jenngorham said:
if you own a vegetarian restaurant and your waiter eats meat, can you fire him, no.
This is a good example to show how "bad" habits can be relative. Ask the vegetarian, and he might tell you that the carnivore will have inflated healthcare costs and may even back it up with a study that has some nifty statistics. So, why should he hire someone who eats meat? Suppose the case goes to the Supreme Court (if it's here in the States), and they agree. Boom. You can charge carnivorous or omnivorous people more for healthcare.
What about all the situations such as car accidents and victims of violent crime that cause people to be in the hospital for weeks, months or years, costing more than some if not most cancer treatments? Accidents happen to everyone. "Sir, you've already one accident, so we're raising your healthcare payment." I'm sure there are people who get into more accidents than other people, but are we going to deny them coverage by making it too expensive for them? It's essentially saying, "Oh, you actually
use the healthcare system? You're going to have to pay more. You can only pay a reasonable fee if you don't use the system."
I realize car insurance providers already use this technique, and charging more would provide some incentive to cut out certain activities, but when I turned 25, my car insurance dropped $50/month. So, because of inflated costs, some people who are under 25, just have to settle for insurance that provides benefits only for the other person they hit, not themselves. This happened to a friend of mine, and he lost a car that he was still paying on because of it. Making something cost more means that fewer people will get coverage. We're not actually making a dent in helping recover the costs from "high risk" drivers; the system's just excluding them.
What about the elderly? They cost more and usually have less money because they aren't working. We can't kick them out, and kicking out smokers will not alleviate the stress placed on the system by the elderly. This just isn't as simple as we'd like to make it. Please let me know if I'm overlooking something here on any of these matters; I'm sure I am.
Just so you know, I hate defending smokers and smoking, but I feel like I'm defending my own right to choose what activities I indulge in without fear of losing benefits. As I said before, we can't blame our increased health care prices on smokers. I would look to the healthcare providers, insurance companies and any stake the government may have in the matter. All I'm saying is that healthcare is a high profit business, and anywhere large amounts of money are trading hands, there's plenty of room for corruption. Smokers seem to be the scapegoats in this debate, diverting our attention from the real problems
inside the system, not the people using the system. The solutions to fixing the system requires economic data, statistics and whole lot of information I don't have, so I won't begin to act like I know how to fix it.
). If a business owner can not hire someone for activities that he disapproves of though, then you'll get people not hiring bases on other things, such as whether not the person drinks, musical preference, religion, etc. All it would take would be a study that says something about musical preference or religion or drinking showing some correlation to bad work habits or medical costs. Then, those things are valid reasons not to hire people? Let me know if this sounds over the top. I feel like I'm just playing devil's advocate, but I'm really interested in this subject.