Okay, I will try one more time. In other countries the healthcare you receive under UHC is determined by your age and your productivity. If you are old you do not get a knee replacement or a heart transplant. What they do suggest is end of life care or euthanasia. You had a good life make way for the next generation. So in those countries your age tax is paid with your life. There are people in the administration that want to limit care for the young until they reach a viable age such as five, until then your child is too risky to waste funds on. The optimum ages for full healthcare is 15 to 35 and then your care starts to decline. Anyone see Logons Run?  

I would very much like to see where you get your data on this.

Fail.  That only applies if you are forced to buy health insurance.  Furthermore, a few simple changes in existing laws & regulations would allow you to buy less expensive insurance tailored to you, what you feel you need and what you want - we don't need a complete federal takeover of healthcare to achieve that.  You'll have fewer choices once that happens.  If you really are 'healthier' and really are living a 'healthier' lifestyle and believe you should be rewarded for that, the market will provide it, given the opportunity.

Just to be clear, the health risks associated with obesity are undisputed - I spend a large amount of my time counseling patients on that very subject.  I have no objection to non-punitive 'incentives' to encourage 'healthy lifestyles' and weight reduction, as well as obesity prevention.  People need to understand on an individual level how obesity places their future health at risk.  Unfortunately, there is no lifestyle that immunizes someone against health problems.  And association is not the same as causation, a trap we fall into all too easily, especially the lay (some prefer 'lazy') media.

The market can, when allowed, provide such incentives (it's derisively called cherry-picking), but I don't think people would accept the inevitable consequence of that approach - an auto-insurance style system where you get sick, your premiums go up.  So if you're skinny & you want to avoid 'paying for someone else's obesity,' it can be done - just pray you don't get sick from any of the thousands of serious conditions unrelated to being overweight.  And hope that it doesn't encourage an epidemic of anorexia & bulimia.

Personally, I'm willing to pay a little more up front to avoid the auto-insurance approach to healthcare.

On what, health risks associated with obesity? I've already given you a link to some data. If you're referring to the subsidisation effect, it's a result of simple economics/logic and there are numerous examples out there of such situations.

Fail. It applies both if you're forced to buy health insurance and also if it's your choice whether to buy health insurance. The effects may be more pronounced with a forced system, but they still exist in an unforced one.

That's the beauty of the market, if people wouldn't accept that consequence, then it wouldn't happen. People would instead look to purchase insurance which wouldn't change in cost for a set period regardless of their health. You yourself effectively evidence this in your later statement:

If you don't want to pay for someone else being fat, you don't have to with the market system you seem to believe would 'work' if enough people wanted it to.  But the 'fat' wouldn't have any insurance at all if risk couldn't be spread.  Sounds like a liberal, compassionate idea to me.

Despite your denial, it is a moot point when insurance is voluntary - you don't have to pay for anyone else if you decide, in your wisdom, that the premiums being charged are in any way helping to pay for anyone else's health care.  Don't buy it, and self-insure.

And where did you pull that statement from? All that would happen is the insurance would cost them more, not that it wouldn't exist at all. Perhaps you should read up on the basics of risk+reward - just because something becomes riskier, it doesn't mean you don't want it, it just means you require a greater reward.

But if you want insurance, you are forced to pay for others.

As for self insurance, it doesn't work. Given the potentially huge costs of health care should you suffer a particular ailment, even if you saved 100% of your salary you wouldn't be able to cover such eventualities for a while, and even after many years of saving you would still only be able to cover the 'lesser' health risks and not the very severe (but less likely) ones effectively.

Hello?!?!  It's... insurance.

You still don't get it.  As long as there is no coercion involved and insurance companies are permitted to offer a wider range of options more closely tailored to your needs, you should be happy.

D, this one is a hater, does not understand the concept of insurance and will only be happy when we are all paying for is problems while he complains about paying for fat people.

Yes, you really are an idiot.

Come back when you actually know what insurance is, and preferably also how it works, and maybe you might have a chance of understanding. Given the pitiful reasoning you've shown this far I doubt it though.

Why should I be happy if I'm having to pay for fat people?

Why should I be happy if I'm having to pay for you, fat or not?  You can solve your 'moral dilemma' by not buying insurance and paying cash - that way you're guaranteed to be paying only for yourself.

Because he wants UHC to pay his bills, and nothing else will do for him. It is okay if we pay for him as I pointed out earlier but he should not have to pay for others unless we all chip in. You are correct D, self insurance is the way to go but I doubt he ever thought of that.

The problem with copying and pasting my arguments against you and trying to use them against me is that they don't apply. You are the one arguing that UHC is evil because it means you have to pay for others, yet argue in favour of non-fat people being forced to pay for fat people if they want insurance.

You really are hopelessly out of touch with reality if you think people can effectively self-insure for healthcare.

That doesn't solve it, since that means I don't have insurance. It can be solved by letting insurance companies charge fat people more.

My healthcare cost me 60 a month. Where is it that I am paying for fat people?  That is medical, dental, and vision. UHC will cost everyone roughly 40% to 60% of our income. Tell me how it is cheaper? Even the Canadian healthcare beign as generous as the proponants want to be cost them between 15% nad 20% of their income to pay for a lousy system. I see nothing that works as good as the system we have now.

okay dip stick, if people opt out of medical insurance the price has to come down to a rate the market will pay. Priceses will continue to go up because insurance companies will pay rather than the individual. Lawyars cause the prices to skyrocket because if every test under the sun is not done then the doc can be sued for not doing the tests. Malpractice inusrance cost 60% of your doctors visit. I just love the sliding scale used by doctors. If the insurance companies pay the doctor charges 475 a visit with the patient paying 20 dollars. when I don't have coverage the doctor charges me 179 for the same treatment.

your argument is that you need insurance to pay for your medical bills. but if you pay cash you pay less. If everyone pays cash the cost will have to come down or the doctors won't get paid. If they do tort reform the cost will drop even further.

Your misguided belief in the need for insurance ensurs the cost stays high and will only go up.

Supported by the fact that other countries (with UHC)'s healthcare spending is far lower than the US's (per person)...

Well done for demonstrating your complete lack of understanding of how insurance works.

Sure they do; they ration the care so only the people in productive age groups get the care so yes, they spend less as a nation per person served. the young healthy people don't require much care. you don't heal the healthy. On the other hand you do not heal the sick. a 60 year old with cancer does not get the care we receive in America. Mortality rates for cancer (expensive treatment) is higher in all those countries. people reduced to self medication because it takes so long to get treated the illness is beyond fixing by the time the cancer is found. As my girlfriend said to me, you get a choice between the two systems. good care or economical care. good care costs money. economical care costs lives. I went in for a checkup in the middle of July, they found something that looked suspicious, since then I have had a biopsy to confirm cancer, a bone scan to see if it spread, a soft tissue scan to see if it spread there, a series cardiac tests to see if I can survive the surgery, now I am waiting for scheduling to tell me the dated of my robotic surgery. All of that and it has not been a month since my doc found something suspicious. In countries with UHC if the doc found something that did not look right it would take 3 to 6 months to get the biopsy. by then it could have spread to other parts and made the cure rate more difficult. it could take another two years to find out if it spread to my bones and soft tissue. Yes, it would be cheaper but I would be incurable by then since my cancer is agressive. I will pay the thousand dollar deductable and get the surgery before the end of the year and still be here. At 53 I might not have been elegable under UHC to get the surgery. Due to the laws as they stand now, once a doctor is treating you they have to treat you regardless of your ability to pay. under UHC that goes out the window because the government decides if you are worth spending the money.

Actually I was pointing out how to fix health care to reduce costs but you could not grasp that. Sorry if I wrote on a level above your ability to comprehend. It is real basic, business makes a profit based on the consumers ability to pay. Price it too high and you don't make money. if a carwash cost a thousand dollars few people would pay for it and the carwash goes out of business. Put the insurance company in the mix with the government mandating that it must wash cars in a certain way and the price goes up because no matter what the cost it will be paid.  Put medical care back into the free market and the price will come down. Is that easier for you to understand?