Nearly three years after the then Democratic-controlled Congress passed and President Obama signed the Affordable Care act into law, Americans are still finding out what’s in it. The latest gem is a huge surcharge on smokers that could effectively make their health insurance so expensive that they can no longer afford it.According to the New York Daily News:
The Affordable Care Act — or “Obamacare” — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.
For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.
Younger smokers could be charged lower penalties under rules proposed last fall by the Obama administration. But older smokers could face a heavy hit on their household budgets at a time in life when smoking-related illnesses tend to emerge.
Younger workers could avoid the surcharge by joining smoking cessation classes and then quitting smoking. So what we seem to have here is a backdoor prohibition on smoking tobacco, using the guise of “affordable healthcare” to accomplish it. Insurers are banned from barring people with pre-existing conditions, and cannot charge overweight people any surcharge. There is no debate that smoking is unhealthy behavior, but it is far from the only unhealthy behavior that remains legal, and ObamaCare appears to single it out while leaving other unhealthy behaviors alone.
The ObamaCare smoker surcharge explicitly discriminates on the basis of age.
First, the law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times as much as their youngest customers.
Second, the law allows insurers to levy the full 50 percent penalty on older smokers while charging younger ones less.
And finally, government tax credits that will be available to help pay premiums cannot be used to offset the cost of penalties for smokers.
This is one case where the poor and the elderly will be the hardest hit.
The smoker’s surcharge was never discussed publicly during the ObamaCare passage debate. Much of the law was shaped in backroom meetings among Democratic leaders, and most in Congress never read the mammoth bill at all before voting on it. A majority — about 57% — of Americans objected to the law when the Democrats passed it, but were ignored.
Update: And thanks to ObamaCare’s emphasis on moving to electronic medical records, we’re losing vital individual medical information.
Older smokers… what demographic would that be?
Heavily lower income minority. Obama voters. Ooops.
They will probably find a way to subsidize them a bit. This is really a bone to his (white, puritain) affluent base, which do not smoke and do not want others to smoke (because it’s “bad for them”). This base is very paternalistic/maternalist and believe they, as the enlightened, intelligent ones, need to do this to save people from themselves. Call the new White Person’s Burden: getting people to live the “correct” way.
Health care is significantly more expensive for smokers versus non-smokers because of lung, vascular, and other diseases linked to smoking. Insurers use actuarial tables to determine their risk–how much money they are likely to pay out for a client–to determine their rates. It is only reasonable that those who choose to risk their own health should shoulder the responsibility for their increased medical costs. Why should others pay for their self-injurious behavior?
“Why should others pay for their self-injurious behavior?”
Wrong question Marilyn. Why should the Federal Government have the power to force others pay for their self-injurious behavior? Answer that question.
In a free market insurance companies could sell an insurance product that excluded smokers and you could buy that policy. The answer isn’t to make a flawed and possibly unconstitutional law work,the answer is to get rid of it.
If Obamacare causes many people to quit smoking, the budget deficits in many states will climb, because they have become so dependent on extremely high cigarette taxes.
It’s a gift that keeps on giving.
Pricing older smokers out of the insurance market, so that they pay the tax penalty and don’t get any preventative health care? What could possibly go wrong?
Anyone ever watch someone die of lung cancer?
And we thought that death panels were ghoulish.
Especially the multitude of those who die of lung cancer yet never smoked.
Consider it one of the many “stupid penalties” we’re gonna enjoy over the next four years.
Don’t have any sympathy whatsoever for chain smokin’ Obamanutz. Keep lighting up, chumps!
Given that most smokers probably voted for this guy – TWICE -, no sympathy here.
They’re getting exactly what they voted for.
Wait, are several of you here actually arguing that a person’s health care costs shouldn’t be tied to the health-affecting behaviors they engage in? That, specifically, it is wrong to charge a smoker more for health insurance, even if they are statistically more expensive to treat over their lifetime?
If we were doing this the free-market way like we should, that’s exactly what would happen. Who knows, maybe the actuaries say the smoker penalty would be more like 75% instead of 50%. We do this for life insurance too, of course.
The argument is that there was no public debate on this provision before it became law, that the law did not have majority support when it passed, and that it targets one unhealthy behavior while leaving many others untouched. Further, that some people will be hurt by this, and they were not allowed any input and their elected representatives didn’t even bother to read the bill before passing it. I apologize for writing all of this in plain English that is too difficult for you to understand.
Now come on, Bryan, the snark was uncalled for. “We’ve got to pass it to see what’s in it” is not news. I understand that aspect of the story itself. So yes, it’s unfair that the public (in particular, the smoking public) was not aware of consequences like these when they expressed support or objection for the bill.
But again, it seems like many people here object to the *very idea* that smokers should pay higher health insurance premiums. Smokers already pay higher life insurance premiums. People who have had prior accidents pay higher auto insurance premiums. Clearly, health insurance costs should be balance the need to pool customers together to lower global risk, and separating them into risk classes to avoid forcing healthy people to subsidize the unhealthy.
Like I said, if we would allow the marketplace to design these policies, that’s what would be happening. It’s not suddenly wrong because it’s in Obamacare.
No, not at all. As an asthmatic, it beats the hell out of me why a healthy person would want to deliberately hack, cough and wheeze like I do when it’s a smoggy day, PLUS have clothes and cars that REEK.
However, most if not all smokers have seen the warnings and still went ahead and acted incredibly stupid by picking up that nasty habit. I know plenty of ‘em who were so freakin’ happy that now, with their fellow smoker Barry in da House, they wouldn’t have to pay for (insert whatever here, usually birth control pills, because, hey….that was like getting a free pack of cigs for the afterglow celebrations). Such a deal!
I personally consider the 50% a good start. Raise it to 100% or more for all I care.
Fat people wheeze like you wheeze, why are they exempt from your 100% increase?
Seriously? What size of “fat people” are you talking about? Because I know a lot of big ol’ boys and girls who don’t wheeze at all.
You really don’t know a blessed thing about asthma or lung problems, do you?
What about the promiscuous? What about 350-lb 30 year olds? What about the brain-dead pot smokers?
What about the promiscuous?
Bingo! Through Sandra Fluke, they have been made a privileged class.
Yes, them too. Look, this is the problem with universal coverage requirements. If I am blessed with a healthy constitution, and I am very diligent about eating healthily and staying in shape, why *shouldn’t* I save money on my health insurance compared to a 350 pound pot smoker? Why can’t I get a cheaper insurance policy through a company that saves me money by placing strict health requirements on its participants?
Actuary tables show that those who smoke but do not drive an automobile have the same lifespan as those who do not smoke and drive an automobile. Based upon your reasoning should not automobile drivers be paying more for their health insurance than those who do not drive an automobile?
Actuary tables show that fat people require more health care than thin people (especially knee surgery, heart attacks, diabetes, hypertension etc etc), based upon your reasoning should not fat people (I dictate anyone over my weight of 130 lbs is stupidly fat) pay more for their health insurance than what I pay?
And should not those who engage in sexual activities with multiple sex partners, risky sexual activies and with prostitutes pay more for their health insurance because of their unhealthy lifestyle choices?
The list of reasons for whose lifestyle choices are punishable is endless.
Yes. So what? This is the nature of the insurance business. Pooling people together saves money for the group. But for some risks, the benefits of pooling are outweighed by the gross differences in risk. And the cost of evaluating each and every possible risk factor has a diminishing return.
Do you have life insurance? If so, you know that there are different risk classes. Smokers get shoved into a more expensive risk class, but there are indeed different classes based on your general health. I’ve seen as many as seven different risk classes.
*But why only seven*? We both agree that the potential risks are endless. But eventually, there practical limits to how many classes you can create. If you subdivide too much, then the classes are too small; that drives up uncertainty, which in turn drives up *everyone’s* rates. So there is a natural check against going overboard with risk classifications.
Of course, the funny thing is, the lifetime healthcare costs of smokers are no higher, and could even be lower, than those of nonsmokers.
We all die. We run up most of our lifetime costs at the end of our lives. Smokers tend to die relatively quickly and cheaply.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/22/alcohol-obesity-and-smoking-do-not-cost-health-care-systems-money/
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-08-fda-tobacco-costs_N.htm
Yes, but health costs are only paid while you’re living. So the key metric is not lifetime costs but costs per year.
Yeah, if we were doing this the “free market way,” my family would still be allowed to have our low-cost, high deductible, pays for nothing before $10,000 and everything after plan. I liked this plan. We saved enough with low premiums to save up for the deductible and were happy with it. It is now illegal under Obama-care to have an insurance plan that doesn’t cover birth-control, abortion, sex-change operations and the like. I am now mandated to pay for a much more expensive plan, that I still will not use, or be penalized. Hmm.. something to think about. Someone for sure knew what was better for my family. They think.
Does this surcharge healthcare tax law for smokers apply to the multitude who use medical marijuana?
Just curious whether the penalty is specific to those who only smoke tobacco products, or those who smoke other substances? Hookahs? Bidis? Marijuana? Crack pipes?
Sorry, I’m not hip enough to know what else the nuts are smoking these days!
And, if one is an alcoholic, drug addict, anorexic, morbidly obese, just to name a few? Or is it just smokers who pose health risks?
as soon as somebody gets around to reading the bill, we’ll know!!
This is one of those times when you have to be happy that a bad thing has happened.
As soon as this get around, millions of smokers who voted for the Fraud are suddenly going to realize that the Welfare State never stops with redistributing the other guy’s money. Statists don’t just want power over your pocketbook, they want power over your life. It’s going to be a hard slap in the face for many for fell for the con.
This is punch 2; punch 1 being the surprise (to many) 2% fica increase. If you didn’t like that $1,000 hit, Mr. 50K a year libwit, how are you gonna feel about another, oh say about $5,000 a year, hit?
It will take another dozen or so punches. Unfortunately, many of them are going to hit everybody in the country. The question is, will the country be completely knocked out before the brain dead awaken. I’m guessing it will be yes.
Before any non-smokers start getting too smug about this thinking it won’t impact them, there’s no way that smokers will be the only ones targeted. Drink? Eat red meat? Like ice cream? Hike? Ski? The government will soon have a data base that monitors every thing we buy, eat, or do for fun that could potentially have an impact on our health. What starts for the smokers next January will eventually hit all of us unless this man is stopped.
Exactly. Are folks really that naive to think it begins and ends with people that smoke. And by the way smoking is an addiction just like alcoholism and any other addiction to substances. Waiting for discrimination law suits. And yes, before someone screams about being irresponsible- we are responsible for our own behaviors. My point is do you really think it is going to stop with the dirty smokers? I am a dirty smoker and have quit 8 times- think I don’t know the dangers of smoking? What about drinking alcohol- all the cancers that can and do result. What about obesity- being underweight- red meat eaters- sugar consumers- coffee drinkers- sky jumpers- bungee jumpers- folks that ski- extreme sports- drug addicts-on and on and on. I work in the health industry- revolving door for alcoholics and drug addicts. But we will continue to pay and pay. Folks don’t be too smug- remember the famous words of Martin Niemoller- “Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.”
What about charging more to “high-risk” people who have inherited health weaknesses? What about charging more for people who have allergies? Heck, why not just charge us out of any healthcare at all? Then we’d all die and the problem will be solved.
I think its stupid the barrack obama thinks that he can really change everything that everyone has known and loved for years. I think he needs to realize that obama care is not where anything needs to be. If he wasnt putting us in ttrillion dollars worth of debt than he wouldnt be overcharging us to smoke ciggarettes or have health insurance. Thats what he is trying to do with obama care is try to pay off the debt he accumulated in the first four years. But hes going about it wrong. Because this is pissing me off. There is no reason im Required to have health insurance or get fined. Thats just stupid. But what do i know kim only 18 and realize that barrack obama is infact the worst president weve ever had. Hes put us in moe debt than all the other presidents combined.