I just took a look at Randy’s Blog, because I was looking for info on last night’s teleconference, and saw that on the 24th he made a post titled, “What is your #1 reason that you either support or oppose a government take-over of health care?”. This is an example of what we call “framing”, but it’s also an example of what we call “lying”, or at least “misleading”. Mr. Forbes is deliberately confusing people by pretending that a “take-over” is what the health care debate is about. This might not be lying, but it’s about as honest as me asking why you’re cheating on your spouse and then claiming that I didn’t accuse you of anything, I just asked “why?”.
The argument that a government option, despite being a bloated and inefficient disaster, will have such an unfair competitive advantage over private health care that it will destroy the industry is just an argument. In my opinion, it’s a bad argument. Those who support health care reform don’t believe it. It’s dishonest and insulting to pretend otherwise, and to pretend that the health care debate is between people who want to kill the health care industry and people who don’t.