"A cap on your costs, but no cap on your benefit." - Nancy Pelosi

I affirm the resolution - a limit on the costs of health care does not result in a limit on the benefits of health care. I accept all my opponent's definitions. I also would like to provide the following abbreviations: HCC: Health care costs HCB: Health care benefits I have a three pronged method for affirming the resolution, and I have formed my arguments so that even if one prong fails, my other prongs will still be able to affirm the resolution. ==== PRONG I: "Limit" on HCB ==== While my opponent has attempted to show that a limit on HCC would reduce incentive for insurance companies to provide HCB (I will refute this claim in my other prongs), he has NOT even attempted to argue that a limit on HCC would create a LIMIT on HCB. Let's look at the definition of limit again: "amount that may not be exceeded by law. " A reduced incentive for businesses to provide benefits does NOT satisfy this definition. The business is free by law to provide benefits in excess of their revenue. It is not the law that would prevent them from doing this, it is a sound business sense that would. A legal cap on HCC does not in any way imply a legal cap on HCB. A legal cap on HCB would require that a law literally sets a maximum for how much benefit insurance companies may provide their customers. Such a law is not implied, and thus the resolution is affirmed. ==== PRONG II: HCC isn't the only possible source of revenue ==== Let us look at the definition of HCC. It is "what a person pays their health insurance company. " If the government wants businesses to provide HCB that they usually would not based on HCC, the government may provide subsidies. While this is included in the company's revenue, and therefore the ability to provide HCB, it is not included in HCC, since it comes from the government, not from the individual. Therefore, a limit on HCC does not even necessarily result in a lessening of incentive or ability to provide HCB, so that cannot be used as a rationale for assuming a limit on HCB. ==== PRONG III: Average value vs. an actual cap ==== Even total revenue from all sources does not create an actual cap (not even one enforced by the company rather than by law as the definition of limit requires) on HCB. The company would reign in its contract-making so that all contracts are seen to have an average benefit for the company, but that would not create an actual cap. For instance, let us say that Jimbo is a seemingly very healthy man with no real risk factors. His insurance would already be cheap compared to that of most, due to the low perceived average cost to the insurance company of providing him with HCB. A limit on HCC would probably not even affect the terms of Jimbo's contract, since it wouldn't affect his HCC which is already low. Now let us assume that Jimbo gets very unlucky, and due to an extremely unlikely set of events, he ends up requiring extremely large amounts of HCB, which his contract allows for (with the assumption, of course, that he's very unlikely to need it). But when he does need it, there is not an actual cap, except that that already would have existed in his contract. Note that HCB refers to the actual individual costs of healthcare to the insurance company, and NOT to the average cost as calculated by the company. The company may try to cap the latter, but they will not cap the former to any specific value. That is all for now. I will clarify my arguments in the next round if necessary.