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Comment by rincebrain | Hacker News Reader

Why should promiscuity mean that they should have to privately fund their treatment? (Not that promiscuity is the only way you can get HIV, but that's not the question I'm asking.)

People have differing ideas about what acceptable and unacceptable behavior is. If we required that taxes only be collected for the set of behaviors everyone agreed on, we'd have no taxes, and no government.

Even if we agreed that promiscuous people should not receive public medical treatment (which is not a position I hold), would you suggest condemning people who contracted this through no act of their own as well?

Parents can give it to their children, and there are nonsexual ways you can end up with bodily fluid transmission.

Assuming you're describing the book I think you are, there are a number of editions of said book in which one of the protagonists shows mercy toward the sick and ostracized people.

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Your argument ignores real politics. In my country we are constantly having questions about why isn't more money available to help children with autism or old people with dementia, etc. At the same time people complain that taxes are too high. One of the ways to square that circle would be to look at spending on the treatment of avoidable diseases. Particularly ones that affect only a minority (ie not people like us) but yet cost a lot to treat.

If you want to go down that road then I suggest you start looking at injuries for spare-time daredevils without insurance first (and professional athletes, but I think most of those have private insurance anyway).

The group that most commonly get mentioned are smokers. The reply smokers give is to mention that they are taxed so heavily for their habit that they are paying their way. It's also mentioned that because they die younger, they effectively subsidise other people's old age.

Yeah, that's a nice way to solve it actually, but I suspect that taxing sexual intercourse based on how frequent it happens and with whom it happens might just be a bit difficult. :P

How do you separate the HIV+ people that engaged in 'risky' (by whatever definition you apply) behavior from those who didn't?

I'm not suggesting you do but if society were ever to do that, I'd imagine that people who were avowedly promiscuous would be viewed as risk takers.

> would you suggest condemning people who contracted this through no act of their own as well?

No, but these cases can be identified. For ex - children or people with unfaithful spouses. A majority of HIV infections are due to unprotected sex.

> there are nonsexual ways you can end up with bodily fluid transmission.

Please do tell use about these nonsexual ways. Cause I was under impression that normal contact during daily life carries no risk.

And the cases where a partner didn't disclose their status, or didn't know that they were contagious, or they hit the shitty jackpot and were infected despite best-effort and best-practice measures?

Yes all those reasons contribute more to HIV infections than promiscuous sex with multiple partners.

> Please do tell use about these nonsexual ways.

Sharing syringes (e.g between drug users).

I assume parent means contaminated blood transfusion. That was the primary non-sexual vector before screening and excluding known high risk populations from blood donation was adopted.

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