Basically the point is why health care is not a variable rate dependant on how well you take care of yourself. Most other insurance policies are, so why not this one, and what the challenges would be. For the record, I absolutely support charging smokers, obese etc. more for health insurance since the burden on the insurer is statistically more.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32306655...h-health_care/

Here's a couple excerpts for a teaser but I recommend the whole article:

If you ask Dr. Steven Spady, there are two important words missing from the nation’s conversation about health reform: “personal responsibility.”

But Spady, a 54-year-old emergency physician in rural Kentucky, can’t talk about the topic right now. He’s too busy caring for people who he says don’t take care of themselves.

“I just had to go take care of man that left our hospital this morning and now has gone and got drunk and will suck up more health care dollars,” Spady wrote in a hurried e-mail late on a recent weeknight.

Only 37 percent of U.S. adults thought it was fair to charge people with unhealthy lifestyles more for their care in 2007, down from 53 percent just a year earlier, according to Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Healthcare polls.

Asked specifically about smoking versus obesity, they came down harder on the puffers, with 57 percent favoring higher insurance rates for smokers, but only 36 percent saying the same for those who are overweight. Humphrey Taylor, chairman of the Harris Poll, said that's not surprising in a country where two-thirds of adults are overweight and 20 percent still smoke.

Coincidence that roughly the percentage of unhealthy Americans think these policies are unfair while roughly the percentage of healthy Americans agree with it? Doubtful