Well, in essence it is a form of gambling: the insurance company works out the odds of you getting sick or injured and charges accordingly, with a mark-up for their profit: if you then accidentally cut off your arm while practising lightsaber moves with a chainsaw, you’ve beaten the house and get to collect. If you never make a claim, the insurance company has won, since it’s collected all your premiums and hasn’t had to pay out.
Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to manage an employee’s heath choices is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
I am altering the terms of our agreement. Pray I do not see fit to alter them…again.
One could argue that you’ve “won” too, in the sense that you still have both arms when you die.
The only losers are the people who might have inherited a little extra money that went into your premiums rather than savings - most likely your kids. IOW “Won’t someone please think of the children!”
In this country, the major medical aid companies are all about promoting healthy lifestyles, although they do it with incentive programs similar to those of credit card companies - i.e. you earn points for going to gym, quitting smoking, getting medical checkups, going to movies*, etc. The points go towards free airline tickets, products (I think there’s a catalog), etc. There’s also discounts for gym meberships with certain chains, cheaper movie tickets (around $1.50, all shows), sports equipment etc.
Premiums don’t change much for lifestyle changes once signed on, as there’s now some legislation preventing this, I think partly as a result of our staggering HIV rate across the board, not that I see the connection. So this is how the industry encourages healthy living. AFAIK, the only discrimination in insurance is based on known chronic illnesses, and where in the country you live (us coastal dwellers pay lower premiums because our lifestyle and environment is generally healthier)
- yes, seeing movies. Some so-called cultural life is better than sitting on your ass, I guess.
Perhaps the most efficient way of insurance companies assessing the future needs of their customers, and charging accordingly, is by mandating DNA tests with every application, and by collecting more money from those who won’t participate.
The New World across the Atlantic would then be truly Brave.
I presume since they plan to charge more than the current price for people who don’t volunteer or are unhealthy they will be charging less than the current price for healthy people?
If so, I’m for this, with a few reservations. Healthy people are less of a risk than unhealthy people. It follows that the equations should spit out a lower premium for them.
My biggest reservation would be a dramatic rise in cost for unhealthy people. I’d prefer to see discounts for people who can show healthy behaviour, and incentives for healthy behaviour (such as discounted gym memberships).
Let’s play “ask an Insurance Industry Veteran”!
The plan that you’re describing is called a CDHP, or Consumer-Driven Health Plan. It’s the latest wrinkle, which attempts to motivate employees to maintain a more healthy lifestyle.
“How?” you ask? It’s based upon the HSA (Health Savings Account) legislation enacted by GWB on 1/1/04 (and the previous HRA legislation). Given the existence of an overlying “High Deductible” medical insurance plan, the employee can have access to a pot of money provided entirely by the sponsoring company (HRA), or provided by a combination of company and employee funds (HSA). The money is tax-deferred (usually), and can be taken out tax-free for IRS-mandated reimbursements.
There really isn’t any de facto discrimination here, if I understand the OP’s situation correctly. Most plans set up a series of incentives which will add to the pot o’money if conditions are met. For example:
[ul]
[li]Not a smoker = $100[/li][li]BMI under 20 = $100[/li][li]Recently-completed physical = $100[/li][li]And so on…[/li][/ul]
So, it’s not technically a discrimination. Yes…it looks like one when you view your balance versus the clean-livin’ exercise guru in the next cubicle, but the framework is supposed to motivate you to GET those incentives by following the roadmap.
Get used to 'em, folks! Everyone is going to have one (unless you’re one of the lucky ones in one of those patriarchal benefits-oriented law firms!) by 2006. Quote me on it.
-Cem
Um, that is the way all insurance works. Your risk is assessed, and you pay rates accordingly. The industry has actuarial formulas that takes all factors into account. Car insurance is based on where you live and how safe that area is. If you have a lot of traffic violations, your rates go up. Same with your age and gender. Young men pay more because they are more likely to get in accidents. Same with life insurance. If you’re a 65-year-old life-long smoker who weights 400 pounds, you will get charged more than a 45-year-old non-smoker in good shape. Same with liability insurance. If a doctor keeps getting sued, his rates will go up. If you engage in dangerous activities, your rates will be high - I bet Eval Keneval (sp?) had a hard time getting life insurance.
So why the hell shouldn’t health insurance rates be charged accordingly? If you’re a a fat smoker, you’re going to cost the group plan more money. That affects everyone in the group negatively, and that is not fair. Any incentive that encourages people to be healthy is a positive idea.
Many states have laws prohibiting this, and many more are following suit. For example:
District of Columbia B 52
Effective 1/3/2005; Public Law Number A15-648
B 52 prohibits health benefit plans and health insurers from using genetic information as a condition of eligibility or in setting premium rates; and prohibits health benefit plans and health insurers from requesting or requiring genetic testing.
Hawaii SB 2180
Effective 6/28/2002; Public Law Number 387
SB 2180 prohibits requiring genetic testing or the use of genetic information as a prerequisite for issuing health, long-term care, or life insurance.
Utah HB 56
2002
HB 56 prohibits the use of genetic information in connection with the offer or renewal of an insurance product or in the determination of premiums, coverage, renewal, cancellation, or any other underwriting decision.
Wyoming HB 24
Effective 7/1/2003; Public Law Number 74
HB 24 limits the use of genetic information by group health insurers. The bill states that an insurer may not deny eligibility or adjust rates based on the genetic information of an individual or a family member of an individual, or request or require predictive genetic information, unless it is needed for diagnosis, treatment or payment.
California SB 200
Effective 1/1/2004; Public Law Number 408
SB 200 prohibits a long-term care insurer from requiring testing for the presence of a genetic characteristic for insurability or underwriting purposes.
A cursory nod in the right direction, perhaps, but a past history of a condition is a vital piece of genetic information which determines the size of one’s premium. Just as one who has passed a medical with flying colours will seek as low a premium as they can from different companies, so someone whose DNA simply displays their future health more precisely and clearly will wish to do so. These laws merely force insurance companies to discriminate less accurately.
Indeed, an insurance company could eventually offer genetically healthy people lower premiums (thus impacting those born with the wrong genes) simply by mandating an extremely rigorous physical check-up testing for the “higher level” consequences of those undesirable genes, thus sneaking through the loophole as a genetic test in all but name. Cue cat-and-mouse litigation in which the exact chemical outcomes of various medical tests are either allowed or banned on a basis arbitrarily set out by a jury of dunderheads.
Just a thought.
Actually, a CDHP is a completely different thing, it has nothing to do with lifestyle discounts.
You’re right, this is just too much. God forbid something make good business sense AND encourage healthy living. God forbid we give people the option of lowering their health insurance costs by doing something in their best interests.
Yeah, you’re right. Health or medical insurance should only be for people who live a 100% healthy lifestyle and have absolutely no bad habits. 'Cuz I promise you, if we go down this road, the insurance companies will be grabbing at every excuse they can find to jack up your rates, and insurance will eventually become unaffordable for most people.
I don’t think this is true. However, steadily allowing the healthiest to shop around for the cheapest deal based on their health (which is genetically determined, however you look at it: two people can eat the same crap and only one become obese, based on their genes) will impact those with some kind of prior condition (or tendency towards such, as determined by a medical so rigorous that it aproaches a genetic test).
The price of one’s health insurance is already an accident of birth. I can only see discriminatory pricing becoming more polarised as screening develops apace, especially as insurance companies jostle to exploit medical tests which just about avoid those covered by legislation.
Because everybody knows that it’s in the insurance companies’ best interests to ensure that they have as few customers as possible. :rolleyes:
Insurance companies could just as easily make premiums cheaper for people who live healthier. You have to seperate the concept from the execution.
What chaps my ass about the insurance industry is that I have never had a claim against my GC liability policy, don’t perform some of the extreme high risk work such as EIFS, and yet my premium is double what it was 10 years ago. Certainly, there are adjustments of scale, but I’m not making double what I was 10 years ago, and I doubt too many others are, either.
Without question, the last few hurricane seasons, and 9/11 put a major hurt on insurance company profits, but that shit’s not my fault. Doing business without insurance is outright stupidity, yet I feel as though there’s a gun to my head, or as another phrased it, robbery with a fountain pen.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this thing or reading something that is not there. We are talking about the health and medical insurance provided by a local government for its employees on a fringe benefit or group plan basis. Somebody is going to get more favorable rates, if not lower premium rates, because they “follow a healthful lifestyle,” what ever that is. People whose life is not so healthful get a less favorable and surely a more expensive rate. Presumably all this is calculated out on a non-sex and non-age discriminatory basis. Who is getting the break, the county treasury of the individual employee, we don’t know.
As rational as it might seem to charge a higher premium for people who engage in higher risk behavior – things like smoking, living in the same house as smokers, riding a motorcycle, drinking more than six cups of coffee a day, easing off at the end of the day with a twelve pack of Colt 45, being ten pounds over the ideal weight, keeping a pit bull dog, living in a two story house, not changing burnt out light bulbs, sky diving, driving a muscle car, not wearing rubbers in wet weather – the scope of stuff that could provide a statical higher risk is nearly infinite.
If the county is paying the premium is the county justified in firing people who continue to smoke, or don’t divorce their smoker spouse, of fail to reduce to within ten pounds of some hypothetical ideal weight because that would make the work force statically less at risk and therefore less expensive to insure? Can no one see the potential for abuse, the settling of grievances and cover for discriminatory dismissals? Do we break down the insurance group into increasingly smaller groups until we have multiple groups of one person each, each with it own individual actuarially calculated risk of loss? Shall we eventually be served by an elite body of non-smoking, skinny, Marathon running, vegetarian 24 year olds who don’t know any thing but sure are in good health –and who we fire as soon as they show any signs of chest pains?
The problem is, AIUI, while I have lifestyle problems (I weigh mass over 150 kg.) the real shocker for the insurance company will be my maintenance medications. I’m on a late generation SSRI anti-depressant that retails at about $3 a pill, and I take two pills daily.
I don’t mind the idea of dropping the premium for people who are healthier living than I, but it’s not really on my radar. I’m far more concerned about getting some parity for mental health care compared to other chronic care treatments. I see the potential for abuse that Spavained Gelding is complaining about. But, considering I can’t even get a McJob, in a large part because of my medical history - it’s a bit late to worry about that. I’m aware that technically I may have a case under the ADA, but even if I win I’ll get two thirds of some nominal settlement and a McJob out of it. And reputation as a troublemaker. Color me not impressed. 
Actually, it is pretty much the opposite of gambling. Gambling increases your risk, insurance reduces it.