Maybe but I'm more concerned about a) easily demonstrable and measurable risks not being addressed and b) separating people from the consequences of their own choices.

Ignoring risk and consequences doesn't make them go away.

What about the 60 year old with autoimmune issues? That have expensive drugs but it wasn’t “their actions” that led to this?

The entire system only works if healthy 30 year olds are putting in somewhat similarly (it will be cheaper regardless). Insurance is based on the idea of spreading risk. Without it insurance cannot function.

On the subject of (b), shouldn't tobacco companies be paying the risk premium for their customers? Why does the buck stop at the individual consumers and not those making money from their misery?

To put it into more technical, economic terms: why should the individual tobacco consumer bear the full cost of their externalities while the tobacco company does not?

> why should the individual tobacco consumer bear the full cost of their externalities while the tobacco company does not?

Because people are well aware that smoking is dangerous and can freely choose to smoke or not.

Definitely disagree with at least the ‘can freely choose to not smoke’ Nicotine is highly addictive much more so than many illegal drugs.

Don't use quotation marks if you're going to rephrase what I said.

The tobacco company (also composed of people) is well aware of the health consequence of smoking to its customers yet freely chooses to continues to sell tobacco products. Where's the difference?

Actually it's much worse than that. The tobacco company is not just selling tobacco products, it's marketing them and actively encouraging their use!

> shouldn't tobacco companies be paying the risk premium for their customers

How would that even work? Any such tax would be priced in into the price of the product. It doesn’t really matter if the government is collecting it directly or through the tobacco companies.

Or if we wanted tobacco companies to pay for all the damage they did retroactively they would just go bankrupt, since they don’t have even remotely enough cash/assets to cover it.