health care

Now that we're dealing with health care again, it brings to mind a question: What do the productive people owe to the unproductive people in this area? I feel there should be a 'floor' of social services for everybody, and that includes health care. The problem is, what level of care should be afforded lower-class people who simply don't take care of themselves-- who eat crappy food and too much of it, who smoke, drink too much, do drugs, and don't exercise? What do we owe them on a spectrum between carte blanche and enough morphine so they're not in too much pain as they're dying from the diseases they totally predictably bring on themselves?

In the first place, with people like this, the emphasis should be on prevention-- to try to get them to stop doing all the bad things they do to themselves. So they would get lectured to a lot, and there would be various carrots and sticks to try to get them to change. Beyond that, part of the tit-for-tat of giving them basic health care should be that the taxpayer should be able to control their reproduction. Single women should be limited to one child, married couples to two.