cont.
... people who are punished with higher rates.  However, if you're a heavy smoker or an HIV-positive party animal, an alcoholic ne'er-do-well or a drug-raddled slacker, a single mom with no job skills and 5 kids by four different dads,  and lo and behold you're paying the unavoidable health costs of poor choices and impulsive, self-destructive behaviors - you probably qualify for a government subsidy.  :-/  Not surprisingly under this scenario, lots and lots of responsible people feel like they're being screwed by the system.   O-care seems less an insurance program than it is another redistribution mechanism, setting up yet another entitlement to buy more reliable Democratic  votes.  

The problem is, James, what the government rewards, it gets more of.  What the government punishes, it gets less of.   When a society consciously *punishes* personal responsibility and instead rewards all the screwheads, what do you think happens in the long run?  0_x