Rhetorical Analysis Of Daniel Stone's Our Big Appetite For Healthcare

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Daniel Stone, a practicing physician in internal medicine, writes “Our Big Appetite for Healthcare” to argue how California’s healthcare needs to change. In the article, Stone discusses how California’s “more is better” health care is costly, inefficient, and insignificant. The author creates his argument with the methods of appeals; logos, a logical appeal, and ethos, an ethical appeal. Stone establishes his argument by mainly using logos with indicative reasoning to support his argument. Stone uses ethos less frequently then logos. In the article, Stone’s ethos is accomplished by using a real life example when he stated, “Consider just one example: A doctor I know recently submitted a referral for a costly MRI scan for a 46-year-old woman with a week …show more content…

First, he uses an analogy fallacy, he is comparing the healthcare industry to Starbucks. Stone even creates this into a syndrome when he states, “They expect their CT scans, when they want them, in much the same way they expect their decaf caramel extra hot low-fat macchiato. Think of it as the Starbucks syndrome in healthcare,” in order to explain his analogy. The author also establishes the appeal of everyone living in California as huge snobs. This leads into his second fallacy, when he uses a generalization fallacy, he assumes that all Californians expects everything to run how a Starbucks runs. Starbucks is known to be quick, and efficient, and Stone goes back to the first ethical example involving the premature ordering of the MRI scan when he states, “The doctor saved time and avoided a difficult discussion by going along. The patient saved a trip and got what she wanted. Just as she would have at Starbucks,” to provide how patients want their doctors to be how their baristas would be at Starbucks. Although, Stone uses these two fallacies as part of his strategy it help persuade the readers by using a relatable experience that we have all had, a trip to

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