That is making the is-ought fallacy;...
The United States Government ought to provide Universal Healthcare for its Citizens
My opponent has utterly ignored her burden of proof which has been laid out to her time and time again. However, I am a merciful God and will let her make a new argument in the final round. Not only this, but I will play her game (despite her arguments having no bearing on the resolution until she has demonstrated why anyone "ought" to do anything) Before I get into the meat of the arguments there are a few things that need to be made clear; When one challenges someone to a debate, if they want specific rules (such as using their own definitions or making it LD debate) they must be stated in the first round. If one doesn't, then they can't in later rounds declare certain rules and criteria and expect their opponents to co-operate fully is ridiculous. If I were to claim that every round should have some level of DDO meta-humour and declare my opponent the loser by default because she has not included a reference to Royal PMS-ing or DK secretly being in love with me (he is by the way - seriously the PMs he sends me are crimes to good taste) at this point, it would be utterly unfair and foolish to expect the voters to respect that. Similarly, in no place in the first round did you state you definitions, your desired framework aside from round structure or other matters so to declare them now and expect me to say, "yeah, OK" is crazy and abusive. Now to the matters of the debate. I shall first counter my opponents last round. I remind my readers and my opponent that for her to fulfil her burden of proof she must not only demonstrate that "The United States Government ought to provide Universal Healthcare for its Citizens", but also that any entity "ought" to do anything. That is to say; that an objective moral standard exists by which we can judge an entity having a moral obligation to do anything. Bearing this in mind, I am completely correct to concede that the value by which we must judge this debate is morality, but that is nowhere near conceding it exists, which my opponent erroneously believes. In fact it is solely a recognition of what my opponent must demonstrate before her case can even be considered. Her argument makes no case for morality existing, hence I have nothing to refute other than state that there is no evidence for an objective moral standard which means any entity ought to do something. In the absence of such an argument my opponent has failed to meet her burden of proof. She also makes the claim that I did not read her case. Now unless I'm blind and there are several paragraphs philosophically or otherwise demonstrating that an objective moral standard exists and "should" be observed that claim is seems obviously false. "I am saying that the United States Government ought to provide Universal Health Care for its Citizens because of all the reasons stated in my case in R2." That is making the is-ought fallacy; http://en.wikipedia.org.... Those reasons presented in R2 do not suggest that the US government ought to do anything, unless morality is proven. Onto the questions; "Do you think it is Moral for many millions of Americans to die simply because they have genetic and untreatable diseases and are too ill to work and make money?" It is neither moral nor immoral. "Would you rather have more or less doctors readily available to treat patients?" I don't really care. On a matter of personal preference, as long as there are doctors to treat me when I am sick, I'd be happy, but I am more than willing to pay for that myself. Thus, my opponent has yet again utterly failed to meet her BoP. It is getting tiring now. To make it totally clear so that she understands: in order for your arguments to have merit you must demonstrate that morality exists, otherwise we default to moral nihilism - the result of which is that no-one has any moral obligation to do anything, thus disproving the resolution. I will now briefly counter the arguments presented in R2 as a matter of completeness, however, I would warn my opponent to not respond to this unless she first has provided a case for the existence of morality. Otherwise she is just wasting her own time. Contention 1: Why should anyone get anything at someone else's expense? We could improve welfare of many citizens by buying them all cars, but that doesn't mean we should do it. Universal healthcare is not free. It costs others. Would you want to be forced to buy another's car? The answer is likely no. Why do you make a distinction for other goods. As to part b), not only this a ridiculously naive approach to economics, in countries with UHC, such as my own, the UK, costs have gone up, not down. In layman's terms debt will only increase if you buy more. Health-care is not a good investment for boosting aggregate demand as the costs primarily get sunk into the old, who will never be able to contribute again. Furthermore, it is entirely arguable that the free market can provide a superior service, which is cheaper; http://www.cato.org... (quite a sizeable document so I'd recomend only reading the summary) Contention 2 Here you contradict yourself; you advocate capitalism and yet suggest that the opposite (socialised healthcare) should be implemented. Furthermore you make completely unsupported claims that the government is required to encourage growth. This is not only a bare assertion but highly contentious. There is a great deal of literature to suggest the exact opposite (http://mises.org...) Your final sentence about buses is a bare assertion too. Why can't the free market provide those as well? Contention 3 "It isn"t moral for someone to not get health insurance just because they can"t afford it" It isn"t moral for someone to not get a car just because they can"t afford it It isn"t moral for someone to not get a PS3 just because they can"t afford it It isn"t moral for someone to not get prostitutes just because they can"t afford it What do all these sentences have in common? They are all equally supported by arguments presented by Pro, which is to say, not at all. The rest of this argument is just a sob-story with no bearing on the debate. All secondary arguments are refuted. The resolution is negated. Cheers ladies and gents.