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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

How can you guarantee the health of a person? Doesn't that incentivize risky activities? If someone else will pay to stitch you up if you get injured, or cover your drugs if you get sick, or keep you going in your old age if you make terrible long-term lifestyle choices: wouldn't that skew the overall population toward cheaper, more convenient, or more fun decisions at the expense of the state?

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I live in the UK, so all my medical costs are covered by the state.

However, I still don't go base jumping. Even if the costs are covered, I still don't want to spend six months in traction after I break my back because the parachute didn't open. Similarly almost all the people I know either don't smoke, or want to stop smoking, because even if you can do it free of charge lung cancer just isn't much fun.

You mean your medical costs are covered by taxes you pay and taxes other people (and corporations) in the UK pay and the costs of medical research and development that might benefit you are paid by people in the US.

I think that getting hurt or sick has enough pain or tragedy for itself and thats why people dont want to feel it.

If you hurt yourself and someone patchs you up, its not the same, my reconstructed knee will never feel the same as the other.

I think that you pose people that whant to benefit as much as they can from the state, and I think that I know noneone that does that, at least in health care, nobody wants to go the hospital

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchausen_syndrome

Now whether the people with this syndrome are sizable enough to make it unacceptable to just bear their cost is another story...

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