[sailaway21]

Heading down the road of determining whom is eligible for health care insurance is a path I'd recommend not treading. Are we really proposing that some body be placed in charge of what is a healthy lifestyle? Government or the insurance industry are going to reach similar conclusions; whatever costs them money is an unhealthy lifestyle. As if the health insurance bureaucracy is not bloated enough, all we need is our citizens in a protracted dispute over what is unhealthy for them.

Of course, the logical extension of such a policy will be such things as determining a "life worth living" and similar unquantifiable's. Why spend all that money for one more year on a seventy eight year old life? Why expend funds on a child doomed to a short existence because of congenital defects? Abortion is cheaper than a full term pregnancy.

Absent any effective competition for my health care insurance dollars, I see little reason to start surrendering my existing coverage wholesale. I think it's supposed to be the insurance and the health care industry that is supposed to be competitive and not the patients.