All the President’s Mandates: Compulsory Health Insurance Is a Government Takeover (Briefing Paper) ⁠96%

By null null⁠92%

9/23/2009, 4:00:00 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Politically Right Leaning Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Biased Writer Voice, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 30.9% saturation with 90 hits. Analysis detected 1,121 faulty-reasoning hits from 291 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 93.4% and a BS Rank of ⁠96% (935 of 21,886 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 95.70% of the article peer group.

The most hazardous health reform measure before Congress is not the so-called “public option,” but proposals to make health insurance compulsory via an individual or employer mandate. 
Compulsory health insurance could require nearly 100 million Americans to switch to a more expensive health plan and would therefore violate President Barack Obama’s pledge to let people keep their current health insurance. 
In particular, the legislation before Congress could eliminate many or all health savings account plans. 
Making health insurance compulsory would also spark an unnecessary fight over abortion and would enable government to ration care to those with private health insurance. 
Obama adviser Larry Summers writes that mandates “are like public programs financed by benefit taxes,” meaning that compulsory health insurance would also violate President Obama’s promise not to increase taxes on the middle class. 
Under the House Democrats’ legislation, some middle-income earners would face marginal tax rates over 50 percent (before state taxes). 
The experience in Massachusetts belies the claim that compulsory health insurance brings down health care costs. 
The “shared responsibility” ruse allows Massachusetts politicians to declare success for a compulsory health insurance scheme whose actual costs reveal it to be a failure. 
Massachusetts also demonstrates that compulsory health insurance enables, and ultimately requires, politicians and government bureaus to control nearly all aspects of health care and medical practice. 
Rather than make health insurance compulsory, Congress should make it more affordable by letting individuals control their earnings and choose their own health plan from any state in the Union. 
Michael F. 
Cannon is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and coauthor of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 20.3%null null: 9.7%The Daily Caller: 5.0%Confirmation Bias20.3%This article: 0.0%null null: 1.6%The Daily Caller: 0.7%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 6.5%null null: 6.4%The Daily Caller: 2.7%Availability Heuristic6.5%This article: 0.0%null null: 1.5%The Daily Caller: 0.8%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.1%The Daily Caller: 0.4%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 11.3%The Daily Caller: 3.3%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 4.5%null null: 13.7%The Daily Caller: 10.4%Framing Effect4.5%This article: 11.3%null null: 3.5%The Daily Caller: 0.9%Loss Aversion11.3%This article: 0.0%null null: 2.1%The Daily Caller: 0.9%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 8.9%null null: 1.0%The Daily Caller: 0.1%Sunk Cost Effect8.9%This article: 10.3%null null: 8.2%The Daily Caller: 2.7%Optimism Bias10.3%This article: 10.7%null null: 4.4%The Daily Caller: 2.5%Pessimism Bias10.7%This article: 30.9%null null: 8.8%The Daily Caller: 8.2%Negativity Bias30.9%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 1.2%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.5%The Daily Caller: 0.9%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 0.1%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.6%The Daily Caller: 1.8%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.1%The Daily Caller: 0.9%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 8.9%null null: 1.5%The Daily Caller: 1.6%Halo Effect8.9%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 0.1%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.7%The Daily Caller: 0.9%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 1.1%The Daily Caller: 0.6%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.4%The Daily Caller: 0.2%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 8.6%null null: 0.6%The Daily Caller: 1.1%Ad Hominem8.6%This article: 0.0%null null: 4.0%The Daily Caller: 1.3%Straw Man0.0%This article: 20.6%null null: 5.7%The Daily Caller: 4.6%Appeal to Authority20.6%This article: 19.6%null null: 9.9%The Daily Caller: 2.9%False Dilemma19.6%This article: 17.5%null null: 5.0%The Daily Caller: 2.4%Slippery Slope17.5%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.3%The Daily Caller: 0.2%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 26.5%null null: 15.2%The Daily Caller: 6.3%Hasty Generalization26.5%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 0.4%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.4%The Daily Caller: 1.0%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 13.1%null null: 2.8%The Daily Caller: 5.7%Appeal to Emotion13.1%This article: 19.9%null null: 6.0%The Daily Caller: 2.1%Begging the Question19.9%This article: 11.3%null null: 2.4%The Daily Caller: 3.5%Post Hoc (False Cause)11.3%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 0.1%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 2.8%The Daily Caller: 0.9%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.6%The Daily Caller: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.4%The Daily Caller: 0.4%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 14.4%null null: 1.0%The Daily Caller: 1.5%Anecdotal14.4%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 0.0%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 20.3%null null: 3.0%The Daily Caller: 1.9%Ambiguity (Equivocation)20.3%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 10.3%null null: 0.4%The Daily Caller: 0.2%Middle Ground10.3%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.1%The Daily Caller: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.2%The Daily Caller: 0.2%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.1%The Daily Caller: 0.1%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 11.7%null null: 1.6%The Daily Caller: 2.2%Unattributed Quote11.7%This article: 8.6%null null: 2.6%The Daily Caller: 1.8%Quote-first Misdirection8.6%This article: 22.0%null null: 16.2%The Daily Caller: 8.5%Biased Writer Voice22.0%This article: 21.6%null null: 12.7%The Daily Caller: 3.6%Indoctrination21.6%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.0%The Daily Caller: 0.3%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 26.8%null null: 13.7%The Daily Caller: 5.0%Politically Right Leaning Bias26.8%This article: 0.0%null null: 0.9%The Daily Caller: 1.3%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

291 words analyzed.

Speakers

2speakers21%attributed speech231writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 13 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 27 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 33 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 15 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 25 words • 100.0% coverageLarry Summers • 34 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 19 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 16 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 25 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 26 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 30 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 2 words • 0.0% coverageCato Institute • 26 words • 100.0% coverage
Selected voice

Larry Summers

100%flagged-word coverage
34 attributed words57% of attributed speech99% writer coverage
0%50.0%100.0%Unattributed Quote+100.0 ptsWriter: 0.0%Larry Summers: 100.0%100.0%Politically Right Leaning -33.8 ptsWriter: 33.8%Larry Summers: 0.0%0.0%Indoctrination-27.3 ptsWriter: 27.3%Larry Summers: 0.0%0.0%Biased Writer Voice-16.5 ptsWriter: 16.5%Larry Summers: 0.0%0.0%Quote-first Misdirection-10.8 ptsWriter: 10.8%Larry Summers: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.