Reply #51: As I've said before, trying to single out various unhealthy lifestyle "sins" in such a case would be

[Warren DeMontague]

a never ending game. Everyone does something stupid that could conceivably impact their health care costs at some point. Some people smoke. Some people drink. Some people have sex with a lot of partners. Some people eat a lot of French Fries. Some people ride motorcycles in the rain, like Billy Joel. And so on.

IMHO, we have to accept that the responsibility of a SPHC system includes the fact that sometimes we may end up paying for other people's so-called "misbehavior". That doesn't mean we shouldn't educate people about healthy choices, that doesn't mean we can't practice preventative medicine- but universal coverage would mean that many of the folks who don't get seen until they end up in the ER would have a decent shot at addressing their problems earlier on. That would SAVE us all money.

And I'm okay with 'sin' taxes, too. Hell, if we would legalize and regulate marijuana we could tax that, even though it's not a terribly dangerous substance for most people- and combined with the savings from the idiotic war on drugs, we could finance a lot of coverage for other things.