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Originally Posted by BlueMikey
I do support that sort of thing, I like the car insurance example, where if I drive a car that is more likely to be stolen or crash or if I am a driver more likely to crash, then I pay more.
We need to be careful though with healthcare, especially like in a state-run system in Canada or through the US's Medicare. If insurance can discriminate (not a negative connotation of that word here) against someone who smokes because they are more likely to get lung cancer, why couldn't they also require a blood test when you sign up and make you pay more if you have a recessive gene that makes you more likely to, say, die of a stroke, regardless of your lifestyle?
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People make a choice to smoke or drink - more dangerous lifestyles, like the car situation.
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In a more parallel example, why stop at smoking or drinking? I read a report once (hell, there is a report for everything) that said if you live near high voltage power lines then your risk of cancer goes up. Should people who live near power poles pay more? There is a town in Arizona that has an abnormally high frequency of childhood leukemia...so if parents have a child, should their employer group health plan rates go up compared to someone in another town? Do cell phone users pay more since there are some reports (and many reports that refute this) that say cell phones cause brain tumors? These are all choices people can make, where they live, what products they use, which, depending on who you ask, can impact health. Not as much as smoking, but they can.
It's a fine line to straddle.
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I swear to God I remember reading in psych class that the same study was later found to be innacurate because it was not fixed to social class. That is, the people who lived next to power lines also worked many more hours and lived much less comfortably.
Jam it back in, in the dark.
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