America's #1 Online Cigar Auction
first, best, biggest!

Arizona county to vote on proposed hiring ban on smokers
Published December 16, 2014


An Arizona county will decide as early as Tuesday whether to stop hiring smokers -- a controversial move that would freeze thousands of residents out of a county job but potentially save the local government money.

The Pima County proposal could mark the start of local governments testing new limits on who they hire in a bid to save money. According to projections, the no-smokers proposal would save more than $1 million annually in health care costs. But it has sharply divided residents across the state.

“That’s not fair at all,” Phoenix-area resident Damon Tice told Fox 10 in Phoenix. “It’s a form of discrimination, especially [with] cigarettes being an addictive behavior.”

Others argue smokers should cover the additional health care costs associated with smoking.

“I think it’s fair,” resident Samantha Provencio told the TV station. “A lot of people have so many health issues because of their bad habits.”

Pima reportedly spends more than $13 million annually on health insurance costs. And the proposal, if passed, would impose a 30 percent surcharge on the roughly one-third of the county's 2,000 current employees who use tobacco.

The county board of supervisors is scheduled to vote Tuesday on the issue. But Administrator Chuck Huckelberry reportedly has asked the board’s five members to delay such action until they can review next year’s insurance rates.

If the council goes along, the vote could be delayed until February 2015. But Huckelberry also is proposing an alternative plan -- charging new hires who smoke $90 a month -- should the board vote down the proposed hiring ban, according to a memo obtained by Tucson News Now.

The amount would cover “their fair share of additional medical costs incurred as a result of choosing to smoke,” the memo states.

Staffing employment expert Michael Hayes says the ban could be just the beginning of such selective hiring, as health care costs escalates and governments try to save money.

“It’s going to start with smoking, then it’s going to go to weight and to other factors down the road just because the cost is so out of control,” Hayes said.

Film at 11.....

My company puts severe insurance penalties on smokers. It's starting next calendar year.

Lots of company insurance plans have, or are starting, tobacco user surcharges. Currently, if I want to participate in the insurance reduction program at work where you get twice annual lab work and have to document workouts and stuff, I'd also be required to have nicotine saliva tests and disqualified if positive.

This is nothing new.

It is a well known fact that cigarette smokers' medical expenses exceed those of non-smokers...

Conditions of employment is a bit harsh.

Though, if caught with any tobacco product on company property, its grounds for immediate termination, so i guess this is just the next step our handlers will take to ensure assimilation.

And diabetes.

Also, if you have your gall bladder removed you fart a lot. Sometimes folks even shart because of it. Imagine the cost of Glade.

Rather than having a debate over whether or not an employer (in this case public) can discriminate this way the more useful debate would be if health insurance should be tied to employment in the first place. I'd much rather modify the tax code and change the law to steer health insurance away from employer provided care to individually purchased policies like Home, Auto, etc. Let the insurance companies decide using actuarial anaylsis to determine how much more smokers should pay.

But if employers were no longer compelled to have to purchase health insurance for their employees why would they care if they hired obese employees? Thats my point. A lot of these issues of whether or not employers can do this or can't do this would be solved by taking it out of their hands and moving health care strictly to the realm of public/private exchanges.

Also many companies already selectively choose who they want to hire. A company that is heavily concerned with health premiums is not going to hire many or any obese employees. Making it an open policy that they will not hire obese people opens themselves up for litigation.

I think the reason they don't go after obese people is because there are some that legitimately are predisposed genetically to obesity. Personally I believe that most obese people today are that way because of their own poor eating habits and sedentary lifestyle but I think its just a gray area that employers don't want to touch. Smokers are just easier to demonize because it is seen as a conscious choice they make to smoke whereas for some obese people their weight is beyond their control even with their best efforts.