It’s been a full year now since the major provisions for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” have been phased in. Its goal was to lower the number of uninsured people and to expand the sector for public and private health insurance. If the government can be held responsible for our health if something goes wrong, I want to propose an idea to make the policy a little more accountable.

Let’s say your team just won a big rivalry game and you finished a project earlier that day. Everyone is in great spirits, especially you without the stress of that project hanging over your head. You’re 21 years old, legal and free to go downtown and enjoy the night with the rest of your friends. The cab ride is short and uneventful, but that’s the last thing you remember before waking up the next day in a hospital bed.

Unfortunately, this happens too often and is not exclusive to the college population. People will lose control, drink too much and have to be admitted to the hospital for alcohol poisoning while also incurring costs to the hospital while they recover.

Luckily with the new Obamacare, your friends, who were able to enjoy the night responsibly, end up sharing the burden of your hospital bills with you due to a public health insurance company that receives their money from the federal government that insures you. We’re all taking care of one another. This sounds great, but in reality, the people who keep themselves healthy and out of the hospital are giving a way out to those who don’t. 

The costs of alcohol-related accidents, emergencies and hospital bills are costing society $223.5 billion annually according to a Centers for Disease Control study. Most of this is caused by binge drinking and increasing healthcare and criminal justice costs. 

So if the government wants to posit laws to influence the economics of our choices, I say they don’t cover the drunk. If someone drinks too much and has to be admitted to the hospital to be given IVs and watched over by trained nurses, he or she should be responsible for paying those bills without the help of health insurance. The legislation of this policy would include benchmarks like how high your blood alcohol content must be in order not to be covered by your health insurance and it would also only include the acute costs of the binge drinking. Only those hospital bills incurred that night would be on your bill. But the policy would also have an upper limit. If something as severe as surgery is required, then your health insurance would kick back in to its regular coverage level and help you like normal. 

People, it seems, cannot make the smart decision without some sort of incentive. I think seeing the costs might help them make the smarter decision. Hospital administration and IVs are not cheap. Doctors and nurses make a decent living, so let’s stop wasting their time with something that is completely preventable. 

Alcohol can make a summer day at the beach better, it can complete a day of skiing or it can serve as a commonality for people from different countries. There is nothing wrong with alcohol, but there is a lot wrong with how we use it.