The only instinct going on here is the lack of motivation in the pocket book. If you make the issues of personal choice and lifestyle about personal wealth, the masses will respond. Smoke up and pay double or quit and reap the benefits.
I could care less about what JimBob down the street does with his own body. He can smoke till his lungs are content. But treating him the same as a someone who makes a conscious decision not to light up that cigarette and then telling the smoker they will pay the same in premiums as a nonsmoker is a recipe for moral hazard disaster. When you incentivize bad behavior, you get bad behavior. When you incentivize Cheeto eating, Oprah watching couch potato lifestyles, and tell the masses they will pay the same for their health care whether they engage in personal sacrifice or not, you are giving them the golden ticket to the Willy Wonka Healthcare Factory. The finance issue in this country is not about health insurance. It's about health. If you can reduce diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer by 80% you solve the health care finance problem.
You want to make it worse? Let's start insuring couch potato, Cheeto eating, Oprah watching smokers and charge them the same whether they engage in personal health care sacrifice for the common economic good or not.
The issue here is about funding a moral hazard that has no boundaries. The entitled masses believe they have a right to their health care and health care insurance. But they cannot also accept that they have an obligation to limit their consumption of these community resources through lifestyle choice. That's because FREE=MORE prevails. Those that argue for social solidarity choose to ignore the individual's responsibility to society for accepting society's resources as their own.
The reason socialism will always fail is because it's easier to be fed than to hunt. When we have everyone feeding, and nobody hunting, we get famine. Perhaps that's exactly what our country needs to turn a nation of feeders into hunters again.
