Are these employees unionized? Thought not. If they're too gutless to organize, they deserve what they get.

I'm not really sure of Dan's ultimate point...

Putting our healthcare in the hands of employers makes little to no sense to me. A for-profit business shouldn't be in the game of healthcare for it's employees. Healthcare is a legitimate function of community government, and should be safeguarded by basic human rights to healthcare.

I can't wait to see the backlash when employers start firing their workers for eating meat or for being too fat.

I hate typos in my own posts! :~P

I applied for a job a few weeks ago that the company advertised that they were a "Drug-Free, Tobacco-Free" workplace. Supposedly they tested. I thought it was a tad strange, but since I don't smoke, I applied.

What was that line about "When they came for the..."?

Smokers, spouse or not, add to the health care costs of everyone unless you charge them about 25% more in their premiums, no matter who pays those premiums (persons, employer, govt.).

So why do they have freedom to increase my health care costs for predictable disease?

I'm fine with this employer's approach but a more moderate and fair one might be making smokers pay more.

If this leads to fat people paying more, too, why the hell not.

Prevention should be rewarded. The leading indicator of an asymptomatic heart disease is a waistline more than 40 inches among males over age 50. charge by the inch.

Your avoidable costs should not be socialized except among those in the same group of smoekrs or fatties.

ivan, unions are getting smaller; why is that?

Timothy, how do you provide a universal health care system where healthy choices are rewarded and unhealthy choices punished? and who determines that? and what are the costs of having blanket coverage for everyone in spite of health?

how does universal health care create incentives for being healthier?

@6

Hey, Susan, I fount this stuff in Google's cache about you. It says the reason you're so willing to spread lies all comes down to your own health problems. Like they've driven you mad or something. Is it true?

What's funny to me is that all many of my friends opposed to healthcare said they were worried about the government telling them what they could and could not do. They were like "If the government controls things, they'll force us to live differently".

Despite the fact that there has been no evidence of that in all the countries that provide healthcare, they were worried.

Looks like the worry all along should have been with corporations, who stand to lose more money than the government when people get sick by choice....

I love how our healthcare "plan" in this country is "get a 40-hour a week job and take whatever your employer gives you." It naturally results in situations like the one you describe. It seems as if there's no limit to what sort of intrusions employers can force on their employees, from monitoring them by closed-circuit camera while they're at work to reading all their email to suspicionless random urinalysis. It's all fair game and employees have no right to complain because they "choose" to work there.

The additional wrinkle of employers providing healthcare and trying to "economize" on that expense now brings us to insane schemes like this one. This same logic would also seem to present a compelling case for firing every employee who's twenty pounds overweight or over the age of 35.

While i'm for smoking succession programs as part of health care, i'm not for employers forcing it upon their employees. What's next? Employers looking at employees medical records for safe-sex behaviors or to determine someone's sexuality by seeing a male employee with a HIV or a history of genital wart or some other STD? No thanks.

Oh my god, this is so fucking stupid.

While we're at it, let's restrict coverage for tan people (increased risk of skin cancer!), pre-menopausal women (lost productivity due to maternity leave! Giving birth at a hospital costs money!), anyone who plays sports or exercises vigorously (risk of related injury! Medical bills! Missed work!), anyone who eats tomatoes (salmonella! Medical bills! The horror!)...shit, pretty much everyone does at least one thing that could potentially up their health-care costs in relation to others, depending on how you look at it. Yes, this is why we need universal health-care managed by the government.

Maybe he can get away with that shit in Michigan. But if he tried it in Colorado, he'd be in court so fast it would make his head spin. 'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado. We have laws against idiotic crap like this.

You think this is bad?

In Japan, if you're not ultra-thin, they send you to reeducation camp.

No, that is not a joke.

And even Mr. Poe would qualify, so we're talking 99.9 percent of SLOG.

It's easy to pretend you live on an island when you're just one company. You can reject smokers and fat people and so on, yet still have a large enough pool of workers to fill your ranks. But how does a whole society reject classes of people who are supposedly dragging them down? And when you do stop and consider all people in your entire society, you start to realize that while some might smoke, others jump out of airplanes, or go rock climbing. So if you were to try to leave out everybody except those who never take a risk, you're left with too small pool to be viable.

So if we were all sharing each other's health care costs, we would encourage each other to be healthy, but would any of us be so without sin as to cast the first stone and force another to clean up their act? And if so, how come it hasn't happened in every other industrialized country?

My understanding is that in Canada, there are examples of government programs to discourage or restrict behaviors that add to the healthcare bottom line. For example, higher driving ages, because young drivers are involved in a disproportionate number of accidents. High taxes on tobacco and alcohol to help recoup the outlay in healthcare costs associated with those things.

The difference being that the government is run by officials who must stand for re-election, so if they get too out of hand with the nanny-state approach, the public has recourse.

@7 Bellevue...

I actually believe that the only tool that Universal Healthcare should use is education and healthy living programs. In the end, we all get sick, and that burden is should be shared by all. I don't smoke, but I participate in other activities that put me at risk; for example, I play a lot of sports. I don't think we should go down the road of singling out certain behaviors over others. I think as society gains more knowledge, and as we are free to participate in programs that encourage healthy living, we'll make choices.

If this is his company, and provided Michigan is a right-to-work state, well then, there's not much anyone can do. Except not work there if they smoke.

Freedom is dead. "In Corporations We Trust".

How long will it be before genetic testing can determine all your genetic health risks? Would employers then have the right to refuse to hire employees based on their genetic predisposition for cancer, heart disease, or diabetes?

Healthcare should not be tied to employment.

@18, a small number of states have laws protecting workers for engaging in legal off-duty activities (CA, CO, NY, SD, though there may be more that I'm missing). It doesn't look like MI is one of these, so the workers may be screwed. Also, depending on MI's law on the right to privacy, the smokers might be able to claim that this is wrongful termination in violation of public policy.

@7 Bellevue --

unions are getting smaller; why is that?

Can you cite a source?

1. Employers are allowed to retaliate against unionization efforts.
2. A systematic anti-union propaganda effort over the last thirty years
3. Reagan
4. Increased fluidity of employment within an industry
5. Decreased employer-to-employee ratios
6. Tax breaks for employers offering non-monetary benefits
7. etc...

I'm only proud to be an American if we can keep Whitey down...

Um, sorry to burst your libertarian, free-market-uber-alles bubble @7, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2007 the union workforce actually INCREASED over the previous calendar year for the first time in a quarter-century.

bls.gov

less % of people are in unions since 1980.

and unions aren't peaches and sunshine

you're a fucking tool comte. I suppose looking a YoY numbers anything can look rosy even in a 25 year trend

Better quit flying Alaska then. They're self insured, so they test for nicotine before they hire you. On the bright side, you can drink all you want.

also the total % went up .1. don't talk stats if you don't look a them fully

@16 - bull.

Most provinces in Canada have lower drinking ages and about the same driving ages.

Get a life. Living in Nazi America has warped your mind. Nationalized health care is the gold standard of the competitive West - all but one First World Nation use it.

And, in case you didn't notice, Canadians live almost a decade longer than we do ... we're pretty much the bottom of the heap here in America.

Dan as much as I love ya, where the heck have ya been? Alaska Airlines and all its subsidiaries have always had a complete tobacco use ban forver and a day. All applicants must declare they are tobacco free(smoking, chewing, all of it)and submit to testing before hiring. You can be fired for using tobacco of any kind. I'm a nonsmoker and I dont agree with this policy, but its no different than a company firing me for smoking a doobie IN MY OFF HOURS.

Not to mention, while when we talk of smoking, we always talk about cigarettes, what about cigars and pipe tobacco?

I know they're not "healthy", but they're still a lot better than cigarettes. By this control freak's rules, if I have a cigar to celebrate say, getting a raise, and then get blood tested, I can get fired. That's ridiculous.

six shooter

1. should a business owner not have a choice in the matter?
2. a lot of the propaganda is right though. There are costs to being part of a union, allowing unions, and problems within unions that are passed on to non union members. I'm not saying that unions are all bad either.
3. Reagan set precedent to be sure.
4. Not only this but across the world. Unions work well and ensure their continued existence when they have market power. increased transportation and mobility reduces market power and makes unions irrelevant.

30: Actually, I'm in favor of single payer, and I like Canada's system better than ours. I was just pointing out that the criticism of such systems that they creates incentives for laws that try to curb unhealthy behavior is not entirely without merit, although for my money having that legislation in the hands of elected officials as opposed to unaccountable corporations is a better deal. (Also, as a point of order: I said higher driving age. Several provinces have a graduated system where new drivers receive permits with certain restrictions and with lower thresholds for certain crimes, for instance 0% blood alcohol level allowable. You are correct that most provinces have lower drinking ages.)

So relax. I mostly agree with you, although I have to admit that sentences like "living in Nazi America has warped your mind" make me a little embarrassed to be on your side.

banjo, I dont trust politicians to legislate my health needs or lifestyle though. They already do a piss poor job in many regards.

I would welcome a mandatory health plan for most people if A. they could opt out for a private solution B. there are no strings attached to the public care component or the prevailing morality of the time decides medical course C. the FDA is reformed to change their trial phase policies.

I just have a hard time reconciling the conflict between providing health care for all and enabling people to consume health care resources beyond what they would because it is free.

one of the bright ideas that I do like though is tying a dollar amount to a person and then forcing corporations to compete for the business of that person. like the way some school districts in the world operate.

I dont trust politicians to legislate my health needs or lifestyle though. They already do a piss poor job in many regards.

I guess my point is that given the choice between that and having a private corporation regulate my health needs and lifestyle (as in the cited example) I would prefer having the government do it because I can vote them out if they do a piss poor job, whereas in the current system, I have little recourse if my employer decides to make arbitrary decisions about my health care in order to cut costs. The for-profit system of healthcare creates incentives for health care providers to charge as much as they can for as little care as they can get away with providing. Government bureaucracies may on occasion be inefficient but they are at least not systematically working to deny coverage to sick people.

banjo, you'd be wrong about denying coverage. look at medicare as an example of where the stated goal and the achieved result aren't close to one another. and look at the cost of medicare.

and the scary thing about voting for it is there are a lot of people that disagree with the morality of providing the basic reproductive health needs or providing aids therapy etc etc and theyll vote in people that will actively seek to eliminate that from state health care.

And look at a lot of social services or government as a whole as to examples of where piss poor management doesn't yield different results, only different piss poor managers voted in overseeing it.

The government has already provided incentives for companies to provide health care in such a manner that the choice is effectively robbed from the individual and given to the employer.

If there was a way to create a system where people have health insurance benefits of X dollar amount and companies are forced to compete for those benefits independent of any agreement with a company, then we might not only encourage better health care, we could do it in a manner where the costs of providing health care and the amount provided are dictated by the services given, not by what someone else determines is right for you.

and of course secondary markets to trade your medical benefits amount.

It kinda irks me that 1 in 10 of my answers is always "hey, did you guys see that Frontline episode?", but shit, it's a good show. Anyhow, they covered the health care examples in other countries (who provide, or require it, universally), and I recommend it to anyone interest in the topic.

The Michael Moore documentary was entertaining, but not at all educational. Frontline episodes are all online on PBS to watch. Seems to be a lot of misconceptions of both sides of the argument about how universal healthcare can work.

for 3 trillion a year we could give everyone a 10k health benefit that they could trade to other people for some dollar amount. the question is where do we raise 3 trillion dollars? the entire federal budget income was 2.5 trillion dollars.

Bellevue -- Unions aren't all peaches and sunshine. I was simply answering your question about declining membership.

I am so sick and tired of people saying that universal health care gives people no incentive to take care of themselves! If you take care of yourself, you live longer and feel better, isn't that incentive enough!?

@14 WTF?!

I've been living in Japan for 2 years and your comment was the first I've heard of this. Do I need to start locking my doors at night?

east coaster, have you seen how fat and unhealthy people are in some places?

If they are fat and unhealthy because they didn't take care of themselves, it's not because they thought "I have free health care so I don't need to". It's because they were too lazy to bother. If living longer and feeling better doesn't motivate you to take care of yourself, money won't either- and nor will anything else.

thats it east coaster, people don't respond to one incentive so why would another incentive work? or people are fated to do one thing in spite of anything else.