Are you willing to get the Covid vaccine when offered? (2 Viewers)

[brandon8283]

So should our insurance premium be based on BMI?

Wait till you hear about life insurance.

 

[bigdaddysaints]

So should our insurance premium be based on BMI?

My company (and i know other that do this as well) have a Tobacco surcharge. If you use any tobacco product (including vaping) there is a $200/month surcharge. Fair? i guess it all depends on your personal opinion. They also have a spousal surcharge of $150/month if you cover your spouse on insurance if they are offered insurance at their emplyment. So its not like adding a surcharge to unvaxxed is some kind of new contrivesial thing.
Sure, its easy to lie about these things ,but if they do a follow up, you will be fired.
Honestly, i am surprised my the aren't doing the surcharge for unvaxxed for us. I fully expected that this year.

 

[Saint_Ward]

Well damnit…I may have COVID. Essentially I feel exactly like I did after my 2nd COVID series…significant headache, fatigue, body aches. Mild cough so far and otherwise we I’m doing well.

Good luck. I. Sure you'll be fine. It's more the annoyance of not being able to work for us vaccinated and young-ish (aka not 65+).

I never did have covid. Tested 3 times. Really only felt kinda run down for 3 days. No idea what it was. Ad allergies or a minor cold.

 

[Saint_Ward]

My company (and i know other that do this as well) have a Tobacco surcharge. If you use any tobacco product (including vaping) there is a $200/month surcharge. Fair? i guess it all depends on your personal opinion. They also have a spousal surcharge of $150/month if you cover your spouse on insurance if they are offered insurance at their emplyment. So its not like adding a surcharge to unvaxxed is some kind of new contrivesial thing.
Sure, its easy to lie about these things ,but if they do a follow up, you will be fired.
Honestly, i am surprised my the aren't doing the surcharge for unvaxxed for us. I fully expected that this year.

I'll know in April/May if ours does anything. They probably won't. But, it's Blue Cross Blue Shield... if they do, it would hit every state.

My company just brought back the "health check reward", which is you get a discounted premium if you have an annual physical.

 

[jahsoul357]

Insurance premiums are based on risk factors - any and all for the particular coverage you might be seeking. So if you're looking for health insurance, being overweight can definitely have a negative effect on your premium.

That's actually a factor for some health insurance policies/premiums depending on the company. So yeah, it already is loosely based on BMI in some cases.

Some companies are already giving discounts to policy holders who have been vaccinated. So....

yes, and I don't totally agree with it. I'm a smoker and had to take a nicotine test when my life insurance premium
was up for renewal. Like it or not, that's the way it is.

Wait till you hear about life insurance.

My company (and i know other that do this as well) have a Tobacco surcharge. If you use any tobacco product (including vaping) there is a $200/month surcharge. Fair? i guess it all depends on your personal opinion. They also have a spousal surcharge of $150/month if you cover your spouse on insurance if they are offered insurance at their emplyment. So its not like adding a surcharge to unvaxxed is some kind of new contrivesial thing.
Sure, its easy to lie about these things ,but if they do a follow up, you will be fired.
Honestly, i am surprised my the aren't doing the surcharge for unvaxxed for us. I fully expected that this year.

Most insurances granted by the employer will not ding you for being obese and very few provide wellness programs (and I'm fully aware what goes into life insurance brandon8283..lol). I brought up BMI because, let's be honest, the same demographic that was filling the hospitals before COVID are the same ones filling it up today. Why worry about just their vaccination status when we have been in this long enough to know that there are other key drivers that are sending these people to the hospital? I mean, we are pushing to have the unvaccinated punished in everyway but don't even know the percentage of unvaccinated that are ending up in the hospitals compared to those who are asymptotic or experience mild symptoms. "Let's punish them all!" lol

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Well damnit…I may have COVID. Essentially I feel exactly like I did after my 2nd COVID series…significant headache, fatigue, body aches. Mild cough so far and otherwise we I’m doing well.

Same
Tested Monday (thought it was a cold), test came back positive last night
Those are my symptoms

 

[Eeyore]

Same
Tested Monday (thought it was a cold), test came back positive last night
Those are my symptoms

It was nice knowing you. You were one of my 219 favorite posters. You will be missed.

 

[bigdaddysaints]

Most insurances granted by the employer will not ding you for being obese and very few provide wellness programs (and I'm fully aware what goes into life insurance brandon8283..lol). I brought up BMI because, let's be honest, the same demographic that was filling the hospitals before COVID are the same ones filling it up today. Why worry about just their vaccination status when we have been in this long enough to know that there are other key drivers that are sending these people to the hospital? I mean, we are pushing to have the unvaccinated punished in everyway but don't even know the percentage of unvaccinated that are ending up in the hospitals compared to those who are asymptotic or experience mild symptoms. "Let's punish them all!" lol

Not my company, but the plant work at ( i am a contractor), The employees of the plant have to take a physical once a year with the on site Nurse. So if there are medical conditions that come up as a result of their physical, they have to have it taken care of or they will not be allowed to work. For example, high blood pressue. If they have high blood pressue, and they said they do not want to take blood pressure medicine, they will not be allowed to return to work until it is under control. They also have to take some kind of breathing test, if they do not pass it, they will not be able to return to work until it is corrected. Those exapmles may not make their premiums go up, but they can result in you not being able to return to work and if left unresolved can lead to you no longer employed.

 

[St. Widge]

Most insurances granted by the employer will not ding you for being obese and very few provide wellness programs (and I'm fully aware what goes into life insurance brandon8283..lol). I brought up BMI because, let's be honest, the same demographic that was filling the hospitals before COVID are the same ones filling it up today. Why worry about just their vaccination status when we have been in this long enough to know that there are other key drivers that are sending these people to the hospital? I mean, we are pushing to have the unvaccinated punished in everyway but don't even know the percentage of unvaccinated that are ending up in the hospitals compared to those who are asymptotic or experience mild symptoms. "Let's punish them all!" lol

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.

 

[jahsoul357]

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.

 

[DaveXA]

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.

I do believe there are stats clearly showing that an outsized percentage of unvaccinated individuals who get Covid end up being hospitalized. It may be more difficult to track now with so many more people getting infected with Omicron. With Delta, the differences were stark for those unvaccinated.

 

[St. Widge]

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.

I mean, the numbers certainly show that unvaccinated people wind up in the hospital at a much higher rate than vaccinated people and being in the hospital by nature costs a lot more than not being in the hospital. I don't think that's really in dispute and I can assure you that insurance companies have actuaries and epidemiologists who have run the numbers many times. So, if it's not the case, they won't raise premiums for the unvaccinated, they will just raise premiums for all of us spreading the cost across all of society.

How you react to that is a different question. But, I do think it's the case that insurance companies always use "risk" of higher medical costs and the major factor in setting insurance rates. I mean, the whole point of insurance is the spread the "risk" of health care costs over a larger portion of society in order to theoretically keep the costs down. That has not been the result for a lot of reasons (mostly because health insurance is tied to employment and the free market doesn't really work for a service for which there is basically an infinite demand no matter the cost), but that is why we do it and how they set premiums. Whether we should be using private insurance to take care of health care needs is another discussion entirely. But, if that is how we are going to do it, the result will be higher premiums for people at higher risks for higher health care costs.

It's not about "calling out" people who are unvaccinated, or calling out smokers or obese people for that matter. It's just a simple fact of the insurance industry that higher risk equals higher cost.

And smokers and obese people are already paying extra premiums for their increased risk. Not sure why unvaccinated people should be any different.

 

[sammymvpknight]

Same
Tested Monday (thought it was a cold), test came back positive last night
Those are my symptoms

Hope you feel better buddy. The headache has been legit

 

[Optimus Prime]

Two hundred seventy doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators signed an open letter calling on Spotify to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform following an episode of Joe Rogan's popular podcast, "The Joe Rogan Experience."

Rogan, who signed an estimated $100 million exclusivity deal with Spotify in 2020, recently interviewed Robert Malone, a medical doctor who claimed US citizens became "hypnotized" into wearing masks and getting COVID-19 vaccines due to a concept he called "mass formation psychosis."

Psychology experts said there is no evidence for Malone's claims, and the phrase "mass formation psychosis" does not exist in the American Psychological Association's Dictionary of Psychology.

The open letter from the medical community states that Spotify allowing "The Joe Rogan Experience" to air Malone's claims unchecked can "damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals." Rolling Stone first reported on the letter.

"This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this activity to thrive on its platform," the letter states.............

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[brandon8283]

Just got my third rapid test and a PCR. My wife is confirmed positive and I have fatigue, a headache, a mild cough, and a sore throat, but I’ve also got 2 negative rapids over the last two days.

If this comes back negative, I’ll just chalk it up to allergies or something, but it’s quite a coincidence if so.

Edit: Coincidence confirmed, I guess. Third negative!