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Universal Health Care

Rebuttal Universal Health Care and Spending My opponent claims that the point about United States government interventions increasing the cost of Health Care is irrelevant and that I failed to refute his argument about preventative medicine: "This part of the debate came about after I demonstrated that the US spends far more on health care than any nation with universal health care. Con responded by saying that the spending is high because prices have been artificially expanded by the government. Lets assume for a moment that he's right. So what? Does that refute what I demonstrated in the first place, that universal health care will reduce spending? No, it does not. Neither did Con refute the effect of preventative medicine in nations with universal health care." However, my opponent is incorrect in both of his assertions here. First, it is totally relevant that government distortions have caused US Health Care prices to be so high. My opponent argued that Universal Health Care reduced prices. His entire basis for arguing this is that the United States, without Universal Health Care, has higher prices than countries with Universal Health Care. Therefore, if I can show that Government Distortions, not a lack of Universal Health Care, have caused the US to have such high Health Care prices, I have successfully disproven a major part of my opponent's argument. In my Round 1 and Round 2 posts, I offer substantial evidence showing that Government Distortions have indeed lead to high Health Care prices in the US. This reality effectively rebuts my opponent's entire argument about prices. As I mentioned earlier, my opponent's entire argument about prices was based on the fact that the US has high Health Care prices. So, my opponent is basically arguing that high Health Care prices in the US are caused by a lack of Universal Health Care. However, I have shown that these prices are caused by government distortions and not a lack of Universal Health Care. My opponent's other point is that I did not rebut his point on preventative evidence. This is not true. My opponent never gave any evidence that Universal Health Care systems have more preventative medicine or that preventative medicine reduces prices. I cannot rebut either of these claims because they were never supported in the first place. My opponent did offer a theoretical reason why Universal Health Care might increase prevention. Basically, he said that Universal Health Care systems encourage use of preventative check-ups because Health Care is free at the point of delivery. However, my opponent ignores that Universal Health Care systems do have to deal with much longer waiting times than non Universal Health Care systems. This means that accessing preventative check ups would be challenging in Universal Health Care systems, just like it would be in non Universal Health Care systems. The only difference is that price is the problem in non Universal Health Care systems and waiting times are the problem in Universal Health Care systems. I have shown that excessive waiting times do exist in Universal Health Care systems in previous rounds. Another problem with my opponent's argument is that he ignores the fact that high Health Care prices in the US are the result of government distortions not a lack of Universal Health Care. This is relevant, as it shows that high prices are not a necessary barrier to preventative medicine in the absence of Universal Health Care. In other words, a country can have both low waiting times and low prices without Universal Health Care. Universal Health Care and Waiting Times My opponent responds to my waiting times point by pointing out that US Health Care costs are high. I have shown above and in previous rounds that US prices are the result of government distortions and that this is relevant to this debate. Universal Health Care and Health In my last round, I showed that US life expectancy is only lower than other countries because fatal accidents are more common in America, and that this has nothing to do with Health Care. My opponent acknowledges this and responds by pointing out that the infant mortality rate is higher in America than it is in other countries. However, this is a deeply flawed argument. Just like Life Expectancy, infant mortality is almost entirely determined by factors that don't relate to Health Care, and, to make matters worse, infant mortality is measured differently accross countries [1]. This means that infant mortality rates say very little to nothing about the quality of Health Care systems. My opponent's next point is that a WHO study found the US to have only the 37th best Health Care system in the world. I am familiar with this study, as it has been cited favorably by nearly every advocate of Universal Health Care I have encountered. The problem is that this study is deeply flawed. One problem with this study is that it is very old. It was released in 2000 and is based on data from the 1990s. Furthermore, this study is based on some very obscure measures. For example, 25% of the ranking is based on "Financial Fairness". This does not seem like a very good or objective measure to judge Health Care systems on [2]. My opponent makes his next point about what it means that Public Health Insurance would crowd Private Health Insurance out of the market: "When I mentioned this before, Con replied that they would not be able to because they would be pushed out of the market. Now, he needs to think harder about this one. Whether that is true or not is beneficial to my case. If it is true this means that universal health care's success can be measured by the fact that those who use it, by a large enough margin to make private insurers disappear" To respond to this point, let me offer a quick hypothetical story. Let's say that government forces everyone, by gun, to pay a banana tax so everyone could get free bananas at the grocery store. Now, when everyone goes to the grocery store, there are other private bananas available for people to pay for there, but everyone chooses to take the bananas they were forced to pay for in advance. Because of this, the private banana companies all went out of business, and everyone started taking the "free" government bananas (they were paid by through forced taxation). Does this prove how good the government bananas are? Or, does it simply show that people will take what they are forced to pay for? I think the answer is fairly simple, and this is why my opponent's argument is wrongheaded. The fact that people will enroll free public insurance that they are forced to pay for through mandatory taxation does not prove that this Public Health Insurance is superior to Private Health Insurance in any way. On another note, I have in previous rounds that Universal Health Care systems do impede medical innovation and that Universal Health Care systems are not very efficient. Universal Health Care and the Economy My opponent claims that Universal Health Care will help the economy. Although, he never actually explained how it would help the economy. Instead, he simply pointed out that it would be more equitable. In previous rounds, I explained how Universal Health Care does not reduce costs and, more importantly to this point, must be funded by new taxation. Higher taxation hurts the economy by reducing incentives for productive behavior. I have also shown this to be true in previous rounds. Universal Health Care, through the higher taxation necessary to fund it, will actually harm the economy. Conclusion I have successfully disproven the notion that a Universal Health Care system is beneficial to the population. I have shown that there is no reason to believe that Universal Health Care will reduce prices, and I have shown that Universal Health Care will lead to long waiting times. Finally, I have shown that Universal Health Care does not save lives and does keep lives from being saved by impeding medical innovation. VOTE CON! Sources: [1] http://www.nationalcenter.org... [2] http://www.cato.org...