Sure, you should be able to take the risk (if an adult and mentally competent, and maybe also fully informed). It's a free country (or so they claim).
But when your choices rack up huge medical bills that the rest of us have to pay, then your freedom to do what you want collides with our freedom to not have to pay for it. If you're free to spend my money, then I'm less free.
But that isn't absolute, either. We let people drive, and emit carbon dioxide, and play loud music, all of which impose negative externalities on others. We even let people be obese and smoke, which impose financial costs on the rest of us. (And yet, there's been a massive anti-smoking campaign over the last 10 or so years...)
Societal costs is a slippery slope, or something like it. As a society, we're trying to find a place to stand on it that isn't "no healthcare for you because you make stupid choices", and also isn't "here's the public's checkbook for you to make full use of to try to undo the consequences of your bad choices". There are no simple answers. (And it's not just Covid.)
There are societal costs for obesity as well, but they aren’t socialized early enough in the USA, and their increased cost burden on Medicare is paired with a decrease cost burden on social security.
Not that it’s an excuse (we should mandate vaccines and also deal with obesity on a societal level, both are good, one is more urgent than the other).
Sure, you should be able to take the risk (if an adult and mentally competent, and maybe also fully informed). It's a free country (or so they claim).
But when your choices rack up huge medical bills that the rest of us have to pay, then your freedom to do what you want collides with our freedom to not have to pay for it. If you're free to spend my money, then I'm less free.
But that isn't absolute, either. We let people drive, and emit carbon dioxide, and play loud music, all of which impose negative externalities on others. We even let people be obese and smoke, which impose financial costs on the rest of us. (And yet, there's been a massive anti-smoking campaign over the last 10 or so years...)
Societal costs is a slippery slope, or something like it. As a society, we're trying to find a place to stand on it that isn't "no healthcare for you because you make stupid choices", and also isn't "here's the public's checkbook for you to make full use of to try to undo the consequences of your bad choices". There are no simple answers. (And it's not just Covid.)