Employers have long grumbled that smokers drive up already soaring health care costs. Now, some major companies are fighting back by levying a fee for workers who light up.
Northwest Airlines and Meijer Inc. have joined a growing number of employers tacking on a surcharge to health plans of workers who smoke.
It’s the latest attack by businesses on a habit that costs an estimated $75.5 billion a year in health care costs and another $92 billion a year in lost productivity on the job, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
“Smoking is a health hazard, and this is one way to encourage a healthy lifestyle,” said Judith Clark, spokeswoman for the Meijer grocery chain in Grand Rapids, Mich. “We look at it as an incentive.”
Starting next year, the grocery chain will begin charging its smoking employees an additional $25 a month for health care, Clark said. The company has 64,000 workers in 171 stores throughout the Midwest.
Smokers can avoid the fee by enrolling in a company-offered smoking-cessation course.
Meijer is asking employees if they smoke as part of its open enrollment for next year’s health plans. Workers are trusted to be honest.
“The company’s not going to be a watchdog,” Clark said.
The ranks of anti-smoking employers are growing as fewer people light up. The CDC estimates that 20.9 percent, or 44.5 million people, are smokers, down from 21.6 percent in 2003.
Northwest Airlines will begin charging employees next year. Northwest, based in Egan, Minn., is drafting a policy for salaried employees and their dependents and negotiating with unions of hourly workers. The unions already have been notified the fee is coming.
Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper chain, will begin charging smokers on its health care rolls a $50 monthly fee starting Jan. 1. Gannett has 40,000 U.S. employees and owns 99 newspapers and 21 television stations in 41 states. In Colorado, Gannett owns the Fort Collins Coloradoan and KUSA 9News.
KUSA and Coloradoan employees who smoke will pay the $50 per month surcharge beginning Jan. 1, said Roxanne Horning, vice president of human resources for Gannett in McLean, Va. Gannett is self-insured and the fees will go into a trust used to pay claims, she said.
Four states – West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia – impose a surcharge for employees who smoke. In Tennessee, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s largest health insurer, charges employees $7 a month.
Tying the disincentive for smoking directly to health insurance makes sense because the habit affects the premiums people pay for insurance, said Dee Edington, director of the University of Michigan’s Health Management Research Center.
“That really makes the point,” he said. “It’s saying, ‘If you’re going to smoke, it’s going to cost more.”‘
However, Edington said, policies that single out smoking and use punishment are less likely to be successful than those that use incentives to encourage an overall healthy lifestyle, and the fees will need to be higher to make a difference, he said.
“When you get to the $200 range, then you start getting people’s attention,” he said.
Northwest flight attendant Byron Grays was irked to hear his already costly habit will soon become more expensive. Grays, a Northwest employee for 17 years, doesn’t like the thought of Northwest charging him more for health insurance just because he takes a few puffs off a cigarette several times a day.
“I have a big problem with that,” said Grays. “We’re being treated differently from other employees. If you apply the same logic to smokers, where does it stop? Why can’t I request that those employees pay more that are obese or heavy drinkers?”
Grays hasn’t heard exactly what it’s going to cost him, but some have suggested it will be about $60 a month.
The debate over how much control an employer should have over its workers’ health habits is heating up as health costs climb.
A Michigan company got national attention last year for a policy that bans smoking – even off the job. Four employees at Weyco Inc., an Okemos-based health benefits management company, quit rather than undergo mandatory nicotine testing.
Denver Post staff writer Tom McGhee contributed to this report.
