The 2010 Health Care Reform Should be Repealed

However, I do believe that some of his responses were inadequate. For a number of my arguments made in my past post, my opponent simply responded by asking for a source. I understand the importance of sources in a debate. However, there are times when sources needn't to be cited. For well known facts, a source is not always necessary. For example, would I need to cite a source to claim "a Health Care Reform Bill was passed in 2010". Even though sources could be cited, it would be a waste of time to try to prove this point. Having said that, I will defend all of the statements that I made that my opponent mentioned:a. "the huge amount of revenue expected to come from tax increases on the rich will certainly not all materialize. "This is not a particularly controversial statement among economists (although, the extent to which it is true is). Basically, the tax increases in the bill increase tax rates for the rich. These higher tax rates increase an additional disincentive to earn income on top of the tax rates that already exist. That means that the reward of earning income at the top is reduced and the incentive to dodge taxes is increased, therefore less income is earned. This means that, while taxes increase, the tax base decreases. This means that less income is taxed, but at a higher rate. Therefore, more revenue is raised, but not as much as projected. This is a fairly solid theory, but the near unanimous support for this idea in empirical literature should quell all doubt. Even liberal economists acknowledge that this effect doest exist to a degree. At the bottom, I cite an article by Economist Alan Reynolds explaining this in depth, and giving the numerous estimates for just how much High Income people reduce their income in response to higher tax rates. Generally, empirical research has found that there is a large response. b. "Talking about Medicare savings in a campaign is much easier than actually making cuts in practice. "The Medicare Savings are largely based on cuts to provider reimbursement rates. If these come to fruition, they will lead to Doctors rejecting Medicare patients at Similar rates to Medicaid Patients. However, they will likely not come into place. Even though the bill relies on these savings, Congress has already extended the well known Doc Fix outside of the Bill. Other savings are not into law. Instead, they appointed a board, known as IPAB, to install cost controls. This board can only make recommendations to Congress, which will likely reject politically unpopular proposals. c. "There will be pages of new regulations and forms, making it harder to start a new business. "This is not a claim that should require a source. The fact that the bill is long (2,700 pages long) and that it includes many regulations should be a simple enough statement to not require a source to be cited. There are many new regulations in this bill. These include an employer mandate for larger businesses, making it more expensive to expand and start new businesses. There are also numerous forms and complications in the bill that make owning a business far more complicated. Although I don't believe these simple claims require a source, I will cite a source to support these claims. d. "On top of this, there a number of surcharges on Insurance Companies in the Health Care Reform Bill, which will be passed on to consumers through higher prices. "Again, my opponent simply responded by asking for a source. This is not a particularly controversial claim. It is a simple fact that these are included in the Health Care Bill. Therefore, I did not think a source was particularly necessary. Surcharges on Health Insurance Companies are part of the increased revenue used to pay for the bill. Again, I will link to a source here at the bottom. e. "the bill also includes large tax increases that will hit a significant number of Small Businesses. "Again, it is a fairly well known fact that the Health Care Bill is largely funded by tax increases aimed at individuals making over $250,000 a year. A large number of these individuals are Small Business Owners. Again, I'm not exactly sure why a fact that is this well known need a source. f. "Medicaid Patients do not get much better access to Health Care than uninsured patients. Likewise, the bill will lead to much larger Health Care wait times"I disagree with the point my opponent is making here. First, it is not clear that Medicaid patients do get better care than the uninsured. A survey from the GAO found that Medicaid Patients have worse access to physicians than Uninsured patients. Another large study from the University of Virginia found that surgical Medicaid Patients were 13% more likely to die than surgical patients that were uninsured. These studies would suggest that Medicaid patients get worse care than patients that are uninsured. Of course, my opponent cites a recent study from Oregon showing Medicaid patients have better Health Outcomes than uninsured patients. In my view, this study mostly relied on self reported Health, which is different from actual Health outcomes. Regardless, the evidence is not even clear that Medicaid makes patients better off at all, even though it costs over $300 Billion a year. So, basically, we spend massive amounts on a program that does not even clearly have any positive impact on the Health of the recipients. g. "I agree completely here. "I think my opponent mistook my statement here. I agree that the value of Human Life should be of utmost importance in any debate. However, I disagree that the bill saves lives. In fact, through rationing and lost medical innovation, this bill will cost lives. h. "It seems that my opponent believes that Health Decisions are too important for individuals to make in a private market, and should therefore be made by the government. "My opponent called this statement an Ad Hominem and Red Herring. I don't see where he is coming from on this. i. "Insurance Companies may limit care, but not to the extent that governments do. "All Government Health Care systems ration care. In my second argument, I showed that Canada's system involves very long waiting times. Rationing is the only mechanism through which the government can control costs. In fact, the Bills plan to use IPAB to reduce Medicare Payments is, in fact, rationing (even if they don't call it rationing). j. "I'm not sure what exactly this entails. "Check my last post on price controls. To summarize, Price Controls always lead to shortages. k. "Again, this means that the government forces young adults to buy Insurance. "This is far from false. A mandate to buy insurance is a key part of bill, basically forcing people to buy insurance. l. "Yes, those with pre-existing conditions need to be covered. However, forcing insurance companies to cover them will raise prices for everyone. "I offered solutions in my last post that could take care of those with pre-existing conditions without causing significant harm to the rest of the system. On a final note, Insurance Companies are very different from the government because people aren't forced to pay insurance companies by law (although Health care Reform changed that). Free Markets, by definition, are not authoritarian, Government is. Unfortunatley, our modern Health Care system is far from a free marketSources:. http://www.cato.org...http://blogs.forbes.com...http://www.avikroy.org...