Obamacare should be repealed.

1. Entitlements should only be passed by consensus I did not argue that it was unfair for Obamacare to have been passed. I argued that it was unwise to have passed legislation that was not properly vetted through committee hearings, that came out of the vapors, and is incomprehensible. I do not see Con having disputed any of those three points. I agree the Parties are highly polarized. The study that Con cites correctly shows that Republicans are further right than in a long time. The study also shows that Democrats are further left than since they won with Woodrow Wilson's promise to keep us out of war. As government moves towards regulating everything economic, there is a reaction. How does that justify a lack of vetting and justify incomprehensible legislation? Rather the opposite. If $545 billion is going to be cut from Medicare through “efficiency” everyone should know exactly how, so they can evaluate the plan. What are each of the 150 new government bodies regulating health care going to do? No one knows even now, and Obamacare should be repealed so that a step-by-step approach can be properly debated and put in place. Republicans concede some of the ideas in Obamacare, but the whole package is an unresolvable mess. Con argues that the Republicans are only against Obamacare because they want President Obama to fail. The debate is on the merits of the legislation, not the motivations of supporters of either side. For the record, the accusation is false. Republicans supported the President's intervention in Libya, supported the President's expanded use of drone strikes, and sided with the President on many national security issues. It is issue by issue. Con argued correctly that Republicans are solidly right wing these days; that means they don't need a political reason to oppose Obamacare. It's fundamental. The CBO says tort reform will save $54 billion. The point is that it doesn't cost taxpayers anything to accomplish, so if Democrats wanted some bipartisan support they could have thrown that bone to Republicans. Con agrees that interstate competition in health care should also have been given as a concession to Republicans as well. Obamacare was a failure of the legislative process, and should be repealed. 2. Obamacare is not affordable The United States now has free universal health care supplied through an emergency medical system. The US has a unique emergency system because of high rates of heart attacks, strokes, accidents, drug overdoses, and violence. Obamacare does nothing to reduce any of those emergencies, and Con says 85% of the patients are true emergencies. If you have a Cadillac plan or no insurance, you go to the same emergency room and receive exactly the same care as an uninsured person. This system can surely be improved, but any improvement depends upon increasing the amount of health care, mainly by increasing the number of health care professionals. Government runs the Medicare system, with the result that half of physicians won't take new Medicare patients and physicians are not entering geriatrics. We can debate the number who will leave medicine rather than fight the bureaucracy to deliver care, but overall Obamacare is not going to increase the number, it is going to decrease it. Con argues that the latest survey only covers a small percentage of physicians. The small percentage does not mean inaccuracy; voter surveys are reasonably accurate despite being a negligible percentage of voters and only covering the people who choose to respond. We don't know exactly how many physicians will follow through and retire, but the point is that the number of physicians will go down, so therwill be less care. My opponent argues that Obamacare will only cost $1.76 trillion over the next decade, just as the CBO says. If that's true, does that mean the Obamacare is affordable? Is it really just a rounding error in our spending? For comparison the total amount of student loan debt outstanding is $833 billion. http://www.finaid.org... The CBO estimate of Pentagon costs for the Iraq war is $1.9 trillion. http://www.reuters.com... Where did Con argue that we have another $1.76 trillion to spare? We have seen the economic downfall of Europe from wild overspending on entitlement programs. Even if Obamacare were a wonderful thing, which it is not, we cannot afford it. CBO assumes that $545 billion can be taken out of Medicare. Con argues that new efficiencies, previously undiscovered by the bureaucrats who have been running Medicare for decades, will emerge to make this possible without cutting any benefits. I relied upon President Obama's explanation of how this will be accomplished. The judgment of the personal physician attending a patient will be overruled in favor of formulas supplied by a remote panel. In the case the President considered, a 100-year old woman was judged by her physician to merit receiving a pacemaker based upon her good health and “spirit.” It happened and provided at least five years of comfortable living to the lady. President Obama said that efficiency had no room for individual judgments of that sort, so Obamacare would take precedence. My opponent did not address the President's explanation, but cited undefined new efficiencies as if magic will occur. In fact, there is little chance that Medicare recipients will tolerate the efficiencies brought by remote medical decisions. Congress will restore the cuts after the outcry. I pointed out that the CBO does not figure compliance costs. My opponent only argued that I did not accurately figure the cost. My basis for figuring was that the cost of parsing regulations is probably reasonably proportion to the amount of regulations. I admit to confusion over the correspondence of words to pages. (e.g. The PPACA was 2700 pages when first made available, 900 pages after typesetting, etc.). Anyway, “We have almost four million words in the US tax code. Obamacare added two million more.” http://slowfacts.wordpress.com... If it were completely proportional, the yearly $500 billion cost of complying with the present code would rise by $250 billion yearly. I more conservatively estimated $2 trillion per decade. It could be less, but keep in mind the Feds are nowhere near done writing. For this debate, all that matters is that there are very large unaccounted costs to the public. Con does not argue the logic of companies dropping employee coverage in much larger numbers than CBO anticipated, nor does he argue the fact that only 28,000 of four million employers found it worthwhile to try to satisfy the bureaucracy for a tax credit. My estimate of $2 trillion in additional costs is reasonable. The basic fact of supply and demand remains. Demand is increased and supply is decreased, therefore prices will rise. The only way to reduce the total cost is to ration services, as President Obama described, calling it efficiency. 3. Obamacare is an unacceptable loss of freedom Con argues that because everyone needs medical care, the principles of free markets do not apply, and therefore we should not worry about loss of freedom. Everyone needs food. Does it follow that we should not worry if government determines what food we eat? Everyone needs clothing. So maybe efficiencies should be obtained from government-mandated Chairman Mao suits? No, consumers have real economic choices in how much insurance they should have, what aches and pains deserve what amount and what type of treatment, and how much diet and exercise they do to improve their health. Physicians place enormous value on patient interaction to determine appropriate treatment. The loss is intolerable. ------- I invite readers to track my opponents dropped arguments. I appreciate my opponents diligence in this debate. I think we have given a good airing to the issues within the limited space afforded. The resolution is affirmed.