead son in a war is the weapons manufacturer and weapon dealer.
And wars are usually a chess game played by a politician with too much spare time, for his personal amusement, using taxpayers money.

As for abuses and recruits who enter because of wrong reasons...
Probably they expect a Wing Commander type of job.



Or perhaps a Top Gun job

Top Gun only told us it was OK to be unsure of your sexuality.