This week the members of the medical society at my school met at lunchtime to have a debate, the proposed motion was that "illnesses caused by lifestyle choices such as smoking, drinking and diet should receive less time and money from the NHS."
As you can imagine the debate was a very interesting one and the motion immediately gets you thinking, what do you think? Personally I can understand reasons both for and against but I disagree with the statement and as it happens I was on the team arguing against the motion. Below I will briefly summarise some of the reasons given in this particular debate (I'm not saying I agree with all of them!)
Reasons given for:
- People who have lived healthily, paying careful attention to diet and not drinking or smoking excessively should be rewarded with more time compared those who have been careless for example.
- People are educated throughout their lives about the importance of healthy eating and exercise and many attempt to do so, others do not and it is often these people who become ill.
- If this was the case and people did receive "less time and money" this could act as an incentive to someone to change their particular "lifestyle choice" before they became ill.
Reasons given against:
- Such a system would be impossible to regulate, for example where is the cut off point for lifestyle choices? And what if the lifestyle choice contributed to an illness as well as another factor?
- The amount someone eats, drinks or smokes is a personal choice. In addition cigarettes and alcohol are highly taxed and this tax is of benefit to the economy and could potentially end up in the NHS.
- Anyone and everyone, regardless of circumstance is entitled to free health care from the NHS and it would be immoral and discriminative to excluded one particular party from this.
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