I remember seeing a 60 Minutes presentation in 2005 saying that employees were cracking down on smokers because they raised the company's healthcare costs.

I am not a smoker and I hate cigarettes but I was still outraged that a company wants to dictate what you do outside of work to save them money. When I discussed this with friends, I predicted that if companies were allowed to do this, they would go after fat people next. I was dismissed by most of them, but I guess, sadly, I was right after all.

From the way William Saletan described the program, it's certainly not as harsh as the smoking, but it's almost as ridiculous. Companies have no business dictating your life outside of work.

<sarcasm>Or hey, let's go all the way. Since gay men are statistically more likely to get AIDS, let's charge an additional fee on their premium -- or maybe they can provide "incentives" to not have anal sex!</sarcasm>

These programs are absolutely offensive. We cannot tolerate them.

But I'm still not buying it.

I really really DO NOT feel like subsidizing your quadruple bypass surgery just because of your fork in mouth disease.

Smokers DO pay more in health care premiums, even though their numbers have decreased to the point where obesity related deaths far outstrip those from lung cancer due to smoking.

You are not subsidizing anything. Rates continue to rise because the pool of premium paying subscribers continues to diminish. Increasing premiums for specific groups will drive more people away from the pool and thus rates will go up. Drop your personal prejudice or the next "study" which allocates higher medical costs to messy people will have all the neatnicks crying for your premiums to go up.

...I've no desire to subsidize your bypass surgery because of your genetic predisposition to high cholesterol. Should companies be able to make you take a bloodtest, so they can charge appropriate premiums to all of you with hidden health problems? Or, should they be limited to going after the obviously different?

...this is about people who are deliberately killing themselves by stuffing their faces and sitting around. This is what we've been discussing all along.

If insurance companies want to charge smokers more, great, no one seems to have an issue with that. In fact, most of you support it. The number of smokers has decreased radically in recent years, partly for that reason.

Get politically incorrect and mention that obese people are running statistically even worse risks, and you get enraged. Sorry, still not buying it.

I proposed in an earlier post that companies offer discounts to people who are within 10 or 15 pounds of their ideal weight (based on the standard height/weight chart, which is pretty generous) and pass a stress test. If there is no pre-existing medical condition that would prevent that (and that is, despite the excuses we hear all the time, very rare), then why would you have a problem with it?

Why are people so terrified to acknowlege that most fat is self-inflicted? Or are they so scared to take responsibility for anything, that weight is just one more thing to make excuses about?

"The number of smokers has decreased radically in recent years, partly for that reason."

Have your premiums gone down as a result?

I don't think that anyone is advocating gluttony. They are simply fed up with being ripped off by insurance companies.

But they have stopped increasing beyond the rate of inflation.

I still say a discount for people who care about their health and take care of it would be a fair thing to do.

MessyOne,
On a certain level, I see where you're coming from. A little bit of stigma might do some good: people often complain about how it's "easier" to be fat than thin. But it is a really dangerous slope. Too dangerous. Your employers' control over what you do should end at the office door.

I guess I would be okay with it if it were directly from the insurance companies. I mean I wouldn't be jumping up and down with joy, but it's employers' involvement that bothers me most. No, I take that back: the whole thing bothers me. It's unfair and it's discriminatory.

Surely there's a better solution to our obesity problems than docking people's wages because they don't meet the government's criteria for what a healthy person is supposed to weigh.

MessyONE said:
...this is about people who are deliberately killing themselves by stuffing their faces and sitting around. This is what we've been discussing all along.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume you've never been fat. There are so many factors that contribute to obesity. So many.

The victim in this problem are not the guy who has to pay $0.0001 more every month because some obese man needs heart surgery. The victim is the obese man who might die because of something that, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot control. He doesn't want to be in that situation. Don't blame beat him up for it.

Well, I have to say that your policy is quite unique if premiums increased less than inflation (assuming you're referencing gov't numbers and not reality) as our group has consistently gone up by an average of 9% - 12% per annum without a single major claim by our employees.

I agree in a more rational world granting a discount for healthier people makes sense, however, I stand by the actuarial facts that an ever decreasing pool of insured prevents such; and in fact rates would skyrocket for less healthy individuals to the point of being prohibitive thus reducing the pool - rinse/repeat = escalating premiums!

sdho:

... no matter how hard he tries, he cannot control.

There is no doubt that obesity in some cases is caused by circumstances beyond an individual's control such as medical conditions. However, suggesting that there is no way to control obesity is as ridiculous as suggesting that it can be controlled in all cases.

Actually, I gain weight pretty easily, especially since my 40th birthday. I have to pay attention to everything I eat and I have to hit the gym at least 4 times a week to maintain my weight. This is not easy. I have to earn my body.

I am 5'8" tall. I topped out a couple of years ago at about 150 pounds and decided enough was enough. I was down to 130, but since I lift weights, I'm carrying a fair amount of muscle these days, so right now I'm ten pounds heavier. I wear a size 6 or 8.

Some of my cousins have the same tendency to gain. Most of them are taller than me, the women average 5'10" to 6'2", the men range from 6' to 6'8". All of them are older than me. I watched two of my female cousins change from curvy, athletic girls to 400 pounds plus, just because they did nothing and ate everything in sight.

One of them actually died because she needed a bone marrow transplant and no surgeon would touch her unless she lost at least 50 pounds. She complained and whined, never lost the weight and died of leukemia out of sheer laziness. Essentially, she commited suicide through gluttony. She was only 52 years old in a family that easily makes it into their mid-90s.

So, yes, I know whereof I speak. I know precisely how hard it is to maintain a healthy weight. I know precisely how hard it is to lose the excess. I take full responsibility for all of the choices I make regarding my health, and I am damned if I'm going to end up paying for idiots like those blasted cousins of mine. They can kill themselves on their own nickel.

There is no doubt that obesity in some cases is caused by circumstances beyond an individual's control such as medical conditions. However, suggesting that there is no way to control obesity is as ridiculous as suggesting that it can be controlled in all cases.

JWeinberg,
It was not my intention to say that obesity can never be controlled, I'm saying that it's virtually impossible for some people. And when you hear about the rates at which people regain lost weight, it seems like it's nearly impossible for quite a few people.

MessyOne,
I'm glad you've had that experience, but I guess I wish that had given you some more compassion on obesity. People make foolish choices, but there are too many people who have all the best intentions who are still heavy to justify a "fat tax" on their healthcare.

Also, not to diminish your story, but everybody's body tends to gain weight in middle age -- I really think it's more difficult for those who have been fat all their life. And... 5'8" at 150 pounds is a healthy weight, according to the BMI scales. And not even borderline -- that's a BMI of 22.8, that's really not bad at all.

Who has compassion for the two teenage children that my selfish cousin left behind? Or are they just collateral damage?

What do you say to kids who are more than old enough to understand that their mother cared more about stuffing her face than she did about them?

No, I have very little sympathy for people who know bloody well what they're doing to their bodies and continue to do it. It's a selfish, ugly thing to kill yourself at the best of times, but to know the train is coming and be too lazy to jump off the tracks is simply unforgiveable.