2010 NFA-LD Coop Evidence Now Available
Hey folks,
The LD Coop evidence has been released by John Boyer for general consumption. You can download the full set at this link: http://www.net-benefits.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=439&d=1283189995
I attended the camp, so I’ll just give a little overview of the evidence. But first, a word of caution.
This evidence is released by John Boyer and the camp so that the debate community can see what we have been doing. Under no circumstances should this evidence be used as a substitute for original research. If you use camp files for the entire year, well, frankly, you’re not going to succeed competitively. Why? Well, first of all, you’ll have a hard time beating me, because I have read every last card in the file and can easily clobber you with your own evidence. Second, the best debaters will be cutting things that these files aren’t going to have responses to. And third, the best way to become acquainted with your own evidence is to cut it yourself. If you’re just reading files that other people handed to you, you’re not going to understand the evidence and you’re not going to know how to use it in a manner that maximizes their utility.
You should use this evidence only to supplement what you have already done, but even then, not before you have extensively read through and highlighted it. And I will promise you this – if I catch anyone reading exclusively camp evidence after the first few tournaments of the year, my first response in a round will be to call you out on it. Research is not particularly hard. Try some.
Without further ado:
IMD Aff – the IMD (Institutions for Mental Diseases) exclusion prevents Medicaid payments from being used for treatment at these facilities. The plan text would remove this exclusion. The prisons advantage basically says that shoving the mentally ill into prisons instead of mental facilities is bad. The second advantage is dehumanization of the mentally ill due to prison/homelessness, which is sort of self-explanatory. Overall it’s a solid aff.
Natives Aff - it’s not a big secret that Native Americans receive substandard services in virtually every facet of living. Mental health is no exception. This aff would attempt to remedy this by providing cultural competency training to mental health workers and requiring collaboration between Indian Health Services and communities on methods of treatment. There are a couple impacts in the file. While it’s a good start, and the aff has a lot of potential, I think there are better solvency mechanisms available. I also question whether this is topical: providing cultural competency training seems like it’s effects T at best.
Rural Telemetry Aff – this would expand mental healthcare to underserved rural populations by increasing access to telemedicine. The advantages are pretty straight up, just depression/suicide and poverty. It’s a fairly solid aff, although the impacts are a bit nebulous. The main problem in my mind is, again, topicality, because the plan text simply provides material infrastructure and makes no mention of any actual mental health services.
PTSD Aff – I ran a version of this at the camp tournament. The aff essentially removes the requirement that veterans obtain a diagnosis of/treatment for PTSD from Department of Veteran Affairs. Allowing private diagnoses would expand the number of veterans who receive treatment. There’s a couple of advantages included, although I think that they can be greatly expanded. A few notes about this aff. First, it’s pretty topical, and I didn’t lose any rounds on T with this at camp. Second, it’s awesome because it links to nothing. States CP? The VA is pretty much an exclusive federal entity. Same goes for federalism disad. This doesn’t link to politics, either – the GOP won’t touch VA benefits with a ten foot pole, for obvious reasons. It’s a very solid aff overall.
States Counterplan – that’s right, it’s back. Good luck beating states spending disads though, they’re more potent in this climate now more than ever.
Federalism Disad – argues that expanded federal control over mental health services hurts federalism. Personally federalism has been dead for years, but it’s a debate mainstay so feel free to run it.
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Neg – this isn’t responsive to anything specific in the file. It’s just a generic toolbox you can use to attack cases which provide mental health treatments that deviate from scientific standards.
Community-Based Care Counterplan – basically transfers the mental health service in question from the federal government to community care clinics. It might be useful in a limited number of instances, but from my experience at camp this was an extremely weak argument.
Funding File – generic stuff involving funding.
Generic Negative Evidence – exactly what it sounds like.
Mental Illness Myth Kritik – ah, here we go. This is also known as the Szasz K. For the uninitiated, Szasz argues that mental illess is not an actual biological disease, i.e. there is nothing “wrong” with the mentally ill apart from the labels we apply to them. Rather, the concept of mental illness is a social construction. If you’re interested in reading this, my advice would be to skip this and go straight to the original source – Szasz himself – and read his stuff. You’ll get a much more thorough understanding of his work that way. But if you do decide to read this file, it needs a serious, serious overhaul to be viable in tournament competition. I had to completely rewrite the 1NC shell to have any success with this argument at camp. And it is a very potent argument – but only if read correctly.
State Spending Disad – this was something that I cut, so you know right away that it’s quality 
. It’s basically a disad to the states CP, but it can also be used as a disad to plans that force states to provide funding for services in some manner. (You’ll need specific link evidence). Basically, states are cutting back on mental health services now to cover up budget deficits, but the plan/counterplan forces new spending, which forces new borrowing. That causes states to default on their debt, causing economic havoc.
Procedurals – frankly, they’re kind of weak and underdeveloped. My advice would be to avoid them entirely and cut your own.
Have any questions? Just ask in the comments and I’ll try my best to answer them.
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Comments
I would start with The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1961). It’s kind of dated but it covers the core of his argument.
You can find a ton of materials written by Szasz here: http://www.szasz.com/szaszwri.html
You can also find a more complete bibliography here: http://www.szasz.com/publist.html
I haven’t read any Szasz works, but I found his introduction to Myth of Mental Illness pretty clear.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/books/szasz-myth_of_mental_illness.pdf
as you know, I am partial to native’s affs.
I am glad to see that there is one in this camp aff. I only hope that some day people will notice the plight of indigenous people and force our government to make the necessary changes to stop doing the stuff we do!
“this was something that I cut, so you know right away that it’s quality”
Nick you are such a brat. =p But thanks for the summary, it makes my life a lot easier.
Hey, we are trying to get some NFA-LD started at my school and we were hoping to find some sources to start with and the camp evidence seemed like a good place to start. Is there any way that we can get the camp evidence? the links to download it are all down. Thanks in advance it would be a huge help.
You can download them here: http://www.net-benefits.net/showthread.php?t=14507
Although a word of advice, I wouldn’t use them for more than a single introductory tournament because most people have already been exposed to it and know how to beat everything in there.
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Thanks for the summary Nick. Would there be a particular work by Szasz that you would recommend debaters read?
I think the arguments could work very well as a generic harms argument (ie, there are no harms, only labels) and/or solvency argument (your plan won’t solve – we’ll just label something else mental illness) – which would be one way to run the position in front of judges who don’t think kritiks have a place in NFA-LD.