Let me be more clear. Maybe you misunderstood what was being “said” in the letter. Since we don’t have the letter for reference, I think you need to at least accept that as a possibility.
Additionally, that’s a ridiculous thing to be “offended” over as anyone with can independently verify it with any number of resources out there. People and organizations do make errors occasionally and reasonable ways of dealing with them usually involve opening a dialogue.
Sounds to me like they recorded your height wrong, Nrdsb4, and then calculated the ideal weight for a shorter person. A BMI chart does not say that a person who is 5’6" and 124 pounds is overweight.
You can’t compare a self-inflicted substance abuse that can be tested for in a clinical lab setting with domestic abuse. A better parallelism would be employers requesting periodic drug testing. No one seems to object to that - do we want to be on a bus driven by aomeone who abuses drugs?
Maybe you and I can’t compare voluntary substance abuse with being a victim of assault, but insurance companies have treated them similarly. They’re only about risk=money.
I don’t disagree with employers charging more for smoking when they offer programs and incentives to help people quit.
ETA: my H’s employer doesn’t charge obese people more, but they have a wellness center and offer incentives to people who come in, set a fitness goal, and meet it. It might only amount to $20/month less for their premiums but it’s popular. That way, no one is punished up front but everyone can do something to save.
Even if one uses BMI for individual assessment (which it is not good for, due to differences in individual body fat levels at the same BMI), that still does not make sense.
At 5’6", 124 pounds would be a BMI of 20.03, while 113 pounds would be a BMI of 18.25, which is considered “underweight”. “Normal weight range” is supposed to be a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 (which would be 114 to 154 pounds for a 5’6" person).
Perhaps they thought your height was something like 4’9" rather than 5’6".
Yes, maybe they misread it, and thought you were 56" tall, not 66".
I had a friend whose doc was reading her the riot act about her weight being so low, her risk for osteoporosis, he had her down in his notes as 6 inches taller than her actual height, he was talking to her, in the same room, without processing the fact she is a tiny 5 foot woman. The reality of this example is not to expose the stupidity of the dr but to be active in the process and not carry some residual grudge for years over what is obviously a clerical error.
As the originator of this thread, ^^^^^^this is my point. Like I said, we dont smoke, so passing the test is no biggie, but it seems to be heading down a slippery slope. There are some diseases that some ethnicities are more prone to, or have higher death rate. For example, we as Blacks tend to have high blood pressure, which leads to a host of other issues. Are they going to charge me more? Also, like I said, weight is a huge issue that causes a host of medical problems, and they arent screening for that. Also I dont think its saving as much as they thought. This particular company has a majority of low level low paid employees. They now have to pay the employees for travel, and missed work time to even go get the test. Not to mention, smoking by lower paid employees is very common, so a significant portion of the workforce could be impacted, which means paying them while they are in a treatment program, and hiring replacements. They are the group that can least afford an increase in premiums.
Again, I actually hate smoking, it stinks, and it is a costly habit! However, I feel this is just the beginning.
This is not the same, because at least auto insurers charge for all bad habits related to driving: too many tix, points on license, accidents, etc. The health insurers are picking one bad habit and charging more.
If people are really upset over paying higher premiums for belonging to high-risk groups, another solution might be to adjust benefits.
For example, a non-smoker who got lung cancer might receive $2 million in treatment benefits, while a smoker might be capped at $75,000 in benefits for treatment of the cancer.
Lol, yeah, okay, maybe they did think I was 4’9" instead. 
At 5’6", I always considered my height just “average,” and wished I were either really tall or short and petite. I had two Ds and got one of each, though. 
There has to be (1) a validated clinical lab test for (2) a “self-inflicted” condition where there is no other potential explanation for the result. High BP can be due to either diet or genes, so this would not be one of those. With the two-pronged approach, only substance abuse is left on the table.
So, to sum up my point: your concerns are legitimate, but smoking is a wrong “martyr” for the cause since it does not belong in the group with the other conditions.
I don’t smoke, BMI lists me as overweight and I have high cholesterol and I play racquetball 6-8 hours per week so cardio is decent. I have several guns but they are all locked in a gun safe. Also, I have a motorcycle.
It seems reasonable to charge more for smoking since it presumably leads to higher healthcare costs.
BMI I do not think is accurate enough but I can see charging more for being obese if an accurate gauge is available. Instead of charging more I should get a “good cardio” discount
Guns/motorcycles - ok if data supports that they typically lead to higher healthcare costs (but should the gun safe not negate that? also, motorcycle crashes seem to be fatal so I wonder if healthcare costs actually higher?) I ride the motorcycle as I am a bit of a tree-hugger and like to cut down on fuel consumption where practical.
High cholesterol - from what I have read the science around cholesterol is not exact either although maybe that is wishful thinking
Generally, if I am making bad choices that stats clearly show result in higher healthcare costs then I think I should pay more.
partyof5- This is a very valid choice made by employers/insurers. It is well-documented that smoking leads to higher health care cases in a high percentage of people. It is extremely low-hanging fruit and sound business practice to impose a financial penalty for those who choose to smoke. They are not being denied coverage. I really can’t understand why anyone has a problem with this. Clearly- the benefits of this charge outweigh the small costs of the smoking cessation programs, travel, missed work time (which pales in comparison to the smoking breaks) etc.
Partyof5, the discussion that followed can be summed up that is wrong to bring up smoking as an example of big brother snooping. It just does not fit with the other stuff that is of legitimate cincern.
Not only there are no “good” tests for certain metabolic conditions, but there is a fuzzy line as to when they would need to start charging me more. I have decent BMI and perfect BP, but hypertension runs in my family. When should I start paying more? Hmmmm… Now or when my doctor documents my first 130/90? I am also a white female of Northern European descent. My bone density is most likely fine, but as a group we are highly prone to osteoporosis. Hmmmm… BTW, no testing is needed - my insurance ALREADY knows all of this from my prior medical history.
With smoking and nicotine the line is clear: I either smoke or I don’t or I’m in the process of quitting.
I actually don’t disagree with your concerns as long as smoking is not brought up into the picture. I am concerned with the trend towards “wearables” and all these techies salivating at the prospect of making everyone instantly beam up their vitals to a centralized hub for monitoring. Companies like 23andme who have little experience in diagnostics want to “revolutionize” the way diseases are diagnosed - never mind that there is no validation of many of these snps they want to use as disease markers. There is a good reason docs still rely on Petri dishes and microscopy…
I think the answer to it is that smoking has been directly tied to huge medical costs, they have ads in NY saying that smoking causes about 10 billion a year in health costs in the state each year. Smoking is directly tied to a number of things, various cancers, heart disease, diabetes, loss of limbs, you name it, and there is basically no safe level of smoking and despite claims, there are also no health benefits. Not to mention other things, that smoking also causes loss of productivity and so forth…
The problem with comparing smoking, to let’s say issues like obesity, is that when it comes to fitness and health there aren’t such strong correlations as with smoking. For one thing, obesity is not necessarily someone who chows down on junk food and refuses to exercise, obesity has strong genetic ties, too, could be metabolic problems and such that aren’t entirely in their control. Too, take a look at what has happened in recent years with fitness and health, that for example, maintaining a steady weight, even if obese, is much healthier than see-sawing with weight. Things like what constitutes a healthy diet are under debate, and magic numbers like cholesterol levels, LDL/HDL ratios, the impact of diet on dietary cholesterol, the value of statin drugs, the whole salt and high blood pressure, have come under increasing scrutiny and in some cases, have been found out to be bogus (for example, that dietary cholesterol has zero impact on serum cholesterol, or that the magic cholesterol numbers alone mean anything, the inflammation and things like arterial scarring are the real causes of hearth disease), using magic numbers in terms of setting insurance rates has a lot less meaning than with smoking, with smoking, other than those dependent on the tobacco industry, the data has only become more and more refined as to the impact of smoking on health, it is a direct correlation, whereas terms like fitness, and even terms like overweight and health, are not so clear.
So with tobacco, they use the stick (higher rates), with things like overweight and overall fitness, they use the carrot, give lower rates.So for example, let’s say the base rate of plan x is 600 a month to the employee. They could make the base rate 500, and add 100 on for being overweight let’s say, or 200 for smoking, but basing it at 600, and giving incentives to those who go to a wellness center and work out and such, of 100 a month does the same thing. In a sense, it is encouraging good behavior to become more healthy, while discouraging bad behavior (smoking) that frankly has no health benefits, no safe levels.
To be honest, given the cost that tobacco puts on our economy, it is just staggering to me it is still legal, in any form, and that the government farm programs still subsidize it. And before someone starts the prohibition analogy, forget it, with alcohol there are safe levels of drinking and it does have health benefits, with tobacco it not only has no positives, economically it is a huge drain on the economy, the the economic activity it generates is a fraction of what it costs us in lost productivity, and medical costs.
The whole point of insurance is pooling risks. Since we don’t know who will get sick, and incur a lot of health care costs, we join a pool to protect ourselves against that risk. The insurance company makes money by charging enough to cover all the costs (plus profit) but not more.
If you’re a smoker, you’re more likely to get sick and incur health care costs. If we account for this in your premiums, everybody who isn’t a smoker can pay a bit less. I don’t see anything unfair about this, or for most of the other suggested items, as long as it can be shown that a person who smokes, or is fat, or who has a gun in the house, or who rides a motorcycle, is in fact more likely to get sick and incur health care costs. The profit motive will push insurance companies to do this more and more–the only way to stop it is through laws limiting what insurance companies can do.
I know everyone is passionate about his point of view, but please lets pay attention to what was said, and to whom it was said.
At the end of the day its not going to cost me anymore because I dont smoke, and its an expensive, nasty habit. But I do think this is just the beginning of them sticking their noses in our lives. What probably ticks me off so much is that we have really crappy health insurance, that I barely use, because we have a 5k deductible, so as I said, I was venting.
@BunsenBurner I want to do 23andme badly, but Im too afraid of what they may do with the data! Unlike most , I can go back 7 generations, I grew up with my great-grandmothers, and my mom grew up with her great grandmothers. Normally when you go back that far, you have a country of origin, but my family was in the south.