Political Theory

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

SkepticalMetal — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:50:07 GMT

Oh, I'll go check it out. I don't remember seeing that post, so sorry about that. But thanks.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

Neodoxy — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:46:43 GMT

Skeptic,

I made you an invaluable recommendation on your original thread. It's not "progressive" as such, but trust me, if you want to see the full political spectrum in all of its... Glory... Then politicalforum is a damn good place to go.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

Kelvin Silva — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:43:00 GMT

Wheylous i sent you a message.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

SkepticalMetal — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:23:47 GMT

Oh.

I tried looking for some Progressive websites, but I couldn't find any.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

Wheylous — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:23:01 GMT

I draw mine from school discussions (mostly in politics and history classes). Otherwise, current events. I've never been to progressive websites.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

SkepticalMetal — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:55:13 GMT

Well, getting back to the point of the original thread I made about this, what are some statist sites you could recommend for me to go check out to see what the various arguments are? This time I won't debate like I had originally intended to do - I'll just study and present it over here, like you recommended.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

Wheylous — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:46:42 GMT

Don't worry about it - keep reading and you'll get there. I've been around here for a year and I'm a little more comfortable on my own. Even I had to look up some sources for the info I gave you above - such as the Scandinavian part above (though I had already read a very similar article).

If I were to debate an economist on the issue I might very well lose. I have not read a significant amount of AE and I'm going largely on intuition and my understanding of entrepreneurship and microeconomic competition. Only in the past 2 weeks did I read the article about healthcare vs. CPI. I hope to read MES and a few more books soon to solidify my knowledge on different topics.

While we're at it, here are my healthcare sources:

http://candlemind.com/projects/progclub/file/michael/getEducated.php?listID=29

I have only read maybe 4 of those articles, and I hope to read more soon.

You can use that website to read up on a lot of libertarian positions. I will be adding more very soon (hopefully - right now I am focusing more on user features rather than articles).

It's not bad to want to debate people - I want to do it too. But do try to not embarrass yourself. I had to refrain from debating early in my libertarianism because I was not very great at it. I instead looked at arguments statists presented, brought them here, and had them critiqued. I also did research on my own. For topic X I usually type "mises X" into Google. Recently, I found LibertySearch.info, which searches main libertarian websites only, and it's pretty good. If you do not remember the name, you can just go to my website LibertyHQ and use the search function and if there are no matches the page suggests to search LibertySearch and provides a link.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

SkepticalMetal — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:34:21 GMT

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that's a big post.

But seriously, thanks for the advice. I can't believe before this I was asking for places to go debate, and then discovering that at my level I could be used to mop the floor by a hardcore liberal or something.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

Wheylous — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:29:04 GMT

Here it is without the links (until the links get approved):

My first post:

Healthcare in the US is in a terrible mess. No one would disagree that our costs are exploding out of proportion and we're not receiving what we're paying for. The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation and we still have millions upon millions of uninsured people who do not receive treatment. Furthermore, insurance companies are able to deny people coverage for preexisting conditions. What if a middle-aged, uninsured, single working-class woman comes down with cancer and no insurance will cover her? We need government to help to cover these people. While the rich can keep whatever healthcare they want, everyone else should be able to access healthcare backed by the government unconditionally. The rich have a large amount of money - why can't they give up a part of that to people less fortunate than them? We need a system of universal healthcare for households than earn less than $50,000 per member. Look at Scandinavian countries for example. Their healthcare spending is only around 9 or 10% per GDP and everyone there can go and get treated.

First of all, point out that insurance against pre-existing conditions is a contradiction of definitions. It's not insurance (which, by definition, is against a possible future risk) if we're sure they have the condition. At that point, it's socialized healthcare.

Next, sidestep the whole argument about the government providing healthcare better than the free market - initially. Start off by using this article: http://mises.org/daily/6014

Essentially, healthcare costs rose with CPI before medicare and it exploded afterwards. Now, this is not by itself a 100% sound argument, because correlation is not causation. But then you could look at other theoretical Austrian arguments for why government spending explodes costs. You could, for example, show that artificially increasing demand increases costs. Currently, 50% of healthcare spending is done by the government. Another thing you could point out would be the IP arguments - which you did later, which is good.

As to Scandinavia: http://mises.org/daily/4146

They are more free-market than you expect, PLUS, all they "prove" (even if the claim is correct), is that their socialism is better than our socialism - something entirely possible. The article says 'This is the simple reason why the Scandinavian welfare states appear to "work well": because most alternatives are even worse, and in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.'

-------------------

Your post:

By stating that we need universal healthcare for all households that earn less than 50,000 dollars per member, you are implying that health care is a natural right for the less fortunate. If we believe in self-ownership, then the idea that you are suggesting regarding the responsability of the rich to pay for the poor's healthcare goes against that very principle. If one does not pay his or her taxes to pay for somebody else's care, then that person is automatically punished for not giving out the fruits of his or her labor. That person earned that money, and regardless of who the money would be given to after the theft, we cannot have the dillusion that it is anything other than what it is - theft. A better word to use would be slavery. And I might also add that in places where universal healthcare does indeed exist, such as Canada (which is often cited as a good example), because of strict regulation on the matter, waiting lists are created, even for people who have extreme illnesses such as cancer. Many have died because of these long waiting lists, and were restricted the right to find private care because of laws that made privately-owned health institutions illegal.

It's certainly no secret that the healthcare system in the United States is no good, but we must not forget that many years ago, BEFORE government intervention in the matter, the United States was looked upon as having the best healthcare system in the world, as it was completely free-market. More advances were made in medicine. Because it wasn't monopolized, competition was allowed, which resulted in increasingly better quality care.

Let's break it down.

First of all, you go straight for the throat with the slavery argument. This is not something many people would buy. I do, but I am already a libertarian. Furthermore, you run the danger of them taking the logical conclusion and then asking you whether you believe in anarchy, thinking that they have you in a reductio ad absurdum. This is bad because then they have tons of arguments left open, such as justice, roads, and national defense. The problems there would be 1) The fact that you're diverging from the issue at hand (healthcare), and 2) That your task becomes exponentially harder. It's unfortunate that some libertarian arguments mutually support each other (anti-tax, anti-IP, anti-defense monopoly) to make the system work nicely, but you'll have to restrain the arguments you can use so as to not spread yourself too thin.

Next, you bring up waiting lists, however you are just making an assertion. As a student of economics, I understand why the assertion is true, but the general progressive will not. If you want to use this argument, either cite a good empirical study to back your claim up about assertions or explain the Austrian theory of socialist calculation briefly.

Next, you talk about the time before government intervention. This is very good, as I pointed out above, but 1) you speak about it as if there used to be a completely free market, while the data you will actually be citing will be more of a free market but not a completely free market as you claim. Note, for example, the AMA (discussed here: http://mises.org/daily/6099).

You talk about monopolization and competition - if you want to do this, you should consider giving a quick breakdown of what competition is and how it works in a microeconomics perspective.

---------------

My reply:

How does the responsibility of the rich toward the poor violate self-ownership? No one has violated their person. We are merely taking part of the large sums of money that they do not need and giving it to those people whose lives are threatened by disease. Since we're using the money to save lives, what we are doing is in fact reaffirming self-ownership by placing life on a higher value scale than mere money and helping the poor. Furthermore, you can hardly say that the rich person earned all of that money with harder labor than the poor person. Many rich people just put their parents' money into some general stock funds and let it accumulate without really caring too much for it.

You cite Canada as a supposed example where there are long waiting lists. But nowhere did I state that Canada has the best system possible. There are many ways to improve their system. For example, this website says that there are ways to improve the public health system by making adjustments to it. In the age of modern technology, we can surely analyze the system to find places for speedup. Moreover, the same page claims that wait times in parallel privatized systems are as long or longer, directly countering your point. Even if I concede that, you say that many have died because of the long waiting lists - even if that's so, what about all the American poor that die because they can't afford healthcare. You're so ready to blame the Canadians without seeing the sin in your own system.

You mention a time "BEFORE" government intervention, but you give no dates whatsoever. You just make a very bold claim that the US was looked upon as having the best healthcare system in the world.

As it stands, you made a weak moral argument, a factual claim directly refuted above, and then a baseless claim. You're obviously trying to cover up your lack of understanding or compassion with vague words about evil foreign socialist governments and some imaginary awesome free market.

On the topic of need vs. want, I think JJ would have a good response to that. I, on the other hand, point you to a great piece by David Friedman to counter the idea that the right to life is supreme over all others:

http://libera.me.uk/pub/pub/books/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf#page=29

About rich people putting their money into funds and letting it grow - that's not a bad thing. Their money isn't just lying still in place - it's being used by other people to drive the economy. Here is a wonderful Milton Friedman video on why soaking the rich doesn't work:

[view:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi-D24oCa10]

As to the website I cite, you should challenge the website. It doesn't cite any studies or provide any logic. It merely makes claims. I bet that they cherry pick.

As to the argument that the Canadian system could be improved - well, that's a valid argument - their system could be improved even within a government framework. However, we've already pointed out that it's government intervention that makes healthcare expensive. Here, you could inject other issues such as war or education as to why Americans don't have more money and experience more growth. Again, this is risky, because while right, you get off-track. You could, however, ask "if socialism is so good in healthcare, why not apply it to everything?" You do that later on, and I respond later, so I will address it there.

My argument that you do not provide sources on US free market healthcare is true - you don't. You should have. I gave you some above. But you ALSO should have called me out on not providing sources for my claims. I did this numerous times and you let it slide.

------------------------

Your reply:

So if the poor are entitled to health care, please tell me what else they are entitled to. A swimming pool? A car? Personally I'd like to have a government supply of sunscreen, because that is a part of my essential needs if I go to the beach on a regular basis.

Without healthcare, the majority of people won't die for quite some time. Without food or water however, everyone will die in a matter of weeks. So isn't food and water more urgent then healthcare?

So under your logic, wouldn't food and water be of much more importance? So I guess we also have to have government running the food and water production, like in the Soviet Union where there was mass famine, or like North Korea today. Regardless of how the rich earned their money, if they earned it fairly, then to extract money from them is indeed theft. And if you say the poor are entitled to health care, doesn't that mean that doctors should be forced to serve those who have a right to it? Nobody is BORN with a responsability to anybody else. But your argument suggests that basic human compassion would cease to exist when there is no coercion from the state.

Also, I'd like to say one other thing - we do not have anything near private healthcare in America, contrary to what you believe. Government is ALREADY majorly in healthcare. These is strict regulation by the FDA which makes the process of releasing of new drugs and healthcare technology very expensive to the consumer. So much for those evil insurance companies making everything expensive. And, there are strict regulations prohibiting international drugs and healthcare services provided to the nation in general.

IP laws negatively affect the industry by hampering innovation, and the ability for religious organizations and non-profits to provide free or low-cost healthcare has been restricted.

More regulation will just create more malfunctions of the market. As it turns out, the socialization of dentistry in Britain has plunged them back over a century in tooth care. People pull out their own teeth because of the waiting lists that are mandatory with socialized medicine.

At the beginning you begin nicely, but the argument is easily countered, as I showed. The David Friedman argument I link above is stronger.

Good that you question the idea of production of food and water privately since healthcare is so good with socialism. I counter this in my next post, so I will tell you how to counter that in the next section.

Good point on the doctors being forced to give healthcare. The counter to that would be "we don't need to force doctors to do things, we need the money of the rich to give to the doctors." The counter to THAT would be "mental experiment: what if there are no rich to take money from? Do we force the doctors to operate if they do not want to?" THIS really is obvious slavery, and they will likely concede that you do not want to. Here is the crack in their belief in universal healthcare that you can exploit, because you've found a weakness in their moral system you can use to break it completely apart and have it LEAD to you argument that taxation is theft.

Good on mentioning the regulations of the FDA, but that is easily deflected by saying "oh, we'll fix that."

Good IP argument, although you provide no sources or arguments as to why you're right. It's a mere claim. You can find sources on that somewhere on this site. I don't have good ones, atm. Maybe Kinsella. Again, however, this is dangerous ground - you might not want to open the IP can of worms.

Interesting claim on the Britain dentistry, but it needs a source. Also, easily countered with "yeah, we'll fix it."

----------------------------------

My final post:

Now you're just being silly. Of course we do not need the provision of sunscreen unless it is specifically for some condition you know needs sunscreen as part of the treatment (possibly strong burns). What I'm talking about is the provision of necessities which people cannot afford.

As to food and water production, we obviously don't want to be like the Soviet Union or NK - they're military dictatorships! I don't want that!

Do note, however, that we do have food stamps today, and utilities are heavily regulated by the government - not exactly free market dog-eat-dog, is it? Regardless, I hope it's quite easy to see that healthcare and food are quite different things. Why, for example, is my side not advocating governmental provision of bandaids? Because bandaids are cheap and plentiful and there's no really asymmetry of power of production of bandaids. Healthcare, on the other hand, is very complex and hardly something that a consumer can understand all by himself. The point is, it's extremely expensive, unlike food. Remember, too, that we have soup kitchens providing food to poor people - while not enough, it's something. We certainly can't have random people set up stands and give out pills for free to the poor, can we?

Call taxation what you will, but you cannot deny that it's more desirable to take money from people who can afford to lose some and to give it to other so they can live. To ask a hypothetical, would it be "immoral" to take even one single penny from the rich man to give it to the poor to save him? Seriously? What if we took a penny from every household that earns over $200,000 and use it to buy the medicine for a family infected with a disease that is easily treatable through antibiotics which they cannot afford?

You mention strict regulations by the FDA - well, never did I say that the governmental process cannot be improved - in fact, I said it above! I believe in actively reforming government programs, not removing them completely so the poor are left on their own. We can find ways to streamline the process and have the FDA approve safe drugs faster. We can also decrease patent times so that companies can make gigantic profits for less time. We should also fund more research so that we can get more medicine in the public domain. But your argument implies that all the costs of healthcare come from just drug costs. What about procedures? You fail to cover that completely.

And with your Britain example you once again are focusing in on specific policy. The point is to have dynamic, adapting government policy to see what works and what doesn't.

I begin my countering your "necessities" argument about pools and sunscreen. Wasn't too tough.

My rebuttal on Soviet Union and NK are also semi-valid.

I mention food stamps. You could let this slide or you could mention that state welfare is terrible and can be replaced by private welfare: http://mises.org/journals/jls/21_2/21_2_1.pdf ($5 taxed for every $1 given).

On the point of utilities being regulated, try http://mises.org/daily/5266/ (utilities worked fine before regulations).

On the point that healthcare is expensive but food is not, HERE is where your argument about socialism hits. You argue "if socialism is so good for healthcare, why not everything?" I reply "well, we don't need it." IMPLICIT to this reply of mine, is an idea that THE MARKET IN FOOD WORKS. Push me to answer WHY it works. Make me write out the micro scenario. Make me argue for the market in food production or almost any other commodity. That way when I argue that we need socialism in healthcare specifically I will have to fight my own arguments for the market in other commodities. This is the heart of the debate. The calculation problem. You really need to learn this argument. It's the heart of most Austrian analysis.

Next, on the immorality of stealing a penny - this implies the government can tax a penny and save a bunch of people. However, always remember crowding out. You'll ask, well, how does taxing one penny crowd out investment? Well, what if private people solicited the same 1 penny in donations? They themselves could invest something or save the poor people. You don't need the government. I realize this is a utilitarian argument, but so was my original argument against you - that redistribution is not immoral because it produces good results. Show me that the same results can be achieved with voluntary action.

Next, I block the argument on the FDA by saying "we'll fix it." Push me to tell you how we'll fix it. I won't know. In fact, I don't :P

That's about it. Your arguments might be bought by libertarians or conservatives, but make them more rigorous and empirically and theoretically stronger and you will be able to destroy the statist.

I welcome other suggestions. I am sure I missed some weak points in both our arguments. Also, ask me if something is unclear.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

SkepticalMetal — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:28:54 GMT

Must be, geez.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

Wheylous — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:25:50 GMT

My post is pending moderation :\

It's big :D

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

Wheylous — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:23:41 GMT

My first post:

Healthcare in the US is in a terrible mess. No one would disagree that our costs are exploding out of proportion and we're not receiving what we're paying for. The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation and we still have millions upon millions of uninsured people who do not receive treatment. Furthermore, insurance companies are able to deny people coverage for preexisting conditions. What if a middle-aged, uninsured, single working-class woman comes down with cancer and no insurance will cover her? We need government to help to cover these people. While the rich can keep whatever healthcare they want, everyone else should be able to access healthcare backed by the government unconditionally. The rich have a large amount of money - why can't they give up a part of that to people less fortunate than them? We need a system of universal healthcare for households than earn less than $50,000 per member. Look at Scandinavian countries for example. Their healthcare spending is only around 9 or 10% per GDP and everyone there can go and get treated.

Next, sidestep the whole argument about the government providing healthcare better than the free market - initially. Start off by using this article: http://mises.org/daily/6014

As to Scandinavia: http://mises.org/daily/4146

-------------------

Your post:

By stating that we need universal healthcare for all households that earn less than 50,000 dollars per member, you are implying that health care is a natural right for the less fortunate. If we believe in self-ownership, then the idea that you are suggesting regarding the responsability of the rich to pay for the poor's healthcare goes against that very principle. If one does not pay his or her taxes to pay for somebody else's care, then that person is automatically punished for not giving out the fruits of his or her labor. That person earned that money, and regardless of who the money would be given to after the theft, we cannot have the dillusion that it is anything other than what it is - theft. A better word to use would be slavery. And I might also add that in places where universal healthcare does indeed exist, such as Canada (which is often cited as a good example), because of strict regulation on the matter, waiting lists are created, even for people who have extreme illnesses such as cancer. Many have died because of these long waiting lists, and were restricted the right to find private care because of laws that made privately-owned health institutions illegal.

It's certainly no secret that the healthcare system in the United States is no good, but we must not forget that many years ago, BEFORE government intervention in the matter, the United States was looked upon as having the best healthcare system in the world, as it was completely free-market. More advances were made in medicine. Because it wasn't monopolized, competition was allowed, which resulted in increasingly better quality care.

Let's break it down.

You talk about monopolization and competition - if you want to do this, you should consider giving a quick breakdown of what competition is and how it works in a microeconomics perspective.

---------------

My reply:

How does the responsibility of the rich toward the poor violate self-ownership? No one has violated their person. We are merely taking part of the large sums of money that they do not need and giving it to those people whose lives are threatened by disease. Since we're using the money to save lives, what we are doing is in fact reaffirming self-ownership by placing life on a higher value scale than mere money and helping the poor. Furthermore, you can hardly say that the rich person earned all of that money with harder labor than the poor person. Many rich people just put their parents' money into some general stock funds and let it accumulate without really caring too much for it.

You cite Canada as a supposed example where there are long waiting lists. But nowhere did I state that Canada has the best system possible. There are many ways to improve their system. For example, this website says that there are ways to improve the public health system by making adjustments to it. In the age of modern technology, we can surely analyze the system to find places for speedup. Moreover, the same page claims that wait times in parallel privatized systems are as long or longer, directly countering your point. Even if I concede that, you say that many have died because of the long waiting lists - even if that's so, what about all the American poor that die because they can't afford healthcare. You're so ready to blame the Canadians without seeing the sin in your own system.

You mention a time "BEFORE" government intervention, but you give no dates whatsoever. You just make a very bold claim that the US was looked upon as having the best healthcare system in the world.

As it stands, you made a weak moral argument, a factual claim directly refuted above, and then a baseless claim. You're obviously trying to cover up your lack of understanding or compassion with vague words about evil foreign socialist governments and some imaginary awesome free market.

http://libera.me.uk/pub/pub/books/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf#page=29

[view:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi-D24oCa10]

As to the website I cite, you should challenge the website. It doesn't cite any studies or provide any logic. It merely makes claims. I bet that they cherry pick.

------------------------

Your reply:

So if the poor are entitled to health care, please tell me what else they are entitled to. A swimming pool? A car? Personally I'd like to have a government supply of sunscreen, because that is a part of my essential needs if I go to the beach on a regular basis.

Without healthcare, the majority of people won't die for quite some time. Without food or water however, everyone will die in a matter of weeks. So isn't food and water more urgent then healthcare?

So under your logic, wouldn't food and water be of much more importance? So I guess we also have to have government running the food and water production, like in the Soviet Union where there was mass famine, or like North Korea today. Regardless of how the rich earned their money, if they earned it fairly, then to extract money from them is indeed theft. And if you say the poor are entitled to health care, doesn't that mean that doctors should be forced to serve those who have a right to it? Nobody is BORN with a responsability to anybody else. But your argument suggests that basic human compassion would cease to exist when there is no coercion from the state.

Also, I'd like to say one other thing - we do not have anything near private healthcare in America, contrary to what you believe. Government is ALREADY majorly in healthcare. These is strict regulation by the FDA which makes the process of releasing of new drugs and healthcare technology very expensive to the consumer. So much for those evil insurance companies making everything expensive. And, there are strict regulations prohibiting international drugs and healthcare services provided to the nation in general.

IP laws negatively affect the industry by hampering innovation, and the ability for religious organizations and non-profits to provide free or low-cost healthcare has been restricted.

More regulation will just create more malfunctions of the market. As it turns out, the socialization of dentistry in Britain has plunged them back over a century in tooth care. People pull out their own teeth because of the waiting lists that are mandatory with socialized medicine.

At the beginning you begin nicely, but the argument is easily countered, as I showed. The David Friedman argument I link above is stronger.

Good on mentioning the regulations of the FDA, but that is easily deflected by saying "oh, we'll fix that."

Interesting claim on the Britain dentistry, but it needs a source. Also, easily countered with "yeah, we'll fix it."

----------------------------------

My final post:

Now you're just being silly. Of course we do not need the provision of sunscreen unless it is specifically for some condition you know needs sunscreen as part of the treatment (possibly strong burns). What I'm talking about is the provision of necessities which people cannot afford.

As to food and water production, we obviously don't want to be like the Soviet Union or NK - they're military dictatorships! I don't want that!

Do note, however, that we do have food stamps today, and utilities are heavily regulated by the government - not exactly free market dog-eat-dog, is it? Regardless, I hope it's quite easy to see that healthcare and food are quite different things. Why, for example, is my side not advocating governmental provision of bandaids? Because bandaids are cheap and plentiful and there's no really asymmetry of power of production of bandaids. Healthcare, on the other hand, is very complex and hardly something that a consumer can understand all by himself. The point is, it's extremely expensive, unlike food. Remember, too, that we have soup kitchens providing food to poor people - while not enough, it's something. We certainly can't have random people set up stands and give out pills for free to the poor, can we?

Call taxation what you will, but you cannot deny that it's more desirable to take money from people who can afford to lose some and to give it to other so they can live. To ask a hypothetical, would it be "immoral" to take even one single penny from the rich man to give it to the poor to save him? Seriously? What if we took a penny from every household that earns over $200,000 and use it to buy the medicine for a family infected with a disease that is easily treatable through antibiotics which they cannot afford?

You mention strict regulations by the FDA - well, never did I say that the governmental process cannot be improved - in fact, I said it above! I believe in actively reforming government programs, not removing them completely so the poor are left on their own. We can find ways to streamline the process and have the FDA approve safe drugs faster. We can also decrease patent times so that companies can make gigantic profits for less time. We should also fund more research so that we can get more medicine in the public domain. But your argument implies that all the costs of healthcare come from just drug costs. What about procedures? You fail to cover that completely.

And with your Britain example you once again are focusing in on specific policy. The point is to have dynamic, adapting government policy to see what works and what doesn't.

I begin my countering your "necessities" argument about pools and sunscreen. Wasn't too tough.

My rebuttal on Soviet Union and NK are also semi-valid.

On the point of utilities being regulated, try http://mises.org/daily/5266/ (utilities worked fine before regulations).

Next, I block the argument on the FDA by saying "we'll fix it." Push me to tell you how we'll fix it. I won't know. In fact, I don't :P

That's about it. Your arguments might be bought by libertarians or conservatives, but make them more rigorous and empirically and theoretically stronger and you will be able to destroy the statist.

I welcome other suggestions. I am sure I missed some weak points in both our arguments. Also, ask me if something is unclear.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

SkepticalMetal — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:08:14 GMT

I just ate. Non-breaded spicy chicken with vegatables. Starting the paleolithic diet now.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

Wheylous — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:06:23 GMT

I'll get you in a few hours. Atm I have to go eat.

Re: Practice Debate: SkepticalMetal vs. Wheylous on Healthcare

SkepticalMetal — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 22:48:45 GMT

Yes.