Comment by bill_joy_fanboy
8 hours ago
UK has public/socialized healthcare.
If you are a smoker, you are much more likely to be a burden on this system.
Makes sense to ban these types of activities if the costs of them are socialized rather than individualized.
We should ban scrolling social media for people born after a certain date and legally mandate an hour of exercise per day and eating 5 servings of vegetables. If you don't listen, one month in jail. The state has decided that since it pays for your healthcare, it will now tell you how to live your life.
You're making my point by making sweeping deeply personal policy for people without first citing how much less dangerous vaping nicotine is vs using tobacco.
My question is why aren't you or the people making these policies interested? It's consequential stuff done ignorantly and recklessly.
Determine scientifically how dangerous vaping nicotine or THC is before banning it. That's call rational. Not reckless
Then charge smokers much more for healthcare rather than collectively punishing and discriminatorily reducing the rights of a group of people arbitrarily. Individual freedom and consequences rather than prior restraint.
If the cost of having socialised healthcare is so severe maybe we should stop socialising healthcare before we start banning risky activities.
I wonder what the cost/benefit analysis is for different addressable health outcomes. For example, under this justification could a government mandate a restricted calorie diet or enforce daily resistance training?
There are all kinds of activities/behaviors whose costs are socialized: obesity, driving, sitting around all day/not exercising, living in suburbs, gambling, engaging in sports (broken bones cost society!). That's kind of the point of a society though - to pay for socialized costs. If the goal is to make every individual pay for the consequences of their own decisions what's the point of public healthcare or insurance in general?