Maggie Mahar, who contributes many thought provoking posts here, has an article about Senator Baucus's plans for universal health insurance which very subtly suggests a political problem hidden in any such proposal.  Note the following statement in that article, "An estimated 80 percent of heart disease, stroke and type-2 diabetes and 40 percent of cancers, could be prevented if Americans stopped smoking, adopted healthy diets and became more physically active."

If we are going to share in everyone's health care costs, as a universal health care program requires, don't we have to work to reduce those costs in any way we can?  Surely we can't continue to allow tobacco products to be marketed in this country when they increase health care costs that much.  The government currently bans many food additives, fearing that they might increase cases of cancer by a few percent a year.  We ban many drugs because the cost to society is too great if those drugs are abused.  Think of the pressure on government to enforce healthy life styles on all of us if we have any form of universal health care.

I'm not bringing this up because I think government shouldn't ban tobacco and greatly increase the pressure on us to change to more healthy life styles.  In fact I think those things should be done in any case.  We have no individual right to live dangerously when all of our citizens have to share the cost of the consequences of our living that way.  And, even now we share some of that cost.

Isn't this a can of worms?