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[ - ] Stompfaggots 6 points ago (+6/-0)

Here's some awkward facts Neri.

One hundred percent of non-smokers fucken die. One hundred percent of people who don't drink also fucken die.

Old people need more health care because they are fucking old. Fat people need more healthcare on average because they are fucking fat. This does not change if they smoked their whole lives or never picked up a Marlboro.

What of course does change is how much they have or have not paid into the system. Smokers and drinkers - especially in your modern nanny state home of Australia - pay billions in tax for the privilege of an early death Neri.

Your proposal penalizes the people who've paid MORE towards their own healthcare than anybody else. A quick check shows that smokers in your country fund around fourteen percent of ALL health spending in Australia via taxes despite being around ten or eleven percent of the adult population. And of course smokers would pay the same rates income tax and health levies the same as any other citizen.

If anything smokers and drinkers deserve to be treated first, based upon how much they have contributed towards the cost of their own treatment over their lifetimes.

That's some marxist redistributive shit right there when it comes down to it Neri. Do better.
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[ - ] paul_neri 0 points ago (+0/-0)*

Son, taking smokers as our reference point, they pay more via taxes on tobacco for health care quite simply because they tend to use more health care:

"Smokers are likely to cause a greater burden on the public health system than non-smokers and as such, under the benefit principle, should pay for this through the instrument of tobacco taxation." ([Australian] Department of the Treasury)

https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-03/Document_57.pdf

Now all that is a different issue to mine which is that smokers, despite paying more into the health care system via taxes, should go to the back of the hospital queue. And I say this because it would seem tobacco taxes don't cover smokers' health care costs. In 2022–23 Australia collected $12.7 billion in duty on tobacco. In 2015–16, tobacco smoking cost Australian society $19.2 billion in tangible costs like healthcare. This latter figure would probably be higher now due to increases in health care costs but it's possible the number of smokers has declined and so to has the health care costs they generated. Even if smokers as a section of society paid their way in the health care system due to the tax on tobacco, I'd still maintain they should go to the back of the hospital queue (if such a thing was possible) because health care is a scarce resource and non-smokers should not be required to wait for a hospital bed or other hospital treatment on account of a smoker being a person who has deliberately engaged in an act harmful to the person's health. Hospital is not for idiots.

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