RFK Jr.: If You Eat Doughnuts or Smoke, Should Society Pay for Your Health Care?

MSN/Washington Post ^ | 4/11 | Lauren Weber

[gundog]

If you’re a vegan and jog, should society pay for your health care?

[fruser1]

That depends on whether you want a heath care system or a chinese-style social credit system.

In fact, in regards to smokers, they are already pre-paying their health care through effectively being fined through obama-care, along with the obese.

And every pack of cigarettes sold goes to pay into the Master Settlement Agreement where manufactures pay states billions for the sin of smoking.

Also, risky behavior is just that - a risk. There is no guarantee of sickness.

Penalizing riskier behavior would be ok if it’s proportional to the risk vs actual payouts and you don’t pick and choose which risky behaviors to penalize or not.

E.g., Are people who play contact sports penalized? There is plenty of money spent treating sports injuries and if you happen to be a teenager who’s paralyzed during football that’s quite a lot of expenses to incur over a long lifetime. But such participation is considered “healthy” and may actually get you a credit.

Insurance companies have the data. They can correlate payouts to certain behaviors easy.

There is also the circumstance when risk is replaced by certainty in increased payouts, e.g. being born with type I diabetes - you need insulin et al for life. Should they be charged more? or not because it’s “not their fault”?

So insurance is required to charge more for someone who MAY get sick in the future, but not allowed to charge more for those who ARE sick now because it’s “pre-exisiting”.

Again - hypocrisy. Like the social credit system in China, folks want to use insurance as punishment and only for the risky behaviors they don’t like.

[BuckeyeGOP]

that crash you just heard was Krispy Kreme stock hitting the floor.

[FLT-bird]

He has a point. Which is exactly what I said when Obama started pushing socialized medicine. If we’re all in it together and we have to pay for your healthcare, then it naturally follows that we should get to tell you to stop engaging in unhealthy habits.

Get a full night’s sleep.
Get to the gym and shed the pounds - tubby.
Stop eating all that salt.
Stop eating all that saturated fat.

Or we could pay for our own healthcare and be free to live as each of us sees fit. I choose the latter.

[KarlInOhio]

A local talk show host read a study that said without smoking, Social Security and Medicare would go broke. Why? SS is pretty clear with people living a few extra years on average. Medicare was surprising. Essentially, everyone dies (I know, big surprise) and when you die it is generally medically expensive whether lung cancer at 65 from smoking or heart disease/dementia/other cancer at 85. Those dying early of lung cancer save that 20 years of general treatment. The final disease fight has a similar cost.

So smoke up and gobble down the donuts. You country is counting on you dying before 70.

[ronniesgal]

I’d rather every US citizen get free health care than sending any $$ at all to foreign countries. Let them take care of their own.

[SaveFerris]

[I think society should pay for my donuts. Yes.]

Yeah, I’m with ya on that one for sure.

[Tell It Right]

See my comment #21 to FReeper Arcadian Empire why I don’t like sending money for foreign aid either. But that’s still not a good enough argument for govt “helping” American citizens either. We are simply worse off the more govt “helps” us.

[MayflowerMadam]

Whew! Doughnuts. Thank Heaven he didn’t say apple fritters.

[Brian Griffin]

“should you expect society to pay when you get sick?”

That question was answered in 2010 with the PPACA.

At best taxes can be levied on donuts and cigarettes to fund health care.

Health care can also be made cheaper so the sick can pay a greater percentage of its cost.

[Organic Panic]

Get all government out of healthcare.

[Quickgun]

Of all of Trump’s picks, my least favorite is RFK.

[HereInTheHeartland]

I just ate half of a really good chocolate donut .
Going to eat a spinach salad shortly.
Where does that put me?

[Brian Griffin]

“Medicaid”

One thing that might be done is to let Medicaid get EU country drug pricing.

This might be done through requiring excess payment rebates.

That would reduce trade deficits.

[PUGACHEV]

Doughnuts are in the Food Pyramid, albeit near the top with jellybeans, cake and ice cream.

[liberalh8ter]

How about the U.S. not pay for anyone’s health care?

^This

[Bonemaker]

FURFKJR.

The democrat control freak gene is expressing itself in the boy.

The disqualifying list would start out with cigareetes and donuts and soon have 500 actitivities,

[AppyPappy]

Does he mean “smoke Weed”?

[Bonemaker]

And vegetarians who wind up in ICU with acute vitamin deficiency.

[Beowulf9]

👍🥯