Oh, I'm a failure at discussion board debates.

I’m the only person who took a position against socialized health care on another discussion board. No one responded to my points or commented on the articles I linked to for cites. We are baby debaters and it’s for a grade, but still!

I try to use interesting/provocative titles for my posts. I had the same problem last semester in all but one class. (These are all distance classes so all have discussion boards.) I live in a conservative state so it seems I could come close to a meeting of the minds with at least one person. Should I pick on some pour souls and ask them directly for feedback on my points? I don’t care if people agree with me!

Try posting your arguments here, and see what kind of response you get. Without knowing that, we really don’t have any way to tell you anything. Maybe you were ignored becausse your arguments were incoherent, combative, or otherwise out of place. On the other hand, maybe you were ignored because your arguments were a slam-dunk, and no one could refute you.

In general, issues like socialized health care are so politicized, and most people have such fixed opinions about them, that it can be difficult to debate them. Even here, people often tend to just talk past each other and snipe at little mistakes while ignoring larger points that are harder to refute. On both sides of the debate. So it’s an uphill battle in the first place.

On the other hand, looking for advice for how to debate, (as opposed to having an actual topic to debate), will probably get a better response from the folks in the In My Humble Opinion Forum, so I’ll just nudge this thread over there.

[ /Moderating ]

I had links to cites for these quotes, but I can’t figure out how to do it here (yet).

Title: Things to consider about other health care systems

I don’t know if this will help the discussion, but here is some info I found. I’m finding that comparing health care systems is not a clearcut process – even stats about waiting times in Canada are debated.

Canada

As Canada’s Slow-Motion Public Health System Falters, Private Medical Care Is Surging
The New York Times, February 26, 2006 (Must register to read.)

“Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other politicians remain reluctant to openly propose sweeping changes even though costs for the national and provincial governments are exploding and some cancer patients are waiting months for diagnostic tests and treatment.”

“Canada has a national doctor shortage already, with 1.4 million people in the province of Ontario alone without the services of a family doctor.”

Europe

After scanning several articles on BBC News online, it seems that systems in France, Sweden and Spain are the most admired. The U.K. system has debt and other problems.

France had financial problems in 2004 [“projected overspend this year of eight billion pounds”] and put reforms in place – I couldn’t find much about how that’s going, but they are rated #1 by WHO.

Sweden “has the highest proportion of over 80s in Europe and will face unprecedented demands on its health and social care systems in coming years.”

Spain “takes a different view to rehabilitation, convalescence and terminal illness, leaving care in these cases usually to the relatives. There are very few public nursing and retirement homes, very few hospices and convalescence homes.”

One easy way to post a link:

CLICK the Reply box.
In the window that opens, one icon that is displayed is a globe with something that I suspect is supposed to look like binoculars: CLICK on it

A second pop-up provides a place to put a label for the link, enter it there and CLICK OK,
then paste or key the url into the next window and CLICK OK again.

You’re welcome to post the health care discussion in Great Debates. Your Original Post simply looked like a request for suggestions on how to debate.

Well, one reason you might not have gotten a response is because your post was just a repeat of some data - you didn’t actually present an argument. Nothing wrong with adding cites and data points to a debate, but if you want a response you might try a concluding paragraph in which you state a thesis for why those facts are the way they are, or if you don’t know, posting a question about it.

(Instrutor’s) Title: The Uninsured

The graphed statistical info in the text and article are presented differently – 2000-2004 compared to 2001 – but they support each other. The article doesn’t give breakout info by gender, ethnicity or health status. Overall, I didn’t find that the two sources gave conflicting info, but that the textbook had more detail.

The uninsured are those “young and middle-aged” or 18-54 years old. Other factors are lower income, part-time employment status, and smaller company size. Hispanics are more likely to be uninsured. Texas and New Mexico have more uninsured, but whether there is a connection with their Hispanic population was not clear. Some of the uninsured are chronically ill and can’t get coverage.

How individuals can lose their insurance: making too much to keep Medicaid, divorce, changing jobs, being dropped for being high-risk, the company or the individual can’t pay the high premiums.

What is happening to health care? The bottom line is that costs are rising, premiums are higher, and there are more uninsured or “somewhat” insured every year. More people are going without care. Solutions are being debated and we need to understand the issues and proposed solutions.

I really liked this article from USATODAY.com: Even the uninsured can buckle under health care costs. One of the conclusions is “managed care is over.”

I also found The Health Care Blog – this is a great site!

Maybe I do fall into the category described in the textbook: don’t look to government=health care is an individual’s responsibility. However, England’s and Canada’s systems are also having trouble with rising costs and that is my real objection to assuming government is the solution. The Health Care Blog had some links to some interesting sites that are experimenting with transparency in pricing.

I think we’re just beginning to explore the options available to us.

Okay, good point. The textbook was just presenting information, but everyone knows they have to respond to that.

I bet you guys have debated this a million times already.

There doesn’t seem to be any statement in there as to what it is you are saying about the uninsured.

Lead off with a statement of the point you are trying to make. Follow up with justification for your opinion about that point. Give some examples that illustrate your point. Sum up by repeating your point.

We probably have. I’ve also got a couple of computer games I’ve probably played a million times already. It doesn’t mean I won’t play them again – I enjoy them.

People who hang out in GD enjoy debating stuff, and I don’t think we’ve covered this particular subject recently. Why don’t you put it out there, watch and enjoy the results, and learn from what happens? We’ve got some people around here who are very good at debating.

CJ

All who were kind enough to respond:

I did it; I posted a debate about health care. If anyone asks me a direct question, I’m doomed.

I honestly can’t tell what it is you’re advocating, so you might want to make that clear. But, let me explain something to you. A policy debate is made up of four stock arguments: harm, inherency, plan, and solvency.

Harm: the status quo is doing harm. You need to establish this harm and it needs to be significant enough to warrant action.

Inherency: there are two ways to do this. 1) The first way is to say that absent the proposed plan, the harm will not be solved. In other words, if your proposed plan is not adoped, then there’s no way the harm will be taken care of. 2) The other way to approach inherency is much weaker: you argue that the problem will not solve itself, so that some plan needs to be adopted, but not necessarily yours. Someone could offer a counter plan using your harm & inherency arguments against you.

Plan: you need to have a plan. What’s important in this stock argument are the dis-advantages, or dis-ads. Here’s where the opponent argues that your plan will be more harmful than the status quo, therefore it should not be adopted. For example, if you have cancer, then blowing your brains out will certainly put an end to your cancer, but the cost (death) is probably too high.

Solvency: you need to establish that your plan will solve the harms inherent in the status quo.

If you are proposing a change to the status quo, and if you lose any of the four stock arguments, then you’ve lost the debate. No harms? No reason to change. No inherency? The status quo can solve the problem. No plan? Can’t change w/out changing to something. (For those who say anything is better than X need to remember what the Khmer Rouge did to Cambodia. Things have to be pretty bad for anything to be better.) Finally, so solvency? No reason to adopt the plan.

So, what are the harms? Why do we need your plan to solve them? Why won’t your plan be worse than the status quo? Will your plan work?

I hope that helps.

js_nationally qualified college debater_africanus