health insurance
http://www.freep.com/money/business/obese16e_20050516.htm
good. because if you smoke and gorge on junk food all the time and knowingly put yourself into risk of having health problems i don't want to pay for your health insurance. and it sucks that people who have hereditary/spontaneous problems would have to pay more, but hey, this is not a communist society. i very much support charities who contribute to studies and treatments for the latter but that is a private choice not a public obligation.
posted by Sharkmeat at 7/27/2005 01:58:00 PM
8 Comments:
I'm a personal fan of smoking and gorging on junk food.
27/7/05 16:42
lol i love you but i'm not paying for you
28/7/05 10:27
LOL, ok, I don't gorge and I rarely smoke. ;)
I think we all need to look at Canada as an example for health insurance.
Everyone has it...no one is left out, regardless of what problems they may or may not have.
28/7/05 10:33
Yes but this is a capitalistic watch-your-own ass society. Government exists for people's protection but not to coddle them. It should be there to buffer you when you fall, protect you from what you cannot protect yourself, but it isn't there to luxuriate you. To me it should only make a bare-bones offer.
28/7/05 10:39
I don't agree when it comes to health insurance. I don't think having insurance for all is "coddling." Rather, I see it as a way for the government to show they really care about their ciizens' well-being.
I mean, we pay taxes! I'd like those taxes to go for something beneficial to everyone (not just some west side stadium proposal or any of the other stupid things they do with it).
28/7/05 13:27
actually, to elicit my actual view, i think i actually mean i would like universal health insurance but require insurance premiums from people who knowingly place themselves within statistically significant risk groups. i don't want to pay for someone else's personal irresponsibility. defining irresponsibility covers a lot of gray area but one relatively isolated example is smoking. it is your choice to damage your body however you feel like but i don't want to pay for it. would i have to pay for your house if you burned it down one night during some drunken reverie? the gray area primarily involves psychological issues that may cause obsessive smoking and eating. things that are not really your choice in the first place. but it is incredibly hard to diagnose whether a situation (and to what degree) is resultant from a psychological problem. and in our dramatic society i would expect to see a lot of people attributing smoking or overeating to compulsion induced by an internal demon - an outside party, rather than inability to grow a backbone and suffer for the bit it takes to regain balance.
28/7/05 14:05
you could elevate cigarette taxes to include healthcare coverage for cigarette-related illnesses. impose taxes on unhealthy food in the same manner.
28/7/05 14:09
speaking to one of my friends at work about this: apparently the money that the government makes from cigarette taxes in addition to the money that the government saves in social security, pensions, and other benefits that they don't have to pay to prematurely deceased cigarette smokers, is more than enough to cover cigarette-related illnesses. it even funds some cancer research. as long as it also covers health care for victims of secondhand smoke i'm happy.
they should tax unhealthy foods as well. however also must consider that any food can be unhealthy when ingested in excess
16/8/05 20:45
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