The new healthcare bill passed by our government last week was a tragic, painful blow to hard-working, health-conscious people as well as personal responsibility itself. The reformation of healthcare, in its current state, only discourages people to work harder for their health and promotes reliance on the government for all their troubles. Unhealthy people, on the other hand, are getting a big pat on the back for being, well, unhealthy. They can rest easy knowing that our government is planning to take tax dollars contributed by healthy individuals to pay for all their unhealthy habits such as drinking, smoking, unprotected sex, and illegal drug use.  Shouldn’t we discourage that kind of behavior rather than provide support for them? To me this sounds like this: if one person is an hour late for work every day, that person will be disciplined. But if everyone in the company started showing up one hour late for work, the company changes its work schedule to start one hour late. The increase of personally irresponsible people in this country doesn’t mean we should change our laws to accommodate them.

We, as Americans, should encourage the personal responsibility of everything from finances to health. People should rely less on the government for support and sensibly think about their futures. Many people get into credit card debt because they were not being responsible with their purchase or realistic about their ability to pay them off. People are again heading into a similarly irresponsible direction when it comes to health care. They don’t exercise or eat well, and it is no surprise that many of them are having health troubles. To provide personally irresponsible people with healthcare relief would be like providing people with credit card debt with free money; we live in the land of the free and people should have the freedom to careen towards healthcare and financial disasters. The government has no right to tell people what they can and can’t do even if they know what’s best.

(Photo: Abdullah AL-Naser)

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