My Debate Team Affirmative

[Yanny]

Yes, I do have access to the DSM. In fact, its right in front of me.

Well, let’s see what I can come up with opens big box o’ evidence, pulls Autism file first, since you were sneaky and denied me any real chance of a topicality I’d run an attack on your harms saying there is a problem with diagnosing autism, then an inherency attack based on the status quo is already solving, then I’d run a federalism disadvantage and maybe a stigma DA on top of that. Sorry if I don’t really want to take the time to type out all my evidence, but obviously, looking at it right now, I think the federalism DA will give you the most trouble. that’s really novel, how you denied me most of my topicality arguments though.

Ok, Bossk, I’m pretty green to debating. This is my first debate. Can you help define some terms for me? Like, Topicallity Argument (I have a slight idea of what it is, but it could use some explaining). Also, whats an inherency attack?

[bossk]

No problem Yanny; after a few rounds you’ll be pretty comfortable with the basic stock issues of debate. First of all, there are probably about 4 parts to your case: your significance/harms, that say how many people are affected and basicly outlines how bad the problem is, the inherency, which tells us what is wrong with the status quo hence causing the harms, your plan, which says exactly what you’re going to do (funding, enforcement and the like), and the solvency, evidence that says how the stuff in your plan solves. By attacking your inherency I’m saying that the status quo already solves for your harms, therefor your plan is unnessicary. A topicality argument says that your case or plan is not related to the resolution. It usually consists of a definition of one of the words in the resolution, an explanation of why your case does not meet that definition, and why the judge should vote on topicality. I hope this helps. If it is at all confusing then just forget about it, I’m sure your coach will prefer explaining it to you himself rather than have you be confused.

[Yanny]

Problem is my debate coach retires in 2 days :(

[bossk]

That’s not good. Does your team have a replacment? I’d be glad to help you out the best I can, although I’m not sure how well I can do. This is my first season too, only our season started in mid-November. But if you ask me, I know some top-notch guys who could probably provide answers if you need them :wink:

[Yanny]

I think so, though I don’t know who he/she is. I think I can manage. Problem is, my Negative is weak.

Well, guess I have 3 weeks to work on that. Got 3 more negative handbooks to read.

[ZimZaxZeo]

If I were arguing against you, I’d aim first at a few fundamentals… let’s see:

1. I would first go right to the root, and attack your assertions about “curing” this neurological disorder. Along the way, I would plant a few doubts in the judge’s mind that Autism is a “mental” disorder that can be obviated by psychiatric counseling and some meds. I would continually drop hints – and bring in expert opinions complete with images of brain scans from patient studies – that Autism is mainly a physical deformity of brain function, and that real improvement, limited though it may be, is mostly gained through the application of drugs, that any impression the medical community has of counseling and/or behavior modification as the path to cure is more or less wishful thinking. (What a bastard I’d be!)

Along the lines of cystic crypt’s initial queries, I would declare that improving the lot of 87% of patients sounds great – but is not so great when the mitigation of their condition is relatively minor, as he suggested in supposing that it might raise IQ scores “from 65 to 68.”

So much for the “cure.”

2. Now I would flip my argument, and show that there really has been some “curing” of Autism – and that it has been accomplished mainly by the government funding for special education services, and by Medicaid, etc. Here come the statistics and expert testimony that public health services have indeed done the best, most cost-effective socially responsible job in treating and mitigating the effects of autism.

But wait – does it sound like I’m agreeing with you? Only if you blur the distinction between “public health services” and “insurance companies.”

My real thrust in this argument is to stick the public schools and daycare centers with the burden. I would raise a major, major stink challenging why should insurance companies be mandated to pay for the treatment of any Autistic patients, above and beyond any amount these private enterprises already are saddled with. I would show statistics and my treasured actuarial tables that illustrate a world where having my beloved insurance companies paying 50% of the treatment cost is already a huge burden that qualifies these companies as the veritable Mother Theresas of the corporate universe.

I would make a big statement, again supported by experts, that adding 35 %age points to this burden would actually counteract the good work being done, by eroding the insurance companies’ ability to pay for the drugs, to compensate truly qualified shrinks, etc. They would have to slash the quality of the treatment – thereby harming the welfare of the patients – in order to meet the unsupportable burden of taking on a greater quantity of patients (your argument already states this would happen) while being forced to pay a much greater share of the treatment for each one treated. Some of these corporate good citizens might even be forced out of business, further reducing available resources for Autistic patients.

This is the practical, cold-hard facts part of the argument. Now I swing into pragmatics: “Your honor, we want the greatest good for the greatest number. But in a case of such scope and need, only the federal government can accomplish that, and only by developing the already superior program that exists within the publically funded daycare and school system, through special ed programs, etc.” Of course, the big insurance combines, being the leaders of mankind that they are, would graciously step forward to serve on boards and tell the education bureaucrats how to spend the $12 billion in new federal funds.

I would close by beating the drum for this wonderful match made in heaven: public money, private direction on where and how to spend it. (My first argument, that success in treating Autism is really due to drug regimes, will be alluded to in closing, as I note that by far the best way to administer daily drug doses to kids is to get the school nurse to supervise it! What Johnny needs is not $125/hr. invididual psychiatric mumbo jumbo, but $20/hr. school nurses who can dispense pills to 300 kids! Ah, the public schools: the universal panacea.)

Well, there’s my cynical go-for-the-jugular negative. If you have further questions, I could refer you to my colleague, Dr. Mengele.

[cystic crypt]

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 . . . .

[Yanny]

Couple points -

1. First, we are increasing the availability of treatment for Autism. That solves our resolve, because substantially is defined as “any real increase”.

2. Next, Autism treatment has an 87% success rate (wish I had the stat sheet on me, my partner has it at the moment).

3. 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.

4. Autism is a classified as a mental disorder, according to the DSM.

5. 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”.

[ZimZaxZeo]

@Yanny:

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

[cystic crypt]

what will happen, ZZZ, is that as premiums increase, several things will happen.

1. People with fewer disabilities/risk factors will be charged such small premiums, and people with disabilities/risk factors will be charged high premiums
   OR
2. 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.

[ZimZaxZeo]

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:

3. 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?

[Yanny]

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%.

[ZimZaxZeo]

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?

[ZimZaxZeo]

Hey man: showtime!
Have a blast. Get an A. Have a transcendent experience!

[bossk]

How did it go, Yanny? What did they run against you? Did you get many topicalities?

[Yanny]

My partner wimped out and couldn’t go :( But I watched other debaters, I’m telling you, we would of wasted them!