Yabby,

You are correct. On average FAT SMOKERS have the lowest lifetime healthcare costs. Governments that wanted to reduce healthcare costs should be promoting a smoke, drink, eat and be merry for tomorrow you save us megabucks lifestyle.

See: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/571715_3

If it weren't for PHILIP MORRIS and MCDONALDS we probably couldn't afford Medicare. Philip Morris actually tried to dissuade the Czech government from running an anti-smoking campaign on the grounds that it would cause an inflation of healthcare costs.

See:

http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/Philip-Morris-Czech.htm

In the US roughly 45% of LIFETIME HEALTHCARE COSTS are consumed by hospital and nursing home costs. Prescription drugs make up only about one sixth of the total. So it's not the EVIL PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES that cause most cost blow-outs.

See:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1361028&rendertype=table&id=tbl2

I'm guessing that roughly the same relative proportions apply in Australia.

Steven,
A few points you seem to have over looked.
Liver, kidney cancer often has little or nothing to do with excesses or the extent of ones abstemious lifestyle. Nor are 'fat' people created the same way or by the same consumption and/or activity level.
This of course ignores those with glandular, genetic or hormonal and other medical factors. Then there's the legal/moral and practical side of your proposed regime.
To discriminate in the way you suggest stimatising perhaps unfortunate at this stage of our medical where for all is inviting eugenics at worst and selfishly short sighted at best.

In the final analysis the question you pose comes down to "what is the value of someone else's life?". The value of a life is subjective to the person whose life it is or relationship to that person.
I think a better question would have been along the lines of CJ and master.

I would add when is enough profit enough

Would I be willing to pay $55,000 for an extra 6 months of quality of life? - YES.
Would I be willing to pay $55,000 for an extra 6 months of low quality life? - DEPENDS ON HOW LOW - But I would like the option of assisted suicide if what I was facing was months of pointless misery.
Would the fact that this is money affect how much my wife would have to live on when I die? MAY be a consideration in the low quality life case.
Different answers if what we are talking about is someone who would need medicare support to pay for it? - NO
Should I be doing things that will increase my years of low quality life? Better to die quickly from a heart attack while I am still enjoying life? - HMMM
Should I be taking medicine that reduces my current quality of life so that I will live long enough to die from dementia? - GOOD QUESTION
Should I be doing things that will increase the percentage of my life for which I am NOT a nett contributor? HMMM again.

Tricky set of questions.

"Should Medicare pay US$300 per day to prolong the life of a terminally ill cancer patient by 6 months?"
and: "What price limit should Medicare place on life-extending treatments?"

Should read:
Should Medicare pay US$300 per day to give life healing-treatment of a terminally ill cancer patient for 6 months?"
and:What price limit should Medicare place on natural life-healing treatments? (answer 2 this one:Until healed)

The question should be why we allow the pharmaceutical industry to make huge profits from our health problems.

The pharmaceutical industry is an investment industry driven by the profits of its shareholders. Improving human health is not the driving force of this industry..
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/laws_of_the_pharmaceutical_industry.htm

Since WWII, the pharmaceutical industry has steadily netted increasing profits to become the world's second largest manufacturing industry; after the arms industry.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pharmaceutical_industry

drug companies are spending more than twice as much on marketing, advertising, and administration than they do on research and development
http://www.actupny.org/reports/drugcosts.html

Many pharmaceutical companies enjoy greater profits as a
percent of revenue than other companies, even beating the
three top-ranked companies in the Fortune 500 list.
http://www.retiredamericans.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/3063

According to Declaration of Helsinki, “medical research is only justified if there is a reasonable likelihood that the populations in which the research is carried out stand to benefit from the results of the research.” drug companies are increasingly testing their new products on people from poor countries who will never benefit from them.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1071375

According to the Harris Poll, between 1997 and 2004 the percentage of adults believing that the pharmaceutical industry was adequately serving its customers declined from 79 percent to 44 percent.3 Less than 14 percent described pharmaceutical companies as “generally honest and trustworthy.”
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521708883&ss=exc

Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

There are many natural (suppressed) treatments available, which are cheap and durable as far as life is concerned. If you get a doctor's death sentence, do NOT believe it, as for most doctors they don't know better. After all that is what they learn at uni.
There are too many examples in the world where it has shown that people were told "die within six months" who then turned around and healed themselves for good. Even the "gene factor" is mostly build on a fallacy. Do the research, I'd say, before the Net closes down on the info.
Did I hear somebody say "conspiracy theory"? Well, one should log into:
Alex Jones' http://infowars.tv or http://infowars.com