Federal Tobacco Tax.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by AGDee

So, where does it end? Is there anybody on this planet who doesn't have some health problem at some point in their life? Is someone with high cholesterol more expensive to insure than someone with all the other diseases in the world?

No, but people with "other diseases" often . . . pay more!

If you have AIDS and switch employers, see how quickly you're placed onto their insurance - or see what rates you get when you go outside your employer if you've had even something like plantar warts removed.

This is just employers catching onto what the insurers have done for decades - and that's how it should be.

Insurance is nothing more than pooling risk among a large group - and if you make up more of that "risk pool" why on Earth shouldn't you pay more? For that reason, who cares "where it ends"? It SHOULDN'T end!

Originally Posted by AGDee

What about the logistics of this? Do you run blood tests and check blood pressure every pay period? How many times do you have to have a high reading to get fined? What if you typically have great blood pressure but just had a very stressful event happen and you have a one time reading of a high blood pressure? How in the world do you figure all this out? Aren't these people already paying by paying more co-pays for prescriptions and doctor visits?

Co-pays are a small to negligible amount (depending on the type of visit), and don't account for the increased risk you carry . . .past that, all of these are logistical elements that the company can work out on its own, and don't seem particularly invasive to me.

Originally Posted by AGDee

When do we get to the point that everybody has to have genetic testing to make sure they aren't predisposed to illness because employers don't want to pay for their health insurance? Who would be employable then??? Where do you draw the line on this concept?

Why is this so scary? If you're predisposed to, say, MS, shouldn't that affect what you pay in? If it doesn't, aren't you charging the healthy people more?

I think you're being needlessly alarmist - especially since if people do indeed find this offensive or invasive, then market forces will handle whether employers do this sort of thing.

If you're a healthy individual and you're paying the same as an obese smoker with a tendency toward long-term, expensive, debilitating illness, you are getting screwed by the system, right?