obamacare

Thanks for the quick reply 16kadams. ==My opponent's "plan"== My opponent says that people don't have a "right" to health insurance. This is irrelevant since we both agreed this debate comes down to which plan "covers everyone" better. My opponent's plan is to build a brand new hospital in each city, staff it with doctors and interns, and provide free care, while levying "local taxes" to pay for this. First, my opponent's plan is inordinately expensive since it essentially starts from scratch and builds brand new hospitals all across the U.S., when the uninsured simply need INSURANCE, not their own brand new hospitals. Here is my rough cost estimate: It costs $13 million to build one hospital. [1] There are 19,354 cities in the US. [2] That means just building a hospital in each city costs $252 billion. It would cost up to $24 billion a year just to staff each hospital with cleaning staff (janitors, etc). [3] In the U.S., we need 2.4 physicians per 1,000 people. [4] There are 51 million uninsured. [5] Thus we need 122,400 doctors to staff our hospitals, including both general practitioners and surgeons. Using a conservative average salary of $200,000, that's another $25 billion a year in wages. [6] Next add in equipment costs (beds, x-ray machines, computers, MRI machines, heart monitors, etc). Each MRI costs $1.5 million. Giving ONE to teach hospital would cost $30 billion. It's a reasonable assumption to assume that the cost of all the other equipment a hospital needs is not less than buying 10 MRI machines for that hospital. So add on another $300 billion for equipment costs. My opponent says Obamacare costs $1 trillion over 20 years. Over 20 years, my opponent's plan would cost far more than $1 trillion. The wages alone, over 20 years, add up to $1 trillion, by themselves. The equipment and building costs add up to another $500 billion. AND I haven't even included the cost of giving away free medicine and treatments yet. The cost of a coronary bypass is $55,000. [7] Given how many coronary bypasses there are in the U.S. each year, the cost of free health care for THIS PROCEDURE ALONE could be $23 billion a year. [8] That's $460 billion for ONE PROCEDURE over 20 years. Adding in medicine and free health care, my opponent's plan now EASILY costs at least $10 trillion over 20 years. Staffing these hospitals with interns doesn't save that much money since you still have to pay interns and there are a lot of tasks that they are not qualified to perform. Most private hospitals are teaching hospitals and if you don't pay the interns the "going rate," they will prefer to work at the private hospitals. Next let's examine his payment method: local taxes. My opponent never says WHAT he will be taxing locally. Raising $10 trillion over 20 years through local sales taxes would require enormous sales tax increases, for example. In contrast, Obamacare actually saves the government money, for example by eliminating subsidies for the horribly wasteful Medicare Plus program. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will reduce the deficit by $210 billion over 10 years. [9] "Reducing the deficit" means that Obamacare NOT ONLY pays for itself, but ALSO generates $210 billion in EXTRA revenue for the government. So yes, it costs money, but it saves money too, so we won't need to raise income taxes, as my opponent suggests when he says "only 50% of people pay taxes." My opponent counts the cost of Obamacare but IGNORES the cost SAVINGS. ==Decreased quality of care== My opponent says that in the "Lego" video we can see that wait times increase. I HAVE heard that wait times are much longer in Canada, which uses a single payer health care system, meaning the GOVERNMENT insures people, as opposed to requiring them to have private insurance. However, in France, which maintains mostly private coverage, wait times have not increased. France is rated the best health care system in the world, yet spends half as much per capita on health care as does the United States. ==Procedural note== Next, my opponent just posts a bunch of links. I'm not going to refute these arguments unless my opponent actually makes them. ==Premiums will rise== My opponent cites a blog (RightWingNews) to show that premiums would rise 41%. The blog never says why. This number supposedly comes from Jonathan Gruber, who is cited as "an Obamacare SUPPORTER" from MIT, yet I can't find this number anywhere in his published writings. It's just bandied about in a number of conservative blogs, none of which provide a link to a real, published source. My opponent never answers all the reasons I gave why Obamacare lowers premiums: younger people in the risk pool lower total liabilities; the uninsured stop using the ER as free primary care; State Exchanges aggregate purchasing power; insurance companies must spend 80% of their budget on medical treatments, which caps their profit margins, forcing them to pass on more cost savings to consumers. My opponent drops the HHS study: State Insurance Exchanges save the average family $2,300 a year. Low income families can save $14,000 through tax credits. Small businesses will save $6 billion a year in tax credits. ==Preventative care and $10 co-pays== Honestly, haggling over $10 co-pays is just silly. It doesn't "add up," at least not to very much. Preventative medicine DOES save money though. A breast cancer exam costs maybe $1000. An experimental gene-therapy drug to treat metastasized Stage IV breast cancer can cost up to $200,000 PER MONTH. Clearly, catching it early, when it can be easily removed, is cheaper. ==Age rating band of 3:1== My opponent never answers my arguments. He doesn't even prove this provision made it into the final bill. Most states already have this requirement. And seniors in this country already only pay three times as much as people aged 18-24, according to national statistics, so this would have no effect anyways. ==People will refuse to get insurance== Obamacare's fine is either $695 or 2.5% of household income, whichever is greater. [10] If you're poor, getting fined nearly $700 makes no sense, since Obamacare will subsidize you enough to get health care for free. If you're wealthy, not getting health insurance is stupid because 2.5% of household income is A LOT of money. None of the rest of the arguments is coherent enough for me to respond to. Michelle Bachmann having "read the bill" hardly makes her an authority on it. My opponent claims that "neither of us" have read the bill, yet I've done enough research to understand each of its provisions and have linked my opponent to a timeline of when each provision kicks in, if he would like to read it (previous round, source 3). Vote Pro. [1] http://www.reedconstructiondata.com... [2] http://www.straightdope.com... [3] http://www.whitestoneresearch.com... [4] http://www.commonwealthfund.org... [5] http://www.usatoday.com... [6] http://www.payscale.com...(MD)_Degrees/Salary [7] http://healthcarebluebook.com... [8] http://www.medicinenet.com... [9] http://www.tnr.com... [10] http://blogs.investors.com...