CS314 - Unhealthy Numbers

[Speaker to Animals]

Eh.. in a way, that first argument might fall flat on its face. If we have collective funding of all health care, then people smoking, drinking, and abusing drugs would likely lower costs since they would die faster. The really big costs tend to come late in life and drag out for many years. I am not saying I would back this line of reasoning up all the way, but I think there exists reason to abandon the nanny state aspect of it. Trying to control people to make them healthier I think could very well result in a greater financial cost.

[Okeefenokee]

Trying to follow you, why would they die faster?

[Speaker to Animals]

Trying to follow you, why would they die faster?

If you get diagnosed with lung cancer tomorrow, the overwhelming probability is that you will be dead sometime in the next four years. The costs during those four years might seem steep (I am looking at total cost figures around 40k), but consider what a person costs who lives a healthy, long life, and needs longterm medical care for the last twenty years of their lives. I am looking at a figure for the total cost of diabetes at around 13k per year. You need only have diabetes for 3.5 years and you already cost as much as a guy who died horrifically of lung cancer at an early age. But diabetes doesn't have to kill you. You can go on like that for the rest of your long, long, long life if you are otherwise healthy.

Consider all the shit that goes wrong when people get old which needs help: prostate, eyes, knees, hips, gall bladder, vein problems, etc. That shit adds the fuck up.

But if you worked for like thirty years as a young man, paying into the system year after year without needing to go the doctor, and smoking like a chimney the whole time only to die from lung cancer at 50.. well, you just saved us a lot of money, guy.

[Okeefenokee]

Alright I'm with you. So you're saying we should take all the old people and sick people and make them smoke and drink so they just get it over with.

I like it.

[Martin Hash]

Wars, pestilence & disease work too. As long as it's your kids, I'm okay with that solution.

[Okeefenokee]

Speaking of which. You're not getting shit from me until you instate a draft.

Fucking carry on 16 years of undeclared war while 99% of the population chills at home, and then wants to talk about social responsibility.

[Martin Hash]

It'll be cool: you living up the in the hills with your AR, huntin' buck & fuckin' your daughter.

[Fife]

Wow that sucked.

[Speaker to Animals]

Alright I'm with you. So you're saying we should take all the old people and sick people and make them smoke and drink so they just get it over with.

I like it.

It occurs to me that there are other costs, especially in terms of human capital loss. If you have a greater frequency of people dying early, then your society experiences a greater human capital loss. Most of the innovations are from men in their thirties and forties. You definitely don't want to cut into that demographic any more than it's already suffering.

So it's entirely possible that encouraging unhealthy lifestyles could reduce the costs of the universal health care system, but if it targets the very people who produce most of the innovations and advancements, it could cut into your overall tax revenue, undermine economic and technological progress, and perhaps weaken in you other areas.

So it might be a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other.

[Okeefenokee]

Wow that sucked.

With a retort like that, who can say I didn't win?