But would the judge buy such an argument from the Positive side in Yanny’s case? The insurance industry lobbyist is going to stick to his guns. After all, he likes getting that new company car every two years, to treat as his own, not to mention the stock options, etc. Oh, and he has the best health insurance money can buy, too – but it’s not his money that’s paying for it!
By rules of the debate, I can assume that Congress will pass my plan, so the negative cannot argue “this will never be passed”.
Putting the burden on schools is exactly the wrong decision. Remember, treatment for Autism is one on one contact with a specialized psychologist. This means every single school is going to have to hire a special psychologist to treat the Autistic kids. Thats going to cost a lot of money, much more than would have to be payed for by the Insurance companies.
You argue that the insurance companies will have to spread their resources thinner just to cover the new Autism patients. However, we’re not talking about a large increase in spending. Only 280,000 kids with Autism are covered with Medical insurance. It will cost 150,000 dollars over 3 years to treat them. That is about 4.2 billion dollars over 3 years. This number may seem huge, but it is not much money. My partner (wish I had his notes) calculated that insurance companies would only have to raise their rates 7% to cover the cost. Now, this is assuming every single child with Autism is treated, at the same time, at 54000 dollars a year. The number in reality is probably closer to 3.5%.
