Denying healthcare to smokers alone is victimization  The denial of healthcare, an established right, without the citizen doing anything either immoral or wrong is pure and simple victimization. Suppose you are a doctor and you have two patients waiting for a heart transplant. Patient A is 65. He does not exercise, has never had a job and has committed a series of crimes throughout his life. Patient B is in his 20s, with a first class degree from a good university. He is a trained doctor himself and wants to go and work in the developing world, to help people suffering from leprosy. But Patient B is a heavy smoker. Should you therefore prioritize patient A? It seems problematic to victimize smokers, particularly considering smoking is legal. If you are going to discriminate against smokers then surely you should discriminate against alcohol drinkers and people who do extreme sports as they are also knowingly endangering themselves. Smoking reduces life expectancy by 2.5 years for men, but obesity reduces life expectancy by 1.3 years and if high blood pressure is added to that by a total of 2.8 years all are preventable so why should only smoking be discriminated against?1 Maybe you should discriminate against people who choose to live in polluted cities. And then there are drug users. What about people who could afford private health care? Should age, occupation and past convictions be taken into account? It seems arbitrary and unfair to single out smokers. Yet, if we start to take into account all the factors that determine who "deserves" to be prioritized for healthcare, then we are left with the unsavory, illiberal practice of Social Darwinism. 1 Harvard School of Public Health, "Four Preventable Risk Factors Reduce Life Expectancy in U.S. and Lead to Health Disparities", 22 March 2010, accessed 24 August 2010.