Healthy? You're a burden on the state

[DGP1]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/register/20080 ... d76f9.html

The Register - Technology News
By Lester Haines The Register - Technology News - Tuesday, February 5 03:23 pm

Dutch researchers have confirmed what fat smokers have waited years to hear - that healthy people are actually a greater burden on the state, because they live longer and oblige the taxpayer to deal with the cost of "lingering diseases of old age like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s".
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That's according to the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and Environment, which found that while "a person of normal weight costs on average £210,000 over their lifetime", a smoker clocks up just £165,000 and the obese run up an average £187,000 bill.

The team's findings, published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS), are based on modelling "three hypothetical populations from the age of 20, to see how much they would cost in medical bills throughout the different stages of their lives", the Telegraph explains.

The study states: “The underlying mechanism is that there is a substitution of inexpensive, lethal diseases towards less lethal, and therefore more costly diseases.â€

[Stormproof]

Glad to see I'm not to much of a burden on the state

[Lounge Lizard]

Would probably have been best for the government accountants if we had all been stillborn !

[jemima]

Would probably have been best for the government accountants if we had all been stillborn !

Yes, of course. No people means no costs. That argument can be applied to all public service provision... if there are no people you can balance the books....

Accountancy is all very well if kept in its place, but letting it take over is a mistake that will lead to devaluation of the fabric of society. It's a purely destructive influence, if not leavened with constructive common sense.

Healthy people, contributing to a healthy, civilised society, should be the aim here. We all know that's true - and we know that people's lives are better if the basic services are there for them....

So the right thing to do, to fix this particular accountancy problem in a constructive way, is to find cures for those diseases that affect people in their old age. The care cost problem would then disappear. Shell could afford to set up some research foundations - so could many other large companies. They could change the parasitic image of big business if they chose to use their profits to contribute constructively to society.