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Originally Posted by dogzilla
That was not my point. My point was that if someone makes a poor lifestyle choice, why is it my responsibility to cover the expenses due to their actions? If I decide that dinner every night is going to be a super-size McDonalds meal, why should you be responsible for paying for my bypass operation 10 years later? If I decide that using crack is fun, why should you be responsible for paying for my trip to the ER when I OD? If I decide that smoking Marlboros makes me look cool, why should you pay for my chemotherapy when I get lung cancer?
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As far as I'm aware, the healthcare bill, does *not* prevent insurance companies from having lifestyle choices influence the cost of insurance - I could easily be mistaken here, but I've never read that in any of the summaries of the existing bill. It *does* prevent them from denying coverage or charging differently based upon pre-existing conditions. So, a person with lung cancer can still get insurance, but (again, I could easily be wrong about this) a smoker could be charged more than a non-smoker.
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If, on the other hand I know the risks, and realize that doing any of the above is quite likely to end up with me dead sooner rather than later, that of itself is sufficient motivation for me to not do any of the above.
Why do I need the nanny state to save me from myself? Why should the nanny state make you pay for my mistakes?
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Insurance is already about those who don't need it subsidizing those who do - that's the whole point. Your homeowners insurance premium pays for all of those people whose houses burn down when yours doesn't.
Would you seriously ever choose to go without health insurance if you could afford it? Would you then say "Ok, I've got prostate cancer, but I can't afford treatment. I deserve to die the horrible death that awaits me because I decided to roll the dice and lost."?
The difference here is that the government is requiring you to have health insurance, subsidizing you if you can't afford it, and taxing you if you chose to roll the dice - because some percentage of the people who chose to roll the dice *will* end up in the hospital and expect the rest of us to pay for their care.