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The United States Should Switch to a Single Payer Healthcare System

I thank my opponent for this debate and I believe that I will start this debate with a political cartoon to lighten the mood. Contention 1: Kant's Categorical Imperiatives P1.The Government should only act to enforce the imperatives of Perfect Duties. P2.Universal health care does not meet the standard of a Perfect Duty. C1: Thus, the Government should not act to enforce universal health care. ""Kant's first formulation of the CI states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law... Perfect duties come in the form ‘One mustnever (or always) φ to the fullest extent possible in C’, while imperfect duties, since they enjoin the pursuit of an end, come in the form ‘One must sometimes and to some extent φ in C’" [1] According to the above we see that Kant establishes two duties of that of the government; Perfect Duties and Imperfect Duties. Perfect Duties are those things of which the government must provide to ensure that the government and that society is fully functional. What are these things you may ask? These things are the simple things ensured under that of the Social Contract that you give up for a Civilized Society (not to kill, rape, steal, etc...). These things are indeed key as we can see that this ensures that of a Minarchy at the minimum. What that means is that the Government is to ensure that the people are safe. Everything else falls into that of the Imperfect Duties. Now note that these things may protect and benefit the public, we can see that if they're not of the Social Contract like ideals that they automatically fall into this category and SHOULD NOT be carried out by the government, but by Private entities. “Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law” [2] We can see that if the government intervenes on the behalf on the people to infringe on that of an Imperfect duty that they would undermining humanity to achieve their due ends. We can see and must ensure that the Imperfect Duties are carried out by the Private Entites as things like people's health and Private debt is something that is to be delt with by the individual NOT the government. [3] Contention 2: Universal Health Care is inneffective. "Britain's Department of Health reported in 2006 that at any given time, nearly 900,000 Britons are waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals, and shortages force the cancellation of more than 50,000 operations each year. In Sweden, the wait for heart surgery can be as long as 25 weeks, and the average wait for hip replacement surgery is more than a year. Many of these individuals suffer chronic pain, and judging by the numbers, some will probably die awaiting treatment.” [4] Here we can see that even in nations that have this health system that it actually makes this issues worse in terms of waiting for treatment and to extend the damage we can see this hurts the freedom of the individual and that is something that needs to be preserved. “The employee is better off to charge a $50 doctor bill to the insurance company—even if the [insurance] company spends $20 to process it—and have the employer pay the extra $70 in a higher premium to cover the bill and the processing cost. The alternative—having the employer pay [the employee] an extra $70 in cash– yields the employee only about $42 [because of federal income, social security, and Medicare taxes] and costs the employer $75.36 ($70 + $5.36, the employer’s portion of the social security and Medicare tax on $70).” [5] Here we can see that the affects of the Universal Health Care is disasterous to our economy as the costs are keeping pace with that of one of the Top US economic movers. We can see that this will severely harm our nation and that this law will cost our nation a total of 2.9 MILLION jobs. [6] This is abserd, because instead of focusing on national healthcare it would be better for our nation to focus on economic growth and advancement, but this is doing the exact opposite by killing jobs for the sake of a lost cause as this doesn't ensure that you will get better treatment. No, it's a loss of jobs, economic growth, and finially a great loss in Medical Treatment. This is something that my opponent cannot account for, because even if it's free to get your brains blown out it doesn't mean you're going to do it and you sure wouldn't want to do it. The only economic growth you may see is that on the insurance companies side due to the federal government colluding with Insurance Companies to require that everyone purchases their product. [7] Even at that the Insurance Companies are finding themselves down in profits by 0.3% in late last year from the year before. This is another threat to freedom as the federal government is creating an economic monopoly which poses on Economic Freedom. Here I would like to quote Economist Milton Friedman on the matter, "There is no special role for government in the medical care field at all. There is the same role for government in this area, as there is in every other field – to enforce laws against fraud and deception, to help some people who are in dire distress. For ordinary medical care, there is no case for government financing at all. The costs of ordinary medical care are well within the means of the average American family. And the problem of sometimes it being large and sometimes it being small is readily handled through the availability of private insurance arrangements." [Youtube video] Here we can see that the federal government, nor any nation's government, should involve themselves in this field as for it harms the economic freedom by limiting the choice of health care and this is the type of collusion that Saul D. Alinsky would support. The system my opponent is purposing is a form of price Control and price controls can harm a buisness for one of two reasons. 1. That the Government sets the price to high and the public buys less and less of the product and as a result this harms the buisness and the economy and it shows that the people do not want said product. This product's price then raises again in order to make up for the lack of growth forcing the government out of buisness. 2. The governemtn sets the price to low and people will buy the product out and there will be a shortage of said product. [8] Many people state the rising premiums is due to the collusion of the private industry, but one can see that this isn't due to the collution of the Private Companies, but this is more or less the collecting and merging of Private Industry in this industry. We can see the lack of Competition harms the pricing and option as with more competition there are more companies competitng for lower prices to get custumors who try to get a better deal. We can see that this merging has harmed the economy and that Nationalization will harm it even more. [9] Furthering we just need to look at the Yugos which is a car from the former Yugoslavia. Due to the industry being Nationalized we can see that the quality of the car never improved due to no incentive to improve buisness due to the lack of the market competition. The same thing can and will happen to the health care if you nationalize it. http://www.youtube.com...