Role Play Topics

The Debate Digest
A steady supply of pro/con articles to help you deliberate, take a stand, take action, vote, and back yourself up.
• Mandatory health insurance - Should governments mandate that individuals own health insurance, or face penalties? - October 8, 2009.
Featured pro and con arguments from this article:
• PRO: Mandatory health insurance ensures appropriate pooling of risk Keith Girard. "Health Care: The Case for Mandatory Universal Health Insurance." All Business. April 2 2009: "'Insurance, in its simplest form, works by pooling risks: many pay a premium up front, and then those who face a bad outcome (getting sick, being in a car accident, having their home burn down) get paid out of those collected premiums,' explained Katherine Baicker, a professor of health economics at Harvard’s School of Public Health. [...] Thus, the system is undermined by the uninsured, both healthy and unhealthy. [...] when healthy individuals choose to go uninsured, the model breaks down as well, because they are limiting the pool of reserves available for those who are sick. If they wait until they are sick to get insurance, they defeat the purpose of insurance, too. That’s why Massachusetts, one of the states leading health care reform efforts, requires universal participation in its health program."
• CON: Insurance mandates force citizens to buy special-interest benefits Paul Hsieh. "Health care in Massachusetts: a warning for America". Christian Science Monitor. September 30, 2009: "Under any system of mandatory insurance, the government must necessarily define what constitutes acceptable insurance. In Massachusetts, this has created a giant magnet for special interest groups seeking to have their own pet benefits included in the required package. Massachusetts residents are thus forced to purchase benefits they may neither need nor want, such as in vitro fertilization, chiropractor services, and autism treatment – raising insurance costs for everyone to reward a few with sufficient political pull."
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• Mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods - Should governments require that genetically modified foods be labeled? - July 23rd, 2009
• Filibuster - Is the filibuster a valuable tool in government, or should it be abandoned? - July 17th, 2009.
• Criminalization of Holocaust denial - Should denial of the Holocaust be illegal? - July 12th, 2009.