Frozen in Ideology

Listening to NPR this morning they had an item on the national health care debate. I was reminded of a conversation I had about 1 year ago with a conservative friend of mine. This friend is generally a very smart person. I don't remember how we got on to the conversation but I said something to the effect that we needed national health insurance. He was completely against it.

His first argument was that every country with national health insurance had terrible health care. We were in a bar so I didn't have numbers readily available to me but I told him that multiple studies concluded that France actually has the best health care in the world. They cover their entire populace, they spend less of their GDP than the U.S., and by all objective measures, like infant mortality, they far exceed the U.S.

He countered, "Have you ever been to France. They hate their health care there."

I haven't. I told him that I had been to Canada where they also have national health care and everyone I spoke to there was very happy with the system. He told me that didn't prove anything because there were no facts to my argument. I was just using a couple anecdotes to defend an entire system.

When I presented facts (France), he countered with anecdotes (people hate it). When I gave him counter anecdotes (Canada) he told me I didn't have any facts. He worships at the altar of his vision of capitalism. No matter what you say, no matter what facts are available, it won't matter because it doesn't fit his preexisting ideology.