[SeekAndFind]

NOW A PRE-EXISTING CONDITION:

[Tublecane]

“charging smokers more would be ‘in direct conflict with our efforts to help people quit smoking.’”

What? There are few better ways to disuade behavior than making them more expensive. I was going to say they can’t be that stupid, but we are talking about gubmint.

Unless by being in conflict with their efforts they really mean the efforts, not the preferred end. As in, charging smokers more would be in direct conflict with the salaries of “social workers” and other drones they’ve hired and given attractive benefits packages to pretend to be helping smokers quit.

[GeronL]

That is insane

[vet7279]

And what about the cost of treating HIV/AIDS? Lets social engineer that behavior....

[gundog]

Turn in your guns, you self-destructive junkies.

[popdonnelly]

Leftists won’t be happy until they’ve wrecked every business in the country. First it was banks required to make bad loans, now it’s insurance companies forced to insure people who wreck their health.

[Sender]

The primary logic for this was because poor people smoke more than more affluent people, and so would be harmed unfairly by making poor people pay a smoking surcharge.

Of course, the progressive solution is to spread the cost of poor peoples' poor health choices to more affluent people who made wise health choices.

[plain talk]

Then ... I guess liberalism can be considered a pre-existing medical condition.

[donna]

Anti-Smoking has always been an experiment in big government crowd control.