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Tribune Company Will Charge Smokers $100 a Month

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Dan Rydell, Oct 10, 2007.

  1. fishwrapper

    fishwrapper Active Member

    HIPAA says that can't happen. Illegal.
     
  2. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    Until the law gets changed...
     
  3. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Please. What if you volunteer the information? Ever take one of those surveys about how healthy you are for your company's insurance provider?

    Presumably, they are designed to help you, but I ain't filling one of those things out.
     
  4. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    It's a disgusting habit... Pay up...
     
  5. fishwrapper

    fishwrapper Active Member

    Volunteering information (surveys) and having insurance providers use your DNA for access or denial of coverage are two different beasts. One is dumb, the other illegal.
     
  6. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    Sigh.
     
  7. Chi City 81

    Chi City 81 Guest

    So is drinking. Pay up. I'm tired of paying for people who get cirrhosis.
     
  8. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    So am I... But lung cancer happens a hell of a lot more often than cirrhosis...
     
  9. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    Here's an interesting twist, perhaps. Sorry if it was covered earlier, and I missed it.

    The saloon I go to every night allows smoking. There's good ventilation, and people try to be courteous, but I'm still obviously being exposed to second-hand smoke daily. I don't smoke, have no covered family that does, though.

    So to carry this to the next step, if Tribune knew I exposed myself to second-hand smoke every day, would they extend this policy to cover me?

    Just asking ...
     
  10. jgmacg

    jgmacg Guest

    First the smokers. OK. Next the fats. Well, wait. Are they overweight because they overeat? Or because they're genetically predisposed to weight gain? Are they fat and unhealthy? Or fat and healthy? Whom do we count on to sort that out? The insurance company.

    Drinkers? Two a day, good; three a day, drunk? At risk for cirrhosis? Alcoholism and expensive rehab stints? Who decides where the risks lie? The insurance company.

    Recreational drug users are already out. Although the insurance company is happy to underwrite your suburban addiction to pain killers or sleep aids or ADHD meds.

    What about ten years from now, when your insurance company decides they aren't willing any longer to take a flier on your family's history of cancer or coronary? Or because your unborn kid's genes might be a little twisted because Grandpa smoked a bone at Altamont. "We saw it on your company-mandated chromosome map, sir, so sorry, you're excluded."

    If all this sound like dire slippery slopery, it is. But keep in mind that citizens don't write the laws regulating insurance. Nor does Congress. The insurance lobbies do.
     
  11. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I think on the questionnaire, it says DO YOU SMOKE?, yes or no...

    There's a huge difference between willingly smoking or unwillingly having to inhale someone's secondhand smoke...
     
  12. Might as well take our personal freedoms and stitch em to a welcome mat based on some of the sentiment in this thread.

    I used to smoke. Quit this year. Now I can barely stand the smell of it.

    But making it illegal? Good luck with that.

    On a further note, if alcohol and red meat are wrong, I don't want to be right.
     
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