[pleikumud]

The answer is individual responsibility for health. At least 50% of all people in hospitals at a given time are there due to self-inflicted problems: cigarette cancer, obesity, alcohol, illegal drugs, poor food choices, and so on. People expect to get medical care and “co-pay” $20 (for example), while they think nothing of spending $350 for new brakes on the car, or $200 for entertainment. Individuals expect the taxpayers will foot the bill for expensive medical care after they spend a lifetime smoking, drinking alcohol, eating bad food and neve exercising. The other major problem, besides lack of individual responsibility, is too much government involvement in medicine, which drives up prices and slows down innovation.

[Realism]

after they spend a lifetime smoking, drinking alcohol, eating bad food and neve exercising.

Your point is? Live a miserably healthy life and die?

[eXe]

Oh yeah and its much better for the nanny state to tell you to get insurance (even if you cant afford it) and tell you how to live and what to eat and put in your body?

No thanks..

Besides, how come years and YEARS of smokers never “drove up the price” of health care before? Not buying that one.

[Wolfstar]

ummm...even the most fanatically health conscious will eventually get sick if they live long enough. Or they will have accidents. Or have a sudden health crisis due to a previously undiscovered birth defect or genetic disorder. There are thousands of causes for illness and incapacitation, most of which have nothing to do with life style choices.

Not one single person ever born avoided experiencing some kind of health crisis, even if that crisis was something that caused instant death. Any health crisis short of instant death requires medical treatment.

Are you saying that the only people who "deserve" medical treatment are those who live an approved version of a healthy life style? Just goes to show that totalitarian impulses are not exclusively of the Left.