obamacare

Thanks for the quick reply 16kadams. ==Procedural note== Please disregard my opponent's videos. He can use them as sources, if and only if he advances their argument himself, in written form. I should not have to use my character limit to refute videos that are subject to no such limit. ==Burden of proof== My opponent says in round 1, "I have to give a healthcare plan that will help everyone." It's easy to poke holes in a plan, but much harder to offer a viable alternative for universal health care. My opponent should already lose since he failed to offer an alternative. I only accepted this debate because he accepted the burden of proving there was a better universal health care regime. ==Rebuttal== R1) Mandated Insurance My opponent argues that mandating minimum coverage raises costs because people have the right to have crummy insurance. However, Obama answered this objection at the Blair House Summit. He explained that the goal of ANY universal health care system is to ensure that everyone has insurance that will cover them if they get ill. Obamacare requires people to have a basic level of insurance since certain insurance plans are hardly any better than NO insurance. The example Obama gives is the "ACME" insurance he had on his car when he was a young man. He got in an accident and called the insurance company and they LAUGHED IN HIS FACE. The insurance met the requirement of the law that "everyone have car insurance," BUT his deductible was so high that the insurance didn't really cover any damages. Obamacare remedies this: it requires you get an insurance plan with a reasonable deductible. If someone had a deductible of $2 million, this means that their insurance will not "kick in" and start paying until they accrue $2 million of medical expenses. This is effectively the same thing as being uninsured. No "universal health care" regime could claim to be "universal" without this requirement. ACME insurance companies would merely spring up so people could meet the law's requirements, without "actually" being insured. The last important response is that this "minimum coverage" doesn't raise costs for people who are already insured. If you have insurance through your employer, your insurance DEFINITELY meets the minimum requirements. The mandated insurance only raises costs for people who currently pay nothing (are uninsured), since paying some premium is more than paying nothing. But Obamacare DOES lower the cost of insurance for these people, compared to what they would pay now. It does so in three main ways: 1) it provides 4 million tax credits to small businesses so they can insure their employees; 2) for people this doesn't cover, it sets up State Insurance Exchanges that aggregate individuals into a collective so they have the purchasing power to demand lower rates, much the same way large companies can demand lower rates in a competitive bidding process; 3) it offers a tax credit to families earning less than $88,000 per year. A study by the Department of Health and Human Services (using CBO data) found that State Insurance Exchanges would decrease the cost of purchasing insurance by $2,300 for a middle-class family. [1] The study further found that a low-income family of 4 could save $14,900 a year through the use of tax credits. [1] And the small business tax credits will save small businesses $6 billion a year. [1] In addition, Obamacare results in cost savings to people who are currently insured. There are two main ways: 1) by forcing young people to have insurance, insurance companies can reduce premiums for everyone since this low-risk group reduces the total liabilities an insurance company faces; 2) uninsured people cost insured people a lot of money. When an uninsured person needs medical care, they go to the emergency room (ER). 85% of ER visits are for such non-life threatening conditions. Since the hospital cannot recover their costs from the uninsured, they compensate for this by charging their INSURED customers more. This forces insurance companies to raise premiums. When the uninsured STOP using the ER as their free primary care facility, hospitals can start charging everyone normal rates and premiums go down. The HHS study found that employer insurance premiums would decline by $2,000 per family by 2019. [1] R2) Preventative Care Raises Costs My opponent argues that Obamacare REQUIRES preventative screening. This is untrue. It doesn't force anyone to get preventative screening. It merely forces insurance companies to waive the co-pay of APPROVED preventative screening (such as breast cancer screening when you are over 50). A few things to consider: First, co-pays are relatively small. My co-pay is $10. Waiving a $10 co-pay on my annual colonoscopy when I'm over 40 is HARDLY going to force insurance companies to raise premiums. Second, co-pays are only waived for APPROVED preventative care . The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has approved breast cancer screening for women over 50, for example, because it saves lives and money. [2] In fact, 12.5% of breast cancer survivors owe their lives to breast cancer screening. [2] Catching it early saves costly interventions later on down the line, like expensive experimental drugs. R3) Age Rating Bands My opponent discusses age rating bands, which mean that the elderly cannot be charged more than ______ times more than a young person. My opponent's Heritage evidence says a ratio of 3:1 was considered in the House, but never says whether this ratio made it into the final bill. I was unable to locate any such provision in the final bill. [3] In addition, many States already have age rating bands of 3:1 or even LOWER. [4] Nationally, premiums for the elderly are currently around 3 times that of premiums for people 18-24. [5] Thus the huge rate increases that Heritage cites are highly doubtful. In addition, Obamacare will also save people A LOT of money on their premiums. Obamacare requires that insurance companies spend between 80 and 85 percent of their money on medical care. No longer can they reap huge profits by dropping coverage for sick people and giving ridiculous bonus packages to executives. The General Accountability Office states that the 80 percent requirement is already forcing insurers to cut broker commissions and lower premiums; the new rule will save 9 million Americans $1.4 billion in the first year alone. [6] [7] R4) Excise taxes, etc My opponent claims Obamacare will tax the medical industry, which will raise premiums by 2.5%. This is a TINY increase in premiums considering the cost savings from the 80% rule and the uninsured no longer using the ER as their free primary care facility. This 2.5% increase would be MORE THAN offset. My opponent claims he will offer an alterative plan that can insure all Americans. I'm curious to see how he pays for it… R5) Covering pre-existing conditions Most people agree that forcing insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions is an unqualified GOOD THING. It is one of the things that Republicans and Democrats both agreed on. For pre-existing conditions, not only did insurers used to refuse to cover the uninsured who had pre-existing conditions, but would also REFUSE TO RENEW coverage for people diagnosed with certain diseases (cancer, diabetes, etc). [3] What is the point of having insurance if they can DROP you when you get sick, as soon as your policy comes up for renewal? [8] Again, I'm curious how my opponent's universal health care system deals with this problem. The "death spiral" my opponent cites assumes that people will remain uninsured until they NEED coverage. This makes no sense – under Obamacare, people are REQUIRED to have insurance. There is no option of remaining uninsured. R6) Decreased quality of care My opponent claims there will be "government-mandated procedures." Nowhere in Obamacare are doctors or patients forced to undergo certain procedures. My opponent claims, "Rules WILL be put in place as to when doctors can perform expensive procedures." Two problems with this: first, Obamacare doesn't do this. My opponent uses future tense because this is not intrinsic to Obamacare. Second, insurance companies ALREADY do this. Nearly all insurance companies DO NOT COVER expensive "experimental" drugs or procedures (which is pretty much anything "new"). People can still attempt to pay for those procedures on their own, as they do now. ==My case== Obamacare is good. Insurance reform is key to saving the economy. Half of all bankruptcies are caused by medical bills. [9] I've already provided most of the reasons Obamacare will lower fees. By extending employer insurance to dependents up to age 26, Obamacare puts more young people in the insurance pool, thus lowering the overall liabilities of the insurance industry, meaning lower fees for everyone. Obamacare offers massive tax credits to help the poor afford insurance. Obamacare offers tax credits to small businesses so they can offer employer insurance to their workers. Obamacare creates State Insurance Exchanges so individual purchasers can use aggregated purchasing power to barter for lower fees, the same way large businesses do currently. Obamacare massively lowers premiums by preventing the uninsured from using the ER as a free primary care facility. And Obamacare caps industry profits by requiring that 80% of insurance companies' money goes to medical care, as opposed to corporate pay and hefty bonuses. Lastly, Obamacare requires insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and does not allow them to drop coverage, which is the only fair thing to do. I eagerly await my opponent's counter-proposal on how to cover everyone. [1] http://www.healthcare.gov... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [3] http://www.healthcare.gov... [4] http://bangordailynews.com... [5] http://www.ahipresearch.org... [6] http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org... [7] http://www.healthcare.gov... [8] http://www.collinsbenefits.com... [9] http://www.msnbc.msn.com...