couples it to income, assuming it is paid for primarily through an income tax. I would be much less opposed to it if the cost of your premium depended on whether you smoked or not, your % body fat, your resting heart rate or whatever other objective measure you could think of that would encourage good choices. Yes, it can be subsidized, but a poverty stricken smoker should pay more than a poverty stricken non smoker.

The other concern for me is having politicians deciding what they were going to cover. It's easy to imagine a democrat getting in to office and deciding we should cover birth control, Plan B and aromatherapy. Four years later a Republican gets in and wants to call the purchase of a firearm a healthcare decision that should be covered.

But seriously Congressional and presidential candidates will go on the stump and campaign to expand coverage no matter how generous it already is. Studies show that for some women mammograms every two years are as effective as mammograms every year. Do you think that cost saving step would ever have a chance of passing? I don't. We need to look at end of life care. Who will campaign on cutting off care to terminally ill patients?

I don't recall the exact numbers, but something like 1/3 of all health care dollars are spent in the last 30 or 60 days of life. Some of that should be spent. We want to try to save the victim of a car accident and the 50 year old heart attack patient but we aren't always successful. Do we want to extend the lives of terminal cancer patients for a few more days at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars? For the people comparing our costs to Canada and Europe, I wonder how those numbers compare.

In short, make my premium dependent on my health and age, not on my income. Let me decide if I want to buy mental health insurance, substance abuse insurance, birth control, etc. Do those two things and I'll talk about single payer. In any event, let's stop throwing money down the hole at the end of life.



[Post edited by 81_Hokie at 03/21/2017 6:42PM]