Being Unhealthy is Now Going To Cost Employees

We knew it was coming. There is going to be a lot of commotion over this but it's an insurance practice that has been around since the beginnings of insurance time. What is that, you ask? Surgcharging people for unhealthly lifestyles. Yep - it's now going to cost you more out of your paycheck to be overweight, have high cholesteral, smoke, decide you are too tired to exercise, etc. Employers across the country are beginning to explore and implement the practice of charging higher contributions for people that purposely generate higher claims. Life insurance underwriting has done this for years. You smoke - the premiums are higher; you're overweight - you are put in a higher cost underwriting class, etc. Now, we see it coming to health insurance.

Employees will kick and scream - things like this always bring out the civil rights leaders and the moral compass people of the world to cry how unfair things are. However, as you stuff another ding dong in your mouth as you are reading this, take note: 20% of a given population drives 80% of the claims and of that 20% - 10% are normally related to preventable illnesses like the heart attack from high cholosteral or the amputation from the type 1 diabetes that was never diagnosed because the 400 pound person didn't want to go to the doctor to be told they were overweight! Ooooh that ding dong is good. I'll have another. See where I am going.

There are always exceptions - the steriod treatment for the asthma that is causing significant weight gain with a doctors explanation, etc., those don't count. I am talking about people being accountable for contributing to the escalating costs of healthcare. It's not all about the doctors and medical groups charging more money and being greedy - people - wake up. We as a country are a bunch of sick, overweight, overstressed folks. I see this a just the beginning of a trend where if someone purposely goes out of thier way not to care about being healthy, they may someday be out coverage. The businesses of this country cannot continue to have employees not care about this issue. Passing more of the costs along will certainly cause them to sit up and take notice. Whether anything will change or not, I guess that depends on how much the surcharge becomes.