Unintended consequence or deliberate attack on the poor and elderly?

[dazzleman]

This approach would at least promote responsibilty by letting people eat all they want as long as they are willing to foot the bill for their own health care costs rather than expecting someone else to pay for it later.

Eric, you have perhaps unwitting touched on the achilles heel of socialized responsibility for things like health care.

Socialized responsibility, whether through the government or other means, like insurance, almost always leads to restriction of individual freedom, due to the reasoning that you used in this post.

If others are paying the cost of your choices, they will sooner or later assert the right to have some control over your choices.  We have seen this argument made with respect to welfare recipients, seat belt use, smoking, and now it's being extended to diets and the types of food people eat.

In some cases, it is reasonable, as in the case of direct subsidy from the taxpayers, particularly when the dependency is chosen, either through laziness or the making of stupid choices.  But this argument is really starting to push close to the edge.

[dazzleman]

This approach would at least promote responsibilty by letting people eat all they want as long as they are willing to foot the bill for their own health care costs rather than expecting someone else to pay for it later.

Eric, you have perhaps unwitting touched on the achilles heel of socialized responsibility for things like health care.

Socialized responsibility, whether through the government or other means, like insurance, almost always leads to restriction of individual freedom, due to the reasoning that you used in this post.

If others are paying the cost of your choices, they will sooner or later assert the right to have some control over your choices.  We have seen this argument made with respect to welfare recipients, seat belt use, smoking, and now it's being extended to diets and the types of food people eat.

In some cases, it is reasonable, as in the case of direct subsidy from the taxpayers, particularly when the dependency is chosen, either through laziness or the making of stupid choices.  But this argument is really starting to push close to the edge.

As I've said, I don't really support this tax, but I can at least see some merit to it, as opposed to simply raising taxes on people who are making good choices to pay for those who aren't.

Regardless of the specifics of the solution, I think that ultimately health care does have to focus more on the prevention side, rather than on the cure. Obviously people don't like this because they want to be able to do whatever they want, but at some point someone has to articulate the unfortunate reality that responsible decision making is the only real answer to the problem.

Maybe the answer is to make people of unhealthy habits pay a higher premium, rather than to try to regulate their behavior.  Kind of the way the guy with 4 speeding tickets pays more for his car insurance than the driver with a clean license.  When you have to pay for your choices, sometimes you make smarter ones (sometimes not).  Socialized responsibility destroys the incentive to make smarter choices.

I think that allowing people their freedom, but making them pay for the negative consequences of bad choices, is better than restricting freedom in the name of societal good and socialized responsibility.

[dazzleman]

How would an insurance agency prove that a person lives an unhealthy life Dazzle?

BMI, perhaps.

I have no problem with DIRECTLY assessing people for the costs of their choices, through things like higher insurance premiums for risky behavior DIRECTLY related to what is being insured.

But I don't think the government should try to regulate legal behavior through taxes.

[dazzleman]

How would an insurance agency prove that a person lives an unhealthy life Dazzle?

Well, auto insurance certainly does in terms of looking at your driving record, at least.

Of course, many private businesses are beginning to refuse to hire smokers due to the increased cost in their health insurance. I'm glad Dazzleman agreed earlier that this type of thing is by no means limited to government.

So, driving records don't show all risky behaviors. People still speed, not wear their seatbelt, et al. Surely the insurance company doesn't want you doing such things.

Well if you get caught for those things it is obviously reflected, but yeah, it is far from a reliable way to say who is and who isn't doing something considered "safe". A lot of the time, speeding isn't really even dangerous and can often be used unfortunately as a revenue generator.

It's true that driving record is not a perfect indicator of whether a person drives dangerously, since one could drive dangerously without getting caught, and much speeding for which a person could be ticketed is not really dangerous.

I was more trying to illustrate the concept of risk-adjusted premiums than to argue that this example is necessarily a perfect, or even good, implementation of it.  It is highly imperfect, but I can't think of a really better way other than to revamp many of our traffic laws to increase speed limits, which isn't going to happen because the current system is far too lucrative.