Thread: Smokers Penalties

Originally Posted by AlyssaEimers

If the government is going to dictate that smoking is not acceptable, they should make it illegal. Not withhold health insurance from the people who need it most. Making health insurance cost 24% of your income, is withholding it.

The govt is not dictating this. Private insurance companies are saying they want to charge their own penalties because smokers, particularly older smokers, cost them more money.

Take a hypothetical 60-year-old smoker making $35,000 a year. Estimated premiums for coverage in the new private health insurance markets under Obama's law would total $10,172. That person would be eligible for a tax credit that brings the cost down to $3,325.
But the smoking penalty could add $5,086 to the cost. And since federal tax credits can't be used to offset the penalty, the smoker's total cost for health insurance would be $8,411, or 24 percent of income. That's considered unaffordable under the federal law. The numbers were estimated using the online Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator.

See 3325 is 277 per month, almost what my dad pays for his smoking.....and is the premium of a non smoker his age. However due to his refusal to quit, he has to pay more money because his care will cost much more. Insurance companies are not in the let's lose all of our money and go bankrupt business. So they have to charge more to accommodate the additional gamble. Now I am not for all of this, but that this is why they have to do it.

As an aside, can I ask some questions? Just to understand better and to be able to pose a better debate. How much would an unemployed person, or someone just making minimum wage pay for health insurance under the new law? If you did not have an employer to buy health insurance from, how much are we talking about? Will it still very on your health and age? Are we still talking several hundred dollars a month per family? Is the health care bill actually helping anyone who did not have health insurance before get health insurance now (or in 2014)?

Originally Posted by AlyssaEimers

As an aside, can I ask some questions? Just to understand better and to be able to pose a better debate. How much would an unemployed person, or someone just making minimum wage pay for health insurance under the new law? If you did not have an employer to buy health insurance from, how much are we talking about? Will it still very on your health and age? Are we still talking several hundred dollars a month per family? Is the health care bill actually helping anyone who did not have health insurance before get health insurance now (or in 2014)?

You can play around with the calculator. I do see people being able to get more affordable insurance to some degree at least.

Health Reform Subsidy Calculator - Kaiser Health Reform

mistake

Bonita~I didn't click on the calculator yet but I wanted to explain what happens here. Someone who makes minimum wage and does not have employer sponsored health insurance is most certainly going to qualify for MassHealth (our Medicaid). There are various plans under our Medicaid program. There are plans that you still pay a copay but no premium. There are plans that Masshealth pays your private insurance premium if you have work sponsored insurance but can't afford your deductions. There are so many available options that a lower income individual or family could get.

There are still people caught in the middle. My brother is one. His employer is not required to carry insurance because they do not employ the amount of people to be required to provide it. He makes too much money (just over) for Medicaid but private insurance would take too much of a percentage out of his pay. So he files a waiver and does not get tax penalized. He is still in the same boat he would have been without the law and it stinks that he doesn't have health insurance but at least he isn't penalized and the majority of the people in the state have insurance.

Originally Posted by Jessica80

Companies can decide on their own Lillie. Per the article it is only allowing them to charge higher. Does not mean that they will or if state law will prohibit it. (In Mass, it does not occur for example. We do not take risk factors like this into account)

Am I the only one cynical enough to believe that if the law allows them to charge higher rates, they absolutely will? LOL

Well I think that like anything else it is market demand. My company is not the cheapest insurance locally. We still have a huge customer base. I just switched my car insurance to another company because it saved us 600.00/yr compared to our old one. Same coverage and same customer service. I think if a company Y charges, for example, 7000.00 for a smoker there will be company X will make it a promo to charge the same to smokers to keep customers. I also don't think it will increase a lot like they are allowing.

Also, many state DOI's prohibit large increases for insurance, most employer plans do not take these risk factors into consideration etc.

Or the companies could get together and agree that they are all going to charge $8000 for smokers, since everyone has to have insurance by law and they have a pretty assured customer base.

I think the article was talking about self-insured smokers, not those on a company plan.

I think so as well. I don't know. As I said we have a few major health plans and Mass. and my company is not the cheapest by far. Cost does keep some people from purchasing our plans. The other plans do things that we don't do and we do things they don't do. We don't "get together" to charge the same because that's not a good business practice. It would be like Target and Walmart meeting to decide costs on shampoo.