Firing Smokers to Save Money?
Michael Demmons
Weyco, Inc has fired the smokers at their company to save on health insurance premiums.
Company founder Howard Weyers has said the anti-smoking rule was designed to shield the firm from high health care costs. "I don't want to pay for the results of smoking," he said.
The rule led one employee to quit before the policy was adopted. Four others were fired when they balked at the smoking test.
What do you think? Should Weyco be allowed to do this?
I say yes. But with conditions. Smokers (and I have mentioned before that I do it occasionally) are responsible for billions in healthcare costs that are passed on to all you non-smokers out there. So, I think smokers, and anyone who knowingly partakes in behavior they know to be risky, should be forced to pay higher premiums.
Failing that, the employer has every right, in my opinion, to find another "less expensive" employee to fill that position.
By the way, the poll in the news article is, so far, is about 73%-27% against firing the smokers. I voted yes.
I'm sure this'll be a fun discussion!
UPDATE: Please, let's keep this about chosen high risk behaviors and not get into unrelated subjects like firing people because of genetics - which would be illegal anyway. The slope isn't that slippery.
UPDATE II: The point of this post was that the employer has a right to hire people that won't cost him a lot of money in health insurance premiums - which seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. Deb at Accidental Verbosity says that this might not end up saving him much in the long run. Frankly, she may be right.
I suppose I might be persuaded to think that the higher premiums for smokers could be fair. After all, smoking is a choice. But it's a choice I'd like to make without having to worry about whether or not it will cost me my job.
Anyway, I'd just like to see an honest economic analysis that shows what the real costs are.
As far as the question goes, I'm generally of the school of thought that says an employer can hire and fire employees based on whatever criteria he or she sees fit. And the rest of us can choose whether or not to patronize that business based, in part, on the knowledge of their hiring practices. So yes, I think the employer can fire employees who smoke.
Whether or not he should, from a moral perspective, is an entirely different matter.
Okay, so your support of the company is based on the libertarian belief that the company should be free to hire and fire as they see fit.
So... The company can fire fat people next. And older people too since they also cost more. How about minorities? Minorities tend to cost more to insure as well. Oh, and women too.
In the end, Weyco will have thin, non-smoking (straight) white males working for them. Almost sounds like Disney, doesn't it...
Fat people? Sure, subject to the same conditions and as long as it is related to a behavior they chose to partake in.
Old people? No. Because it's not a behavioral trait. Same with women.
Like your eating habits.
Alcohol is likewise forbidden without a prescription. No more beer, wine, whatever.
Or sex. (STDs, AIDS, and childbirth for women. I wonder how well it would go over if the women at Weyco had to sign an agreement not to get pregnant, or one that mandated Depo-Provera or some such while employed. Oh, and since AIDS is a "gay" disease, guess what happens to practicing homosexuals?)
How about personal habits? Like motorcycles? Sell 'em, baby. Skydiving? Skiing? Firing offenses. Too many speeding tickets? Get a free pink slip with your third ticket.
I prefer both my government and my employer to stay out of my personal life. If you think about the kinds of precedents this kind of thing sets, you should too.
This is exactly right. No such discrimination should be allowed, including against smokers. I think insurance companies shold be barred from making such a distinction, or even keeping data on such facts among their customers.
I note that it is only the non-smokers who tend to be so self-righteous that they think that only *smokers* are engaged in risky activity that "raises health-care costs". Of course, they don't talk about people who bicycle (risk), jog (risk), ride in a car (large risk), engage in active sports (risk), play touch football (risk), ride a horse (large risk, check the stats by hour of exposure). Why should I have to subsidize those folks?
Because it's called "freedom", people. The opposite is tyranny. The desire to control the personal behavior of your neighbors for the "common good" is exactly the description of communism.
Absolutely correct, since letting people hire and fire as they choose might lead to people not making the right/correct/moral hiring decisions on their own, we must legislate against it. </sarcasm>
BK
My grandmother never smoked a thing in her life and had to have a kidney removed because of a cancerous tumor. My husband smokes almost two packs a day and at his last physical was declared to be in perfect health.
I am, by definition, obese. I do not suffer from high blood pressure, diabetes, or any other condition or disease commonly associated with obesity. My weight has never once been a cause for me to seek medical help. My friend, on the other hand, fits perfectly the weight and body fat content all the charts say she should and was recently fitted with an insulin pump to try to get her diabetes under control.
My point? Associating certain medical risks with certain physical traits or common habits is poor science at best and discrimination at worst.
Wrong. It's called statistics. Owners of sports cars do drive faster than owners of econoboxes. Blacks do suffer disproportionately from sickle cell anemia. Women do suffer disproportionately from cervical cancer (huh, I wonder why). Preventing science from investigation things because it's politically incorrect is bad science.
JDS's question about the true healthcare costs of smoking is a good one. I wish I had an answer.
What concerns me about this issue is the precedent it sets. Yes, a company could fire smokers or fat people, clearly. But could a company require new "probationary" hires to submit to a physical, in order to weed out those who have serious health problems, or those who are likely (by lifestyle or even genetics) to acquire serious health problems in the future? That concerns me. It exacerbates the adverse selection problem. The people who are most in need of health insurance will be the least able to obtain it.
But I'm glad that Weyco is doing this, because it's another piece of evidence that the employer-provided healthcare system is breaking down under the rising costs of health care. I believe that some form of universal (aka "socialized") health coverage is inevitable, and stories like this make me think it might be closer than I thought.
And if you read my original post, I say that Weyco should have handled it differently. The employee can stay if they assume the added cost that their choice brings to the table.
Genetic traits, age, having kids, etc are all outside the scope of this argument and are covered by laws - even though some of you would think that's a logical way to defeat the argument. It isn't. I'm talking about people who consciously make a choice to engage in behavior that significantly adds to healthcare costs. And, by the way, firing women because they might have kids is taking the argument to absurdity.
It's perfectly legal for an insurance company to require me to pay higher premiums because I smoke (or parachute, or race stockcars.) If I don't pay, I won't get the policy.
Why should it be different for an employer. I would think the conservatives and libertarians who make up most of this audience would agree that we shouldn't be forced to pay for other peoples' stupid habits.
That's why most of us are for Welfare reform and fair taxation! Remember?
I should have ended my statement with, "when developing employment policy." That would have made it clearer that I wasn't questioning research in general, but was questioning that people should be hired or fired based on risk statistics rather than each individual's abilities to do the required job.
If such were good business practice, I would be unemployable because of my weight making me at higher risk for diabetes and high blood pressure, which I don't have, and my friend, who is under strict medical care for her diabetes, would be a great employable risk because she's 5' 10" and weighs 135.
Ergo, basing employment on statistical risk is not a good business practice.
A company I used to work for actually does a fairly extensive physical screening prior to hiring. The job is physically demanding (a corrugated box factory...lots of lifting), and the pre-hire physical is to determine if a person is capable of the demands of the job, as well as to set a baseline upon hire to establish pre-existing conditions that could possibly be used for a worker's comp claim later (for instance, hernias).
However, I don't think the company refuses to hire someone with a pre-existing condition if the prospective employee demonstrates an ability to do the required job.
But, from a legal perspective, I don't think they have much of a case, as Drew has pointed out. Employers can pretty much employ people based on any criteria they want, with the exception of a few things.
Of course, this wouldn't really be an issue if we didn't tie our health benefits to our employment, which is something, as a society, I think we ought to rethink.
Or what about treatments that are undertaken voluntarily - that is, not because they'll save your life but because they'll make it a whole lot better? A lot of physical therapy falls into this category; sure, it'd be nice if your back wasn't continually acting up, but is it really necessary to spend all this money soothing it every week?
Or, my favourite (since I did it :)) fertility treatments. A lot of insurance companies already regard it as a "lifestyle" type of thing, and there's a strong implication that infertility is the kind of thing that only happens to people who are (a) riddled with STDs (b) waited until 45 to try and conceive because they were too busy trying to climb the corporate ladder blahblahblah. That's not true at all; a lot of infertility is by no means a result of behavior, but the point is that you will not physically die from not having children. Why should they cover treatment, even if it's severely screwed you up and you can't afford to pop out the money for an adoption? And in the event that infertility is covered, what's to stop them from canning you once it's gotten too expensive? I went through $25,000 of joint insurance coverage by the time I was done. What if the company had decided to fire my husband because his wife was too expensive?
Which leads to my last question: what if it's not the employee, but his DEPENDENTS who get too expensive? Suppose you have a low-risk white guy who's young, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, excercises, doesn't like to ride motorcycles or bungee-jump - and one of his dependents comes down ill with a prolonged and costly disease. Do you fire him?
Private, as in not a government office of some kind. Owned by a private individual for that private person's (or his investors' or stockholders') profit.
As opposed to a business or office that is subject to more government control than EEO laws concerning discrimination.
e.g. My home is private, the court house is public.
BK
There was a time when people were being induced to take up smoking via billboards; ads in newspapers, on radio and television; and in almost every feature film you could see. Moreover, the US government were handing out good quality American cigarettes in copious and sometimes overwhelming quantities to US troops all over the world.
Matter of fact, they were used as currency in countries under US occupation. In 1945-1946, there was hardly a woman you couldn't buy in Germany and other recently-freed European countries, for a one or two packs of cigarettes with authentic Virginia mild and smooth tobacco.
Then the culture quickly changed, and along with it, our mass realization that the Bogarts of the world were all dying early of lung cancer.
But it isn't easy to quit, unless you are a real hard-ass guy with heavy-duty will power. That's how I quit. But most people who know me don't want to listen to my line of shit about quitting smoking.
So for those poor suckers still caught up in this particular spider-web, give them a break as long as they aren't poisoning someone else's lungs or ruining their lunch.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Do I? No. I'm not sure this is an example of where insurance premiums would be raised on the employer. For smokers, it's assumed they're a health risk right away, so they cost more up front. But the insurance company can't change the terms of their policy after the fact, although they can for future policies.
Anyway, this is unlikely to ever happen. Firing smokers is not the public relations nightmare that firing model employees with sick kids would be.
But what about telling employers what to do, such as who they must employ?
It's been awhile since I read much in the way of employment law. I used to be quite familiar with it. Anyway, as I remember there's also more restrictions in hiring practices based on the number of employees a company has and the amount it has in government contracts.
For example, a small Chinese restaurant could hire all Chinese employees and that would not be illegal. But Taco Bell couldn't get away with hiring only Mexican employees.
Also, much of this really has more to do with civil law than criminal so as one of my professors used to say "You can do anything you want until you get sued."
Of course they should be able to if the person is female, black, Jewish or a homosexual (or all four) as well. You should be able to fire someone for having too many instances of the letter 'b' in their name.
Affirmative action and EEO laws do just that, don't they?
Weyco may have a right to do this, but it's a crappy thing to do and I hope his business suffers. Smoking is still a legal activity.
Again, why should the employer be forced to pay your higher premiums because of a habit in which you choose to partake?
Insurance companies selling you life insurance aren't forced to spread the cost of lung cancer to people who don't smoke. They rightly charge the smoker more.
Do you people picket MetLife, Canada Life, and other big insurance companies for discrimination?
Smokers cost less because they get sick earlier and die younger
They don't cost the business owner less. Not by a long shot.
Smokers die earlier, therefore saving Social Security from having to pay out their benefits
That doesn't affect how much they cost the business owner in health insurance premiums
states are forced to raise cigarette taxes to add money to the coffers
Still doesn't affect the very high insurance premiums the business owner has to pay for the smoker's habit.
If there's a point, I'm missing it.
Plus, EEO and Affirmative Action laws are somewhat more nebulous than the way we think about them. We generally think in terms of quotas which conservatives and libertarians tend to rightly oppose. But there's no requirement that companies go that far. They just have to make some effort to employ more African-Americans or women, and prove that they are not unfairly discriminating against them.
At any rate, larger companies get sued for violations of EEO all the time, sometimes justifiably, often not. Including other behavior beyond race and gender would just open the door to more lawsuits. For example, was a smoker fired simply because he was a smoker, or because his work suffered because he was sneaking out for smoke breaks all the time? I've been at jobs where this happened (and occasionally I was one of them).
Another example that I currently see alot of is related to employees with kids. Several of my co-workers are often showing up late and/or leaving early because they have to deal with their kids in some capacity. To what extent should a company be forced to put up with this? It's not an easy question to answer, but it would seem unfair for an employer to have no options in this situation but to just deal with it.
How does having a smoker as an employee cost the employer more? Unless the question is asked when signing up for health insurance provided by the employer, how would the employer (and therefore, the insurance company) know which or how many of the employees was a smoker?
JDS:
It's not just kids. I have been called away from work a number of times because my 89-year-old, blind, wheel-chair-bound mother-in-law with congestive heart failure lives with us. I'm the first number her "help, I've fallen and I can't get up" phone service calls when she pushes her panic button. I've been called home because she's fallen, because she thinks someone is knocking at the garage door (despite the fact that the garage is locked and no one can get in), because she can't find her nail file, because she swears she hears music and thinks I forgot to turn off the TV (TV was off, we don't own a radio or stereo system), etc.
But that's a whole different rant...
Snowboarders and waterskiers don't cost the employer extra for his group health insurance. Smokers add SIGNIFICANTLY to HIS costs. If snowboarders and skiers add anything at all, it's a tiny amount - an amount he has decided is nominal enough to absorb.
I know you feel disparaged as a smoker (or feel smokers are being unfairly treated) but that's not the issue here. I know you'd like to MAKE it the issue, but it's not. It's the fact that they make the cost of health insurance prohibitive for some small business owners who WANT to provide insurance for their employees.
And I bet if you were a business owner and your health insurance company said to you "Hey Mr. Small Business Owner, if you can guarantee me that no one here smokes, it will save you $40,000 a year in premiums", you'd go for it in an instant.
Don't say you wouldn't. Any small business owner (who wasn't so dependant on cigarettes him/herself) would take that offer in a heartbeat.
I think the slope can get pretty slippery pretty quick. If the company insures both the employee and spouse, can the company then demand blood tests from the spouse as well? If the employee's entire family iscovered do the children have to be tested so the employee can keep their job?
I've read many accounts of the Weyco decision and in none does the company state how much they will save due to their action. I think your mention of $40,000 as a savings is speculative at best and doesn't really add to your argument. If you can point to real documented savings that would be different.
On the whole I agree with your position that an employee is retained at the pleasure of their employer, though 20+ states have passed Smokers Rights laws that would forbid the actions Weyco has taken.
Like you, I think that government has meddled far too much in the affairs of both individuals and businesses but, boy, has that train left the station.
My real take on this whole mess is that it has nothing to do with medical insurance costs and everything to do with Howard Weyers' desire to browbeat people into living the way he thinks they should.
On a somewhat different note, is this the same Howard Weyers who was implicated in the 1976 MSU Football scandal? His bio says he was a college football coach but not where he coached.
If I was an employer, I wouldn't likely do this. My policy would be to hire the most effective workers possible in order to produce the highers quality product possible, and whether they smoke or not would have little or no bearing. Producing a good product that sells is what will save me money in the long run. I might restrict health benefits for smokers, though, either that or they can put more into the health plan if they so choose. Of course, I might not - I want to keep my effective workers.
We recently moved into a Medical Savings Account, with a high deductable overall plan, all paid out-of-pocket, and it has DEFINITELY changed the way we purchase our medical care. We're more careful and actually shop for the best prices on treatment. That would solve the health insurance issue - the worker's comp problem is another thing entirely - it's a system rife with fraud and abuse - it should be the the subject of an entire post.
Huh? Whuzzat? I didn't say anything. This is Michael's thread. ;-)
Actually I'm not sure where I'm at. But I think what I'd say is what I've said before: family-owned or very small firms are, in my view, within their rights to set practically any rules they want, even if it's "you must show up for work nude." It changes for me once you have a corporation, especially a publicly-traded publication, because now you've got a state-created entity with special powers and privileges, and so with those powers and privileges from the state should come requirements from the state. So on the whole I don't mind if companies have state requirements--and I'm not sure the state should allow them to require employees to be non-smokers.
Wait, yes it is the issue. I don't feel the employer has any right to fire someone for smoking while at the same time allowing people who skydive and engage in other dangerous activities. When employers suddenly get the power to run every aspect of every employee's life, that'll be a bad day.
What's the punishment for smoking -- a perfectly legal activity -- now? We already get the damnation of all of society, and now we're not even allowed to have an income? Do you drink? Do you do anything that's unhealthy? Do you like having an income? This just in: Man fired for eating too many carbs!
So as I've already stated: This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. If you want to randomly discount my arguments, that's your perogative.
I'd agree with that!
I generally favor more stringent rules on publicly traded, publicly owned, or government run enterprises than I do on truly private businesses, i.e. limited partnerships, subchapter-S corporations, etc.
A public company is one that sells securities on public stock exchanges, is registered to do so with the SEC, and thus must issue regular, public financial reports. A private company or privately held company may be large or small; it's just a company where the ownership is held by individuals or a group of individuals and the ownership certificates are not regulated by the SEC. No annual disclosures are required, so often people don't know the size of privately held companies and have to rely on the word of the owners. You can own stock in either public or private corporations, just in one case you're regulated by the SEC and in the other you'd be protected by other state and federal laws governing business transactions.
For example, an S Corporation allows up to 100 partners (which includes families as one partner) under the current tax law to own a corporation. If this stock is not publicly traded, it's considered privately held.
Government, non-profits, and not-for-profits are something else entirely.
One last point on this thread: The logic of firing smokers for higher insurance premiums is impeccable; it's the premise that's absurd.
Our behavior frequently impacts other people in all sorts of ways and we in a community expect others to both reap the benefits and pay the price for our behavior just as we reap the benefits and pay the price for others' behavior. You take the good with the bad.
If you really want to take this logic to an extreme, only men in their 20s should be employable -- because they support the entire health care system. They don't get sick. They don't go to the doctor when they do. And they work and pay medical insurance.
Men in their 20s, strike! And the whole medical insurance system will come tumbling down!
If I'm still around at 80, I think I'll take up the weed again just to piss people off. I'm looking forward to being called a "crotchety old bastard".
Chris,
I don't think anyone here is saying that the smokers deserve to be fired or that the company is doing the morally right thing by firing them. What I'm saying is that they may well be perfectly within their legal rights to fire them. Likewise, I think that they probably could, legally, fire someone for skydiving or being involved in other dangerous activities. I agree that it would be a bad day when work controls the rest of your private life, but in some occupations, that's already the case.
What we're really arguing about is worker's rights vs. employer's rights. Many people who have commented on this seem to be saying that employers should have few rights at all to make decisions about their workforce. The law, as it stands, does not say that. Perhaps we should change the law, but I think we should be careful about deciding which characteristics are legitimate for job termination and which are not. Perhaps a company shouldn't legally be allowed to fire someone for smoking, but what about other characteristics? For example, what if an employee is a member of the KKK. If the company knows it will face boycotts if this becomes public knowledge, should they be able to fire this employee? Is his KKK membership his own private business and no concern of the company?
Companies already have policies concerning things like hair length, tattoo locations, etc. Are all these characteristics private matters that don't concern the company? Would you give your money to a stock broker wearing a business suit or one with long hair, tattoos on his arms, neck, and back, wearing a leather vest and chaps? I might not have a problem with it, but I would guess that the company would be better financially hiring the less colorful employee.
Anyway, I suppose I can come up with examples all day long. The point is that if the employee's behavior has an effect on the bottom line in some way or another, that seems to be the most legitimate reason possible to be able to fire someone. If it's the case that the smokers do cost the company more money, then I can't see how that's any different to the bottom line than if they were unproductive employees who could be replaced with more productive ones.
One final thing: We recently had a discussion about whether or not smoking should be outlawed in bars, and I argued against the idea of having government deciding how bar owners should be allowed to run their businesses. I think I'm being consistent here. In both cases, I'm arguing against the idea of some outsider deciding what's right or wrong for a particular business. I don't see how I could argue that government shouldn't get involved in deciding a business's smoking policy in one case, but can in another. If a business has the freedom to be smoker-friendly, it also has the freedom to be smoker-unfriendly.
And by the way, I don't say any of this out of any hatred for smokers. I light up once in awhile myself.
That's been my take on this all along. The health insurance premiums line is a dodge and so are the figures being bandied about - I don't recall any health insurance app from an employer asking the question and if it did, it's pretty easy to check "no" whether true or not.
As a society we've decided that certain forms of discrimination are wrong, and limit the rights of employers in this regard. If such limits do not extend to private, legal activities on one's own time, then we have surrendered our freedom to employers. I for one, have no intention of standing idly by while corporations impose serfdom on their employees.