Universal Health Care

First off I'd like to thank my opponent again for proposing this debate topic (Off the topic of the debate) there is no set format in these debates, but it helps to have some indicator of new arguments to make them easier to address and defend EXAMPLE: A) point 1 B) point 2 C) point 3 But to the debate: Your entire argument seems to be predicated on the 'fact' that the government is providing the care itself, so naturally I will answer your last point first. When you point to the roman program "bread and circuses" you are making a fatal analogy flaw..... the government isn't giving the people food and entertainment in exchange for salary..... the government is taking the little bit of salary and paying the businesses to give the people the food and entertainment which means that in essence the govt is just acting as a middle man between the people and the insurance companies. Next I will attack your subsidization point, the simple fact is that this isn't subsidization.... you see subsidization happens when a business that the society relies on cannot survive, the perfect example is farms which get many subsidies.... if they received no subsidies then they would have to raise prices of the products, if they did that then less people would be able to afford it.... so the govt tells the farmers to keep their prices down and in return helps them break even, because without this then the farmer industry would be destroyed and everyone would be in trouble. This is not what universal health care is.. put it simply a subsidy is the government negotiating prices with a company for the better of the company, universal health care is the government negotiating prices with insurance companies for the better of the people..... Because let's face it, YOU ARE RIGHT in the fact that these are businessmen and businesswomen, they don't give a rats behind about the people, they just care about the money, and that is exactly why we need the government to be able to put a leash on them.... they need to be able to negotiate... which is another one of your arguments that that quality decreases when the government negotiates.... the 37 best health care systems according to the WHO are as follows: #1 France (universal), #2 Italy (universal), #3 San Marino (universal), #4 Andorra (universal), #5 Malta (uni), #6 Singapore (uni), #7 Spain (uni), #8 Oman (uni), Austria (uni), Japan (uni), Norway (uni), Portugal (uni), Monaco (uni), Greece (uni), Iceland (uni) Luxembourg (uni), #17-36 are all universal and better than number 37 --- the United States........ Saudi Arabia beats us when it comes to health care, I don't believe I need to articulate how wrong it is what you said that universal health care diminishes the quality, it does 2 things, it increase quality and it decreases the cost..... I'd like to pull through my arguments from before about how health care being a right: (Contention 1: Health care should be a right the problem with companies providing health care is that it is, in a way, an inelastic demand. What is an inelastic demand? well it is a service that if the price was raised people could just stop buying it. A lot of people say "Well, You can stop buying health insurance," and this is a troubled way of thinking. Think about a man who is so poor that he can barely pay for the clothes on his back, he finds it hard to make it to every next meal; this man gets a cut on his hand, he wraps it up and moves on. 2 days later his hand hurts where he was cut; he has the obvious choice of going to the doctor and getting it looked at, or being able to pay for his next few meals. He chooses to eat, because you cant live without food, 3 days later the man is dead from staph infection.... This man had to choose between dying from starvation or dying from staph infection...... AND the government is the only thing suitable for providing rights to people because of the fact that there isn't that competition there.) And the argument that it saves Money (Contention 2: saves money You feel a pain in your side and ignore it, a few days later your appendix explodes and you're in the hospital getting an expensive surgery, if you had caught it at the pain and gone to the doctor then it would have cost a couple bucks of antibiotics, but the surgery cost thousands of dollars..... You can't pay it because you don't have insurance, you file bankruptcy and the cost of that surgery is added to the premiums of other people with insurance...... catching things early is key to saving money and we can't do that when we're so reluctant to go to the doctors, in Japan people go to the doctors 6 times a year on average.) I look forward to the next round.