The United States should adopt Universal Healthcare

PRO’s CASE REBUTTAL C1: More people get more affordable coverage PRO believes Universal Health Care (UHC) offers people affordable healthcare coverage. Under a UHC system, people may indeed have affordable coverage, but there a multitude of tradeoffs that make this benefit not worthwhile. For example, PRO spends a lot of his time telling us about the glory of the Taiwanese healthcare system, but upon closer inspection, it becomes abundantly that there healthcare model is one the United States ought to reject. For starters, the Taiwanese government is not actually able to pay for the system. Instead, it addition to the taxes it collects from the Taiwanese people, Taiwan also relies upon constant borrowing from banks “to pay what there isn’t enough to pay providers.”[Ex1] Clinics and small size hospitals have diminished and the nation’s provider payment scheme has resulted in a serious shortage of doctors throughout some divisions.[Ex2] Doctors are encouraged to use less effectives treatments as well as spend very little time with patients in an effort to save money.[Ex3] A great example of the latter is a Taiwanese doctor who would spend 84 seconds on average diagnosing his patients.[Ex4] Using the Taiwanese Universal 84 Second health Care system as an example, PRO tells us that “more people are covered and the government doesn't lose any money. It's a win-win.” Borrowing from banks isn’t saving money by any standard and more people are certainly covered, but at the cost of diminished healthcare quality. C2: Universal Health Care saves and prolongs lives I’m not really defending the current healthcare system in the US, so much of what PRO says doesn’t apply. However, PRO’s comparison of the life expectancy in the US vs other countries is fallacious at best. Life expectancy boils down to multiple factors “unrelated to healthcare, such as unintentional injury and homicide.”[Ex5] It’s been determined that “when accounting for these two factors, life expectancy in America is comparable to that of Canada and England.”[Ex5] The rationale for the US being ranked so low in healthcare as compared to other countries is also without merit.[Ex6] That being said, does healthcare prolong and save lives? Absolutely. Really, I’m not going to deny that. What I do take issue with is PRO’s position on the extent to which UHC saves and prolongs. It is complete contrast to years of data on the issue. According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal, in just one year alone, “71 Ontario patients died while waiting for coronary bypass surgery and over one hundred more became medically unfit for surgery.”[Ex7] One woman had “an enormous tumour and fluid totalling 18 kilograms, [but that] massive weight gain and a diagnosis of ovarian cancer could [not] assure her timely treatment in Canada.”[Ex8]. In the UK, up to 500 heart patients die each year while waiting on their healthcare system’s waiting list.[Ex9]. The British government threatened one of its citizens, telling her that she “will be denied free National Health Service treatment for breast cancer if she seeks to improve her chances by paying privately for an additional drug.”[Ex10] In one year alone, “nearly 900,000 Britons [were] waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year.”[Ex11] A great deal of Swedish people “suffer chronic pain” while waiting as long as 25 weeks just for some heart surgery or an entire year just for hip replacement surgery.[Ex11] I could spend 20 lengthy debates just informing you about the atrocities suffered by individuals in other nations with UHC. Really, there’s no shortage of information on this issue. If you carefully consider the above examples and what we talked about in regards to Taiwan, what you see is the result of faceless unaccountable bureaucrats running healthcare. Having more healthcare coverage certainly does help lives, but imagine if we had a system that could do this exponentially better. C3: Universal Health Care benefits economic productivity PRO’s makes conclusions based on insufficient data. First, I think having health insurance can play a role in the amount of days you miss work, but I don’t see anything that leads us to the conclusion the having UHC would bring about this result. If anything, having anything similar to the wretched wait lines I discussed above would result in the exact opposite. Second, the US economy may very well lose $65-$130 billion due to poor health and premature deaths, but how much would we be losing under a system where poor health and premature deaths is a built in function, per waitlines and other methods of rationing? How much would we be losing out of the plethora of lawsuits against the federal government that are sure to ensue under such a system in a culture as litigious as the United States? PRO jumps the gun by presenting a 2009 study from the Council of Economic Advisers under president Obama, who maintains that healthcare reform slows the growth rate of the federal budget deficit, expands economic well-being by 100 billion each year and increases labor supply. Fortunately, we live in 2015, thus can assess for ourselves the legitimacy of this study by assessing the president’s own healthcare reform, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). First, the president’s healthcare reform is actually increasing the deficit [Ex12]. Second, the US economy is expanding at a very sluggish pace.[Ex13] Third, workforce participation is lower than it has been in decades.[Ex14]. PRO’s study sounds great on paper, but when implemented in reality, we see contrary results. C4: Universal Health Care creates jobs PRO points out that America spends more on healthcare than the national budgets, Canada and UK combined. This is yet another fallacious comparison though. Of course the US spends more. It’s spends more on a lot of things. In fact, the US economy (per its GDP) is much bigger than France, Canada and UK’s combined.[Ex15] He talks about companies saving money under a UHC system, but if that’s indeed the case, surely PRO would agree a free market system would allow companies to save even greater amounts of money, since there would be that much less regulatory oversight and taxation. The healthcare system, no longer being third party dominated, would mean that companies would paying their employees more money as opposed to having to offer healthcare benefits due to tax incentives put in place by the federal government. [Ex16] CON’s CASE REBUILD R1: Health care is indeed a commodity PRO asks us which we would prefer in control of healthcare: Indeed, who would you prefer? Politicians heavily influenced by lobbyists and faceless unaccountable bureaucrats or people who have to compete for your dollar and lack the ability bail themselves out for their own failures? Businesses certainly do exist to make a profit, but PRO’s worries are without merit. The point isn’t that healthcare providers care about making a profit. Rather, it’s that they’re put in a position where they compete with other providers in the business of protecting the lives and well being of customers in an effort to make a profit. Such is the genius of capitalism. PRO talks a bit about health insurance contract rescission, a practice engaged in by Insurance companies. First, this is in no way a criticism of my affirmative case. In my system, consumers would be doing most of their dealings with healthcare providers directly as opposed to third parties, so insurance companies having as much as oversight as they do in the present would be a thing of the past. Second, go back over the examples I gave of government rationing (i.e. waitlines) in UHC countries. Insurance industries don’t have a monopoly on conserving resources. R2: Free Market Health Care Leads to Lower Cost and Better Quality PRO tells us that no matter what, the cost of healthcare will still remain high because demand remains high, unlike the legions of other commodities I cited in the previous round. This is the sort of thinking based entirely in theoretical academia and in no way a reflection of real world experience. There is evidence of costs lowering under a free market system. Look no further than the booming Cosmetic and LASIK industries. [Ex17] No health insurance or constant government oversight. And not only have costs lowered, but the quality of services have greatly increased. Paul Krugman is plain wrong. R3: The government IS too incompetent to handle Universal Health Care Having read my responses to PRO’s case, it should be readily clear why this is my strongest point. Not being able to manage a simple website is the tip of the iceberg of the incompetency the US federal government has consistently shown. Even putting aside the failings I’ve cited from other countries, the US government is 18 trillion dollars in debt, has just about bankrupted social security and Medicare, spends the most on education in the world yet has really low student rankings to show for it. Can you imagine if US federal government were in the private sector? There is no reason to hand 1/6 of the US economy over to an institution with a track record of incompetence when we can hand it over to a system with a track record of success. A system that has created the biggest economy in all human history. Back to you, PRO! Sources: (Ex1) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex2) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex3) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex4) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex5) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex6) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex7) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex8) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex9) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex10) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex11) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex12) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex13) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex14) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex15) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex16) http://tinyurl.com... (Ex17) http://tinyurl.com... http://tinyurl.com...