New Orleans is a good second team - they were down and out for a long time, won it all, and are gearing up for another go at it… they have great uniforms, a wild city, and a fun style to watch.
My Debate Team Affirmative
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any further discussion on ZZZ’s point can be found in my Community Health Sciences Health Policy paper on privatization of the medical system in Canada . . . .
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Couple points -
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First, we are increasing the availability of treatment for Autism. That solves our resolve, because substantially is defined as “any real increase”.
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Next, Autism treatment has an 87% success rate (wish I had the stat sheet on me, my partner has it at the moment).
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Next, this plan will actually lessen the burden on schools. It costs a lot of money to educate an Autistic child for 12 years, upwards of 1,500,000 dollars (according to a study done by the Autism Society of America). It only takes 3 years of treating Autistic children to cure them, at 54,000 dollars a year. Thats only 162,000 dollars, a huge savings.
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Autism is a classified as a mental disorder, according to the DSM.
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The number of 400,000 people with Autism in America (from the New York State Guidelines on Autism) only count “people who are significantly impared by Autism”.
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Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase Public Health Services for Mental Health Care.
Right now, insurance companies are only required to pay 50% of Mental Health Care costs.
Our plan would pass a law requiring patients to only pay 15% copayments, and insurance companies must cover the other 85% of costs, to all Autism treatment related charges.
The burden of funding would be placed upon the Insurance Companies of America. This would mean a very small increase in Insurance rates, if the company decides to increase the rates at all. Assuming every single company decides to increase rates to fit the added cost, this adds a 12,852,000,000 price tag.
Whatever other smokescreens I might use, my “negative” will relentlessly hammer away at the private vs. public funding & administration question in the solution to your otherwise eminently logical proposal.
As we are not speaking about a country with a nationally socialized medical insurance program (and though on this point I may envy my brothers to the north), it comes down to who should and will pay. And I believe I can make the case (as I am taking the position of a lobbyist for the healthcare insurance industry) that spiraling costs of healthcare – prescription drugs, physician and psychiatric liaison, reimbursement bookkeeping and record management, patient services, etc., etc., etc. – have already pressed our fine industry to the breaking point. Some very well run companies, exemplars of our sacred system of free enterprise, would go bankrupt if forced to take on this added burden.
What those who propose this proposal do not understand is that the insurance industry is already subsidizing even the paying of 50% of costs to treat Austism. We shift much of the real cost in order to provide these treatments to these deserving patients. But $12.9 billion is no small uptick in expenses! We are literally talking bankruptcy here, because the Federal Govt has been and will continue to cut back on Medicaid and other special reimbursement funds – not increase them – and there is enormous additional burden upon the healthcare industry in attempting to recoup such costs.
Increasing payments from 50% to 85% is a 70% increase in cost! (35/50 = 0.70)
What other industry would be asked to increase their cost burden per client by 70% – and at the same time to dramatically increase the number of clients they serve?If the Federal Funds are not forthcoming – and sadly, they will not be, not in this time of repeated tax cuts, budget deficits, a recession-mode economy, more unemployment, and a call from the highest levels of government for shifting of education, healthcare and welfare costs to private charities – then this $12.9 billion burden will fall upon an industry already under huge pressures. And then who will suffer? Well, the patients and their families and their communities!
The quality of care will actually diminish for each individual patient, because the healthcare industry will be forced to spread current resources to care for many more patients. With this decline in quality of care, the rate of a complete treatment cycle of three years will no longer hold up. And then we will see the burden shift to the only place it can – upon the schools, already under great duress to sustain special education programs. Thus the federal government would be at a disadvantage, running a triage operation as under-treated patients bog down the resources at unprepared schools.
A better solution is to increase the service level in the schools to begin with! Each federal dollar spent in the public daycare and school environment goes much farther per patient than a dollar spent through the insurance reimbursement system. Let us not penalize the patient! Let us increase and improve the care level in the schools!
Bleah blah I rest my case etc.
Ciao for now -
what will happen, ZZZ, is that as premiums increase, several things will happen.
- People with fewer disabilities/risk factors will be charged such small premiums, and people with disabilities/risk factors will be charged high premiums
OR - People who have few risks and/or disabilities will opt out of insurance plans as they increase.
These will have the effect of fewer people paying much more for insurance to the extent that insurance would become relatively pointless - people would be (roughly) paying for their health care, plus the layers of administration, marketting, company cars, etc. that the insurance company requires.
This is one major reason for sociallized health care up here.
- People with fewer disabilities/risk factors will be charged such small premiums, and people with disabilities/risk factors will be charged high premiums
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I yam hep to dat, good buddy!
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!
(Why I didn’t go into corporate lobbying as a career is beyond me!)
Another thing that you can add to your list:
- millions of people will show up in ERs with conditions that could have been treated and should be treated through multiple-times-less expensive regular preventive and diagnostic care – because they are uninsured. Can you say “cost shifting?” whereby hospitals must charge the insured with $40 aspirins.
…where is Hippocrates when we need good strong advice?
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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%.
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OK, color me mystified… if we assume that Congress will pass a law forcing insurance cos to deliver the services and permitting them to raise their rates in order to increase the proportion of coverage to 85% - - - then what is left to argue??
If you are going to say that the point left to argue is that it is unfair for the 196 million Americans with medical insurance to have to pay $65 more per year, I don’t see where these citizens are going to have much choice! When Congress passes a law, they generally create an appropriations (that is, spending) bill to go with the law – some tax dollars may be directed toward reimbursing part of the service cost, and some pressure applied upon the insurance cos. through the usual channels to make them come up with another part of the cost, and finally the govt will approve some rate increases to make up the rest. That’s the way it will go, it seems to me.
What assumptions are left for making a negative argument?
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Hey man: showtime!
Have a blast. Get an A. Have a transcendent experience! -
How did it go, Yanny? What did they run against you? Did you get many topicalities?
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My partner wimped out and couldn’t go :( But I watched other debaters, I’m telling you, we would of wasted them!
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