Gallup.com says that 58% of Americans think smokers should pay higher
health insurance rates.
I think so too.
The interesting point here is that 42% of Americans don't think smokers
should pay higher rates for health insurance…even among non-smokers, 1 out of 3
aren't in favor of making smokers pay more.
I don't get that.
Smokers get sick more than non-smokers. Smokers make a choice every time
they light up (and I know it's hard to quit, but it's doable, I did it).
About 19% of Americans smoke. Tobacco should be taxed much more than
it's taxed now, and smokers should pay more for the health insurance that,
statistically speaking, they're going to need to use a lot more health care than
non-smokers use.
We have to start deliberately doing more sensible things to make our
health care better and more affordable for everyone.
And all Americans should pay their
fair share for health insurance.
Reminder:
no polling organization in America is capable of reaching a true random sample
of persons for any survey, and all polling organizations "massage"
their data to "improve" the results, so all poll results should be
viewed as rough guesses about the truth.
A comment of yours at WonkBlog brought me here, and thought I'd give you a comment re the above.
ReplyDeleteObamaCare mandates that insurance companies can charge higher rates for smokers.
Swell, you say?
If a free insurance market were allowed, smoking would be priced accordingly, without the need for multi-trillion dollar legislation (which doesn't price smoking according to market principles, instead mandating a set arbitrary price).
Why, on earth, do we need the spectacle of thousands of pages of regulations, for what the free market could handle without blinking?
Because smokers who can't afford insurance will be left to die in the streets when their noxious habit gets the better of them? That might be some incentive to kick the habit. Instead, with smokers now dunned a token amount in the exchanges, there's little incentive to worry about the final costs of whatever treatment is necessary.
Whatever. Good day.
Coupla problems with this All-American point of view:
DeleteThe free market, like it or not, screws things up without blinking....in any event, powerful people and organizations never allow the "free market" to operate in the perfect way we'd like to imagine.
In America, like or not, nearly everybody isn't going to allow smokers to "die in the streets," many folks will insist that all of us should pay to help them.