60 bucks a month!?

GaryThompson
GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
in General Discussion
 That's going to be the extra "Tobacco User" fee every month on our new health care package. New State,  new job, new health plan. $720 a year unless I take some "Quit for life" course and submit to testing. Wow...
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Comments

  • Trish
    Trish Posts: 1,908 ✭✭✭✭✭
    And they know you're a smoker how....? I say if it's not filling the lungs it's none of thier business lol
  • 0patience
    0patience Posts: 10,665 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Just wait until they start trying to make you do the Health Assessment programs and then charge you for not doing crap like weight watchers or some crap like that.
    I'm 6' tall, weigh 160 lbs. Thinking weight watchers probably won't do me much good. So I pay a penalty for not doing the health assessment programs.

    I also get charged because my wife opts out of her insurance at work. 
    So she gets $100 for opting out and I pay $100 because she opts out.

    In Fumo Pax
    Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.

    Wylaff said:
    Atmospheric pressure and crap.
  • Rhamlin
    Rhamlin Posts: 9,137 ✭✭✭✭✭
    If your insurance has a wellness plan you can save serious money by doing the stuff they want. I did the quit smoking course every year. That knocked off 50$ a month plus if I did all the doctors appointments they wanted I got a check for 300$. Unfortunately my new insurance plan doesn’t have that but it’s free I only have to pay the tobacco charge. 
  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I'll have to look into this stuff ^^^ Thanks!
     I'll be a good boy (Mostly) and play ball to offset that cost. Then I'll use that $60 bucks a month on some smokes! Bam! Thank you, wifey  :D
  • dirtdude
    dirtdude Posts: 6,196 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Now you know how I felt when they started drug testing in the 80's
    A little dirt never hurt
  • Markwell
    Markwell Posts: 1,616 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Lady came into work today telling me her doctor said she has to immediately quit smoking or they're removing her as a patient. Says this quack is even going so far as to test her for nicotine. The world is going nuts.
    “Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, a good cigar and a good woman – or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle.” – George Burns
  • ForMud
    ForMud Posts: 2,468 ✭✭✭✭✭
    It musta been 25 - 30 years ago the insurance company came to my house to take a blood sample to check for nicotine in your system ( That and fill out the paperwork ) Granted this was for life insurance but I can see a health insurance company doing the same thing.  
  • Usaf06
    Usaf06 Posts: 11,889 ✭✭✭✭✭
    My life insurance policy required a blood test for nicotine before approving policy. I pay more a month from the positive test. 
    "I drink a great deal. I sleep a little, and I smoke cigar after cigar. That is why I am in two-hundred-percent form."
    -- Winston Churchill

    "LET'S GO FRANCIS"     Peter

  • Amos_Umwhat
    Amos_Umwhat Posts: 9,805 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Trish said: it's none of their business 

    fixed it for you.
    WARNING:  The above post may contain thoughts or ideas known to the State of Caliphornia to cause seething rage, confusion, distemper, nausea, perspiration, sphincter release, or cranial implosion to persons who implicitly trust only one news source, or find themselves at either the left or right political extreme.  Proceed at your own risk.  

    "If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed.  If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." --  Mark Twain
  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Rat Ba5tards..  I had been sucking it up and holding off on buying cigars for a while now getting ready for the big move!   Now, I'll be forced to spend $60 a month and still no smokes..  "Bend to our corporate will and bottom line or, you won't be covered for falling and breaking anything,  that hearing check,  that cholesterol screening etc...
  • Trish
    Trish Posts: 1,908 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Well it's a good thing you got yourself a sugar mama there to take care of ya  :D
  • jgibv
    jgibv Posts: 9,245 ✭✭✭✭✭
    GaryThompson said:
     That's going to be the extra "Tobacco User" fee every month on our new health care package. New State,  new job, new health plan. $720 a year unless I take some "Quit for life" course and submit to testing. Wow...
    Do you think non-smokers will see a reduction in cost on their health plans? 

    Just another way for health care conglomerates to boost their profits.

    * I have a new address as of 3/24/18 *

  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
    ^^^^Right? Thank you. 
  • silvermouse
    silvermouse Posts: 23,484 ✭✭✭✭✭
    meanwhile:
    Science hinted that cancer patients could take less of a $148,000-a-year drug. Its maker tripled the price of a pill.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/18/science-hinted-that-cancer-patients-could-take-less-of-a-148000-a-year-drug-the-company-tripled-the-price-of-a-pill/
  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
    ^^^Healing patients is an ineffective business model. 
  • Patrickbrick
    Patrickbrick Posts: 8,085 ✭✭✭✭✭
    When i filled out my paperwork, i called them about that question.  I told them i quit cigarettes 2 years ago but smoke a cigar a day.  "Do you inhale."  "No."  "You are a none smoker."  Never hurts to call and ask.
    "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give".  Winston Churchill.
    MOW badge received.
  • webmost
    webmost Posts: 7,713 ✭✭✭✭✭
    George Orwell had it wrong. It's not Big Brother the oppressor. We oppress each other.

    “It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.” —Thomas Jefferson (1808)
  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
    More to gripe about..

    I have to take this "Quit for life" smoking cessation program, then pinky swear (sign on the dotted line) I'm cured and no longer partaking in the blessed leaf. Tests will follow, and IF....IF I fail their tests, and show as contaminated with tastyness, I will have to repay the difference between the smoker and nonsmokers premiums, PLUS pay the $60 monthly smokers fee PLUS a 10% penalty (10% of what you rat ba5tards?) Wait for it..... AND I forfeit an out of pocket max for the current plan year as well as the next year on my health plan. WTF!?!?
  • dirtdude
    dirtdude Posts: 6,196 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Do they know you smoke cigars, @Patrickbrick trick @#$%££ them into thinking he was a non smoker..
    A little dirt never hurt
  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
     That monthly smokers premium rate plus the $60 fee, really add up!
    I'm going to have to become a "Cigar Ager" instead of a smoker for a while now.  At least until the bank account recovers some from a cross country family move. 
  • Trish
    Trish Posts: 1,908 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Just had a conversation with a friend about this.  Call them, he was facing the same thing but when he called they asked do you inhale, if not you're not a smoker.  Done deal. 
  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
    dirtdude said:
    Do they know you smoke cigars, @Patrickbrick trick @#$%££ them into thinking he was a non smoker..
    I would have but the wifey ratted me out when she filled out the paperwork.. She is apparently the rare type of Lawyer that won't lie...
  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Trish said:
    Just had a conversation with a friend about this.  Call them, he was facing the same thing but when he called they asked do you inhale, if not you're not a smoker.  Done deal. 
    I wish.  The paperwork specifically mentions smokeless and cigar tobacco use regardless of inhaling into lungs...
  • Trish
    Trish Posts: 1,908 ✭✭✭✭✭
    GaryThompson said:
    Trish said:
    Just had a conversation with a friend about this.  Call them, he was facing the same thing but when he called they asked do you inhale, if not you're not a smoker.  Done deal. 
    I wish.  The paperwork specifically mentions smokeless and cigar tobacco use regardless of inhaling into lungs...
    Well I hope the wife likes the couch... hehehe  :D
  • 0patience
    0patience Posts: 10,665 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Legalized extortion.
    And the insurance companies are legal mafia.

    In Fumo Pax
    Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.

    Wylaff said:
    Atmospheric pressure and crap.
  • GaryThompson
    GaryThompson Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited April 2018
    0patience said:
    Legalized extortion.
    And the insurance companies are legal mafia.

    I want this on a T shirt I can wear.  My current favorite "Estar Guars" is getting worn out  B)
  • silvermouse
    silvermouse Posts: 23,484 ✭✭✭✭✭
    $2/day to have health insurance and smoke cigars. I know it is the principle of the thing that is at issue, insurance is supposed to spread the risk among participants, but smoking is voluntary risky behavior statistically.

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