Addressing everybody so far who has said something along the lines of "But doctors operate on _______"
I wouldn't necessarily get too upset with doctors on this. Even though I have absolutely NO use for medical insurance companies, I don't think I'd even get horribly upset with them on this either.
I say this because the medical payments market is so tightly regulated by both state governments and FEDGOV that they may have no choice in this. It is politically acceptable for government to have regulations allowing insurance companies to mitigate risk based upon smoking, but:
And if they refused to provides services based on those particular lifestyle choices, then the screams would be infinitely louder. Politicians are not willing to take that screaming.
Fact is, they are allowed to do this with smokers because it's politically correct...they aren't allowed to do so with other bad lifestyle choices, because those choies haven't similarly been vilified for generations.
This would all be changed if individuals were responsible for the consequences of their behavior. As it stands, those consequences are assigned to a third party (the one who actually pays the medical bills).
True