Should the ACA - Affordable Care Act or Obamacare be renamed the LACA - the LESS Affordable Care Act

CONCLUSIONPro has hypothesized that Obamacare will make healthcare less affordable. For his only piece of evidence, Pro has described a notice from his insurance provider in the vaguest possible terms. In fact, the only information we are permitted to know about this remarkable policy is that the rate has not risen once over the past 14 years (while the average increase for health insurance premiums rose by 172%) and that the rate will now rise 1000% over the next four years (31.25 times faster than the average predicted by pessimistic analysts). Regrettably, we are not allowed to know the name of the healthcare provider, whether Pro receives his insurance through an employer, how much the plan costs, or any other fact that might allow us to evaluate the relevancy of Pro's claim. Whatever those facts, the little information we do possess demonstrates that the plan is so far from being representative of the experience of ordinary Americans that it must be exempted as an article of proof. In my previous argument, I requested that Pro consider potential increases for the average American, not just increases to his plan. Pro ignored this request. In my previous argument, I advised Pro to consider the increased value of insurance due to mandated benefits. Pro ignored this advice and returned to his magic insurance policy citing little improvement in benefits. We aren't permitted to know whether his current benefits were so good that the mandated benefits were already included or if Pro is simply ignorant of new benefits available through Obamacare. In my previous argument, I asked Pro to factor in tax credits kicking in for 67% of Americans. Pro ignored this argument entirely. In my previous argument, I requested that Pro separate Price increases due to Insurers from price increases due to reduced employer cost-sharing. Pro dropped this argument completely. In my previous argument, I advised Pro to distinguish between the regular healthcare inflation in the insurance industry and inflation due to Obamacare. Clearly, Pro intends to credit every future point of healthcare inflation to Obamacare, ignoring the regular annual increase in the cost of healthcare provision and the extra points tacked on by insurance providers. Pro ignores this advice entirely and instead argues that the charts provided represent "cherry-picking. " To refute two graphs showing regular premium increases 1999-2012, Pro refines the argument to four years before/after 2009, the year Pro mistakenly states ACA was instituted. Huh? The graphs were included to demonstrate normal inflation rates, Pro is so focused on demonstrating higher rates during Obama's term that he misses my point (not to mention that averaged rate increases over Bush's 8 years are significantly higher than Obama's 5 year average, mostly due to the financial crisis of 2008). . http://blog.cwpub.com...Importantly, Pro thinks that ACA was "instituted in 2009. " Obamacare was signed into law March 23 2010 and the bulk of its provisions will be instituted 3 months from now, Jan 1 2014. Pro appears to be trying to demonstrate that increases in premiums before 2014 must also be credited to Obamacare. Even increases before the law was passed are credited to Obamacare! Strange math indeed. In my previous argument, I also asked Pro to demonstrate how Obamacare is the direct cause of premium increases, since no premium increases are mandated by Obamacare and the whole point of the bill is slow down rate hikes. After all, if Pro can't define the relationship between Obamacare and premium increases all of Pro's assumptions collapse. Nevertheless, Pro ignored this argument entirely. In short, Pro did not bother to respond to any of my six arguments against his plan to credit any increase in premium over CPI to Obamacare. Rather, he simply reiterated his argument in ALL CAPS. Clearly, Pro does not wish to evaluate the range of factors that will apply in determining whether Obamacare is more or less affordable for the average American. On to the Forbes articles. I guess it is no surprise that Steve Forbes, who inherited his hundreds of millions of dollars and used it fund two weak runs for the Republican presidential nomination is opposed to Obamacare. After all, Forbes would like to see Social Security eliminated. Therefore, his magazine has been running some variation of the same anti-ACA editorial every week or two for the past five years. I can find no instance in any of these Forbes editorials where the potential advantages of tax credits, or mandated benefits, or increased regulation are ever considered. Most of the editorials focus on a very narrow view of Obamacare from the perspective of the very rich and show no concern for the uninsured, the uninsurable, or the fleecing of the middle-class. Notice that Pro had no response whatsoever when I discredited his Forbes cut & paste in round 2. I showed how the Forbes article merely transmitted the political propaganda of a Tea Party fundraising effort without any effort to investigate an alternative perspective. When the same group dramatically altered their premium increase estimate from 88% to 41% in the space of 7 weeks, neither Pro nor Forbes Magazine expressed the least curiosity about the unreliability of their source. In spite of my unchallenged discrediting of Pro's first Forbes cut & paste, Pro included 2 more lengthy cut & pastes in round 3, hoping that Forbes might some points in the absence of any compelling arguments from Pro. The first of these comes from venture capitalist Michael Bell, who offers no credentials related to healthcare or insurance. Bell spends no time considering the potential health benefits, the impact of tax credits, the advantage of increased competition. One senses that his primary complaint is the 3.8% surtax on capital gains for people making more than a quarter-million dollars a year. There's no denying that taxes are going to go up a bit for the richest 5% of Americans, but that in no way promotes the argument for LESS affordable. For the richest 5% of American, small increases in taxes likely only cut into disposable income and healthcare remains just as affordable. Anyway, the top 5% pay an effective tax rate of 17.5% in spite of a 35% tax bracket. The second cut & paste comes the same reporter who failed to follow up on Tea Party claims in the article from round 2: Romney campaign adviser Avik Roy. Deceptively, Roy states that Obamacare architect Michael Gruber has changed his mind and is "quietly telling State governments that the law will significantly increase the cost of insurance. " To refute, I have added a YouTube video of Roy and Gruber debating Obamacare 8 weeks ago. Notice that Gruber states quite clearly that healthcare costs will go down or remain the same for all but 2.5% of the population and Roy does not disagree. We can't expect an objective position from a Romney employee regarding a plan named Obamacare, but it's interesting that Roy doesn't challenge any of Gruber's facts. . http://www.youtube.com...Finally, Pro spends some time documenting that healthcare premiums spiked in 2011. I do not dispute the fact, but fail to see the fact's relevancy when discussing the impact of Obamacare provisions implemented in 2014. Pro concluded his second round argument with the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum meaning the conclusion is an exact restatement of the hypothesis. Unfortunately, once we have disregarded the subjective political tracts and the entirely unrepresentative personal experiences, Pro has failed to make much of an argument at all. Pro's conclusion may be the same as his hypothesis, but readers of this debate expect a hypothesis to be supported with facts. Pro has failed to demonstrate why or how Obamacare will be less affordable for the majority of Americans. Therefore, the Affordable Care Act should retain its current title.