Inventing the Latest Health Care Scares

WARNING: This column could lead to alligators in your toaster oven.

There are people out there who actually value a good, honest, fact-based and data-driven debate about reforming the nation's health-care system.

Pity.

That's because the chance of our actually having a good, honest, fact-based and data-driven debate about reforming the nation's health-care system is roughly equivalent to the chance of Sarah Palin being chosen the next poet laureate of the United States.

(In other words, don't bet the ranch.)

But does that make the current debate worthless? Hardly -- at least for those of us who enjoy watching the way politics and policy occasionally interact with the English language. For us -- the few, the masochistic -- the battle over health care has been an absolute treasure trove of linguistic innovation.

And it's not just the instantly memorable phrases like "death panels" or "tea parties." It goes way beyond that. The health-care debate has birthed an entirely new tense!

That's right: Just in case the Present Tense and the Past Tense and the Future Tense and the Past Subjunctive and the Future Conditional and all the rest aren't quite enough to satisfy you, suddenly there's the Cataclysmic Hypothetical.

As in "The provisions of this bill could lead to pulling the plug on Grandma."

Or "This so-called reform puts us on the path toward a government takeover of the health-care system."

Or even "The president's recent statement moves us one step closer to a totalitarian, socialist, communist, fascist state."

The Cataclysmic Hypothetical.

It's no longer necessary for the particular horrible they're railing against to actually be in the bill they oppose so fiercely. It's now enough simply to suggest that the bill in question makes that particular horrible the tiniest bit more likely.

They can't prove it -- but they don't have to! They only have to claim that, under the most sinister possible interpretation of every word and number and punctuation mark in the bill -- and the even-more-sinister interpretation of every word and number and punctuation mark that isn't in the bill -- some terrible something is a hair more likely on some distant tomorrow than it might have been yesterday.

They can't prove it -- but they don't have to: The other side can't disprove it!

Maybe something really awful really could be in the offing if this or that provision passes. Maybe this or that phrase really could mean we get invaded by swarms of illegal aliens -- or, for that matter, swarms of intergalactic aliens from the Planet Rootytoot. Do you see anything in the bill that specifically prohibits intergalactic swarms? Not a word! What does that tell you?

And what about Thursdays? Why doesn't it say anything about Thursdays?

And how about when the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars...?

Petrified yet?

No? Just give them time. First they use the Cataclysmic Hypothetical Tense to stir up the fear, to jump-start the panicked conversations. Then they say, "Well, we're not saying it's necessarily true, but it's certainly something that lots of people are talking about, so let's talk about it some more."

Right. The bootstrapped bogeyman.

You can believe it if you want to. You can believe anything if you want to.

You ought to know, though: It can move your brain one step closer to mashed potatoes.

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at [e-mail].

Comments

[Scarborian]

Snigger if you choose but I for one believe Fox News when they tell me that healthcare reform is just one more step along the path to tea-bags. At least, I think that's what they were saying.

[Cam Climie]

That's been around for a while, this is nothing new.

Today they're talking to one another. Tomorrow they could be holding hands, which could lead to hugging, which could lead to sex, which could possibly lead to dancing.
and we all know how immoral underage dancing is!

[whalerpilot]

Theoretical Suppositionist?

[sixyfivepercentwater]

"The health-care debate has birthed an entirely new tense!" There's nothing new about this tense. Many decades ago we were told certain activities might cause hair to grow on our palms or the backs of our heads to cave in. Hasn't happened to anyone I know.

[jenneroos]

thank you for this. the evil they imagine is coming from their own evil imaginations.

[elbzee]

Absolutely beautiful!!!! ..."Catacl­ysmic Hypothetical" sheer poetry!!!
And, OMG, intergalactic swarms! There they are!

A hearty WELL DONE!!!

[PlaceboStudman]

Of course you are forgetting the biggest, and for some of us, the scariest part of the whole thing. The sense that people give us when our real honest and sincere concerns are not addressed, and it becomes perfectly clear that there are people, and even perhaps the majority of people, who care more about their wallets than they do their lives.

Now, I realize that, when things boil right down to it, it's unlikely that people do care more about their wallet than their lives, but with so many people's needs being unaddressed by insurance reform, when there simply is nothing TO insure in terms of real actual health care, what are we supposed to think?

[sixyfivepercentwater]

Good questions. What I think we are "supposed" to think from all of this is that no one out there has our best interests at heart. Since I never thought they did, I'm not disillusioned by the realization.

[MeinNH]

Yeah I know what you are saying.

[PlaceboStudman]

I guess I'm still in the process of shedding my niavete and trustworthyness. I used to believe government was supposed to protect the weakest of its citizens, now I just believe that government is there to protect itself from extinction