Preventive Medicine, Here’s How

In a discussion of the right emphasizes for the recovery of our health system the argument against the proposed program relates to the fact that smoking causes more sickness and death along with others behavioral reasons then the rest of the problems in the health system combined. here

The authors are not entirely silent on this point. When they discuss population health management as the function of an integrator, they do indicate that the “actual” causes of mortality in the United States lie in behavior that the individual health care system addresses unreliably or not at all, such as smoking, violence, physical inactivity, poor nutrition, and unsafe choices. An integrator would increase preventive efforts. An integrator would also encourage and cooperate with governmental policies, agencies, and programs to discourage smoking, combat obesity, provide alternatives to violence and substance abuse, and address community determinants of mental health problems” (p. 764).]

I suppose there could be interesting questions regarding the responsibility of the state to help care for those who knowingly ruin their bodies.

Just thought that maybe a right motivation for people to be responsible and live a balanced life is to make the health insurance payment in a similar way to the car insurance. The safe and responsible drivers would be rewarded by better medical insurance and lower payments.

Of course there are problems that people don’t really choose to be fat especially if they have been fat their entire life and they are usually teenagers when they start smoking and by the time they start thinking about their health insurance the habit is there to stay but maybe the rules can be modified by efforts for example has the person joined a weight watch program etc.

People should be responsible for their choices and if they are the antagonism of others will decreased as well and everyone would be free to live the life that they want.