I keep watching as universal health care inexorably takes hold in the USA. One of the restrictions sure to come of it will be something along the lines of: "If you want the coverage you will have to be smoke free for six months." Or some such. Perhaps, "smokers will not be covered with regard to tobacco related illness." For sure one can see coming the situation where people with smoking related, or other "self-inflicted" illnesses are relegated to the bottom of the list.
Some swear such is the case in Great Britain, Ireland and other places. It's not a regulatory situation, simply the response (mind set) of individual doctors/administrators working in the system. They have limited resources with which to treat the population and feel it necessary to "triage" or, shuttle off to the side, those they feel are not "participating."
"Universal Health Care" is probably the greatest threat to "choosing" one's lifestyle in the future. High risk behavior simply cannot exist in such a system. And, that is why more than a few doctors will opt out of such a system and make moneys, hand over fist, in private practices. Smokers, wealthy smokers, will become assets to them, sought out, coddled, properly treated, all for a price.
The above is based on personal observation, anecdotal information from friends living under "Universal Healthcare", and reading British/Canadian/Irish papers, magazines and books on the subject. It is a "zero sum" game. If there are forty beds and sixty patients well... do the math. It's forty beds for forty patients so choices must be made by the government so the system doesn't break completely. X number of doctors can only treat X number of patients so the answer is to put some "doctor" work into the hands of lesser trained individuals, reduce the number of eligible patients, and so on until the system simply collapses due to lack of professionals and moneys.
I was extremely lucky in my one, personal, interaction with "Universal Healthcare" as my business partners were well connected. I was treated in a state controlled hospital which only treated certain strata of the citizens. The treatment was excellent, immediate admittance, single room, view, one (very competent) doctor assigned, well staffed, everything one could ask for. That level of treatment was not available for cab drivers, retail clerks, teachers, clerks, stevedores, etc. Social/Political status and/or moneys were the criteria for admittance and treatment.
Universal Healthcare is always great when it is new and shiny. Put a little age on it, some dents and dirt and it's not what good intentions imagined it would be thirty or forty years earlier.
So, smoke 'em if you got 'em!
