The better corporations realize that money isn't made from getting a customer, but maintaining good customer relationships with current customers. In this economy, no one can afford to provide poor customer service. I hope Verizon changes its policy to deal with the deaths of its current customers.

It will also take the realization that the leading causes of death in the USA are all preventable:

• tobacco usage
• poor diet and physical inactivity
• alcohol consumption

Source: http://proxychi.baremetal.com/csdp.org/research/1238.pdf

There's only so much a doctor can do to stop the damage if the patient is already physically in poor health.

The political issue at hand is this: Should the government allow people to make irrational decisions when the mistakes can be costly or deadly? There is a movement called "soft paternalism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_paternalism) that basically argues that many people are making irrational decisions, so the government should gently nudge them into making rational ones. There are many books promoting this idea, including Nudge, The Paradox of Choice and Free Market Madness.

This sounds all nice and wonderful until you realize that it's ultimately politicians and bureaucrats that is deciding what is "rational" for a person to spend their money on -- like they're such great role models :p

The cost of health care driving the US deficit and federal debt is actually old news:

http://www.iousa.com/ (30-minute version of the film film, highly engrossing)

http://www.pgpf.org/resources/PGPF_CitizensGuide_2009.pdf (Summary in PDF format)