Smokers can cause themselves serious health problems. The choice to smoke is made freely and with knowledge of dangers. Smokers should therefore expect to pay more for medical treatment than non-smokers.To what extent do you agree with this statement?You

It is an irrefutable fact that smoking will cause several health issues. Although this has been understood by most smokers, they still choose to buy cigarettes. Therefore, it arouses a popular debate that whether patients with smoking history should be expected to have extra budget for their treatment. In my opinion. It is unreasonable for such group of people to pay more.

First and foremost, smoking has little relationship with most of diseases in most of cases. Although it has been scientifically proved that the toxic chemistries in cigarettes do result in a higher possibility in certain diseases such as lung cancer, smoking is unlikely to be a main factor in most of situations such as injuries from car accidents or psychology issues. It is therefore unfair for them to pay more for their treatments, as they paid for the same to their health insurance and suffered the same condition.

Secondly, extra payments have been made when purchasing products. Due to the control of cigarettes, higher tax and price has been compulsorily approved internationally. With several documents from the United Nation and the World Trade Organization, the industry of tobacco is forced to apply higher tax and price. Eventually, it means that customers have to pay more for their habit. With higher expenditure, it seems less fair for them to pay more for their medical bill.

On the other hand, some people argue that people should be responsible for their behaviors. It is a mandatory measure for merchandises to print warning sentences on the packets of tobaccos. Therefore, with the awareness of probable effects, it is unjustified for Medicare services or insurance companies to cover the fees which they could have avoid. However, this could be tough currently, due to the fact that it is hard to identify smokers and the so called “second-hand” smokers by a medical process.

As a conclusion, although smoking is a controversial habit and received numeric criticizes from public, without a powerful prove of the potential effect to most of diseases, it is impossible to deploy higher charges for smokers. In my view, it is reasonable for smokers to pay more for their smoking related issues, assuming that we can successfully identify them.