Monday, July 30, 2007

Paying for your obesity

Health insurance premiums are starting to be linked to lifestyle habits:
Government workers in Benton County, Ark., can now sign up for a plan with premiums that fall from to $500 a year from $2,500 a year if they maintain a healthy weight. Clarian Health Partners, a hospital chain based in Indiana, said last month that it’ll start charging workers as much as $30 every two weeks if they don’t get their weight down. And UnitedHealthcare introduced a family plan this month that has a typical deductible of $5,000–but it falls to $1,000 for people who maintain a healthy weight and don’t smoke.
Nothing like hitting the wallet for incentive.

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Comments:
This smacks of the same P4P crap that doctors are lambasting.

We know that many smokers never have bad outcomes. So that means that they all MUST stop smoking? And what if a patient tries but still cant get the vague "healthy" weight the insurer demands? This seems anti American to me. As much as I advise patients against obesity, if they can't exercise enough or make unhealthy eating choices because they are working their ass off all day to feed their family, then what? We punish them with even higher insurance premiums they can't afford? So then they just get lost to follow up, until they use the emergency room?

Completely misguided.
# posted by Blogger Mike : 8:48 AM
 
Thanks, Mike, for standing up to Kevin's usual fat-bashing. Kev, I notice none of the vicious anti-fat docs responded to your blog about fat being contagious. Hopefully they've gone back to whatever rock they crawled out from under.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 8:18 AM
 
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