Via hippachria: 10 Myths About Canadian Health Care, Busted

9. People won't be responsible for their own health if they're not being forced to pay for the consequences.
False. The philosophical basis of America's privatized health care system might best be characterized as medical Calvinism. It's fascinating to watch well-educated secularists who recoil at the Protestant obsession with personal virtue, prosperity as a cardinal sign of election by God, and total responsibility for one's own salvation turn into fire-eyed, moralizing True Believers when it comes to the subject of Taking Responsibility For One's Own Health.

This is this bizarre conservative notion that financial incentives are the only incentives. First of all, lets recognize that for many diseases, hemophlia, epilepsy, etc., have to do with genetic predisposition and environmental influences are poorly understood.

But let's concede that many diseases are brought on, or aggravated by bad choices, smoking, eating too much, exercising too little. The incentive for making the right choice is good health. Poor health is a huge disincentive, much stronger than money. That people continue to make bad choices should indicate that this is a little more complicated than incentives. We would recognize that if our priority were public health.