re: #68 Amory Blaine

I would say that is a good argument to drop the safety net itself.

I don’t see how. Shit also happens to people who don’t smoke, drink or eat crap food and the safety net extends to allow bankruptcy forgiveness for more than just medical debt. As a society we’ve decided that we don’t want slaves and we don’t want people dying on the street while the rest of us look on in depraved indifference. That doesn’t mean that the poor get anything more than medically stabilized, for instance right now they generally never get advanced treatments for cancers and other diseases. But even with this incomplete treatment families, the economy and psyche of society in general are all improved by having a safety net that aims to avert the worst, most easily prevented outcomes.

If anything it’s an argument to improve the safety net, to have it focus more on things like cheap preventative care, early diagnosis, follow up treatment and education.