Tuesday 23 April 2013

Health fascism meets equalities mongering - a battle royale!

****

In the USA, as 'Obamacare' rolls out, a new battle is taking place as the desire of the health fascists to charge smokers more meets the desire to provide healthcare for all:

But city officials in the District of Columbia recently decided to charge them the same rate as nonsmokers, joining Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts. California is considering following suit.

Those places argue that the purpose of the health law is to insure all Americans and that includes smokers, who are disproportionately old, poor or minorities all populations that the bill is trying to make sure get coverage.

Oh dear, immovable object and irresistible force! Some folk aren't happy but most of those planning the new systems see no value at all in charging smokers more for the new insurance schemes:

Timothy S. Jost, a health policy analyst at Washington and Lee University School of Law, said charging a 50 percent smoking surcharge on premiums doesn’t make sense mathematically.

“Smokers die younger, but I have seen no evidence that they cost 50 percent more than nonsmokers,” he wrote in an email.

In truth, when it comes to lifetime healthcare costs, those smokers are probably a good sight less costly than that super healthy non-smoker. For sure, the smoker costs more now, but he's going to die young which means he won't be filling up the wards for new knees, hips and shoulders or consuming his body weight in heart drugs for 20 years.

But one has to smile while the health fascists encounter truth - and that other left liberal obsession of positive discrimination for "minorities" of one sort of another!

....


No comments: