Companies that offer employer sponsored health insurance are always looking for ways to lower the amount of money that they have to spend on it. There is a new trend for employers to charge higher premiums to workers who smoke, or who are obese. This decision is controversial.
In the past few years, employers have been doing a variety of things to attempt to encourage their workers to become healthier. This isn’t because the corporation has developed a mother-like interest in their employees, or has a true interest in making the lives of their workers better. The real motivation has to do with money.
People who are young and extremely healthy are unlikely to generate many medical bills. People who are older, or who have serious health issues, are obviously going to need more medical care than the healthy people would. The less healthy group could require a number or prescription medications, extra visits to doctors and specialists, and many medical tests.
The healthiest workers will cost their employers considerably less in health insurance costs than the least healthy workers will. To cut costs, employers are going to want to find ways to encourage their workers to become as healthy as possible.
How are they going to make that happen? Workers are in favor of incentive programs. For example, they want their employer to offer a free smoking cessation class, or a free weight loss program. They want to get an incentive, like a lower insurance premium, if they participate in these types of programs.
The problem is that not enough workers are signing up for these programs, (according to employers). Too few of the people who do participate do not reach the health goals of these programs. As a result, the new trend is for employers to do the opposite of an insurance incentive.
Workers who do not stop smoking, who cannot lose weight, or who are unable to control their cholesterol, are going to wind up paying a higher health insurance premium than their coworkers, (who are healthier, thinner, non-smokers). This move has been described as moving from offering the proverbial “carrot”, to wielding the threatening “stick”.
Tobacco users require around 25% more health care services than do workers who don’t use tobacco at all. Employers are no longer interested in covering those extra costs on their own. They are going to force the workers who are less healthy to pay some of that price.
This concept is controversial. It feels morally wrong to punish workers who happen to have health issues. There will be people who have health conditions that prevent them from being able to lose weight. People with asthma are going to have problems participating in an employee exercise program.
Shifting the extra cost over to the least healthy workers means that these people are going to have a larger portion of their income going directly to health care. This could lead to some workers skipping the health care they need, because they can no longer afford it.
Image by Marius Mellebye on Flickr