I guess smoking always messes with the health of people around you, even moderate; people breath that smoke unless you live alone in some forest. Eating red meat or drink a beer (aka moderate as well, although red meat you can also do in extremes for this to hold) hurts only you. Well, unless public healthcare, then it 'hurts' all tax payers; however, then you can talk about social media (mental health) and sugar as well for that list.
> Well, unless public healthcare, then it 'hurts' all tax payers
No, it also hurts private insurance customers( in the US ). Healthy weight people, and those who exercise are subsidizing the premiums of people who refuse to put down the fork and move occasionally, because it's illegal to discriminate premiums based on obvious risk factors like bodyfat %.
My family pays $2700/mo in premiums for a shit-tier PPO in order to support the gluttony of everyone around us. We very rarely even use the insurance.
Public healthcare is not insurance; it's 'free' (paid by taxes), for instance like in Portugal.
But yes, your point stands. The healthy young pay for ill and old. What would you change? Any suggestions I heard in the past, will include some perverse vagueness to screw people over. Smoking, drinking, overweight should pay more; how much? What amounts; are we doing it tiered; does that make sense; do people who are 30kg overweight cause lesss issues than 40? Who decides that? If you let the insurers decide, they would fuck you over for 1kg too much. What if you stop smoking or drinking or eating red meat; it goes down over time? How do you prove that? Really nothing works without people who do something stupid during a (possibly stressful, mental health issue etc) period in their lives getting screwed when they need help most.
And does it go for red meat? I know people in some US states would go against that: here it is considered incredibly unhealthy for your vascular system and actively discouraged more than a few grams a month. When is proof, proof enough?
And mental health? If you are a bully in school or a toxic colleague, should you pay more? How much, how long? You likely did cost more pain and messed up others for a higher $ than an obese person, so a looot more then yes?
Should rich offenders pay more than poor offenders? Poor are more likely to smoke and drink and be overweight, but they also are barely making ends meet as it is, while many of the rich (your two new presidents for instance) are overweight and hoarding wealth.
How do you change it without getting into a worse shitshow than it already is?
