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Originally Posted by samcol
Because I don't want to pay for someone's expensive treatment due to a high risk behavior like smoking, drinking, overeating, and general laziness.
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Is there any evidence that high-risk behaviors in a population increase the overall health care costs (more than a trivial amount)?
The other possibility is that they just lower the mean lifespan, and the costs that would have been paid (say) 10 years later are just paid 10 years sooner.
I haven't looked recently at the statistics, but isn't it true that, on average, something like 99% of a person's lifetime health costs are paid just before they die?