Washington DC's Obamacare Exchange Rules That Smoking Is A Pre-Existing Condition

Just another way in which Obamacare will make health insurance more expensive and harder to get:

The District of Columbia’s Obamacare czars — the board that sets rules for the phony insurance marketplace, or “exchange,” that the law creates — have decided that henceforth insurers shall be forbidden by law to charge smokers higher rates than non-smokers. Smoking, as it turns out, “is a preexisting medical condition,” according to Dr. Mohammad Akhter, the chairman of the D.C. Health Exchange Board. Two liberal states, California and Connecticut, have decided likewise, while Colorado and Alaska have rejected the idea.

The idea is to end “discrimination” against smokers. But the idea of charging smokers, and those with other unhealthy habits, higher insurance rates is that they tend to consume more medical care.

It’s a sort of price rationing. If you live a less-than-healthy lifestyle, you should pay more for health insurance. That’s as it should be. It’s actually ironic that the same federal government which has no compunction about bullying Americans into quitting smoking is also just fine with removing price incentives to quit smoking.