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Firms to charge smokers & obese more for healthcare

Thunder

Thunder

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Insight: Firms to charge smokers, obese more for healthcare - Yahoo! News


Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.

It also gave workers a mandate - quit smoking, curb obesity, or you'll be paying higher healthcare costs in 2013. It doesn't yet know by how much, but one thing's for certain - the unhealthy will pay more.

LOVE IT!!!

smokers, the obese, and folks who participate in other very unhealthy lifestypes should TOTALLY pay higher premiums and co-pays.

why? because their lifestyle costs the rest of us healthy people.
 
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I don't mind this, but you will get lots of the talk about how those two problems are linked to poverty and can't be helped in some cases and such like.

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Don't whine when they raise rates for people who skateboard, snowboard, snowski, skydive, rock-climb... or work in energy, construction, chemical factories, or any profession that drives a lot... or owns a sports car or muscle car or or or....
 
I don't have a particular problem with this, but it should be noted that one's obesity is not necessarily their own fault.
 
I have no problem with this, as long as it doesn't get out of hand and they start labeling other non-related things as "higher risk".

Insurance companies will do anything to leech that extra dollar right out of you.
 
StillBallin75 said:
I don't have a particular problem with this, but it should be noted that one's obesity is not necessarily their own fault.
Click to expand...

This is a great point.

I use to have the idea that if you were obese, it was purely your own gluttony that was the issue.

Now while I don't usually indulge in Reality TV (Absolutely hate it) I did watch a couple of episodes of the biggest loser. And you find alot of these people ended up in a downward spiral emotionally and mentally that led them to that place. And some people choose Meth, coke, weed or alcohol, and some people choose food.
 
Goshin said:
Don't whine when they raise rates for people who skateboard, snowboard, snowski, skydive, rock-climb... or work in energy, construction, chemical factories, or any profession that drives a lot... or owns a sports car or muscle car or or or....
Click to expand...

Interesting point.
 
Open discrimination to be honest, why not charge old people double the standard because of the costs they accrue?
 
Jetboogieman said:
This is a great point.

I use to have the idea that if you were obese, it was purely your own gluttony that was the issue.

Now while I don't usually indulge in Reality TV (Absolutely hate it) I did watch a couple of episodes of the biggest loser. And you find alot of these people ended up in a downward spiral emotionally and mentally that led them to that place. And some people choose Meth, coke, weed or alcohol, and some people choose food.
Click to expand...

Good points, Jet. However, I was referring more to obesity as a genetic condition.
 
Hare said:
Open discrimination to be honest, why not charge old people double the standard because of the costs they accrue?
Click to expand...

This is essentially the primary problem with the insurance industry. It makes perfect economic sense to discriminate. Socially, that's another story.
 
Thunder said:
Insight: Firms to charge smokers, obese more for healthcare - Yahoo! News


Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.

It also gave workers a mandate - quit smoking, curb obesity, or you'll be paying higher healthcare costs in 2013. It doesn't yet know by how much, but one thing's for certain - the unhealthy will pay more.

LOVE IT!!!

smokers, the obese, and folks who participate in other very unhealthy lifestypes should TOTALLY pay higher premiums and co-pays.

why? because their lifestyle costs the rest of us healthy people.
Click to expand...

yay...lubs it! Make smokers pay more! Even though over half the cost of tobacco products is tax. And even though those taxes were installed to offset the additional costs smokers have on the healthcare system. Let's tax them 3...no 4 more times! Let's get em!

Seriously, does anyone actually understand the purpose of insurance anymore? Or are we so high and mighty that all we want to do is sit around looking to throw the first stone? The human brain is a remarkable organ, I suggest some of y'all employ it.
 
Hare said:
Not really your decision is it?
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no, its not mine.

but a company does have a right to charge higher premiums and co-pays to folks who clearly choose to engage in destructive behavior and refuse to change.
 
Ikari said:
yay...lubs it! Make smokers pay more! Even though over half the cost of tobacco products is tax. And even though those taxes were installed to offset the additional costs smokers have on the healthcare system. Let's tax them 3...no 4 more times! Let's get em!

Seriously, does anyone actually understand the purpose of insurance anymore? Or are we so high and mighty that all we want to do is sit around looking to throw the first stone? The human brain is a remarkable organ, I suggest some of y'all employ it.
Click to expand...

Smoking might change that though.
 
Goshin said:
Don't whine when they raise rates for people who skateboard, snowboard, snowski, skydive, rock-climb... or work in energy, construction, chemical factories, or any profession that drives a lot... or owns a sports car or muscle car or or or....
Click to expand...

Actually, I really think that people who skydive, rock climb, drive race cars, parachute jump, base jump, bungie jump, etc., etc., all ought to pay more. Premium should be based on risk. It is now, but just by men/women/age. I see nothing wrong with the OP. Should've been that way a long time ago.
 
Thunder said:
no, its not mine.

but a company does have a right to charge higher premiums and co-pays to folks who clearly choose to engage in destructive behavior and refuse to change.
Click to expand...

No, they do not. First off, not the point of insurance. Second off, tobacco users already pay it in increased tax on tobacco products, third it is thought and behavioral control executed through aggregated "insurance". This is nothing more than trying to make the lot of us act the same within regulated "tolerances". **** it. It's supposed to be a free country. I'll take the additional expenditure to spread out risk (which is what insurance is SUPPOSED to do) rather than trying to force everyone into the same mold. Seriously f'd up **** here.
 
StillBallin75 said:
Smoking might change that though.
Click to expand...

Any insight into the problem? Want to address that all the taxes paid for tobacco were created and supposed to go to offsetting healthcare costs? Or is that pointless and worthless snide comment all you got?
 
Thunder said:
no, its not mine.

but a company does have a right to charge higher premiums and co-pays to folks who clearly choose to engage in destructive behavior and refuse to change.
Click to expand...
As a previous poster already pointed out, this is clearly not the only type of lifestyle they will target for rate hikes, so have fun defending this precedent when it directly affects you.
 
i'd feel better about this idea if we had a sustainable health insurance strategy in the US. at this point, we do not.
 
MaggieD said:
Premium should be based on risk.
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No it shouldn't. The purpose of insurance is to aggregate everyone together so they share the same "risk", you bet with a system and through that you spread the "risk" around through a greater population. The insurance companies win on the whole. When you start adjusting premiums based on "risk" you no longer have insurance. At that point you're better off getting rid of insurance all together and go with a pay to go system.
 
Ikari said:
Any insight into the problem? Want to address that all the taxes paid for tobacco were created and supposed to go to offsetting healthcare costs? Or is that pointless and worthless snide comment all you got?
Click to expand...

Nah, it was pretty much an attempt at levity which you took way too seriously.
 
Ikari said:
No it shouldn't....
Click to expand...

auto-insurance factors in all KINDS of risks, such as the location of the owner, his/her age, if he/she drives to work regularly, his/her driving record.

why is it wrong to also factor in risks when deciding how much a person should pay for health-insurance?
 
Thunder said:
auto-insurance factors in all KINDS of risks, such as the location of the owner, his/her age, if he/she drives to work regularly, his/her driving record.

why is it wrong to also factor in risks when deciding how much a person should pay for health-insurance?
Click to expand...

That's not "insurance". Car insurance is no longer insurance because everyone has to have it. Once everyone has it, you realize the statistics across the entire populace. The point of insurance is in reality to take a smaller group of people, aggregate risks together, have them pay the same premium and then you bet against the system. Once rates are determined on factors and blah blah this and yadda yadda that; it's not insurance anymore. It's forced savings. But not even that because no way in hell are you going to get back out what you put into it. Not on the whole. And that's where insurance now wins.
 
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