Summary -- Part 2

Insurance Premiums for Smokers and Obese Employees

Name

Course

Tutor

Date

Possible topic

Smoking and obesity have a direct impact on the business. However, when most people think of the smoking and obese impact, they only focus on the potential health problems on the smoker. Various studies have been conducted on smoking and its impacts on the employee productivity which have revealed shocking result. Obesity unlike smoking is not easy to hide. Besides that, it is also hard to remedy. Most people with obesity suffer from other disease like high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary artery disease among others. Obesity is linked to over 400,000 deaths in America. Those employees who are obese find themselves being penalized as they do not the specified wellness goals like BMI (Hammaker, 2011).

These two factors have a negative impact on the business in that; for the employers. The cost of obesity involves high medical expenses along with the accompanying conditions like diabetes, a long-term disability expense, lower productivity and high absenteeism rates. People with obesity spend 37% higher than those with normal weight. Being obese also adds up to the increasing health insurance cost and also makes the cost of health insurance higher for the low income earners (Overman, 2009). Since it is more prevalent among low-income populations companies that employ the low earners might face the consequence of paying the high obesity prices. On the other hand, smoking in workplaces has led many employers to ban smoking. Some even refuse to hire smokers at all. Smokers are also more likely to miss work days at an average of 6.16 days compared to the non-smokers whose average is 3.86 days. This means that their productivity is lower compared to non-smokers. They also spend more time in hospital unlike non-smokers.

Importance of the topic

In writing about this topic, I hope to show how smoking and obesity affect the overall health insurance system meaning that these two factors affect all Americans. Besides that, hope to show what employers can do to address these two issues by reflecting on the responsibilities they hold in addressing the issues. The topic also affects me because I come from a family where some of my relatives have suffered obesity and through writing the paper I can have more information on what they can do including joining wellness programs provided in the workplaces (Pekarek, 2007).

Besides that, I one day hope to ran my own company and so by writing this paper, I can get to know all the needed information pertaining to obesity and smoking and how it affects businesses. It also means that I can get to know the requirement of Affordable Care Act and HIPPA in relation to obesity and smoking (Hammaker, 2011). The topic is quite informative even at a personal level as I get to know my expected BMI given the height I have and what BMI level shows that one is obese. In addition to that, I can also learn how smoking affects the financial capacity of the business organization that one works for.

Current point of view on the topic

The issue of smoking and obesity has sprouted a heated debate on whether or not there is a hiring discrimination among smokers and obese people. The Affordable Care Act sates that employees can fire or refuse to hire employees who are obese and smokers given the negative impacts that they bring to the business and the entire healthcare system costs. This hence seems like a fear trade since employers incur a lot of costs paying for the medical insurances of these two groups of people (Crawford, 2010). The Affordable Care Act even allows employers to charge an extra 30% of the total cost of the family and individual health benefits in case they fail to meet the specified wellness goals.

On the other hand, there are those employees who see the move as unfair and of discriminatory nature. They argue that failing to hire people due to their obese nature and smoking is discrimination. They hence argue that it is more amendable for the employees to charge such employees with more health insurance. About 58% of the Americans argue that it is more justifiable to increase the rates of insurance for them than fail to hire them. Either way, it would be best if these costs do not fall on the employers as they are very high to incur especially if most of the employees are either smokers or obese (Pekarek, 2007).

Target audience

The target audience of this papers are employers as well as those employees who are obese and smokers. This is because the information in the paper talks about them and they might find some of the things very helpful to them to know how they can work on their conditions (Overman, 2009). However in addressing them, I need to consider how they will take the information in terms of is it biased or reasonable. I also need to consider their feelings in terms of the words used to refer to them.

On reading this paper, I think that there will be mixed feeling since there will be those who will definitely be against it claiming that those who are not in their position could not possibly understand them while the open-minded one will think that the information can be of great help to them in helping them know how they can cut down their medical insurance costs. I personally am an outsider to the group since I am not obese neither do I smoke so I refer to them. The background of the group that will reader the paper will dictate my writing approach since I will want to know what led to their condition. In most cases, low income earners are the ones who are obese as some of the foods that are healthy tend to be expensive for them to afford. On the other hand, smokers can be from any social class (Hammaker, 2011).

Specific issues to write about

With the increasing government regulation and uncertainties in the business environment today, the wise employers want to manage their costs and increase their employee productivity. Most employers had in the past months dealt with hefty health insurance premium increases with the passage of the Affordable Care Act which seems unavoidable. As a result, many employers have begun thinking of certain lifestyle choices among those employees who are obese and heavy smokers and how they impact their businesses directly. Smoking and the use of tobacco product is one lifestyle choice with high adverse effects on just on health insurance cost but also on the business (Crawford, 2010). Therefore, if employees do not follow the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, then is it not upon the employers and the state to increase the insurance premiums?

References

Crawford, D. (2010). Obesity epidemiology: From aetiology to public health. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hammaker, D. K., & Tomlinson, S. J. (2011). Health care management and the law: Principles and applications. Clifton Park, NY: Delmar/Cengage Learning.

Overman, S. (2009). Next-Generation Wellness at Work. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

Pekarek, M. L. (2007). Freedom from obesity and sugar addiction. Tucson, Ariz: Wheatmark.