Obamacare is not good for the country

1) The harm listed was the individual mandate. I asked for harms of the mandate which was the original claim in round 3, and we don’t have any. We do have a new point of disagreement. Which is the cost structure of the individual mandate: Well, it just so happens that the fines would be less than the cost to purchase healthcare. And this is an invetablitlity! Premiums will go up because insurance companies are now being forced to cover people despite pre-existing conditions. This is akin to my house being on fire before i purchase home owners insurance. That’s actually specifically what the mandate prevents. The cost of the fines will be higher than the likely out of pocket expenses. Say for example a 25 year old has a mean likely out of pocket expense of $3k and a median of $1k (median would be lower because catastrophic costs). Assume the insurance is $3300. The fine needs to be higher than $2300 not higher than the $3300 to make the choice to purchase insurance rational. And if he doesn’t purchase it, the fine covers the risk just as well as a premium would. 2) “pay-or-play for employers. Here there was a specific harm listed and it was addressed in round 1. In particular the business community has been supportive of the Patient Protection act (Obamacare), because they like the cost containment structures. This counter argument wasn’t addressed. Instead we see more hyperbole about a taxes and insurance companies. A small tax representing less than ½% of the cost healthcare is the focus. Just so that I don’t have to debate the “horrors of paperwork” any small business that wants to can join a Professional employer organization (PEO) and co-employee their employees with someone who is responsible for all healthcare, payroll, disability... costs. Generally additional costs are a few hundred dollars per head per year. And that’s for all HR costs. If we assume that small businesses are already absorbing 80% of the work this makes it about $50 / head / year. I’ll triple that for a margin of error and make it under ½% of wage costs. So even with that triple how is that “death by a thousand cuts”? 3) The 3rd harm was federal regulation. In round 1 I pointed out that the exchanges don’t change anything with respect to the regulatory framework. We are now moving onto whether exchange are going to be used. I don’t see any reason to argue this. They don’t exist under current law and they aren’t key to the system so: Heads: They are good and get used.Tails : They are bad and no one uses them and its like the current system no worse or better in this one aspect. 4) On the issue of cost I commented and documented heavily how high US healthcare costs were for inferior care. There were no counter statistics presented. What was presented was an argument that the US has all the best hospitals based on the assumption that Americans can’t name good foreign hospitals. In real life, while hospitals like John Hopkins are internationally well known and the US has 17 internationally known hospitals those hospitals are simply on par with the world’s leaders: Bumrungrad International Hospital, Thailand Parkway Health Care, Singapore Wales Hospital, Australia Centro Médico ABC Hospital, Mexico Hospital Punta Pacifica, Panama The London Clinic, United Kingdom Klinik Hirslanden, Switzerland The American Hospital, France Vienna Hospital, Austria This is not a situation where the US is uniquely great, other than a disproportionate share. 5) Finally a new reason is presented which is an argument that everyone has access by stealing care from hospitals under the mandates. Having an unfunded mandate has destroyed the emergency care system in states with high levels of uninsured persons for example LA: http://projects.latimes.com...