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Originally Posted by raveneye
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?
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i don't know the numbers but I'm pretty sure that costs from cancer treatments (whether on terminal patients or not) due to smoking have raised health care costs considerably. You and I don't see it as nothing more than trivial because the our part of the premium may only rise $100 a year, but for a company with 1,000 employees on the benefits package that equals $100k.
Now, you multiply that by the number of companies that employ 1,000 or more and you're talking about alot of money.