I’m going to be a lone dissenter here, but I don’t care.
You get charged more for insurance if you drive recklessly and get tickets or have accidents that are your fault.
You get charged more if you have a lot of homeowner claims resulting from negligence or disrepair.
We decry that hospital cost shifting occurs and people who have insurance and are of some means are charged exorbitant amounts to subsidize the care given those who have no insurance.
Personally, I don’t give a whit whether someone smokes or eats like a horse or engages in all sorts of risky and unhealthy pursuits, but why should others who try to stay as safe and healthy as possible have to pay for it?
We might as well demand that we can consistently drive 20 miles over the speed limit and dodge and weave in heavy traffic and expect to be charged the same for car insurance as the most conscientious defensive driver.
A person’s freedom to live his/her life any way he/she wants should stop when they reach into my wallet to pay for their poor choices.
Guess what? Smokers have always paid higher premiums than non smokers. Smokers, through specific taxes, also pay for all the children’s healthcare through the CHIP programs.
So just like everything else you list, smokers not already pay - but pay more above and beyond what is for themselves.
“but why should others who try to stay as safe and healthy as possible have to pay for it?”
Insurance was designed as an opportunity to transfer risk from one party to another. The party that was willing to take the transferred risk specifically set up business models to ensure that they could maintain financial viability and reap a financial reward for assuming that risk. Their business models assumed that some small number of high risk folks would be offset by a much lager number of small risk folks.
The individuals willing to pay them for assuming the risk of a catastrophic financial event understood this business model. Then we had wage caps and employers had to find another way to attract the most qualified job candidates, so they started offering health insurance as a benefit package and over time many services were rolled into that benefit.
Now we have transitioned from INSURANCE to CARE and that benefit is utilized for all sorts of basic medical industry services. We have completed the transition from a transfer of risk product to a complete medical care benefit package and then we are shocked that the costs have skyrocketed!
Ask yourself about car insurance. We buy auto insurance to protect ourselves from financial ruin in the case that we have a catastrophic unforeseen event. What would happen to the cost of your auto insurance policy if society decided that it should cover regular maintenance as well as catastrophic events? If we transitioned auto insurance to include oil changes, repairs, new tires, etc. then we would have unaffordable auto insurance policies!
Then everyone would scream that we need to dictate the type of gas you use or frequency of your long trips to ensure that your maintenance costs did not effect the collective costs!
The transition from health insurance to “health care” has been a wonderful training tool to get folks to agree with collectivization! Don’t fall for their trickery.
Absolutely right! This country built on individual choices but Obamacare is MANDATORY. You have no choice.
Ina free market, that’s fine. This is not a free market enterprise, this is government intrusion.