We may be healthier, but the public purse is sicker

• By focusing on end-of-life costs (which are similar regardless of the age at death) while ignoring the additional years of life that require more healthcare expenditure.
• By paying little attention to long-term care costs, which will increase significantly as the population ages. Long-term costs are greater than the acute healthcare costs associated with ageing.
• By ignoring welfare payments. Public health authorities are concerned with healthcare budgets, rather than welfare budgets, but the taxpayer foots the entire bill.
• By focusing on per capita costs rather than the costs that are met by working taxpayers. Without steep rises in the retirement age, the ratio of working taxpayers to pensioners will continue to decline for the foreseeable future.
• By arguing that public health policies will reduce healthcare costs by facilitating healthy ageing.

The rationale for gouging levels of taxation (as with tobacco excise), restricted access to alcohol (for responsible drinkers), and highly interventionist programs for all (with food labelling), is a lot shakier when it is known that good health is not a saving.

Governments may tax, regulate, and bewail sinners, but doing so will not lower the taxpayer's burden.

More important, the rationale for controlling the lives of those who choose to indulge has a lot less weight than previously argued. It seems that "lifestyles" are not public property.