Are you willing to get the Covid vaccine when offered?

St. Widge said
While there may not be a specific "ding" for being obese in most employer health insurance plans, the cost to the employer is based on the numbers that actuaries arrive at based on the average age of employees, place they live, and the health numbers in that area. And, those things do, at least to some extent, take into account a premium for obesity although it is indirect.

And, the difference is that obese people are basically only hurting themselves. Obesity isn't "contagious" and while the COVID vaccines don't totally stop people from getting COVID, they do reduce the risk of getting COVID by a pretty significant amount. And, from an insurance company perspective, a vaccinated person is far less likely to require a lot of costly medical treatment and hospital stays compared to a vaccinated person.

I mean, insurance rates are too high, but that's based on a lot of factors that really have nothing to do with how they decide who is in a higher risk group or not and is beyond the topic of this thread, but I don't see an issue with an insurance company setting prices based on how much risk they think a person has for costly medical procedures. And, frankly, that may include obesity in addition to being unvaccinated for any number of diseases.

I most definitely get where you are coming from in your first paragraph and know that those factors play into our health insurance but what we are doing is calling out a particular group without any distinctions. Fingers are being pointed at the unvaccinated but truth is, nobody knows or (seemingly) cares to know how much of our unvaccinated population are landing in hospitals or the type of symptoms they even had. While treated as a "black or white" issue, it is anything but.

And while obesity isn't contagious, in the case of COVID, it can be seen a a key contributor to hospitalization(along with other underlying issues but a lot stems from obesity). So instead of just pointed at the unvaccinated, how about we put that energy towards a root cause (because we all know that this is the main driver used for "breakthrough" hospitalizations. Well this and age). So instead of putting that 20-25% premium on the unvaccinated, we put it on those with a BMI of 25%+. Two birds with one stone; those who were said to put a strain on hospitals before COVID and those who are accounting for the majority of COVID hospitalizations now.

I wish tone could be heard on message boards because I'm not for this at all but if this is the approach that we are going to take, let's go for a common denominator.