Resolved; The United States Government ought to guarantee Universal Health Care to its Citizens

I affirm "Universal health care" (hereafter called "UHC") is a system wherein the government provides health care for its citizens. "Health care" is the promotion of health via the administration of medicine and the provision of amenities such as birth control. I value Morality as prescribed by the word "ought." In matters of morality, we look first to harms and benefits because the capacities for suffering and enjoyment is what makes a being worthy of moral consideration. Singer: The capacity for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness"is not just another characteristic [This] capacity is a prerequisite for having interests at all. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because it will suffer if it is. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. The absence of harm is good in itself, while a benefit has to be enjoyed by someone to be good, therefore harms outweigh benefits in moral consideration Benatar: Consider pains and pleasures as exemplars of harms and bene@257;ts. It is uncontroversial to say that (1) the presence of pain is bad, and that (2) the presence of pleasure is good. However, such a symmetrical evaluation does not apply to the absence of pain and pleasure, (3) the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone, whereas (4) the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation. the absence of [pain] is ensured by not making a potential person actual this absence is good when judged in terms of the interests of the person who would otherwise have existed. We may not know who that person would have been, but we can still say that the avoidance of her pains is food when judged in terms of her potential interests Benatar Continues: Once a life reaches a certain threshold of badness no quantity of good can outweigh it, because no amount of good could be worth that badness. Compare two lives"those of X and Y"and consider the amount of good and bad X"s life has (relatively) modest quantities of good and bad"perhaps @257;fteen kilo-units of positive value and @257;ve kilo-units of negative value. Y"s life, by contrast, has unbearable quantities of bad (say, @257;fty kilo-units of negative value). Y"s life also has much more good (seventy kilo-units of positive value) than does X"s. Nevertheless, X"s life might reasonably be judged less bad, even if Y"s has greater net value, judged in strictly quantitative terms. This shows why the assignment of calues in a system of positive utilitarianism must be wrong Because of the suffering that is inherent to life, coming into existence is always a harm and thus reproduction must be immoral Benatar 2 We tend to ignore just how much of our lives is characterized by negative mental states. These include hunger, thirst, tiredness, stress, and discomfort. For billions of people, at least some of these discomforts are chronic. These people cannot relieve their hunger, escape the cold, or avoid the stress. However, even those who can @257;nd some relief do not do so immediately or perfectly, and thus experience them to some extent every day. In fact, if we think about it, signi@257;cant periods of each day are marked by some or other of these states. People are so used to the discomforts of daily life that they [often] overlook them entirely [but this] does not mean that our daily lives are not pervaded by them. The negative mental states mentioned so far, however, are simply the baseline ones characteristic of healthy daily life. Chronic ailments and advancing age make matters worse. Aches, pains, lethargy, and sometimes frustration from disability become an experiential backdrop for everything else. Now add those discomforts, pains, and sufferings that are experienced either less frequently or only by some (though nonetheless very many) people. These include allergies, headaches, frustration, irritation, colds, menstrual pains, hot @258;ushes, nausea, hypoglycemia, seizures, guilt, shame, boredom, sadness, depression, loneliness, body-image dissatisfaction, the ravages of AIDS, of cancer, and of other such life-threatening diseases, and grief and bereavement. The reach of negative mental states in ordinary lives is extensive. Benatar continues: The positive features of life, although good for those who exist, cannot justify the negative features that accompany them. Their absence would not have been a deprivation for one who never came into existence. It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of [your] their children is not to bring those children into existence in the @257;rst place. There are many reasons why people do not notice this, or why, if they do notice it, that they do not act on the realization, but the interests of the potential children cannot be among them, as I shall argue. Nor is [and] the harm produced by the creation of a child [is not] usually restricted to that child. The child soon @257;nds itself motivated to procreate, producing children who, in turn, develop the same desire. Thus any pair of procreators can view themselves as occupying the tip of a generational iceberg of suffering. [If] each couple has three children, an original pair"s cumulative descendents over ten generations amount to 88,572 people. That constitutes a lot of pointless, avoidable suffering. The only way we can prevent all this suffering is by not reproducing. Thus, the only useful criterion can be Lowering Birth Rates. Humans are not the only ones who suffer because of human existence. The entire natural world is negatively affected by humans" destructive nature. Kochi & Ordan: When taking a wider view of history, one which focuses on the relationship of humans towards other species, it becomes clear that the human heritage " and the propagation of itself as a thing of value " has occurred on the back of seemingly endless acts of violence, destruction, killing and genocide. While this cannot be verified, perhaps "human" history and progress begins with the genocide of the Neanderthals and never loses a step thereafter. It only takes a short glimpse at the list of all the sufferings caused by humanity for one to begin to question whether this species deserves to continue into the future. The list of human-made disasters is ever-growing after all: suffering caused to animals in the name of science or human health, not to mention the cosmetic, food and textile industries; damage to the environment by polluting the earth and its stratosphere; deforesting and overuse of natural resources; and of course, inflicting suffering on fellow human beings all over the globe, from killing to economic exploitation to abusing minorities, individually and collectively. In light of such a list it becomes difficult to hold onto any assumption that the human species possesses any special or higher value over other species. Indeed, if humans at any point did possess such a value, because of higher cognitive powers, or even because of a special status granted by God, then humanity has surely devalued itself through its actions and has forfeited its claim to any special place within the cosmos. In our development from higher predator to semi-conscious destroyer we have perhaps undermined all that is good in ourselves I contend that UHC will prevent untold amounts of suffering by lowering birth rates. This is true for two reasons. 1. Health care is empirically proven to increase education Haas: Those who reported poor childhood health completed approximately 1.8 fewer years of schooling; are almost half as likely to work in an occupation in which the average incumbent has been to college; earn on average $13,000 less annually; and have a staggering $165,000 (77%) less in assets compared to their peers who reported excellent health Increased education decreases birth rates Kasarda: Research to date suggests that both age at marriage and age at first birth increase with female education (Bumpass, 1969; Busfield, 1972; Momeni, 1972). Completed fertility, in turn, has been found to be lower among those women who delay age at marriage (or first consensual union) and age of first birth [Also,] Through well-paying jobs open to her [a woman] because of her formal training, she may become self-sufficient and less inclined to early marriage. Furthermore, married and single women with better educations are more likely to find jobs that provide them with satisfactions alternative to children, such as companionship, recreation, and creative activity Kasarda continues: Extended schooling beyond the primary grades exposes young women, both formally and informally, to contraceptive information and material not often available through familial or mass media channels. In both developed and less developed nations, knowledge and practice of contraception has been shown to be closely linked to the educational level of wives and husbands (Bhutnagor, 1972; CE LADE and CFSC, 1972; Dandekar, 1967; Husain, 1970b, Kripalani et al., 1971; Miro and Rath, 1965; Sen and Sen, 1967; Yaukey, 1961). Most research supports the conclusion of Ronald Freedman and co-workers (1959), that "the more education a wife or husband has, the more likely that the couple has used contraception, that they began early in marriage, and that they planned their pregnancies and avoided more than they wanted." Thus, having demonstrated that human reproduction causes suffering and that UHC reduces the rate of reproduction, I urge a strong affirmative vote.