BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Bailing out Greece is a necessary evil

David Moenning. "Greece Makes Choice Between 'Collapse or Salvation'" IstockAnalyst. May 2010: "We are waging together a difficult and relentless battle dealing with the problems — the dimensions of which one could never have imagined. It is true, we were the first to speak of the crisis — a crisis of politics, a crisis of institutions, a crisis of values which in turn led to the huge economic crisis. No citizen of Greece could ever have imagined the size of the debt and the deficit which the former government had caused and hid upon its exit. This is not the time for accusations, however. The people of Greece are fully aware of where they lie. The consequences, however, are manifold. We have no other choices and no time, so accessing the bailout is inevitable."
EU not responsible for bailing out reckless Greece

"The EU’s Greek Bailout Mistake." The Independent Institute. May 2010: "Members of the EU agreed to limit their deficits and public debt as a condition of membership, and Greece violated the agreement, which landed them in financial trouble. One way to look at this bailout is to ask whether, when the rules are violated, the violators should suffer the consequences, or be helped by those who did not violate the rules. On that ground, the answer is clear: Greece violated the rules and should not be bailed out. Furthermore, the bailout violates the EU’s own rules saying the Community shall not assume the commitments of central governments."
Bailout does not address policy problems in Greece; delays inevitable

Jeff Miron. "Let Greece Default". Forbes. May 2010: "A bailout will not address the fundamental causes of Greece's fiscal problems. Greece has an expansive but highly inefficient civil service and an economy stifled by regulation, favoritism and rent-seeking. These policies have generated double-digit deficits and a debt-to-GDP ratio well over 100%. A bailout [...] does nothing to fix the misguided policies that have generated Greece's existing debt and ongoing deficits. Bailout therefore merely postpones the day of reckoning."
Failing confidence

A Greek default would be disastrous, even more than the Lehman Brothers collapse. Greek is a nation, and a member of the euro zone. A default would be disastrous in the international economy. South Korea, a relatively remote trading partner with Greece, had a huge impact on the South Korean stock market. A confidence shakedown on the Greece bailout was thought to have caused the Dow's 1000 points decrease. If the hint of a default could cause that much damage, how much carnage the default itself would bring?
U.S. is risking its own sovereign debt crisis

"Five Reasons Not to Support a Bailout of Greece", The Heritage Foundation, May 2010 "It was bad enough when the federal government bailed out AIG, and then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then many of the mega banks, and then GM and Chrysler. At least these firms had the modest merit of being U.S. companies employing U.S. workers. Even if U.S. government finances were in pristine shape, U.S. taxpayer dollars should not be used to bail out a perennially dysfunctional state. But as spending-driven trillion dollar budget deficits and a presidential debt commission starkly evidence, the U.S. is seriously risking its own Greek-style sovereign debt crisis. Fortunately, the U.S. does not need an IMF bailout; it needs only a President willing to acknowledge that he has led the country on a Grecian spending binge it cannot afford."
Marshall plan was effective bailout after WWII

"History: European Union." History.com: "The Marshall Plan was a U.S.-sponsored plan designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European nations in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive. [...] some $13 billion worth of economic aid was distributed over the next four years, helping to restore industrial and agricultural production, establish financial stability, and expand trade. Direct grants accounted for the vast majority of the aid, with the remainder in the form of loans. The Marshall Plan was very successful; several western European countries experienced a rise in their gross national products of 15 to 25 percent during this period. The plan contributed greatly to the rapid renewal of the western European chemical, engineering, and steel industries. The Marshall Plan concept of economic aid was so successful that President Harry S. Truman extended it to less developed countries throughout the world."
Austerity measures of Greek bailout set good precedent

David D. Moenning. "Greece Makes Choice Between 'Collapse or Salvation'." American Foreign Policy. May 2010: "Although the spending cuts are severe, the harsh terms for aid should serve as a deterrent to other countries looking for a bailout. With the rest of the PIGIS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ireland, and Spain) experiencing tough times due to massive debt buildups, Germany doesn't want to provide a quick-and-easy bailout to all comers. When countries see that Greece's path, with the IMF's strict terms, is not easy, they will do everything to avoid that for themselves."
Greek debt is too large for bailout to solve

Bill Bonner. "Greek bailout only adds to debt." The Christian Science Monitor. May 10th, 2010: "Greeks borrowed money they couldn’t reasonably expect to pay back. [...] The plans of the ruling classes are not merely unjust. They are unworkable. Over the next three years, Greece will add $50 billion in deficits, stabilizing the debt at 150% of GDP. It will also need to come up with $70 billion to pay off debt that matures over the next two years. That is more than the amount offered in the bailout. [...] when a debt cannot be repaid, there’s no use pretending. When you cannot keep up with the interest on a debt, it is added to the principle. The debt grows, becoming evermore unmanageable. It’s better to admit the error as soon as possible and start organizing the details of your financial funeral."
Default would devastate Greek and global economies

Stephanie Flanders. "Default is no soft option". BBC News. May 2010: "The short-term cost to the economy would be huge. Imagine the Greek government stopped paying interest on its debt tomorrow. It would still have a primary deficit - excluding interest payments - of more than 8% of national income, and it might not have anyone to borrow that money from. That could mean more austerity, not less, especially if the country remained in the euro. There would also be the collapse of the domestic banking system to consider, Greek banks being the largest holders of Greek sovereign debt. And that's before you get even to the costs of contagion (or spread) for other countries, as investors wonder who will be next."
IMF bailouts worked in the Mexico peso crisis

"A Retrospective on the Mexican Bailout." The Cato Institute. Winter 2002: "The International Monetary Fund’s bailout of Mexico in 1995 was a success because it restored confidence in the collapsing peso, led to a quick economic recovery, and possibly stemmed the outbreak of a global systemic financial crisis. The bailout, moreover, helped keep Mexico on a market-oriented track."
Greece bailout is moral hazard; encourages fiscal irresponsibility

Sundeep Matharu. "Europe's $1 trillion Bailout Might not be Able to Save the Euro from Going Down." TopNews. May 2010: "The more the IMF bails out countries, the more we can expect countries to slip into crises in the future because it encourages risky behavior on the part of governments and investors who fully expect that if anything goes wrong, the IMF will come to their rescue. The bailout of Mexico, for example, was a signal to the world that if anything went wrong in emerging economies, the IMF would come to investors' rescue."
Bailout will not stop contagion in Europe

"Bailouts Don’t Prevent Contagion", Kathy Lien, May 2010 "The market is obsessed with contagion fears and unfortunately, bailouts don’t always prevent contagion. If you recall, the 1982 Mexico bailout did not stop the spread to Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina, and the IMF rescue package for Thailand in October 1997 did little to stop the spread to Indonesia and Korea."
Greek bailout avoids a second global economic crisis

"The European Union's Greece Bailout Problem." US News & World Report. May 2010 "Had Greece defaulted on its loans German banks would have taken huge losses. That would have created a domino effect and a second world banking crisis. It's a no win situation. All they have done is postpone the day of reckoning. The global economy is playing an old shell game. It's days are numbered."
Insurance co-ops self-sustaining, need no taxpayer support

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.): "the intent is for the co-ops to become self-sustaining entities—supported, owned and governed by their own members." The fact that they are self-sustaining in this way makes them, in the long-run, a very scalable model, as they can generate an independent stream of revenues. This compares favorable against a government-run public insurance option, which is dependent on taxpayer funding and the whims of government budget allocations. In this sense, co-ops offer a good competitive alternative to private health insurance companies.
Health insurance co-ops are self-sustaining, not taxpayer-dependent.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.): "the intent is for the co-ops to become self-sustaining entities—supported, owned and governed by their own members." The fact that they are self-sustaining in this way makes them, in the long-run, a very scalable model, as they can generate an independent stream of revenues. This compares favorably against a government-run public insurance option, which is dependent on taxpayer funding and the whims of government budget allocations.
Co-ops are equally inefficient as public insurance

Rick Moran. "Health Insurance Co-ops Too Much Like the Public Option". American Issues Project. August 18, 2009: "As a concept, health insurance co-ops are attractive because ostensibly, they would be run by the consumer, for the benefit of the consumer, and with no profit motive, premiums theoretically should be cheaper. But in practice, we are liable to get a much different animal with the same kind of inefficiency and administrative waste we see in government run health insurance entities like Medicare or Medicaid."
Insurance co-ops will require government involvement/problems

Rick Moran. "Health Insurance Co-ops Too Much Like the Public Option". American Issues Project. August 18, 2009: "It would be an enormously complex undertaking — almost as difficult as trying to establish nationalized health care. And the question of whether it would be any better than the public option as far as keeping government out of the private health insurance business is of deep concern to many. While most cooperatives are run by the consumer shareholders, a statewide entity might find such a set up too unwieldy and simply have some crony of the governor heading it up."
Co-ops are more community-focused than insurance companies

Darla Andrews, a member of the Minneapolis-based Health Partners, was reported saying in an August 2009 CNN article: "I like the small community feel of here. It's more personal attention."[7] Large insurance companies and bureaucracies lose their community feel very easily. Co-ops that scale at a local level can compete more effectively with the idea that they are more community-oriented and easy to deal with in this regard.
Co-ops are non-profits, not run by government nor companies

Senator Kent Conrad, a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee and the figure originally proposing co-ops, said co-ops "have some of the strengths of public option in that they are not for profit and will provide competition for the insurance companies. On the other hand, it meets some of the objections from others who don't want a government-run plan, because co-ops are membership-run and membership-controlled, not government-controlled."[1]
Co-ops are a slippery slope to socialized medicine

Rick Moran. "Health Insurance Co-ops Too Much Like the Public Option". American Issues Project. August 18, 2009: "There are slippery slope arguments against health insurance co-ops as well. With so many different co-ops, there would probably be vast differences in how efficiently they would be run. Some might even fail without continued government assistance. In the end, the federal government may end up taking them over anyway."
Co-ops implement a more holistic, preventive approach

Andy Kroll. "Moving past public options and health care co-ops". Mother Jones. August 19, 2009: "Dr. Eric Larson, MD, MPH, and the executive director of Group Health, one of the leading co-ops in the nation, recently wrote to me. [after the jump.] [...] Larson strongly emphasized not just Group Health's co-op model but how it chooses to deliver care—namely, its focus on integrative care, care that treats patients from a more holistic perspective and seeks to proactively treat illnesses and diseases rather than reactively. It's a model that, unlike so much of our health care system, emphasizes primary care medicine and preventive care—a proven way to prevent chronic conditions, which are, of course, a major contributor to skyrocketing health costs."
Co-ops cannot scale to compete with insurers like public plan

Sanjay Gupta said on Anderson Cooper 360 in August of 2009: "looking at a lot of these historical knowledge of co-ops, unless you get scale -- hundreds of thousands of people participating -- it is hard for a co-op to compete against a private insurance company, which is why the people who are such supporters of the public option are crying foul. They are saying, look, the public option was a national option, it had scale. Hundreds of thousands if not more people. That could compete. Could a co-op even at a regional level compete?"[8]
Non-profit co-ops are driven by health interests of members, not profits

The CEO of HealthPartners, Mary Brainered, says that the health insurance co-op has an advantage because it is not beholden to shareholders. "That means that their primary allegiance and accountability is to that membership base and customer base. Making sure health care is affordable is a very big deal to a co-op. Having low administrative costs -- there's no value to our membership in having high administrative fees, so a big focus is on putting the dollars into health care and not into administration."[2]
Advocates of co-ops are really aiming for socialized medicine

Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said the following about the Democratic co-op proposals: "Now, they — they may try to call it a co-op. They can call it a public option. But you know they are all on record saying they want a single-payer government system. So, any Republican now that helps them pass a bill is helping them pass a government takeover of health care."[19]
Health insurance co-ops cannot scale as quickly as public insurance

A public plan can scale within two to five years, with massive injections of public funds. Health insurance co-ops cannot do this, and will take many years and even decades to scale to the necessary level, and even this is not assured. Paul Hazen, president and chief executive officer of the National Cooperative Business Association, the leading co-op trade group, said that any given co-op will take 10 to 20 years to get up and running successfully and at scale.[9] On this note, Jacob Hacker, a famous political science professor and health care expert at the University of California, wrote, "The history of cooperative is that it's very hard to set these things up, and while we're trying to set them up, there's not going to be accountability and pressure [on private insurers]. They would be weakest when they're most needed — at the outset."[10]
Health co-ops cannot scale to solve problem of uninsured

This is an extension of the above argument that co-ops have trouble scaling, but focuses on the outcome of solving the massive problem of around 47 million uninsured Americans. If health co-ops cannot scale widely and robustly to compete with health insurance companies, they will not achieve the ultimate goal of insuring millions of Americans. Nor will it help cut costs and offer better packages to those that can't afford the insurance they have or can afford only bad insurance.
Non-profit co-ops scale widely without profit incentive.

While many social entrepreneurs may find, in the goodness of their hearts, the will to start a non-profit co-op, most people are not willing to invest the initial and sustained effort in something that does not provide increasing returns and profits over time. This is simply human nature, and it places a significant cap on the the potential for co-ops to scale widely and successfully. Indeed, this is why only two major health insurance co-ops exist in America - Group Health and Health Partners - instead of hundreds of them across the nation. As long as co-ops continue to be non-profits, they will not be able to spread widely and help solve the problem of 47 million uninsured Americans.
Health insurance cooperatives are not very portable

Rick Moran. "Health Insurance Co-ops Too Much Like the Public Option". American Issues Project. August 18, 2009: "Health insurance co-ops wouldn’t solve the problem of insurance portability either. If you were a member of a co-op in one state, and moved to another, you would have to buy in to their co-op with no guarantee you would have comparable insurance coverage." This is partly a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Because co-ops are not yet widespread, people will not be able to take plans from one state to another. And because they cannot do this, they will be seen as inferior to private insurers that already have this attribute, and will not scale.
Co-ops create tensions b/w doctors and governing boards

"Q and A on Health Care Co-ops". MSNBC. August 17, 2009: "Q. What is the history of health care co-ops in America?[...] A: Very uneven. Many have failed over the decades because they were unable to compete effectively or because tensions between doctors and consumer-oriented governing boards could not be resolved." In general, this highlights the fact that a non-profit health insurance co-op will likely not compensate doctors very well, and this can lead to decreases in incentives, performance, and quality among doctors.
Co-ops are a successful model for health insurance

Edmund Haislmaier, et al. "Health care co-operatives: doing it the right way". Heritage Foundation. June 18, 2009: "The co-op concept is also longstanding and widespread in the insurance sector, where it is known as a "mutual" insurance company. Thus, such large well-known companies as Mutual of Omaha and Northwestern Mutual Life are in fact cooperatives. There are also successful smaller, niche-market mutual insurers, such as Church Mutual (which offers lines of property, casualty, and liability coverage for member religious institutions) and Jeweler's Mutual (which offers similar coverage lines for members engaged in making or selling jewelry). [...] When it comes to health care, a group that "organizes" coverage provided by insurers could be structured as a co-op, and a company that provides insurance could also be structured as a co-op. Both could be present in the same market."
Insurance industry needs more competition, not co-ops

Michael Leavitt. "Health 'Co-ops' Are Government Care". Wall Street Journal. August 20, 2009: "Our health-care system needs real reform [not co-ops]. We need to abolish the unfair tax that favors employer-sponsored insurance over self-purchased insurance. We need to foster a more vibrant private market with greater competition and choice. We need to make prices transparent and give consumers more freedom to pursue health-care value."
Co-ops more politically feasible than public insurance

"Has Kent Conrad Solved the Public Plan Problem? An Interview." Ezra Klein interview with Kent Conrad (S.D. D) in the Washington Post. June 11, 2009: "[Ezra Klein:] How do you respond to someone who says, [co-ops are] a terrific idea. More competition is always welcome. But why instead of a public option? Why not do it alongside and let a thousand coverage models bloom? [...] [Ken Conrad, Senate Democrat from North Dakota who chairs the Senate Budget Committee:] Votes. The problem is this. If you're in a 60 vote environment in the Senate -- and I believe we are, because I believe reconciliation simply won't work -- if you begin tallying up the votes, I believe that virtually all Republicans are against the public option and some democrats are. So how do you get to 60?"
Co-ops are a great alternative to the public option

President Barack Obama said in Colorado in mid August, 2009: "The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform." Later that same day, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, told CNN that the government run health insurance was "not the essential element" of health care reform. "There will be a competitor to private insurers," Sebelius added. "That's really the essential part, is you don't turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing." [But, these statements made clear that a public option is not essential, and that a co-op could achieve similar goals of adding competition to the marketplace for health insurance.[4]
Health care co-ops have a history of insolvency and failure

Kate Pickert. "Can health co-ops do the job of a public plan?". Time. June 22, 2009: "apart from Group Health and Health Partners, the history of nonprofit HMOs is littered with failures. In the 1990s, a similarly set-up nonprofit HMO in the Washington, D.C., area called Group Health Association was forced to sell itself to Humana, a private insurance company, after its finances deteriorated to the point of insolvency. GHA, which had about 130,000 members, was plagued by falling membership rolls, strikes by staff doctors and nurses and competition from other HMOs. Before being acquired by Humana, GHA even tried to transform itself into a for-profit HMO to stop the bleeding. A partnership between two nonprofit HMOs in New York, Group Health Inc. and Health Insurance Plan of New York, is currently seeking state approval to do the same thing — turn itself into a for-profit company to raise capital."
Co-ops complete strong non-profit, private, public mix

Matthew Iglesias. "Health Care Co-ops". Think Progress. July 10, 2009: "I’ll say that I think [co-ops are] a pretty good idea, but it stands on its own merits completely apart from the merits of a public plan. In other words, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have co-ops and private plans and a real public plan. Medicine has always been a mix of state, non-profit, and for-profit actors and I think it’s worth broadening the mix of insurance options available to ordinary people."
Co-ops will not necessarily work in health insurance

"Health Care Co-Op Supporters Don't Know What They're Talking About". Huffington Post. June 18, 2009: "As it turns out, [faith in health insurance co-ops] comes from a lot of examples that don't have anything to do with health care, even remotely! As pretty CNN hologram Jessica Yellin explained to birther fanatic Lou Dobbs, health care co-ops proponent Senator Kent Conrad was specifically inspired by an entirely different kind of co-op. [...] Kent Conrad is under the impression that electricity and health care are distributed in the same manner [as health insurance]? That's sort of dubious!"
Non-profit co-ops are great, but no substitute for public insurance

While it is entirely true that co-ops are a great option, and should be encouraged, they are not a substitute for a national insurance plan. This has a lot to do with the fact that co-ops simply cannot scale as well as public insurance to solve the problem of millions of uninsured Americans. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in August of 2009, "If someone thinks a co-op can work for their state, let them go and do it. [But, they are no substitute for public insurance]."