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I don't think anyone should be denied treatment. However, people who smoke, eat and drink too much etc, might be charged an additional tax for the extra burden they place on the health system. Perhaps the tax might be placed on the "dangerous goods". The revenue raised could then go into improving the health system.

We have just such taxes -- on alcohol and tobacco at any rate (see earlier postings on "sin taxes" in this thread). A large part of the justification given for these extraordinarily high excise taxes is to cover the increased "social costs" of consumption of these products. Health care is obviously one of those social costs.

So far, there aren't any extraordinary costs on fattening foods -- but, it's not for lack of supporters. If we were to tax "fattening" foods -- which foods should those be? Advocates of the Atkins diet would even include whole wheat, which is otherwise touted as a health food.

What about dangerous activities? When you think about it, just about anything we do can be dangerous -- so, where do we stop? Actually, not doing anything is dangerous too -- so we'd have to tax couches and Lazy-boy recliners.

If we had a competitive market for health insurance, rather than a government monopoly; various companies could offer different premium schedules, according to whatever health factors they thought were important. Then, we could chose the policies that work best for us, individually. In that way, there would be a market test of the "extra burden".