Liberal Debate Strategy: Appeal to Humanity

I challenge anyone to read this and not feel awful. Basically it's the story of how someone became sick, and his insurance wouldn't cover treatment without his challenging the CEO publicly.

I think anyone's first reaction is to feel miserable that anyone has to go through this. This is the emotional response.

Liberals are always, however, saying that they only look at facts/data. This clearly is not true. Sometimes they use examples like these to evoke a sympathetic response for their point of view. We must be cognizant of this strategy.

As far as data, one question I would have is whether this student had the option of another health insurance plan, and did he choose the cheaper plan. This is critical. If he chose the cheaper plan knowing of the limits and risks, then as tragic as this is, he made a choice.

I believe many liberals want to argue that this is not a choice people should be able to make (and they actually can't make it anymore under the ACA), but they must acknowledge that by restricting that choice, they're raising the costs of healthcare for everyone. If they announce that, and most people still desire this policy, great. But instead, they present this regulation as something that benefits everyone and has no costs.

Market-oriented people, if they want to argue for the ability to choose options that could possibly have tragic consequences, have to be ready to defend their stance against these emotional appeals, which is very challenging.

Insuring the Youth

Most of the people who doggedly follow health care reform know that one provision of the ACA forced insurance companies to allow young adults up to 26 to stay on their parents' insurance.  I find aspects of this bizarre.

First, it's probably the case that these people will have low health care costs.  Therefore, if they were participating in a perfect insurance market, the cost of insurance probably would have been low.  Why would it be in their interest to move to the parent's plan. Presumably, the cost of adding them to the parent's plan would be higher than the cost of individual care.  Therefore, they'd be subsidizing others.  Again, why is that in their interest?

Possible answers: parents would be paying, so it's cheaper for the children. But then, the parents could have paid anyway.  Still, I think that's the most likely explanation, as their are psychological reasons that'll push parents to pay when they're actually receiving the bill.

Secondly, why didn't the insurance companies do this in the first place?  If they weren't doing it before, that implies it wasn't in their interest.  But many companies have announced they'll maintain this policy even if the ACA is struck down.  What changed?  My best guess is that the insurance companies would have done this eventually, but the process was accelerated by the ACA.

Also, in this article at thehill.com, the author writes "Adding more young people to the insurance pool is popular in part because it helps lower premiums for everyone."  I think they meant to say "everyone else."  It costs more for the young people, of course.