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I'm fine with insurance companies charging higher premiums to smokers but it is a joke that they can't charge higher premiums for other health risks.

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Good. If you want to smoke, you should have to pay for it. I don't want my premiums going up to help pay the cost of treatment for a lifetime smoker.

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This is a scary place we are heading towards. What happens when a health insurance company can charge extra for having sex, having unprotected sex, having anal sex, parachuting, scuba diving, not exercising, exercising too much, drinking too much alcohol, drinking too little alcohol, being married, being divorce, owing a two story house, owning a goat, eating organic, etc.

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How would they even keep track of 90% of that shit?

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Why not just increase the tax oon cigarettes and have that go directly to the health care system? That seems a lot more workable than trying to figure out if someone is lying to their insurer when they say they don't smoke.

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It's easy to attack smoking/smokers but there are literally millions of behaviors that can affect ones life expectancy and health care needs through out their lives. Let's not forget the ones that we don't have any control of either.

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We all will be paying higher rates for all the people with pre-existing conditions

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since insurance companies can't charge those people higher rates.

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Well, some of those things you listed are hard to verify. But car insurance companies charge different rates based on age, vehicle, color, etc. If you are under 25 and have a red corvette, the algorithms say you are riskier to insure.


Now, age, car makes and models, and color are easy to find out. Some of the things you listed would be difficult to find out. But if you participate in a high risk activity, and it can be proven somehow, why shouldn't you pay more?

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Why are smokers having to pay more? I know that the odds are that they will run up higher medical bills, but wasn't this the reason that Big Tobac shoveled out billons to the states in a lawsuit to cover those costs?

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Don't they already do this?

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Current regulations allow companies to require workers who fail to meet specific standards to pay up to 20 percent of their insurance costs. The federal health care law raises that amount to 30 percent in 2014 and, potentially, to as much as half the cost of a policy.

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I've googled and called my insurance agent. Can't find an answer.

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But if you participate in a high risk activity, and it can be proven somehow, why shouldn't you pay more?

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Now, age, car makes and models, and color are easy to find out. Some of the things you listed would be difficult to find out. But if you participate in a high risk activity, and it can be proven somehow, why shouldn't you pay more?

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You don't actually think that smokers aren't currently charged more for health insurance, do you? Hopefully you know they pay a tax that is supposed to go toward the state's health care costs as well.

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What scares me is not so much in paying more but who collects the information, who has access to the information and what is done with it. However, just wait until they charge homosexual men more than homosexual women for health insurance...Toddy will blow a gasket!

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Campfield seemed to indicate that insurance companies raise their rates for homosexuals. He claimed this to be true because the companies have statistics showing that gays, when compared to others, live significantly shorter lives -- by a full 24 years!

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