Should smokers and obese workers pay more for health care?

Companies have long tried to get workers to quit smoking and start exercising. Now employers are aiming where it hurts: The paycheck  

In an effort to curb rising employer health care costs, some companies are making employees who smoke pay higher rates.
(Image credit: Dave & Les Jacobs/cultura/Corbis)

For years, employers have been trying to rein in sharply rising health insurance costs by encouraging workers to become healthier, usually by giving up cigarettes, or exercising to lose weight and lower blood pressure and cholesterol. That "carrot" approach hasn't exactly been an overwhelming success. Now, according to an October survey for the National Business Group on Health, more employers are turning to the "stick": Next year, 40 percent of large and mid-sized companies plan to raise health coverage costs for workers who smoke or won't voluntarily get in shape, up from 8 percent in 2009. "Nothing else has worked to control health trends," says the business group's LuAnn Heinen. Is penalizing smokers and obese workers a fair solution?

Welcome to the "Nosy Employer Society": Forget the Nanny State, says Paul Wallis at Digital Journal. We're all in even bigger trouble if private firms think they have a "God-given right" to butt into what their employees do outside of work, then dock their pay for it. Smokers and the obese surely aren't alone on the "hit list of the Cost Messiahs." What's next — higher health insurance costs for employees with asthma? Allergies? STDs? Somebody needs to sue "these crooks in health insurance and the ultra-stingy employers" for medical discrimination, so at least "they don't benefit from this scam."

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