Most of the healthcare costs come from lifestyle choices of smoking, overeating and lack of exercise, alcohol and drug abuse, guns. Other costs are from air po

Most of the healthcare costs come from lifestyle choices of smoking, overeating and lack of exercise, alcohol and drug abuse, guns. Other costs are from air pollution (asthma) and depression. Interestingly, people complain when CDC tries to implement public health programs that help to reduce unhealthy lifestyle choices (some call it nanny-state). But you can't complain about high healthcare costs and then not support the public health efforts meant to prevent it. Specifically, to lower health care costs from tobacco use, tax tobacco (which has over half the effect to get people to quit), ban smoking in public places, spend $1 or $2 per capita for hard-hitting, scary anti-smoking ads. Yet, the Federal Govt. has a roughly $1 tobacco tax. Many states have very low tobacco taxes. > Why is medicine so expensive? Medicine for most people with chronic hypertension and most people with high cholesterol is generic in the $100 per year cost range.