The Healthy, the not so Healthy and the Costs
Dan Carlin in his Feb 8th, 2008 podcast brings up a good point about society and healthcare. People who want to force what they think are healthy habits on citizens under the gise that it will cost the american people ie the US Government less money may be missing something. At the very least we should have this discussion.Take two people someone who lives “poorly” and dies early and someone who lives a clean lifestyle and lives until much older. The thinking might be that the healthier person would cost us less in death and /or over their life than the unhealthy person. On the surface this seems to make sense, healthy people don’t need doctors, medical services as much as unhealthy ones, however it fails to realize the following.
First assume that each person has a productive work life, has health insurance and pays his/her share of the taxes. In otherwords except for the unhealthy life choice these two people are on the same plane in life.
- Assuming the unhealthy person dies early in life say before starting to collect social security, medicare/medicaid etc they will have paid into the retirement system/Healthcare system and never have used any of the services. This is a plus for the US Government and it’s citizens as this persons lifestyle has been cheaper for us.
- Assuming the healthy person lives much longer and dies of natural causes the assumption is that the healthcare costs for this person will be lower, but wait why would they be lower, Will they sudden and without cause die peacefully and quietly never having to use any government program. I think not, so let us take another look. First they live to retirement age and will start to draw money out from Social Security, they will also start using medicare and medicaid and any number of other programs. Even with a healthy lifestyle eventually the body and mind break down and everyone needs help. I would say that at the end of this long life when their body does begin to breakdown won’t the costs be higher, who’s to say that their kids are able to help, they will be older and less likely to be able to help even if they too have led healthy lives. I see an increase in government money needed for healthy people. They cash in all of the government insurance policies we as citizens are forced to pay into.
So in the end do we really want to force people to live a certain way based on what we believe will be a cost reduction to society. Forget that being healthy is probably great for each individual person. if we live in a society such that we make it the governments role to take care of us until the bitter end maybe we need to allow people to live their lives the way they want so as a society and a system we have enough diversity and difference to smooth out the edges and make a better and cheaper place for us all.