State employees will have to pay higher premiums if they smoke or are very overweight. This effort to personalize costs of chronic conditions instead of socializing them has been called a fat tax by some, but it could avert a real fat tax or sugar tax or soda tax that everyone would pay. Employers across the country, including other state governments have taken similar action.
Claudia Muse, executive director of the WNC Health Coalition, which represents self-insured employers, told the Asheville Citizen-Times, “The only thing that works is incentives.” Others in the article agreed that people change their behavior based on the relative cost. Destiny Mattsson, wellness coordinator for Asheville guessed people were half as successful when the city started paying for their Weight Watchers memberships: ?There was not any harm out of their own pockets so they didn’t try very hard.”
Kudos to reporter Nanci Bompey for getting the facts right on this story.
