01-28-2005, 10:13 PM
Are we looking at this the wrong way? The fact that it's a health benefits company doesn't make this more pallatable, it makes it a lot scarier.
From the company's website, pretty typical health insurance stuff:
"Zywave Reports is a Web-based decision support system designed to help employers manage their group medical plans. Zywave reports leads employers to faster and more effective decisions about plan changes by providing powerful claims analysis that can be used to formulate plan design. The claims analysis lets employers detect and determine problems with medical utilization or plan cost, isolate the root causes of utilization problems, and create money-saving solutions. In addition to a health plan analysis, Zywave Reports offer sophisticated plan modeling and benchmark comparisons that take the decision-making process to the next level."
If Weyco's money-saving solution for their own company is to adopt a tobacco free policy (and having read their policy, yes they will fire you for using tobacco outside of work), how long is it before they offer the same suggestion to their clients?
Perhaps there is an ideological concept here. Just like all priests should believe in God and uphold the morals of their religion or get fired, all health care bean counters should believe smoking is bad and act accordingly? If the policy's only justification is reducing insurance costs, I don't think it should be legal (and suggest that perhaps it isn't). The language of the policy to me looks to be written in such a general way that any business from NASA to KFC could use it.
From the company's website, pretty typical health insurance stuff:
"Zywave Reports is a Web-based decision support system designed to help employers manage their group medical plans. Zywave reports leads employers to faster and more effective decisions about plan changes by providing powerful claims analysis that can be used to formulate plan design. The claims analysis lets employers detect and determine problems with medical utilization or plan cost, isolate the root causes of utilization problems, and create money-saving solutions. In addition to a health plan analysis, Zywave Reports offer sophisticated plan modeling and benchmark comparisons that take the decision-making process to the next level."
If Weyco's money-saving solution for their own company is to adopt a tobacco free policy (and having read their policy, yes they will fire you for using tobacco outside of work), how long is it before they offer the same suggestion to their clients?
Perhaps there is an ideological concept here. Just like all priests should believe in God and uphold the morals of their religion or get fired, all health care bean counters should believe smoking is bad and act accordingly? If the policy's only justification is reducing insurance costs, I don't think it should be legal (and suggest that perhaps it isn't). The language of the policy to me looks to be written in such a general way that any business from NASA to KFC could use it.