True Grit Farms
Well-known member
boondocks":ijbdur7j said:True Grit Farms":ijbdur7j said:An employer having to pay more for an employees health insurance because of their lifestyle is not right. Those folks that cause damage to themselves through drugs, drinking, smoking, sex or any other know health issues should have to pay a premium for their health insurance. To me it's no different than automobile insurance, those with tickets, crashes, and DUI pay more than those that are safe drivers. Those with a higher risk pay higher prices, and some folks are just un - insurable. Life insurance is a good example of that.
I agree with you, up to a point. There was a book out a few years ago called NUDGE, about the psychology behind trying to encourage people to do the "right thing" rather than forcing them to. For example, have new employees auto-enrolled in the company's 401k plan unless they choose to opt out (rather than the other way around). I believe this showed that the number of people enrolled and saving for retirement went way up, when employers made the "right thing" the easy/default choice. A lot of people seem to not like this, but to me it's just common sense. I have no problem with treating health care the same way. But I think it gets a little harder, because we know many medical conditions have weak links to lifestyle. You mention sex. How would an employer possibly monitor that to know whether you practiced safe sex or not? I don't really think you mean to say you'd agree with Uncle Sam having a tracking device on, well, ya know....
Other cases are (to me) easier (smoking, e.g). Any smokers on here want to argue that an employer (or Uncle Sam, if you're on a gov't plan) shouldn't be allowed to charge you more for your health care?
The sex deal was testing positive for HIV, herpes, gonorrhea and the likes. Let me be clear I'm not for ANY government intervention into a person's personal life. If you want to talk about saving the employee, employer and government money, make every form of birth control available to everyone. To me this is very ironic, and hypocritical, just look how we set up to AI, and test our cattle through DNA for genetic defects and family lineage.