Ala. To Charge Obese Workers $25 Monthly – KXAS | Dallas — Talk about a money maker. Alabama? Obese? Cha-ching!
I know, I could have gone for the cheap joke, but…
Alabama, pushed to second in national obesity rankings by deep-fried Southern favorites, is cracking down on state workers who are too fat.
The state has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit or they’ll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.
Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don’t work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors.
Alabama already charges workers who smoke and has seen some success in getting them to quit but now has turned its attention to a problem that plagues many in the Deep South: obesity.
#5 – MikeN: you’re right, socialized medicine never works. Except in countries that are civilized to have them.
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America is the land of the fried candy bar. I don’t see how this will keep a fat man from his monkeybread.
This is what happens when you ask someone else to take care of you.
Of course, no one is demanding they lose they weight. They still have free will (so far). They can all quit and leave the State of Alabama without a workforce.
How long before they get hold of workers’ DNA and penalize them because their great grandfather had diabetes? How long before they surcharge a worker because he’s over 40?
Insurance is supposed to be a pool, not a pie a company can divide up into countless subdivisions and rate. Rating is nothing new, but it’s usually based on experience, not on the come.
Sure, I’d love to own an insurance company that is allowed to cherry-pick its clients. I’ll just insure those that have little risk.
The discrimination line will have to be drawn somewhere or it won’t be insurance anymore. When the premiums approach the risk, who needs it?
#26–Bubba==you don’t understand insurance at all.
You say: “When the premiums approach the risk, who needs it?”
Premiums by defintion must meet the risk plus a bit more for profit, management, advertising, political payoffs, etc.
Risk evaluation has been the heart of insurance from the start. You are actually only complaining about accuracy and risk assessment/consignment. The better a company can cherry pick, the more money they make. Same with MediCare risk pools and every other pool and form of business.
Its why this country need single payer. And even then, you can decide to charge smokers more. REALITY is a bitch.
@26,27: “Premiums by defintion must meet the risk plus a bit more for profit, management, advertising, political payoffs, etc.” Yes, but in average over all insured, not for every single person. That is the crucial point and many existing Govt. regulations protect some aspects of it. Or everyone would be off better paying for services out of pocket.
Also, what a single payer would do is either kill-off the medical services as USA knows them (losing good and importing bad and cheap doctors as well as losing infrastructure) or make you pay way more in taxes to cover loses. With competition, loses are paid by inefficient business who collapse in market driven insurance…
“Fat people don’t ask to be fat.”
Ha! Of course they do – they eat too damn much.
That’s what I like about the states, if you don’t meet somebody else’s standards you’re defective, ill, a loser. Buncha Nazi’s! Funny thing is people who don’t have a GENETIC TENDENCY never have to worry about sacrificing to maintain an ‘acceptable’ weight. I had this friend thin as a rail. Ate all he wanted whenever he wanted, never got fat. Chili cheese fries, philly cheese steak, pizza, nachos, heck if I’d've eaten half of what this guy’d eat they’d have to bury me in a piano case. One day he suffered a cholesterol related brain embolism, never woke from the coma. Some of us with the tendency have had to learn to take care what we eat. Healthy is a matter of intelligent choices and not a matteer of having some ideal imposed by the state. On the other hand this is scary. How far a jump is it from this to insurance companies using our DNA to determine how much our health insurance should cost.
Risk is risk. The higher the risk the more you pay.
What is there to argue about? If you are fat eat less. Simple.
#4
People at higher risk due to being fat should be responsible for paying the added cost they cause to the pool of insured.
This isn’t about saying you have to live your life a certain way, you shouldn’t smoke, shouldn’t have that Big Mac… its saying if you do those things, you’re going to pay a bit more into the system to cover the added costs for insuring your bad habits.
My employer recently started a new thing along that line… we get a “discount” for not smoking and another “discount” for belonging to the (free) on-site gym. Same effect as jacking up the cost for the fatties but more politically correct, and probably more health-accurate since being in good physical shape isn’t just about weight.
#31 – O’Furniture
>>What is there to argue about? If you
>>are fat eat less. Simple.
Simple, or simpleton? Plenty of thin people eat like pigs, and never gain a pound. Plenty of fat people diet and excercise, and never lose a pound.
The whole point of insurance, as has been pointed out a thousand times, is to pool the risk. I’ve been paying health insurance premiums for 35 years, and other than a broken ankle I got ice skating and sporadic checkups, I’ve never used the insurance.
Do I mind paying? No. I know that at any moment I could be run over by a car, develop diabetes or high blood pressure, need a heart-lung transplant, or any of a million other things. All my life, I’ve been subsidizing sick people, but the time may come when it’s their turn to subsidize me.
>>Risk is risk. The higher the risk the
>>more you pay.
Why focus on fat people, then. Just because they’re easy to spot? Plenty of fat people are healthy, and plenty of thin people are not. And there are a million and one “high-risk” behaviors (unsafe sex, smoking, skydiving, rock climbing, bmx bike riding, sedentary lifestyle, ad infinitum). Why target just the fatties?
On the other hand, $25/month isn’t a whole lot of money, and their insurance is FREE?? Shit, I want to go to work for the state of Alabama.
#33 “Plenty of fat people diet and excercise, and never lose a pound.”
Turn over ANY fat person to me and control of what they can eat and in 10 weeks you’ll see major weight loss.
#34 – O’Furniture
Sure, you can give them pond water and a crust of stale bread and starve them to death.
I’m talking about a reasonable, sustainable diet. And plenty of fat people eat such a diet. Sure, there are the toothless wonders at Wal*Mart loading up on ice cream, potato chips, and 2-liter bottle of Coke, but they are in the minority.
Do a little research before you spout, huh?
#35 “Sure, you can give them pond water and a crust of stale bread and starve them to death.
I’m talking about a reasonable, sustainable diet.”
Again, you show your total lack of science education.
Simply eat 25% less calories than you burn everyday and you will lose weight 100% of the time.
The whole myth of (I’m dieting and exercising and still can’t lose weight) means the person isn’t eating less than they are burning. PERIOD.
#27, Bobbo, sorry, Bud. I’ve written several actuarial exams and have many years experience in the insurance industry. So don’t even think of telling me I don’t understand it. What you don’t seem to understand is the concept of rating, how it works, and how it’s now being used to maximize profits of the companies to the detriment of policy holders by dividing the risk pool into more and more “categories.” Sure smoking vs. non-smoking is valid, but proposals for allowing DNA analysis are not.
Since you don’t seem to understand the basic premise behind insurance, that is, pool the risk, I’ll stand behind my statement that once the premiums begin to approach the return (regardless of profit to the company) the insured is better off self-insuring.
#36 – O’Furniture
>>Again, you show your total lack of
>>science education.
Still blowing smoke out of your ass, O’Furniture? I’ll wager that I have 10 times the “science education” that you have.
Perhaps you’ve heard of “metabolism”? And adaptations that metabolism makes to changes in energy intake?
Sheesh.
#38 “Perhaps you’ve heard of “metabolism”? And adaptations that metabolism makes to changes in energy intake?”
Of course. Have you heard of eating even less? Or, exercise to compensate for that.
Face it. If you intake less than you burn, you’ll lose weight.
Please present the axiom that contradicts that.
Otherwise, return whatever diplomas you posses.
Amazingly enough I agree with Paddy-O on this topic given our divergent political views. Life is full of choices and demands a certain amount of responsibility. I am a Type 1 diabetic, I don’t have life choices available to negate my diabetes. Most (not all) Type 2 diabetics can eliminate their disease by making the right lifestyle changes. Keep eating that Big Mac or Snickers bar, pay for the consequences. Owners of Japanese power motorcycles pay a premium to insure them due to higher accident/death rates. Living an unhealthy lifestyle should demand the same consequences.