What right is that? You engage in risky behavior, you pay for it. If you have a $2000 pot of money to spend on insurance, preventative care, etc (I'm just making up a number for the sake of argument.) and if you eat right and stay fit, you get to keep $1000 of it at the end of the year. That's an incentive to do the right thing. People are motivated by money.
That's because there is no downside to the risky behavior. If you know someone else is going to foot the bill, why pay it yourself? People are motivated by money.
And refusing to pay the cost of something isn't the same as reducing the cost of that something. As I mentioned before, the majority of the increase in spending for health care in the US is due to new technology development. I saw a story last night about a teenage woman who was kept alive by a new machine after her heart failed until a replacement heart could be found. Yes, costs have been going up but
the number of people surviving cancer has been going up too. The
mortality rates for cancers have been dropping. In the last decade,
deaths from coronary heart disease are down by 1/3. All of this with growing obesity rates as Randy referred us to. It's not hard to think that much of the improvement in our ability to treat diseases has come increased spending on developing new technologies, procedures and drugs.
And in a truly free market, that will happen, just like it does with groceries...
Dirk
Originally Posted by dirkterrell
What right is that? You engage in risky behavior, you pay for it. If you have a $2000 pot of money to spend on insurance, preventative care, etc (I'm just making up a number for the sake of argument.) and if you eat right and stay fit, you get to keep $1000 of it at the end of the year. That's an incentive to do the right thing. People are motivated by money.
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