First off there isn't a 200 hour pilot that would pass an ATP flight test with the FAA.
Over and out, done, not even a debate. 200 hour pilots live in a rarefied world where they are culled and trained to fly for a particular operation, to standards, by exemption from ATP standards, in the shadows, outside of the purview of the FAA, being tested by their own airline examiners. That system would crash if these pilots were trained then sent to the FAA for testing in real planes and held to ATP standards.
Flying abilities aside, maybe a fresh 200 hr pilot, fresh on emergency procedures, fresh on hand flying might actually do better then a lazy 10,000 pilot who hasn't hand flown in years. Circumstances exist where training can supersede the performance of supposed performance coming from experience.
The argument can also be made that when you train, you know what your pilot knows, as opposed to a guy walking in with 10,000 hours and it's probably BS, and his experience might actually be so far removed from the operation your hiring for, that it's irrelevant. Like a 10,000 hr flight instructor in Florida with zip IFR, Multi, jet, crew, or trip experience. Or an airline pilot looking to go corporate and he's never flown single pilot, he's never managed maintenance, he's never planned a flight.
So certainly I can argue for training to an operations needs, but there is no way, if you take the 1500 ATP standard as the starting place for a pilot skills and experience to be at, will a 200 hour pilot be able to step up to that level through training.
Ergo, if you did by some miracle train the 200 pilot to pass a real ATP standards flight test...would he be able to handle a situation outside of the checklist, where he needed to make a decision based on aeronautics, logic, experience?
I see it like this. Some people are working around the standards, some see the standards as really a starting point. Some shoot for higher ground, some are simply trying to get away with what they can. It's a philosophy and attitude difference.
Not quite ready to live in the gutter myself, not quite ready to sell out. Maybe it's because I don't have to. It's like taking steroids in baseball? Is that what it takes to be competitive or is the reality that some players need them to be in the game?
Regardless, even congress had enough with this silliness and bumped the hours back up to 1500.
Rant over.