Question: "If you receive an average of two speeding tickets a year, what happens to the cost of your auto insurance?  It goes up.  Similarly, if you chose to engage in sky diving as a sport, what happens to the cost of your life insurance?  It goes up, as well, if you are even able to get coverage.  Why don't we have the same standards when it comes to health insurance?

It might be interesting for the Obama administration to take some insight from a firm that's not had an increase in their health care costs in the last four years (read that sentence again).  During the same period, health care costs have risen an average of 38% for most companies, and their employees.

Safeway (a 1,700 location grocery store) employees more than 200,000 across North America.  They've identified that 70% of all health care costs are the direct results of behavior, while 74% of health care issues can be identified by four chronic areas: 
1. Cardiovascular disease (80% preventable)
2. Diabetes (80% preventable)
3. Obesity (90% preventable)
4. Cancer (60% preventable - read "smoking")

Using this background, Safeway rewarded those employees who maintained a healthy lifestyle (weight reduction, non smoking, etc.).  Conversely, employees who chose to smoke, and gain weight, paid a higher health insurance premium.  (Just like raising auto insurance on people who get speeding tickets)

The CEO of Safeway has a great article on their program. Please take time to read it.

It we are going to have a national health insurance program, modeling it after Safeway, seems to make a lot of sense.  But, of course, the Safeway program is about rewarding responsibility.  And that's not something this administration seems inclined to do.