re: #141 Pete(Detroit)

the major factors in YOUR health are YOUR diet, YOUR lifestyle, YOUR exercise, YOUR smoking / other habits - why should anyone but YOU pay the frieght?

Not so much in many cases. In my own case, I have Type I diabetes - an autoimmune disease unrelated to any of the factors you mention, and one with no cure. Lifelong maintenance is the only effective treatment at the moment, involving multiple daily blood sugar samples and insulin shots. The disease also increases risk of heart disease, gangrene, glaucoma and a host of other ailments.

Similarly, heart disease has a strong genetic component. It can certainly be influenced by lifestyle, but many people who go above and beyond in terms of proper diet, exercise and other choices wind up having heart attacks anyway. Cancer is similar - people who have never smoked develop lung cancer, for example; and leukemia has a nasty habit of striking young children, who haven’t been around long enough for lifestyle or environmental factors to have played any role in their disease at all.

As for me paying my own way, that doesn’t happen under the current system. My insurance is largely paid for by my employer, and the costs incurred are spread across the entire subscriber base. If I don’t have insurance, and wind up obtaining medical care through an emergency room, society as a whole bears that cost. The only people paying directly, out of pocket for the full cost of their medical care are those who are having elective procedures done, like botox injections or liposuction.