On Thursday January 27 the Denver post ran an article published by Ed Quillen called, “Quillen: People-killing profits” in which he argues the hypocritical nature of our society in terms of health care. In this piece Quillen expresses his concern with the fact that the health care in our country is inferior compared to other countries regardless of the fact that we commit a higher percentage of our GDP to health care. He further develops his argument by saying that if we “Feed people junk food and keep them fat and lazy. That's good for the economy. Then Americans have to buy medical care, which further jacks up the GDP” (Quillen Denverpost). He obviously has issue with the cyclical nature of the system especially in an area that could be changed for the better. In this article Ed Quillen’s piece is not particularly long but, he does a good job using rhetoric to support his argument. For the most part he wrote deductively because he makes a case of A+B=C, feed people junk food to keep them fat and lazy + the benefits on the economy = the purchase of health care and the increase of our GDP.
Rhetorically speaking he uses his own personal experience through the example of running into problems with our current health care programming, which allows him to have credibility in what he is talking about. The logos and pathos of his argument can be defined as, here is my example of the problems with health care and this is why everyone should be upset with this current situation. Through the using of his own personal experience he draws a connection with his audience that has experienced something of a similar nature. His example was that he was trying to wait till 65 for his Medicare to kick in but, due to circumstances of his vision fading he needed new glasses. He found out that he could not get prescribed new glasses unless he got his diabetes under control, in which he was oblivious to having in the first place. Quillen ended up having to get regular treatments of laser eye surgery to help fix his vision due to his diabetes. His treatment now is eat healthier and walk more. His pathos is very effective because it gives his reader something to relate to. Even if his reader cannot relate to this situation he presents it in a way that you would feel it is plausible for this same event to happen to you.
This is not a long piece but, its usage of kairos and pathos become apparent from the start. The kairos of this article is health care which is a huge topic of debate in our country today. The health care issues was one of the major issues that Barrack Obama was going to deal with once he was elected president. This piece is relevant to the topic because one man’s hardships with trying to get a new pair of glasses displayed a lot of the flaws and hypocrisy that are present in the current health care debate. The hypocrites are the people who want change but to not lose anything. Quillen supports this by saying, “Any attempt to change our ways or our health-care system gets attacked as "job-killing regulations" or the like. But hey, we need to keep generating those "people-killing profits," right?”. Quillen blames this flaw on the industry juggernauts like McDonalds who would see profits drop and jobs lost so obviously they do not want this to happen. He strongly supports that change has to occur, more so to ensure peoples health does not deteriorate because of low quality food and a country that is entirely concerned with profits and its GDP.
As with any good rhetorically written piece your argument has to be provocative and interesting. Quillen through his use of kairos and pathos accomplish both of these requirements. He is addressing a topic that is very prevalent in debates today making his kairos effective. He then relates to his audience through his own personal experience as an example showing strong pathos. Through his pathos he is trying to connect with the reader on a much more personal level. He clearly lays out an example to invoke the thought process of what would I do in his situation and how would I feel. All the aspects of a well written rhetorical piece are in abundance in Ed Quillens article, “Quillen: People-killing profits”, which make it effective in defense of his argument of the problem with the current health care flaws.
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