The U.S. government should require its citizens to have health insurance.

I NEGATE the topic... RESOLVED: The U.S. government should require its citizens to have health insurance. Before we present our main arguments, we’d like provide a proper framework for today’s debate… OBSERVATIONS: 1. This debate revolves about insurance care and whether or not it should become mandatory. Even though laws like Obamacare can be brought up as examples, this is not the main focus of the resolution and the debate. 2. To show whether the motion stated is good or bad, we shall have fiat power, which is the power to show what would happen if the resolution was true or false. 3. An individual healthcare mandate directly leads to universal health care, which is when every citizen in a country is insured. STANDARD: The standard, or the most important issue of today’s debate shall be the social welfare of American citizens. With all that said, we have three main arguments … CONTENTION 1: Premium Increases My first argument is that the individual mandate is not feasible because the premiums are increasing. Forbes predicts that individuals will pay more out of pocket expenditures with a requirement. Overall, the authors found that “premiums for younger, healthier individuals could increase by more than 40 percentThe CBO even states that this would add $15, 000 dollars to every family in the US with health insurance. Judge, the other team may argue that people that are born with pre-existing conditions should get insurance, but are you willing to add $15,000 dollars to your total expenditure, knowing the fact that this figure will skyrocket over the next few years? Depending on the state, mandated benefits for health care have actually increased premiums by a minimum of 20% and maximum of 50% in the past. Kaiser Family Foundation states that the Massachusetts’s individual mandate on health care creates 15% higher premiums than the national average. It shows that the individual mandate will increase premiums in a national level, too. The impact is clear. People would not be able to pay for insurance showing that the individual mandate would not be effective and hurt the government at the same time. CONTENTION 2: Quality of life Our second main argument is that mandated health insurance hurts the quality of health care. If we have to pay for mandatory health care with increasing premiums, shouldn’t we get the best healthcare possible? Subpoint A: Medical Errors Every single year 98,000 people die every year because of mistakes from overworked doctors, and instead of alleviating this problem, requiring health insurance will only add more victims to the 98,000 people who die every year. As we can see in Massachusetts, doctors are now at a stage that they have stopped taking patients clearly hurting the people. This is because the waiting times are increasing so much that people in serious conditions die in the lounge because the doctors can’t help them since they didn’t come early enough. The impact is clear. People are dying due to overworked doctors and once 40 million people get health insurance, the amount of people dying will skyrocket. In addition to that, many people will not be receiving care by these overworked doctors. Subpoint B: Shortages When private companies have a reduced profit due to serving patients with pre-existing conditions because of the mandate, the companies stop making important drugs like epinephrine to maintain their profit level. Almost 80% of the life-saving drugs that local paramedics use to treat patients are in short in supply at any given time. Secondly, Three United States factories produce 90% of the generic drugs. The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act changed the costs of EMS1 and dextrose , significantly reducing the ability of factories to maintain their profit. Other companies followed. The first shortage of cardiac epinephrine and 50% dextrose occurred in 2010, which are two important cardiac drugs. Medical directors were scrambling with just a 30-day supply and no future deliveries were available. The impact is clear. To make the individual mandate compliable, the government must force medicine companies to lower prices. Since these companies wouldn’t generate as much of a profit, a lesser amount of medicine would be produced, as shown by the 2003 Medical Modernization Act, except it would be much worse since it on a much larger scale. Subpoint C: Research and Development: The health insurance industry is a huge funder of medical research. When there profits are reduced by treating more sick patients, they reduce their funding to research and development. Without the industry funding medical research and development, the research would be much worse and we wouldn’t be able to find important cures. According to NBC news, The US is number one in medical research. In research and development for medical discoveries, the health insurance industry spends a 54% of the research. LOGIC: By forcing insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions, companies will be losing billions of dollars. When they lose billions of dollars, they must put less money into research. If less money goes into research, then the health of citizens across the WHOLE WORLD will decrease. Since the US is number one in medical research, they are the ones that find the cures. These companies then patent it and charge money to access these drugs. Countries get most of their important research/cures/drugs from the US. So, an individual mandate means less money into research which means less profit from foreign nations. The impact is clear. If the mandate were active, then the quality of health care would drastically decrease due to the lack of supply, lack of medics, increased waiting time, and reduced spending in research. Thank you and vote for the negationSources: http://www.forbes.com... http://www.forbes.com... http://www.forbes.com... http://www.kff.org... http://www.nytimes.com... http://homelandvoice.com... http://www.ems1.com...