Do penalties for smokers and the obese make sense?

[JVS]

8. It makes sense for insurance companies, but if your goal is universal health care instead of...

profit it does not make sense to take groups that are already under-served by the medical system and make it more difficult for them to access healthcare.

For insurance companies the best system would be for all unhealthy people to be denied treatment while everyone is forced to pay for coverage. This is why they are a terrible vehicle to achieve universal coverage.

Also, there is a lot of talk about how expensive unhealthy people are to the system. I never hear anyone mention that people who die at 60 save the social security system a ton of money compared to people who make it into their late 90s.