No I am saying that I am healthy, 43 year old, normal weight, no health issues and i JUST DO NOT BUY the stories that eating a cheeseburger or smoking a ciggarette will kill you on contact. I want the ability to CHOOSE what I do with my life and not have some Health Nazi telling me how to live it.
If I want fast food one day and tofu the next, that’s MY business not my employers or the governments.
Leave this lifestyle garbage out of health care, kick out the illegals who we ALL end up paying for, and attack the greed in the system already.
The YES, I would be willing to pay more for my “evil” choices. I suspect the more that I would be would be a WHOLE lot less than what it is now.
And to think.. years and years of people eating what they want, smoking what they want.. and no one seemed to need all this “paranoia-care” like we do today. Seems the more health care people have the sicker they are.
I’m saying treat or don’t treat the result. I’m not for banning behavior. But if you show up in the clinic with a sexually transmitted disease - I’m saying I don’t care how you got it, I’m just not going to cover it. Same with drinking. Drink all you want, but when you show with cirosis (sp?) of the liver - tough titty. If you show up 50 pounds overweight and are now diabetic - save up for your own insulin.
To summarize, do what you want, just be prepared to accept the consequences.
Nobody is saying eating a cheeseburger or smoking a cigarette will kill you on contact. What they’re saying is being overweight or having smoke damaged lungs tends to put you in a group of people who spend more time and money on medical care, which thus makes you more expensive to the insurance company, which thus makes the insurance company want to charge more to cover you, and Safeway is finding that passing that additional cost onto you is saving them money. They aren’t removing anybody’s ability to do anything, they’re just no longer footing the bill for their employee’s health damaging habits.
It’s really not that unusual. Back in the day when insurance was almost exclusively privately bought they ran you through a physical and the worse shape you were in the more they charge. Life insurance still does that. And like they say in the article, auto insurances charges more for people that get tickets and make frequent claims. Somewhere along the lines employer paid health insurance got disconnected from this equation, it became universal, everybody paid the same regardless of what kind of shape they were in and how much they cost the insurance company. This caused “healthy” people to get punished because the insurance companies had to up the rates on everybody. Safeway is reconnecting their insurance with the equation.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re going to be a more frequent user, which obese smokers usually will be, you’re going to be more expensive, nothing wrong with charging more.
There's a lot of truth in that. My best friend started taking some sort of cholesterol-management drug. Didn't work, so he tried something else. That had side effects, so he needed a prescription to deal with the side effects. That scrip had side effects, so that touched off a whole 'nother round of doctor visits.
Now, he takes a half-dozen pills. No idea if he feels any better, or if he's any healthier.
Mom and Dad are in the same boat, as are many others I know.