Lily Xia

I never expected a debate topic to completely flip my understanding of healthcare, but here we are. When “Medicare for All” showed up a couple years ago as the topic I had to debate at a summer camp, I thought I knew what I was getting into: typical healthcare cost arguments, coverage statistics, maybe some government spending debates. I was wrong. 

What Months of Debate Research Actually Taught Me

When you’re debating Medicare for All, you can’t just throw around talking points. You have to dig deep into how our current system actually works, and the more research I did, the more horrified I became. Not because of the politics, but because of the sheer administrative chaos.

Prepping my PRO case, I kept finding stories that weren’t really about money. Patients with good insurance who couldn’t get medications because three different companies couldn’t figure out their paperwork. People missing cancer treatments because of prior authorization delays.

Then when I switched to prepping the CON side of the debate, I realized even the strongest arguments against Medicare for All basically admitted our current system is a bureaucratic nightmare — they just disagreed about whether government bureaucracy would be better than insurance company bureaucracy.

The Round That Changed Everything

I’ll never forget this debate round where my opponent was running a case about administrative efficiency. During cross-examinations, I asked them to walk through what happens when their evidence’s example patient needs a specialist referral. They started explaining the process, and we both just… stopped. We were describing something that takes weeks and involves six different entities for what should be a simple doctor visit.

That’s when it hit me: we weren’t really debating whether Medicare for All was good policy. We were debating which version of administrative disaster was least terrible.

What I Can’t Unsee Now

Here’s the thing about debating PF, you have to actually understand the mechanisms behind your arguments. So when I researched administrative costs, I didn’t just learn they’re high. I learned exactly how insurance companies create barriers, why hospitals hire armies of billing specialists, and how much time doctors waste on paperwork.

After spending a few weeks  arguing both sides of this topic, I can’t look at healthcare the same way. When I hear a  friend fight with insurance over physical therapy coverage, I think about prior authorization delay studies. When my dad mentions his doctor spending more time on paperwork than patients, I connect it to physician burnout research.

The Bigger Lesson

Debating Medicare for All taught me that healthcare problems aren’t about personal responsibility or even just money. They’re about system design. We’ve built something so convoluted that it creates suffering even for people who should theoretically be fine.

Whether Medicare for All is the right solution or not, this debate topic made one thing clear: the status quo is absolutely not working. And now I can’t unsee that. That’s one of the most valuable things I’ve gotten out of any debate topic, a completely different framework for understanding an issue that affects literally everyone.