Higher premiums for poor choices is necessary as a club. The ability to accummulate money in a health savings account is a carrot for right decisions.

Yes, smokers should pay more as should those who allow themselves to become excessively overweight.

Wow James, you attract a particular cranky kind of smokin’ Nazi, don’t you?

It would help if you wrote more clearly. You stated that the cigarette taxes were to be used to cover the increased costs smokers impose on the health care system. Your statement was flat out wrong.

Since my company pays 90% of the health premiums, it isn’t going to affect anyone if the insurance company jacks rates up beacuse the company employs a smoker.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Employees are paid a wage/compensation package. If employees smoke at higher rates in one company that company will have higher compensation costs (health care costs). Thus, the wage will be either lower, grow at a slower rate or there will be less people employed (or all three). There is no such thing as a free lunch, which is precisely what your comment implies. The higher health care/insurance costs will impact employees in terms of raises, future benefits, and number of employees. Hell it could even force the company to shut down or relocate some or all of its facilities overseas to cut costs.

What needs to change is the consumer or insurance end-user’s behavior. As Walter Williams has said over and over, you don’t take your car to the insurance to pay for fixing the little dings in your car, why expect that your health care should pay for everything. When everyone stops using their insurance to pay for every office visit and every dose of limp-dick medicine, the premiums for insurance will start to decline.

It is simply stunning that you can write such a comment. After all didn't you say that jacking up insurance rates doesn't affect employees where you work? Who cares if health insurance rates go up by an order of magnitude, your employer will pay for it.

Sheesh.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/337/15/1052

"Results Health care costs for smokers at a given age are as much as 40 percent higher than those for nonsmokers, but in a population in which no one smoked the costs would be 7 percent higher among men and 4 percent higher among women than the costs in the current mixed population of smokers and nonsmokers. If all smokers quit, health care costs would be lower at first, but after 15 years they would become higher than at present. In the long term, complete smoking cessation would produce a net increase in health care costs, but it could still be seen as economically favorable under reasonable assumptions of discount rate and evaluation period."

State run health insurance (you know, referenced right there in the excerpt) is government run health insurance!! The tobacco trials & settlement was to reimburse the states for the health care burden imposed(!) by the tobacco companies on the states.

Now for the private company health insurance companies, smokers already pay an increased premium, along with the non-smokers. And everyone within an employer's plan pays a higher premium if one of the employees has cancer, or has 1 or more maintenance drugs (such as high-blood pressure or diabetic medicine). Not that insurance companies need any reason to increase premiums.

Since my company pays 90% of the health premiums, it isn't going to affect anyone if the insurance company jacks rates up beacuse the company employs a smoker.

What needs to change is the consumer or insurance end-user's behavior. As Walter Williams has said over and over, you don't take your car to the insurance to pay for fixing the little dings in your car, why expect that your health care should pay for everything. When everyone stops using their insurance to pay for every office visit and every dose of limp-dick medicine, the premiums for insurance will start to decline.

I thought the increased taxes I pay when I purchase my cigarettes was to cover the burden that smokers like me added to the health care system. Are you and ‘Randy’ telling me that the government and its lawyers lied when they brought Joe Camel and the rest of the tobacco industry to trial?

Pray tell, how would this work? Does the government send the insurance company a check? Or does the money go to the treating hospital? If my premiums go up because of smokers do I get a check? I'd like to know exactly how this mechanism works because my guess is it doesn't work.

Could Mike--or others--perhaps point me to some?

Why should someone who orders the prime rib pay more than the hamburger? Why should someone who owns a Miata pay more than someone who owns a Taurus? Why should someone with three bedrooms pay more rent than someone with a studio?

Insurance is not a right, it's a service provided by individual people. If private companies want to charge more with riskier lifestyles, so be it. This does include alchohol, philandering, using drugs, not hitting the gym three times a week.

Is it "dodgy ground", really. If you have a preexisting condition like cancer, I want to see you get reasonably priced healthcare. Why are smokers different, is this not a preexisting condition?

Unlike many cancer patients, smokers have chosen to slowly kill themselves and in many cases have participated in actions that cause cancer. They should be paying a fair price for their choice along the way, so when they do get cancer, and they will, the insurrance company will have enough money to let them live an extra few months.

As far as taxes: dump the stupid tobacco tax, that is putting $$$ in everyplace but where it is needed. Make it up in insurrance premiums and let the insurrance company use testing to confirm.

Again - Why should smokers get to dodge the cost?

No If Ands Or Butts

So should smokers get a discount? Why not?