{"id":8407,"date":"2013-10-26T14:07:38","date_gmt":"2013-10-26T14:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/10\/26\/on-the-label-obamacare\/"},"modified":"2013-10-26T14:07:38","modified_gmt":"2013-10-26T14:07:38","slug":"on-the-label-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/10\/26\/on-the-label-obamacare\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Label ‘Obamacare’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some object to the popular 'Obamacare' label given that the official title of the law is 'Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act' or, as commonly truncated, 'Affordable Care Act.' But there is a good reason to favor the popular moniker: it is descriptive where the other two labels are evaluative, expressing as they do a pro attitude toward the bill.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Will the law really protect patients?  That is an evaluative judgment based on projections many regard as flimsy.  Will the law really make health care affordable?  And for whom? Will care mandated for all be readily available and of high quality?  <\/span><\/p>\n

Everybody wants affordable and readily available health care of high quality for the greatest number possible.  The question is how best to attain this end.  The 'Affordable Care Act' label begs the question as to whether or not Obama's bill will achieve the desired end.  'Obamacare' does not.  It is, if not all that descriptive, at least evaluatively neutral.<\/span><\/p>\n

If Obama's proposal were  referred to as "Socialized Medicine Health Care Act' or 'Another Step Toward the Nanny State Act,'  people would protest the negative evaluations  embedded in the titles.  Titles of bills ought to be neutral.<\/span><\/p>\n

Proponents of a consumption tax  sometimes refer to it as a fair tax.  Same problem.  'Fair' is an evaluative term while 'consumption' is not.  'Consumption tax' conveys the idea that taxes should be collected at the consuming end rather than at the income-producing end.  'Fair tax' fails to convey that idea, but what is worse, it begs the question as to what a fair tax would look like.  It is a label that invites the conflation of distinct  questions:  What is a consumption tax?  Is it good?  Answer the first and it remains an open question what the answer to the second is.  <\/span><\/p>\n

What is fairness?  What is justice?  Is justice fairness?  These are questions that need to be addressed, not questions answers to which ought to be presupposed.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no good reason to object to 'Obamacare' — the word, not the thing.  <\/span><\/p>\n

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Some object to the popular 'Obamacare' label given that the official title of the law is 'Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act' or, as commonly truncated, 'Affordable Care Act.' But there is a good reason to favor the popular moniker: it is descriptive where the other two labels are evaluative, expressing as they do a … Continue reading “On the Label ‘Obamacare’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,34,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-health-and-fitness","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}