Kinnison's last stand

[Lord MJ]

So there is a guy I've known for a number of years. We met online. He's always been on the Republican side of the fence (he's from Texas, what do you expect.) But he's never been very vocal most of the time. That changed after the Obama election.

Via Facebook he has been repeatedly and more passionately expousing the typical conservative arguments that we deride frequently on this board via his blogs and his status messages.

Examples include:

1. Decrying universal health care as forcing healthy people to pay for the sick

2. Decrying the government getting involved with the flu as a waste of taxpayer dollars, it has a lower death rate than the normal flu and he shouldn't be forced to be a charity to save the few people that do die from the flu.

3. Declaring that Obama has a socialist agenda and is engaging in a campaign of fear to brainwash people into giving up their rights.

4. Declaring that public transit systems is evil solely because it spends taxpayer dollars. He argues that any public transit system would be bankrupt if it were a private enterprise, thus if it is unable to survive on it's own without the use of taxpayer money it shouldn't exist. People with cars should not have to subsidize people that don't. (Completely ignoring the fact that design of our auto-happy transportation infrastructure and city planning was a colossal mistake)

5. Opposes any kind of voucher system to get children in areas with crappy schools into better schools (why should taxpayers have to pay for someone else's child to go to a better school)

6. Basically feels that the Obama administration has "opened his eyes" and that he is getting involved in the political process so that he can make the world a better place.

7. Wanted to organize waterslide party so that people could "experience waterboarding" in criticizing Obama's decision to release the torture memos.

I'm actually uncertain on whether to debate him on this. Don't get me wrong, I don't like several of the things Obama has done in this administration (his support for continuing Bush's "police state"-lite policies for one). But these arguments consist of the typical republican/libertarian "mine, Mine, MINE" attitude.

What can I say to refute these statements and is it even worth trying?

[salm]

4. Declaring that public transit systems is evil solely because it spends taxpayer dollars. He argues that any public transit system would be bankrupt if it were a private enterprise, thus if it is unable to survive on it's own without the use of taxpayer money it shouldn't exist. People with cars should not have to subsidize people that don't. (Completely ignoring the fact that design of our auto-happy transportation infrastructure and city planning was a colossal mistake)

Not to mention that the colossal amount of taxpayers money that goes into building and maintaining streets so he can drive his car on.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I'm actually uncertain on whether to debate him on this. Don't get me wrong, I don't like several of the things Obama has done in this administration (his support for continuing Bush's "police state"-lite policies for one). But these arguments consist of the typical republican/libertarian "mine, Mine, MINE" attitude.

What can I say to refute these statements and is it even worth trying?

No, I think it's a waste of time. These opinions read as intellectual immaturity, so I doubt he'll be convinced by argument, and most likely he'll regard your efforts to change his outlook as personal attacks. I started to write out a point-by-point response to help you but:

7. Wanted to organize waterslide party so that people could "experience waterboarding" in criticizing Obama's decision to release the torture memos.

Come on. Your friend is stupid, so I would advise you to put up with it or put him in your killfile.

[Alyeska]

4. Declaring that public transit systems is evil solely because it spends taxpayer dollars. He argues that any public transit system would be bankrupt if it were a private enterprise, thus if it is unable to survive on it's own without the use of taxpayer money it shouldn't exist. People with cars should not have to subsidize people that don't. (Completely ignoring the fact that design of our auto-happy transportation infrastructure and city planning was a colossal mistake)

Ask him who pays for the roads that he drives on. Tell him that if it can't exist privately, Interstates should be shut down.

[Samuel]

1. Decrying universal health care as forcing healthy people to pay for the sick

Insurance is the same exact thing.

2. Decrying the government getting involved with the flu as a waste of taxpayer dollars, it has a lower death rate than the normal flu and he shouldn't be forced to be a charity to save the few people that do die from the flu.

And if it mutates and starts killing people?

3. Declaring that Obama has a socialist agenda and is engaging in a campaign of fear to brainwash people into giving up their rights.

Completely unlike what Bush did, right?

[Lord MJ]

4. Declaring that public transit systems is evil solely because it spends taxpayer dollars. He argues that any public transit system would be bankrupt if it were a private enterprise, thus if it is unable to survive on it's own without the use of taxpayer money it shouldn't exist. People with cars should not have to subsidize people that don't. (Completely ignoring the fact that design of our auto-happy transportation infrastructure and city planning was a colossal mistake)

Ask him who pays for the roads that he drives on. Tell him that if it can't exist privately, Interstates should be shut down.

You see he (and the conservative posters that agree with him) have no problem with paying taxes for roads they use, but they don't feel they should have to pay for public transit they don't use. Pretty convenient...

[rhoenix]

You see he (and the conservative posters that agree with him) have no problem with paying taxes for roads they use, but they don't feel they should have to pay for public transit they don't use. Pretty convenient...

...Wait, so he wants to use the cell phone companies' model of "pay as you go" for using publicly-maintained roads and freeways? Seriously? Does that even need refuting?

[The Spartan]

4. Declaring that public transit systems is evil solely because it spends taxpayer dollars. He argues that any public transit system would be bankrupt if it were a private enterprise, thus if it is unable to survive on it's own without the use of taxpayer money it shouldn't exist. People with cars should not have to subsidize people that don't. (Completely ignoring the fact that design of our auto-happy transportation infrastructure and city planning was a colossal mistake)

Ask him who pays for the roads that he drives on. Tell him that if it can't exist privately, Interstates should be shut down.

You see he (and the conservative posters that agree with him) have no problem with paying taxes for roads they use, but they don't feel they should have to pay for public transit they don't use. Pretty convenient...

By his logic the government shouldn't pay for anything, ever, and we should just be left to a Somalia-style free-for-all because you'll always find someone, somewhere, who will object to some particular aspect of the governments budget.

[Lord MJ]

Now he is really harping the "Fear Mongering" angle regarding the flu. How a flu became a political issue is beyond me.

But basically he's crying hypocrisy over the people that were crying "Fear Mongering" when Bush was using 9/11 to go into Iraq aren't calling Obama out over his "Fear Mongering."

It's not that I don't think the swine flu is serious. I'm just pissed that Obama's administration is taking advantage of the situation with their fear mongering. Regular flu has killed thousands more than this swine flu has but they never called it an epidemic or closed schools.

I so feel compelled to jump in on his thread...

[Alyeska]

You see he (and the conservative posters that agree with him) have no problem with paying taxes for roads they use, but they don't feel they should have to pay for public transit they don't use. Pretty convenient...

Counter him with this argument. I live in Montana. I shouldn't have to pay taxes on Interstates I don't use on the East Coast.

[Lusankya]

1. Decrying universal health care as forcing healthy people to pay for the sick

Well, to be honest, this one is true. Sort of. It's actually forcing rich (both healthy and unhealthy) people to pay for the sick. But if healthy rich people are too selfish to give the money to sick people of their own free will, then having the money forcibly taken from them is a good thing.

[sketerpot]

The government shouldn't get involved in flu prevention? Public health easily pays for itself and then some. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, after all. This guy has crossed over from selfish into stupid.

[Lord MJ]

But if healthy rich people are too selfish to give the money to sick people of their own free will, then having the money forcibly taken from them is a good thing.

Unfortunately I don't think repeating that will win me any arguments. I would think that even moderate people would balk if it was worded that way, even if it's ultimately correct.

This guy proposed a adopt a person where people that can afford healthcare adopt a person that doesn't if they so choose. And that universal health care would dilute the quality of care that people that can afford insurance receive. Maybe hard evidence and data showing that that is not the case might do the trick... but probably not.

[Lusankya]

To be honest, you don't even need to be particularly selfish in order to need someone to take the money from you forcibly. I'm certain that there are plenty of perfectly good people who want everyone to have healthcare coverage, but who wouldn't give enough money to help people, not through malice or selfishness but through a kind of lazy apathy. I mean, I'm perfectly aware of the good that my taxes do, but I probably wouldn't pay them if I didn't get forced to, because it's extra work that has the appearance of losing me money (even if I get a direct benefit from it).

This guy proposed a adopt a person where people that can afford healthcare adopt a person that doesn't if they so choose.

Don't people already have this option? It's not as though there's anything stopping people from buying health insurance for other people, is there?

And that universal health care would dilute the quality of care that people that can afford insurance receive. Maybe hard evidence and data showing that that is not the case might do the trick... but probably not.

Your friend may be assuming that universal health care necessarily entails the removal private insurance. Or maybe he has no idea what he's talking about.

[Patrick Degan]

This guy sounds like a lost cause. Either give up discussing politics with him or dump him from your contacts list.

I have friends in a prairie state who've gotten steadily more rightwing in their politics since moving there. When I was sending Keith Olbermann videos out to everyone on my mailing list, they asked that I not include them as they were Bush supporters and listened to Rush Limbaugh. I obliged but this agreement seemed to go only one-way as they felt obligated to send me right wing political opinion occasionally, especially during the last election. Having enough of this, I began to shred the arguments and sent back "autopsy reports" pointing out every last factual and logical flaw contained therein. One then sent a lament decrying the ascendency of a party (Democrats) which "embraced dishonesty" (because Bill Clinton was still a Democrat) and how freedom would soon be replaced by socialism and the end of the country was nigh. I decided to let her have it if she was going to play that sort of game and treated her to OUR brand of debate (though withholding the profanities and insults); essentially told her to spare me the melodrama, that the country was its democratic experiment and not its economics, and pointed out that, as a Bush supporter, with his record of lying us into a wholly unnecessary war and immediately commuting the sentence of a newly-convicted perjurer to protect his own vice-president, she was embracing dishonesty and of a far worse sort than lies about getting blowjobs from the office-girl.

I haven't gotten another political e-mail from them since.

[kinnison]

Do you actually think that all the statements should be refuted, or even argued against? By the way, this is nitpicking - but the two are not the same.

Point 1. Well, health care is a public good but not to the same extent or in the same way as roads and national defense. It is quite arguable that those who can't afford their own health care should have it provided by the government; the argument IMHO is about how it's done. However, in general, if the government is involved in anything it gets less efficient - that's the nature of government and has been since there were governments. Compulsory medical insurance is my take on this, with payments made by government for those who can't afford it.

Point 2. The American death rate from this one is indeed lower than normal, but it's too early to say. Get prepared, but don't spend lots of resources until it is obviously necessary.

Point 3. American (and British) people have been steadily giving up their rights in the name of safety for years. It started with Bush (or maybe before) and will continue with Obama, and will probably continue with his successor. Governments just about always try to get more power and control. After all, isn't that partly what the American Revolution was about?

Point 4. I agree with you here; the highway system and a substantial fraction of the defense budget should be charged to users of cars and trucks. However, the inbuilt inefficiency of government comes into play again here. As an example, in the UK the trains are run by private enterprise but the tracks are run by government. Guess which bit causes most delays and cost overruns?

Point 5. Voucher systems. My take; get vouchers out to the parents and let them decide where to send their kids. Crap schools end up closing, and that's how it should be.

Point 6. Everyone has the right, and in my view duty, to be involved in the political process to the greatest extent they can manage - and it doesn't matter what part of the political spectrum they are in. A "democratic" society in which half the electorate doesn't bother to vote is a very sick one, ripe for conversion to a dictatorship. One more thing; electoral fraud should be treated as treason, as it strikes at the very heart of the democratic process. For example, anyone who arranges for dead people to vote (and it has happened) should be shot.

Another point here: I have a rejoinder I often use if someone is moaning about what "they" are doing. "Did you vote in the last election? No? Then stop frigging complaining."

Point 7. On that particular point, he is being an idiot. But even the use of torture is not a black-and-white affair. Imagine having a terrorist in your hands, whom you know has the information you could use to prevent a WMD attack. Is the welfare of one terrorist scumbag worth the lives of a million people?

[Teebs]

Point 4. I agree with you here; the highway system and a substantial fraction of the defense budget should be charged to users of cars and trucks. However, the inbuilt inefficiency of government comes into play again here. As an example, in the UK the trains are run by private enterprise but the tracks are run by government. Guess which bit causes most delays and cost overruns?

Two problems with what you said about the UK railways. Problems with the track are always going to cause more delays than problems with the trains unless you have stupidly poorly maintained trains. Secondly, the only reason the government runs the track is because the private company that did it was such a screw up that the situation couldn't continue.

[Samuel]

Point 1. Well, health care is a public good but not to the same extent or in the same way as roads and national defense. It is quite arguable that those who can't afford their own health care should have it provided by the government; the argument IMHO is about how it's done. However, in general, if the government is involved in anything it gets less efficient - that's the nature of government and has been since there were governments. Compulsory medical insurance is my take on this, with payments made by government for those who can't afford it.

It is worth noting that in the case of natural monopolies or similar ones, the government is MORE efficient than the private sector. In the case of health care where the private sector has an incentive to treat fewer people, the government is more effective in treating people.

Point 3. American (and British) people have been steadily giving up their rights in the name of safety for years. It started with Bush (or maybe before) and will continue with Obama, and will probably continue with his successor. Governments just about always try to get more power and control. After all, isn't that partly what the American Revolution was about?

Not really. The British were not particularly oppressive- the majority of the reasons for separation were economic.

"Did you vote in the last election? No? Then stop frigging complaining."

You do realize individual votes have no effect on the result, right? This is more symbolic than anything else.

Point 7. On that particular point, he is being an idiot. But even the use of torture is not a black-and-white affair. Imagine having a terrorist in your hands, whom you know has the information you could use to prevent a WMD attack. Is the welfare of one terrorist scumbag worth the lives of a million people?

Terrorists are unable to lie?

[Kodiak]

1. Decrying universal health care as forcing healthy people to pay for the sick

2. Decrying the government getting involved with the flu as a waste of taxpayer dollars, it has a lower death rate than the normal flu and he shouldn't be forced to be a charity to save the few people that do die from the flu.

4. Declaring that public transit systems is evil solely because it spends taxpayer dollars. He argues that any public transit system would be bankrupt if it were a private enterprise, thus if it is unable to survive on it's own without the use of taxpayer money it shouldn't exist. People with cars should not have to subsidize people that don't. (Completely ignoring the fact that design of our auto-happy transportation infrastructure and city planning was a colossal mistake)

7. Wanted to organize waterslide party so that people could "experience waterboarding" in criticizing Obama's decision to release the torture memos.

It's ridiculous to the point of caricature. I'm reminded of this scene from Dickens' A Christmas Carol

"I wish to be left alone,'' said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.''

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die.''

"If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.''

"But you might know it,'' observed the gentleman.

"It's not my business,'' Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!''

This attitude is what has ultimate forced me and my wife from the folds of "Conservative America", since we believe that a government exists to help those who cannot otherwise help themselves and that improving lives for the poor eventually will benefit society as a whole.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

There's evidence to support Samuel's assertation that government health care is more efficient than private. While I don't have a link, I have the text from an OECD article describing the effects of private health insurance on heath care costs (I think it came from one of the old universal health care debates here). In short, it drives prices up compared to systems where the coverage is public.

But an abundance of product choices can make it harder for higher-risk patients to find cover, to the extent it results in segregation of the market by risk level. To avoid the problem of vulnerable groups being priced out of the private insurance market, as has occurred in some OECD countries, some policymakers have limited the scope for insurers' flexibility and innovation. For example, they have regulated the minimum benefits that insurers must cover, required insurance products to be standardised, or limited the extent to which insurers can refuse cover and rate premiums on the basis of individual risk.


DOES PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE PROMOTE HIGH-QUALITY CARE?

Private health insurance has had only a minimal impact on the quality of care in most OECD countries, since private insurers have not usually engaged in significant efforts to influence the quality of the services they finance. The lack of effort is due to a combination of factors, ranging from lack of regulatory and financial incentives for insurers, to a desire not to restrict individual choice, as well as resistance from health-care providers to the introduction of a new source of influence on decisions over appropriateness of care.

The United States has been the only OECD country where some private insurers, known as managed care plans, have been substantially involved in efforts to influence some aspects of care delivery. Despite indications of some effectiveness, the overall evidence of the impact of quality of care is mixed; such plans do not appear to have fundamentally changed critical processes. Payment incentives that do not consistently reward plans' or employers' efforts to improve quality and inadequate quality-measurement and reporting systems, explain the still small and non-systemic impact of private health insurance on quality improvements in the United States.


HAS IT HELPED RELIEVE COST PRESSURES?

Policymakers often look to private health insurance markets as an alternative or additional source of finding for publicly financed health systems, especially when these budgets are stretched to capacity. Yet health systems in OECD countries continue to be predominantly financed from public sources, which account, on average, for 72% of total health expenditure, compared to 6.3% for private health insurance and 19% for out-of-pocket payments. Only in the United States does private health insurance exceed a third of total health expenditure, at 35%, while it goes above 10% only in the Netherlands, Canada, France, Germany, and Switzerland.

Whatever the role played in a health system, private health insurance has added to total health expenditure. Most OECD countries apply less government control over private sector activities and prices, compared to public programmes and providers. Private insurers tend to have less bargaining power over the price and quantity of care as compared with public systems, particularly single-payer ones. Countries that have multiple sources of primary coverage, including those with significant private health insurance market size, tend to be those with the highest total health spending levels per capita, such as the United States, Switzerland, Germany, and France.



HAS PRIVATE INSURANCE SHIFTED COST FROM PUBLIC SYSTEMS?

There are a number of reasons why private health insurance has not significantly reduced public financing burdens. For one thing, people with private insurance often continue to rely upon publicly financed hospital services in duplicate markets. Privately financed hospitals have often focussed on a limited range of elective services, leaving the responsibility for more expensive services or populations to public programmes.

Second, in OECD countries that have restricted eligibility for public insurance to lower-income and vulnerable groups, leaving the rest to buy primary private health insurance (the United States, the Netherlands, Germany), public spending on health as a percentage of GDP is not lower than that of many countries that provide universal public coverage. This can be partly explained by the concentration of healthcare cost among a small fraction of the population that is generally publicly insured —such as the elderly, chronically ill, and long-term disabled.

Third, de-listing of services from public coverage, another strategy to shift cost onto the private sector, has generally remained confined to less expensive services, which may be paid for out-of-pocket or through supplementary private health insurance plans.

In some cases, private health insurance has actually added to public expenditure on health or public costs generally. Where private health insurance covers cost sharing on public coverage systems, as in France, the resulting increases in use of services raise the cost of publicly financed health systems. In addition, countries that grant significant public subsidies to private health insurance, as Australia and the United States, have seen a reduction in government revenue or an increase in public cost.



DOES PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE MAKE HEALTH SYSTEMS MORE EFFICIENT?

While private health insurance is often viewed as a tool to enhance efficiency, the evidence shows it has made only a small contribution so far. Several reasons explain this performance. Insurers need to sustain high administrative costs in order to attract and retain clients, provide them with a diversity of insurance plans, and negotiate multiple contractual relationships with providers. Furthermore, in several OECD countries, insurers have had few incentives to manage care cost-effectively, due to a combination of desire not to restrict individual choice, providers' resistance, and the cost of implementing such action.

Difficulties in extracting efficiency improvements from private health insurance markets can also come from the way in which insurers compete. In several OECD countries, insurers are confronted with limited competitive pressures as there is little consumer mobility across insurers. It is attractive for insurers to employ cost-shifting and selection of risk as a means of insurer competition and protection against adverse selection, rather than improving the cost-effectiveness of care provided to clients. Finally, the lack of "vibrant" price and quality competition among providers inhibits forces in insurance markets, for example if providers exercise dominant market power, leading them to demand high prices for health services and shielding them from insurers' pressure to improve quality or cost-effectiveness of care.

[Pinjar]

I wonder if this approach would bring fruit…

If his position is not based upon reason then you can’t in the first instance reason with him.. You have to find out what feelings have become emotions and motivated him to adopt these positions and first counter these to return him to a neutral emotional state. You can then reason with him as prior posters have indicated.

Much more easily said than done.

[Tanasinn]

Besides all of the libertarian greed whining, this particularly sticks out:

7. Wanted to organize waterslide party so that people could "experience waterboarding" in criticizing Obama's decision to release the torture memos.

Get rid of him and make a new friend.

[bobalot]

Do you actually think that all the statements should be refuted, or even argued against? By the way, this is nitpicking - but the two are not the same.

Point 1. Well, health care is a public good but not to the same extent or in the same way as roads and national defense. It is quite arguable that those who can't afford their own health care should have it provided by the government; the argument IMHO is about how it's done. However, in general, if the government is involved in anything it gets less efficient - that's the nature of government and has been since there were governments. Compulsory medical insurance is my take on this, with payments made by government for those who can't afford it.

Universal systems of health care are more efficient and deliver better outcomes. Evidence of this has been produced numerous times on this board.

Point 4. I agree with you here; the highway system and a substantial fraction of the defense budget should be charged to users of cars and trucks. However, the inbuilt inefficiency of government comes into play again here. As an example, in the UK the trains are run by private enterprise but the tracks are run by government. Guess which bit causes most delays and cost overruns?

The private company in charge of rail infrastructure fucked up so bad, it had to be bailed out and taken over by the government at enormous cost to the taxpayer.

Public subsidies in 1994 were £1,627m (£2,332.68 in 2008 terms adjusted by RPI) . Total government support in 2008 was £5,147. That's an increase of 221% in taxpayer support.

The number of passengers journeys has increased from 740 million to 1232 million, an increase of 66%, well below the level of tax payer support. How much of this is due to actual increased performance is debatable. Road congestion, high fuel taxes and the actual congestion tax would account for a significant amount.

Just about everybody in the rail industry knows that the privatization of British Rail was a total disaster. But don't worry, the taxpayer will foot the bill.

[Darth Wong]

"It is perfectly true that the government is best which governs least. It is equally true that the government is best which provides most." - Walter Lippmann, American journalist (1889-1974)

Seriously though, Kinnison is showing the classic signs of a trolling idiot. He keeps repeating his mantra that government is always less efficient than the private sector even though he participated in a previous thread where people beat him over the head with evidence that the US private health care system is enormously inefficient compared to public health care systems in Canada, the UK, France, etc.

Ignoring evidence that does not suit his axiomatic arguments is a clear sign of a dogmatic troll, especially when he posts those axioms in other threads as if he had never heard of the aforementioned evidence.

Notice that he never goes into detail to explain why any particular organization might be more or less inefficient than another: he does not think mechanistically. Instead, he simply has his axioms and he repeats them mindlessly.

Governments become inefficient because they are very large organizations, but all large organizations have a tendency towards inefficiency: a fact which you can see by examining any large corporation. Individuals within government can also be quite corrupt, but this is also true of the private sector.

The only real difference between government and private industry is competition, but competition is a double-edged sword. While economic competition tends to wean out poor producers more effectively than the government model, it also has some downsides:

1) Redundancy, ie- many providers doing the same thing, in order to create a competitive marketplace.

2) Victory in the competition may not necessarily be due to superior products or efficiency, but rather, due to predatory business practices, "vendor lock-in" tactics, natural monopolies, etc.

3) The entire for-profit model relies on the ability to EXCLUDE customers from service. No one ever got rich by setting up a business model which guaranteed that no one, no matter how poor, would ever be excluded from using his product.

All of these negative mechanisms are at work in the health-care industry. Huge redundancy is one of the reasons the paperwork load alone is vastly greater than in any public health care system. One cannot switch health-care providers as easily as one chooses to go to a different restaurant today, and even if one could, how does one determine how good one provider's product is, when compared to another? It's an enormously complex field. And 50 million uninsured Americans could testify about the exclusion principle, not to mention countless people who have seen the dreaded word "DENIED" stamped on their health insurance claims.

[PainRack]

Unfortunately I don't think repeating that will win me any arguments. I would think that even moderate people would balk if it was worded that way, even if it's ultimately correct.

So? Any healthcare system that proposes to bring it to the masses work the same way. Insurance? Yup. HMOs? Yup.

By his logic, if he doesn't want to "share" healthcare costs with any other patient, everytime he uses a single diagnostic machine such as an MRI, he should buy an entire set and use it "privately". Afterall, why should he help to subsidise MRI costs for the next other bugger?

Diluting the costs over more people appears to work only when its business doing it(and extracting a healthy share of profits), but not when its the government, who would be utterly hindered by incompetence and red tape and sheer wastage.

This guy proposed a adopt a person where people that can afford healthcare adopt a person that doesn't if they so choose. And that universal health care would dilute the quality of care that people that can afford insurance receive. Maybe hard evidence and data showing that that is not the case might do the trick... but probably not.

Technically he's right. There are finite resources, and if you use resources to help more people, then your share of the pie is smaller. Of course, the inverse isn't true in the US system. Having less people in the system doesn't gurantee you better care either.