Smoking Discrimination - Truth or Fiction for HR Departments?

If you're like me, one of the things that keeps you up at night is the cost of healthcare.  So much so, I've followed the recent news that companies have begun to penalize smokers and employees with other risk factors (high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc.) with great interest.  It seems like an eventual fact that those who display voluntary risk factors will pay via higher employee contributions/premiums than employees who don't engage in the same risky behavior.

Of course, smoking's the easy one, since it's safely classified as voluntary.  The other health metrics (blood  pressure, etc) are more problematic, since heredity and other factors are at play.

So, Open Enrollment season is upon us.  I didn't take the leap and consider raising employee contributions for those that smoke, and certainly didn't raise them for poor scores in the health metrics.

The biggest issue for me?  I'm at a startup, and I know all the people who work at our company.  It's one thing to mandate increased premiums for smokers when you are sitting in the Death Star of a Fortune 500, it's another thing all together when you see those that smoke every day.  Much tougher to make the business decision that probably will ultimately be necessary or routine as an early adapter when you are at a place where everybody knows your name...

So, it's no to increased premiums for smokers this year, and yes to finding a toehold for a cessation program sometime soon. 

Then I see the following information - Health Populi puts the true cost of smoking at $222 per pack over a lifetime...

Maybe I'm doing no one a favor by waiting another year to be more aggressive.....

If you're like me, one of the things that keeps you up at night is the cost of healthcare.  So much so, I've followed the recent news that companies have begun to penalize smokers and employees with other risk factors (high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc.) with great interest.  It seems like an eventual fact that those who display voluntary risk factors will pay via higher employee contributions/premiums than employees who don't engage in the same risky behavior.

Of course, smoking's the easy one, since it's safely classified as voluntary.  The other health metrics (blood  pressure, etc) are more problematic, since heredity and other factors are at play.

So, Open Enrollment season is upon us.  I didn't take the leap and consider raising employee contributions for those that smoke, and certainly didn't raise them for poor scores in the health metrics.

The biggest issue for me?  I'm at a startup, and I know all the people who work at our company.  It's one thing to mandate increased premiums for smokers when you are sitting in the Death Star of a Fortune 500, it's another thing all together when you see those that smoke every day.  Much tougher to make the business decision that probably will ultimately be necessary or routine as an early adapter when you are at a place where everybody knows your name...

So, it's no to increased premiums for smokers this year, and yes to finding a toehold for a cessation program sometime soon. 

Then I see the following information - Health Populi puts the true cost of smoking at $222 per pack over a lifetime...

Maybe I'm doing no one a favor by waiting another year to be more aggressive.....