I found a very interesting and persuading article that I would like to share with you. Steven Pearlstein, a business columnist for the Washington Post recently commented about the health insurance reform debate. Currently the debate revolves around how much each American should pay for their heath insurance, particularly if their health insurance premium should be tied to their lifestyle choices such as smoking and lack of exercise and other lifestyle factors. Here is an excerpt from Pearlstein's article... he has a good point, take a look:
"Those who want to prohibit insurance companies from charging higher premiums to people who smoke, drink heavily, abuse drugs or have unhealthy diets apparently take the position that these behaviors should be subsidized by those who take better care of their health.
And those who rail against limits to end-of-life care are effectively saying that patients willing to follow the best medical evidence about what works and what is cost-effective should be required to subsidize those who don't.
In a free country, people have the right to decide what to buy, where to live, what to eat and drink, and how much medical care to buy. They're even free to negotiate for health benefits instead of wage increases. What they don't have is the right to expect that everyone else should pay for their choices through higher taxes and higher health insurance premiums.
One of the aims of health reform should be to make health insurance more like fire insurance, reducing as much as possible the moral hazards and the cross-subsidies while protecting all Americans from medical catastrophe."