Quote:
Originally Posted by Liliana Vess
I think this could probably be done with a combination of BMI/waist circumference/body fat %. None of those are absolute, but taken together, it's a reasonable way to draw guidelines.
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But going by the premise of the original question DJ asked - who is to define what a smoker is? One cigarette a day? one a week? month? year? Ultimately an insurance company is going to have to draw up broad groups instead of creating personalized plans for each individual and I am sure there will be a way to come up with a grouping. On the fringes it will miss a few people and include some who should not be but there will be ways to come up with groups that are generally valid if an insurance company wishes to charge differently for obesity.
Also, I don't want to enter the war of polemics going on here but I hope that people can understand one part of what WU is trying to say. The intrinsic cost of an insurance policy (as opposed to the cost that is charged to the customer) is the sum of all costs that the insurance company incurs for the product. If an insured is obese it will cost the insurance company more to cover them irrespective of the reason for their obesity. So going by the basic principle of price of a product being proportional to its intrinsic cost the policy would cost more.
Then there is the separate moral question of whether we, as a society, are willing to subsidize those who incur costs for unavoidable versus avoidable reasons. It may not always be as simple as it seems. Pregnancies are generally avoidable. But societally we have accepted them as a morally acceptable choice. I am not going to answer the question here but I am just saying that is how the debate is to be framed. At its core insurance is a cost shifting process. If there were no insurance at all everyone would just pay for their own health care. For the majority of people this would be a cost saving and for a few this would be catastrophic. All insurance companies do is to spread risk and cost over a wide population so that all people have a lower risk and all people incur a moderate cost. Put another way there is a cap on the maximum amount an individual would have to pay but the entire population probably pays more than they statistically would be likely to pay without insurance.
And now I have the urge to respond to the other posting about "greedy" insurance companies but I will do that separately.