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> I want to dissuade people from smoking or excess drinking because it makes health insurance for me and my family more expensive while tying up hospital resour
by i_am_proteus 7y ago
> I want to dissuade people from smoking or excess drinking because it makes health insurance for me and my family more expensive while tying up hospital resources treating people for preventable diseases.
If smoking reduced total health expenditure (because those who die early from smoking-related illnesses avoid the costliest years of their lives), would you advocate for the government to encourage smoking?
- mywittyname 7y agoNo. I considered multiple facets when making this decision: 1) people are harmed by it, 2) even though people willfully start doing it, they can't always willfully stop doing it, 3) it negatively impacts them and their family's health/finances, 4) it negatively impacts society in a variety of ways. I believe that impacts to society is what gives society (read: government) the right or obligation to intervene. Taxes are an effective mechanism of softly encouraging good behavior and they have much less risk of unintended consequences than total bans do.