Sunshine
Trust the pie.
- Dec 17, 2009
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Smokers actually cost less and burden the health care system less.(CNN) -- A Pennsylvania hospital is expected to begin screening job applicants for signs of nicotine early next year, claiming it will not hire smokers, a hospital spokeswoman said Friday.
Geisinger Health System -- a facility located in the eastern town of Danville -- will institute its no-nicotine policy on February 1, 2012, said Marcy Marshall.
Applicants that test positive will be offered help to quit and are encouraged to re-apply after six months, she said.
Smoking has been banned on Geisinger hospital grounds since 2007, added Marshall, who said the new program is part of a plan to make the hospital staff smoke free.
Secondhand smoke, she noted, will not result in a positive test.
Hospital: Smokers need not apply - CNN.com
I remember being a nursing student thinking I would die of suffocation from the staff smoking in the tiny report room. In those days staff smoked on the units. I wasn't sure how I would make it. But I moved to Nashville where Vanderbilt had just become a 'non smoking' facility. Smoking was permitted outside only. Soon other facilities followed.
Not surprised about this bit of news. The smoker is not particularly appealing to employers on various levels. This, no doubt, has more to do with the cost of employee health care than anything else.
Smokers and the obese cheaper to care for, study shows - The New York Times
snips,
Van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the "healthy-living" group (thin and nonsmoking), obese people, and smokers. The model relied on "cost of illness" data and disease prevalence in the Netherlands in 2003.
Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on.
The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.
I already posted the link to the Vanderbilt information on this. Yes, they do cost 'the system' less. It still does not follow that an employer should be required to pick up the million dollar tab on a person who has lung cancer before he croaks.
This employer is doing it the hard way, though. I would do it the way one of my former employers did and just give a health care allowance of a certain dollar figure. My SIL's employer has instituted a $5,000 deductible for their employees and their dependentsw. At the beginning of the year they give each employee a $2,000 debit card to cover their minor expenses. If they decline insurace altogether at that company the amount is considerably larger. He declined this year as my daughter found a job and her employer has the standard $350 deductible. They win:win on this one.
Employers are getting creative with their benefits or lack thereof.