No, prevention efforts are best targeted at where crime is likely to occur. To use an extreme example: there is no point targeting an area that has had a huge crime rate in the past if the expected future crime rate is very low (like if all former residents are dead or gone). Prevention in the present is only effective against future crimes, not past crimes. Targeting crime prevention at current high crime areas works because current trends are usually an indicator of future trends (meaning current high crime areas are likely to be high crime areas in the future).

That is exactly how insurance pools work: everyone pays in to support those that actually have a problem. To help keep costs down for non-young people, all young people pay more because young people are more likely to incur payouts. And the people that actually DO get into an accident or something typically experience an insurance hike, and sometimes a massive one.

Penalizing the whole group for something only a few people did is also fairly common, regardless of how fair it may be.

I'm unclear on what the complaint actually is here. Do you have a reputable reference for these things happening?

I'm unfamiliar with the term "death anxiety". Define what you mean by it, and we'll talk.

Insurance is basically a company betting that the money they pull in from premiums will be greater than the money they pay out when policies are triggered (for lack of a better term). So if Jewish people are more likely to trigger a payout, then they absolutely will be paying more money into the pot. The alternative is charging everyone more because Jewish people are causing more expenses due to a higher propensity for sickness; you commented above about the unfairness of making those not responsible take part of the penalty.

I suppose an alternative would be making the people who are actually sick pay a lot more to cover the costs they are generating. What is your opinion on that idea?

Edit: Grammar.

I am no Catholic.

But the Catholic Church and islam are worlds apart.

The Catholic Church does not sponsor genital mutilation, it does not bar woman from driving, working, voting or being equal, it does not marry 7-year-old girls to 55-year-old men to be raped and live in slavery, it does not condone, let alone glorify terrorism with the promise of more than a hundred virgins, etc, etc, etc.

If you find the two one and the same, I suggest you take your head out of you arse.

So where was jihad prior to the US intervention in Afghanistan, before the Soviet invasion?

Is this a joke?

The muslim invasion of Europe during the middle ages. The fall of Constantinople. The Armenian genocide. The 1972 Munich Massacre (Olympics), or when Grand Mosque Seizure in 1979.

What do any of these have to do with Afghanistan? Oh nothing,

You have a right to health care because you're human (according to, but not only to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25).

"Personal responsibility" is only one of many abject excuses that shield the sick underlying narrative that a person's worth is the money he makes. And, honestly? If those were our standards, all of us would be rated maggots that don't deserve shit on a stick, much less anyone giving a shit about our health.

Do I have the right to cost you money by engaging in self destructive behaviors?

After seeing the community managers being smug about the whole situation and of course the banning on Steam asking about the problem, not sure if I can support this game anymore at all. I get why Jon was removed, I do not agree but in the world of business Jon's words do have consequences unfortunately. The banning of the subject and of course denying refunds is just a low blow and shows horrible integrity on the dev team's part.

The 1972 Munich Massacre??? Is that supposed to be funny? And what should ethnic cleansers expect from their victims, flowers and hearty handshakes?

As for the Armenian genocide, are we to then refer to the German attempt at extermination as an example of jihad, because the only thing that separates the two is the degree to which they were successful?

You understand little of the history of Europe if you think it's less barbaric than Islam -- not least that it is the victors who write the "official" histories, which serve only to contaminate our understanding of the past.

Afghanistan I reference because it was at that point in time that the jihad "genie" was released from it's bottle and unleashed against the former Soviet Union. A genie that has yet to return to it's bottle, and why should it, when it serves as the primary justification for our Mideast meddling and the ever-dubious "war on terror"?

Destructive behaviors like taking pain meds to mask symptoms, rather than identifying and addressing causation?

Your question is best addressed to the pain med industry, which has had great success in promoting it's dubious remedies.

Momentary agreement with richlind. Most problems with supplying health care to everyone stem from making it a capitalist industry that peddles you your own health as a luxury item, hence e.g. isn't that interested in actually curative measures.

Strawman. I'm not asking about issues caused by people trying to avoid higher costs because they already can't afford it.

I'm referring to costs incurred from optional things that damage one's health, like treating lung cancer that arose from a life of smoking.

Does cosmetic surgery fall under the umbrella of "health care"?

Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma is a brilliant work, IMO.

Cures are good, but prevention is better still. ;o

People take pain meds irrespective of their ability to pay for health insurance. It's the "American way".

Then is it acceptable for you to have to pay for my habitual pain medications, taken even though I don't need them? :P

I have a better question: is it acceptable to promote destructive behavior?

Good grief.

I wonder... is this normal now? I mean, did this happen to every kind of "group", or did something fry the brains of gamers in particular? Because it feels to my like the gaming community has become insanely radicalised and seems to be more interested in arguing politics with games as merely an excuse, and sometimes not even that. I'm not saying there's something wrong in principle in discussing politics, but the level of the "discussion" if it can even be called that, the intensity of it and how it comes up again and again is remarkable. And what little I see on some other websites, dedicated to other things like comics or movies (I don't use social media, and I'm not active on other fora so my first hand knowledge may be misleading)... I'm not saying those topics never come up, or that a troll or two never show up, but it stille never seems nearly as intense and bitter as it does here or on some other gaming-related sites.