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Alex Yaney

Dr. Erin Dietel-McLaughlin

FYC 13100

22 February 2011

Ethos Takes the Cake

Throughout the 2008 presidential election and continuing into President Obama’s current

administrative term, the greatest and most controversial debates among political pundits, not to

mention America as a whole, have centered around one thing: an American universal healthcare

system. Debates and speeches on this topic have taken over political rallies, city council

meetings, and more than one State of the Union Address. These arguments are heated by a

cornucopia of questions surrounding universal healthcare, such as its cost to tax payers, decrease

in compensation for doctors, and even whether or not healthcare is a basic right for all people or

simply a privilege only to be held by those who can afford it. Nevertheless, universal healthcare

is not an issue pertaining solely to the United States. Numerous countries have tried or plan to

employ such a system. France, Argentina, Malaysia, India, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Canada are

only a few of the many countries that currently utilize this structure. One of the main reasons this

issue is so controversial in the United States is because while some countries’ plans have failed

miserably, others have flourished and even thrived. Sheenan Porter and Dr. Robert D. Harris are

only two examples of the millions of individuals that disagree on this issue. While Porter

believes that any form of government-run healthcare can be nothing but detrimental to a nation

that prides itself as being “the home of the free,” Harris champions universal healthcare as an

imminent necessity. Understanding the use of rhetoric in this debate is crucial in forming a well-

informed opinion on the controversial issue of universal healthcare in America. Although both
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Porter and Harris attempt to employ Aristotle’s three keys of argumentation, ethos, logos, and

pathos, upon further analysis of both pieces, it is evident that Harris has formulated the better

argument.

First off, in order to form any argument effectively, one must first know the subject

matter he or she is arguing and be able to portray this knowledge to the reader. This is where

Aristotle’s concept of ethos takes hold. Three main points of ethos are the portrayal of

trustworthiness, experience, and competence. It is the manner in which the author portrays these

qualities that determines how he is received by his audience. For example, readers are much

more likely to acknowledge and possibly accept a writer’s opposing point of view if they are

confident that the writer knows what he is talking about. Nonetheless, in order to be most

effective, ethos must be present throughout an entire argument, not just at the beginning, so that

readers hold the author in high regard throughout the entire debate and have confidence that the

author knows what he or she is arguing. It is clear when examining Porter and Harris’s articles

that each individual goes about establishing and maintaining ethos in two drastically different

ways.

Throughout his entire article, “Arguments for Universal Health Access in the United

States: A Radiologist’s Perspective”, originally published in the American Journal of

Roentgenology in early 2007, Harris masterfully utilizes the concept of ethos. For example, at the

very beginning of his article, Harris informs his audience of his credentials. By using the phrase

“as a radiologist” twice in the first two sentences, Harris makes it is easy for his readers, who are

most likely medically trained, to recognize his qualifications and assume that he understands the

coming medical transformation. After all, he is a doctor; and healthcare is a doctor’s business.

He declares that as a radiologist, he is trained to see things no other doctors can. Harris uses this
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statement to uphold the main point of his article: that he does not like what he “sees” for the

future of American healthcare without reform. The concept of “seeing”, which his audience can

clearly distinguish as a radiology-based trait due to their medical backgrounds, adds further

credence to his expertise.

Still, even after these great appeals, Harris continues to establish ethos throughout the

article. He further emphasizes his credibility by calling all radiologists, himself included, to “add

our collective voices to the public outcry” for healthcare reform because he has realized through

his own experience that healthcare reform is a necessity. While some rhetoricians may argue that

this is more of an emotional appeal, the ethos aspect is so much grander. This call for action is

much more an appeal that depends on ethos than it is a purely emotional tactic. Harris’s

audience could read this statement and recognize him as a great leader, deepening their respect

for him. Moreover, perhaps Harris’s most appealing portrayal of ethos occurs in the middle of

the article when he suggests “that all radiologists donate a small portion of their income (let's

say, for example, 10% for private practitioners and 5% for academicians) to help establish a

universal health access pool.” Through this statement, his audience can identify that there is no

financial incentive for him to support healthcare reform. In fact, it proves the exact opposite. He

would actually lose money, but he has made peace with this fact if it means people have access

to affordable healthcare. Readers can identify his compassion and relate to it, which allows

Harris to more easily sway their opinions. In addition, there is even more ethos established in

the last few lines of the article, when Harris makes another call to all doctors to come together to

fight the biotechnology and health insurance companies that “will certainly fight this attempt as

they have done in the past.” Through this call to arms, Harris enables readers to see his devotion

to healthcare reform, which in turn allows for further persuasive credence on Harris’s part. As
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one can see, Harris did an excellent job getting his audience to see that he is an extremely

knowledgeable, honest man through his various portrayals of ethos.

On the exact opposite side of the spectrum of great depiction of ethos is the article “The

Argument Against Universal Healthcare,” which was written by Sheenan Porter and published in

Ezine Articles in 2007. Needless to say, the target audience for Porter’s article is much different

from that of Dr. Harris’s. Because Ezine Articles is supported by a health insurance company, it

is inherently biased on the issue of healthcare reform and thus would likely gear to a more biased

audience. Unlike Dr. Harris, Porter's portrayal of ethos can be described as pitiful at best. In fact,

he makes no real claim to have any authority in the subject until the last two lines of the article,

where he states that he has worked with Ameriplan and dental discounts for several years.

However, this minute appeal to ethos is poorly placed and nearly meaningless. By failing to even

attempt to form a rapport with readers or build any credence for himself until the last few lines,

Porter gave his readers time to formulate their own opinion of him. However even if they had not

formulated any such opinion, they may have stopped reading, thus completely missing this single

appeal to ethos anyway. Instead of trying to build confidence in his readers, Porter opted to

simply jump straight into his argument, which is undoubtedly more emotionally fueled than

anything. It is clear that Porter’s argument would have been much more effective had he

established himself as an authority in the subject by including more references to his expertise

earlier in the article. Plainly, Sheenan Porter holds drastically different credence to the

importance of establishing and maintaining ethos than Dr. Harris.

Along with ethos, logos is a key component in any decent argument. Logos is an

argument based on logic. It is the facts, data, and any reason-based arguments writers pursue in

their writing in order to appeal to their audience. In other words, logos is the proof that authors
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utilize to get others to believe and support their opinions. However, not all appeals to logic are

correct in their undertaking. These irrational appeals to logic are known as logical fallacies.

When examining the use of logos by both Harris and Porter, it is obvious that Harris has done a

better job of incorporating true, logical appeals to logos than Porter, who utilizes numerous

logical fallacies in his argument.

Upon analysis of Dr. Harris’s article, it is clear that he understands the significance of

logos. His article is bursting with various facts and figures that support his claim that healthcare

needs to be reformed. As experienced medical professionals, Harris’s audience is undoubtedly

able to digest and comprehend all of his logical appeals. For instance, right away, he cited the

number of Americans without healthcare as “46 million (and growing).” Through this statement,

Harris hopes to get readers to realize how global and far-reaching a problem healthcare really is.

He attributes this large number to problems that his audience regularly faces: rising insurance

costs, medical expenses increasing, and the expensive administrative body in the medical field.

Moreover, he furthers his use of logos by utilizing more startling figures throughout his piece.

For example, he quotes governmental sources stating that healthcare costs have jumped 73% in

the last five years while salaries have increased by only 15%. Clearly, this is an extremely

uneven percentage, which Harris employs to further push his agenda. Perhaps Harris’s most

logical appeal is his reference to the U.S. ranking number one in highest healthcare costs per

capita but only ranking number fifteen in “key health statistics.” Obviously, this fact is meant to

shock readers into thinking about the quality of American healthcare versus its cost. As

medically trained individuals, it is safe to assume Harris’s audience would believe that America

is the healthiest nation in the world because it is the number one spender on health. However,

this is nothing close to reality, which is what Harris successfully portrays. A final appeal to logos
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that Harris makes has to deal with a fear that many possess: the possibility of medical personnel

losing income with reformation. He counters this argument by declaring that even though per

patient revenue will be reduced, the number of patients seen will drastically increase. Harris

argues that with this increase would come more revenue, even with the reduced healthcare costs.

His acknowledgement and response to this counterargument is a way to assuage those members

of his audience employed in the medical field who may believe that with healthcare reform

would come a lower salary. It is evident through his use of various facts, statistics and medical

knowledge that logos is a key component of Dr. Harris’s argument.

Yet again, it appears that Dr. Harris holds the use of another of Aristotle’s keys to

rhetoric, logos, in higher esteem than Porter, whose paper is teeming with logical fallacies. For

instance, in reference to a government-run healthcare system Porter declares, “Many countries

have tried this and failed.” This is known as an inductive fallacy. Basically, Porter is assuming

that just because other countries have tried similar systems and failed, the United States’ system

is bound to meet the same end. Clearly, the United States’ universal healthcare system is not

doomed to fail simply because other countries have tried similar systems and failed.

Furthermore, Porter commits another fallacy when he says that healthcare reform under the

government would lead to a lack of competition. One would think that a lower price, quality

healthcare plan would only increase competition, but Porter does not want his readers to believe

this. Instead, he tries to influence his readers by painting a negative image of the government

endangering the economy by putting all other health insurance providers in financial dismay. Yet

another misleading notion Porter declares is that the reason medical costs have risen so high is

because “we have already begun moving toward socialized healthcare for several years now.”
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Once again, this is Porter’s attempt to say that one thing caused another without any evidence or

proof.

Porter makes this same mistake over and over again throughout his article. For example,

he wrote “people on capital hill have never had to worry about healthcare and have no idea how

it works.” This is a rash generalization meant to enrage Porter’s audience. There is no way for

Porter to know whether or not “people on capital hill” understand healthcare. He cites no

research to support this claim. He simply states it as a fact. Porter’s argument would certainly

have been more persuasive if he had presented some form of data to prove any of these claims.

However, because he was writing to a biased audience, Porter most likely believed he did not

need to do this. As can be obviously seen, although Porter made numerous attempts to appeal to

logos in “The Argument Against Universal Healthcare”, these attempts can only be described as

misleading.

Some people may argue that I have emphasized these fallacies too much because of the

amount of fallacies I have noted within his article. However, it is clear that the majority of

Porter’s argument is based on these logically flawed points. Due to the bias of the publication

source and audience, it makes sense that Porter employed illogical notions to support his stance

on the issue of healthcare reform. The majority of Porter’s audience most likely already had a

strong opinion on this subject, so presenting concrete, convincing facts to support these already-

formulated opinions is not as necessary.

While both ethos and logos are extremely important in rhetoric, it is usually the use of

pathos that makes or breaks an argument. Unlike ethos and logos, pathos is the emotional aspect

of an argument. It is how a writer gets his audience to care about an issue. Oftentimes, appeals

to pathos allow an audience to identify with the writer’s feelings, which further enables the
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writer to influence them. When examining the writings of Dr. Harris and Sheenan Porter, it is

obvious that this is the only one of Aristotle’s keys to persuasion that both hold in high regard.

Dr. Harris’ “Arguments for Universal Health Access in the United States: A Radiologist's

Perspective” is a perfect example of how to successfully integrate emotions into a logical

argument. For instance, when introducing the topic, Harris lists the number of Americans

without healthcare as “46 million (and growing) people.” While his medically-savvy audience is

most likely aware of the growing problems with healthcare, Harris’s use of this number and the

additional phrase in parentheses is undoubtedly a means to get these readers to sympathize with

those affected by this crisis while also personalizing the issue with the insinuating “and growing”

statement. Furthermore, Harris personified pathos in his list of data from the federal government,

in which he cites the number of underinsured individuals in America. Yet again, this is an appeal

to personalize the healthcare issue to the thousands of medical personnel who have to deal with

these issues on a regular basis. Moreover, by declaring healthcare reform to be “a war on

inefficiency and waste,” Harris is clearly trying to evoke the strong sentiment people often feel

during a war. War is only waged over severe circumstances, so by comparing reform to a war,

Harris is attempting to express the extreme gravity of the healthcare controversy that his

audience faces every day. One of Harris’s solutions to increasing medical costs is to have doctors

pool a portion of their salaries into a fund for people who cannot afford certain medical

procedures. By declaring that “this sacrifice will be painful” for all doctors, Harris is trying to

arouse the desire to join “the fight” in the members of his audience who are not medical doctors

and encourage them to make some sacrifices of their own. Undoubtedly, as can be seen in his

word choice and phrasing, Harris acknowledges the position of pathos as one of the most

important elements of an argument.

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For the first and only time, like Dr. Harris, Sheenan Porter appears to understand the

important standing pathos should hold in an argument. Because he is addressing an audience that

is already strongly opposed to healthcare reform, Porter is able to play a sort of cat and mouse

game with his readers. For example, he tries to lull his audience into a false sense of security

when he refers to universal healthcare as “a dream come true for lots of families.” However,

right after this, Porter seems to take a turn in his mindset, saying that the costs of universal

healthcare greatly outweigh the benefits. The small second of hope readers attained from this

phrase is likely a metaphor for healthcare reform: sounding great in the beginning but ending up

terribly. Furthermore, he tries to summon the patriotic spirit of his readers when he says that

healthcare reform is wrong because it takes away the free market principle of competition which

is “one of the things that made this country great.” By appealing to this patriotic spirit, Porter

hoped to make it appear that any true American would be completely opposed to healthcare

reform. In turn, Porter’s audience would view this as a reaffirmation of their patriotic spirit.

Additionally, Porter tries to infuse his audience with sympathy for doctors who “have huge debts

to repay and big dreams of being successful.” Through evoking this compassion, Porter expected

his audience to feel poorly for doctors who are unable to earn the money “they deserve” because

of the government’s role in healthcare reform. This statement is used to solidify the opinion

many of Porter’s biased readers already possess: that the government is cruel and incapable of

successfully reforming the healthcare system. Likewise, Porter appealed to pathos when

discussing the monetary cost of this reform. It is obvious that Porter hoped to arouse a rage in his

audience by citing the unmistakably large price tag of reform, which U.S. citizens will one day

have to pay. In addition, Porter made one last appeal to pathos in the second to last paragraph of

his article, in which he declared his aspiration to live in a world where healthcare could be free.
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While, once again, it appears that Porter has abruptly changed his opinion, he followed this

statement with “but that is not the world we live in.” Plainly, this was an effort to tear down any

remaining positive beliefs his biased audience may have regarding healthcare reform.

Noticeably, Porter’s diction signifies the prominence he attributes to pathos.

In conclusion, while both Dr. Harris and Sheenan Porter utilize Aristotle’s persuasive

techniques of ethos, logos, and pathos, it is apparent that overall, Dr. Harris has comprised the

superior persuasive article. The analysis of pieces such as these allows for further understanding

of the rhetoric regarding healthcare reform that appears daily on the news and in newspapers and

city halls across the United States. The concept of healthcare reform is not going away anytime

soon, so understanding how politicians argue this issue is paramount in comprehending one of

the major conflicts in today’s society.

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Works Cited

Harris, Robert D. "Arguments for Universal Health Access in the United States: A Radiologist's

Perspective." American Journal of Roentgenology. 11 Jan. 2007. Web. 08 Feb. 2011.

Porter, Sheenan. "The Argument Against Universal Healthcare." Ezine Articles. Ezine Healthcare

Provider. N.d. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.

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Appendix A

“Arguments for Universal Health Access in the United States: A Radiologist's Perspective”

http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/content/full/188/3/617

“The Argument Against Universal Healthcare”

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Argument-Against-Universal-Healthcare&id=2002434