HEALTH AC I AFFIRM the resolution.

Resolved: The United States ought to guarantee universal health care for its citizens.
To provide clarity in the round, the following definitions will be provided: Ought: used to express obligation Guarantee: an assurance for the fulfillment of a condition Universal health care: a system that provides organized health coverage to all citizens of a governed region and is publicly funded through taxation Citizens: A legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized.

The value of the round will be government legitimacy and the criterion will be the upholding of the social contract.

Contention 1: Government, as an entity, cannot have moral values. Subpoint A: As a body of the legal system, the government is not a whole person, and is instead a collection of many representatives, and therefore, cannot have moral values. This means that the US government does not have any type of moral obligation towards its citizens. Instead, the government is under a unilateral contract in which one party alone makes a promise in exchange for an act or service.[CORNELL UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: A unilateral contract is a contract created by an offer than can only be accepted by performance. A unilateral contract can be formed by an express offer stating that the offer can only be accepted through performance.] The United States government had contracted to uphold and protect our granted freedoms and rights. In return for this contractual obligation [THE FREE DICTIONARY: an agreement with specific terms between two or more persons or entities in which there is a promise to do something in return for a valuable benefit known as consideration] the citizens are expected to support the government in fiscal and physical way if necessary. Subpoint B: The whole idea that a country would have a "moral obligation" is unethical on the basis of Ethical Relativism, that ethics and morals are relative to each Nation or even culture and that there is no standard ethical or moral policy that all nation-states ought to abide by.

HEALTH AC Contention 2:Under its unilateral contract to its citizens, the United States has a contractual obligation to uphold the social contract. Subpoint A: A social contract is defined as an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefit. Thomas Hobbes argued that the absolute power of the sovereign is justified by a hypothetical social contract in which the people agree to obey him in all matters in return for a guarantee of peace and security, which they lack in the warlike state of nature posited to exist before the contract is made. Under this social contract, the United States is qualified to guarantee universal health care which can only have benefits for the people.

Therefore, judge, I urge you to vote affirmative. I am now open for cross-examination.