Health insurance, “discrimination,” and smokers
The insurance business is impossible without some sort of “discrimination“—as in “the ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment,” rather than ” bigotry or other arbitrary distinctions.”
But the Obama administration and liberals as a whole use the loaded word “discrimination” to mean something pejorative and/or unfair. They wouldn’t raise a hue and cry because life insurance discriminates against the elderly, or because flood insurance discriminates against those who live in flood plains. But that’s the way health insurance is commonly talked about: as unfairly discriminatory.
Compare and contrast: “Health insurance discriminates against people with pre-existing conditions!,” to “Health insurance discriminates against smokers!” Somehow, under Obamacare, the former is not okay but the latter is just fine.
Obamacare “discriminates” against the second but not the first. Smoking, of course, is considered an act of will, whereas being sick is not, although there are certainly other health habits (being a drug addict, for example) that are just as voluntary (or involuntary) as smoking and certainly very damaging to health, and yet people who engage in those activities are not penalized, and everyone is required to obtain insurance to pay for substance abuse treatment.
How much does Obamacare discriminate against smokers? A lot:
The ObamaCare smoker surcharge allows insurers to charge a “tobacco surcharge” which is calculated after subsidies received through the marketplace. Smokers may pay up to 50% more than non-smokers for the same health plans…
Smoking is not a pre-existing health condition under Obamacare. As part of the negotiations to get coverage for those with preexisting conditions, insurance companies got the right to impose on smokers premium costs that are as much as 50 percent higher than the same plan for non-smokers…
The Smoker Glitch is an anomaly in the government’s computer payment computer systems that won’t process the tobacco surcharge correctly and won’t be fixed until at least 2015. While the smoking surcharge can be up to three time the non-tobacco rate, programmers cannot get the system to make the calculations.
Because the smoker surcharge is calculated after subsidies, it also discriminates against the poorer, who might even be unable to afford insurance because of it, especially the older poor or lower middle class. And wouldn’t they be among the people most in need of health care, and whom you would think Obamacare was designed to help? What’s more, Obamacare discriminates far more than older insurance policies used to (I remember looking at charts with the rates for non-smokers vs. smokers, and although the latter paid more, it never seemed anywhere near 50% more). Six states have prohibited the surcharge (California among them) and two have lowered it, and most people don’t think companies will end up charging the whole 50% more, but it is allowed (although no one will see it till they get the glitch fixed, which may be never).
Let me just add that Obamacare must be racist, as well, because smoking rates are higher among blacks and native Americans than among whites. Oops!
Glad to see someone is pointing this out. One of the reasons that rates are going up so much is that drug and alcohol rehab is a required benefit. Somehow cigarettes are not addicting like booze or dope?
Smokers live about seven years fewer than non smokers which means they save the government Social Security payments.
When considering the application of leftist/liberal policies, solutions and panaceas, political correctness rates far above cognitive consistency. Hypocrisy and reasoned consistency have the taint of objective truth, a concept which the left firmly rejects.
Project Veritas has already exposed Obamacare navigators advising people to lie in order to get better treatment. Somehow, I doubt such advice is being extended to conservative law-abiders. Smoking penalties are just another opportunity for scamming the taxpayers.
I have been bringing this issue up for weeks. The only response is, “Well, we know smokers will use a larger share of health care services.”
To which I respond, “Yes, and so does someone with a pre existing condition. In fact, we know they will, where the smoker just might use more.”
Of course their answer is, as you say, “Smoking is a choice, but someone with cancer did not choose it”.
My question then is, “What about the guy who eats himself into diabetes and heart disease? Should he have to pay extra for his choices like the smoker, or should I have to subsidize him?”
This is usually where the conversation ends, because most people can see where this leads.
ObamaCare has already set the path to discrimination with the smoker exclusion. They will only add to it.
Even charging elderly people 3 times more than the young is discrimination, and most supporters of the ACA are fine with that. They get the math there, that older folks use more services.
But for some reason, they are stuck on this pre existing condition thingy. It’s all they talk about any more.
But it comes with a price, and they cannot fathom why their ‘magic’ failed to work yet again.
Obama decrees things. “I signed a piece of paper that says cars must get 25 MPG by 2025. Ain’t I something? Look what I did!”
And yet, the laws of physics and economics do not bow down to him, and cause him embarrassment every time.
Neo,
A question with regard to smoking and Obamacare.
In the private insurance industry, smoking has very wide latitude. Some companies simply refuse to issue insurance (e.g., life insurance) to smokers. Others distinguish between cigarette and cigar smoking and the number of cigars per year (some companies consider <= 6 cigars per year a non-smoker).
Have you seen any indication of how smoking is indicated or defined by Obamcare? Is there any latitude? No latitude?
I ask because clearly a narrow definition of smoking is yet another, and more insidious, form of discrimination against a lifestyle which is rarely noticed.
“. . . for some reason, they are stuck on this pre existing condition thingy . . . .” (Patrick Albanese@3:55)
Correct. So by their logic it should also be legal to wait until one’s house is on fire to purchase fire insurance. The illogic of their position eludes them because a) they don’t understand how insurance works, b) they think health insurance is a “right” rather than a commodity to be purchased and c) because health insurance, unlike life or fire insurance, has come to cover maintenance not just catastrophic loss.
Obama will lower the sea levels. And a Light Will Shine Down upon him and you will come to Believe!
If liberals were serious about their arguments, they would’ve already banned smoking completely. It is a proven carcinogen.
But it is also addictive and has high “price-elasticity” in economics jargon. In other words, people will pay a very high price before giving up this drug.
THIS is why it is still legal: because the state can gain huge amounts of revenue for itself by taxing addicts. (reminds me of the origins of Coca-Cola)
Everything else is sophistic bullshit.
“THIS is why it is still legal: because the state can gain huge amounts of revenue for itself by taxing addicts.”
Matt_SE,
If I may rephrase, what you’re pointing out is that all utopianism (i.e., for the good of the worker) is actually raw capitalism with the state as the capitalist oppressor. As you point out, “Everything else is sophistic bullshit.”
As I have pointed out before, nobody knows what causes cancer. The causal mechanism and etiology are unknown. The national Cancer Institute has spent over 40 years and billions of taxpayer dollars trying to find a cause of cancer and they have not succeeded. Go here and see for yourself.
http://training.seer.cancer.gov/disease/war/
What ever happened to the Tobacco Payout that the states and feds got in the 90’s? That was to pay for the economic loss my smoking caused.
And how will they fund SCHIP programs without the taxes on Tobacco to pay for it?
How much is Hollywood taxed again compared to tobacco and healthcare?
That’s terrible – I hadn’t seen the details on that before. More of the nanny-statism that our politicians wish to inflict on us. I have no doubt that overweight people are next.
Slightly O/T, but pot smokers her in CO are discovering that legalization is not all that great. First, the voters just agreed to a 25% tax on pot sales. Now there are people agitating for legislation that prevents pot smoking in an area that is visible to passersby (like your front porch), for the children (‘natch). If things keep up they may find themselves lumped in with tobacco smokers when it comes to health care penalties. Bummer, dude!
Why is tobacco a basis for higher premiums and not marijuana, crack cocaine or methamphetamine? My guess is that it costs more to treat HIV patients than it does someone who uses tobacco. Certainly gay sex is a choice. Then there is the cost of those who consume alcohol, again a choice. Not all have related health problems, but many do. Some costs are clearly health issues, and others are due to accidents. An alcoholic will have more accidents than someone that does not drink.
We must assume that the Democrats that passed ACA, and the president that signed the bill, use illegal drugs, participate in gay sex and consume alcohol. But they do not smoke or chew.
“This is usually where the conversation ends, because most people can see where this leads.”
When they realize where the conversation leads most people simply shut their mouths and walk away, only the true believers keep hammering the same talking points.
“What ever happened to the Tobacco Payout that the states and feds got in the 90′s? That was to pay for the economic loss my smoking caused.”
The tobacco payout was put in the Social Security lockbox and spent on Sandra Fluke’s birth control pills and abortions.
The Nazis ran an anti-smoking campaign.
Just sayin’.
It’s interesting that the phrase isn’t “smoking”. The term is “tobacco use?”. Smoking pot is OK. Gotta love the libs…
Osopardo, 9:49 pm — “Gotta love the libs . . .”
Speak for yourself . . .
Osopardo,
Been in the insurance business forty years. Chewing does have a health downside and in the insurance companies’ large numbers, it makes a difference. In addition, the nicotine screens don’t differntiate, so a smoker claiming he chews can’t be contradicted.
Life insurance, disability income insurance, and underwritten health insurance all surcharge for smokers.
WRT gays: Years ago, I ran into an old underwriting manual which said they’d prefer not to write gays. With their unusual lifestyle they were not likely to be able to consistently keep up the premiums and the life companies will tell you they don’t make money until the fifth-seventh year of the contract. This was pre-AIDS by maybe twenty-five years.
It is odd that some libs, who don’t have a problem with the nannystate interfering in lifestyles also don’t want the chosen lifestyle to be reflected in insurance or ANYTHING else if it has predictable, negative consequences. So the government can tell you how to live, but the real world is supposed to butt out.
You can’t make good decisions unless you start out with good “numbers” i.e. statistics that accurately describe the particular situation that you are working on–say, for instance, how many people are smokers.
I’ve written here before that there were indications that occasionally managed to surface in the media that Obama & Co.’s partisans/operatives we’re “cooking” the formerly well regarded statistical measures on our economy put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census–a la the Old U.S.S.R. and China–for use as justification for this or that program, or to show such programs achieving results.
Now comes this story today about at least one person–somehow I don’t’ think that the Departments of Census or Labor want to look any closer at this, and to discover just how many others might have also been doing some “cooking” of their own–was deliberately inflating the number of people who were employed in order to portray the employment situation as better than it was, just before the 2012 election (http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/11/welch-was-right-team-obama-fudged-unemployment-numbers-one-month-before-election/), something he says he was told to do by “higher ups.”
I don’t think leftists quite grasp the idea that, for insurance companies, it’s all about the numbers, i.e., accurately forecasting the risks of insuring a given group of people and setting premiums accordingly. I keep hearing lefties complain that a person was denied coverage because the insurance company was “only interested in profit.” That is so stupid, frankly. It’s like complaining that restaurants don’t give you free dessert because they only care about profit. So, to the extent that it’s true that an insurance company doesn’t want to give stuff away, then the same is true for any business or industry.
It’s not even MOSTLY true that they are trying to protect profits, which are only like 2-6% in the insurance industry. Because the profits are so slim to begin with, an insurance company that agrees to pay for the HC of a person with a known preexisting condition is not just failing to make a profit on that customer, they are incurring a potentially massive loss. The loss could effectively wipe out the 2-6% profit earned on 20 other policyholders. So now they have “insured” 21 customers without making a dime.
At some point, businesses have to make money. The left just doesn’t seem to ever accept this, even in principle.
“At some point, businesses have to make money. The left just doesn’t seem to ever accept this, even in principle.:
This is true. They are not simply pro-utopia, they are anti-capitalist. That is unless, as Matt_SE points out above (@4:35), it’s the state making decisions based upon profitability (i.e., the death panels of Obamacare). The more one examines the “progressive” mindse tthe more one finds out it’s all about hypocrisy and control.
Re: my comment above:
The fact that government statistics were “cooked’ is enormously important, because the statistics churned out by the Federal Government’s statistical apparatus effect virtually every aspect of government, our economy, and society, from the number and apportionment of Congressional districts and, therefore, the number of votes each state’s delegation has–this apportionment is determined by the Census, to the rate of inflation–which is used to set things like annual cost of living increases for Social Security and other government pensions and annuities, to income statistics–which are used to help calculate the poverty line each year–which also determines just how many more people are considered to be ”poor” i.e. “under the poverty line” and, therefore, eligible for a cornucopia of government benefits, as well there are the various ways of measuring the employment and unemployment rate, and then, of course there are all the economic series that are supposed to give everyone–in government and out–an accurate picture of our economy that can be used for planning purposes.
It appears that very early on–starting with the little remarked fight early in Obama’s first term over Obama‘s nominee to run the Census bureau and his approaches to collecting Census information–Obama & Co. realized that it was critical for them to seize the Federal Statistical Apparatus, so that it would paint a picture of our economy and developments in our society that would further Obama & Co.’s interests.
It is starting to appear that their seizure and corruption of this extremely important, formerly pretty honest and objective reporting apparatus was a success.
On TV just a few minutes ago Rick Santelli put some of the pieces together–cooked government employment statistics, Obamacare assurances, the Fed working off of such cooked economic statistics, etc. and asked the question, “what would the election results have been if we knew then what we know now.”
A very good question, whose answer is that Obama & Co. very systematically lied about just about everything of any importance in order to totally, cheat, flim-flamm, and con the American people and to steal the 2012 election.
Wolla Dalbo:
This poll might be some indication of the answer:
Years and years ago, I ran across speculation that European governments encouraged smoking among working people.
It’s been a while, but, as I recall, the argument went something like this: The state made a lot of money from selling cigarettes, either directly — in some countries tobacco was a state monopoly — or indirectly, through taxes. Lung cancer came late in a person’s working life and tended to kill people quickly, so the workers would die off fairly cheaply, and before they could collect much of a pension.
I don’t doubt that some civil servants understood this arithmetic, but don’t know enough about any of the political leaders to know whether they did.
(I wish no one smoked, but I also think we have gone a little too far in taxing and harrassing smokers.)
Does this affect smokers on Medicare? My friend Vinnie, a low-information voter (TV propaganda only) who likes Obama the way some folks like American Idol, is a smoker with emphysema: she still can’t quit, and prays every day for the willingness to do it. She’s completely hooked. (I understand; used to smoke myself, many years ago.)
She clings to the idea that Comrade Zero is a nice young man who cares, who tries hard, but “it’s all those crooked politicians in Washington!” who keep him from being our Hero. But she’s also been very upset that “the whole country’s going Communist!”
I told her about my disastrous foray into the NY State Exchange (which doesn’t work), and she immediately said, “I have Medicare. That won’t be affected.”
But the Obama Administration has siphoned off [an initial] $700 billion from Medicare’s budget, have they not?