Health Insurance Articles

How Smokers Can Lower Their Health Insurance Premiums

2010-08-12

It is common knowledge that smokers are universally in the high risk insurance category. The result is that insurance for smokers is more expensive than insurance for non smokers. Smokers can lower their health insurance premiums by quitting smoking, losing weight, and running.

Smokers pay a huge chunk of money out of pocket for endless packs of cigarettes and many of them also pay with their lives when they become seriously or perhaps even terminally ill from smoking. A health insurance provider will put an applicant in a high risk insurance category while generating a quote if the person smokes and is overweight. This is because the insurance company considers these people to be more likely to develop serious health problems as a result of their unhealthy lifestyle. Health insurance for smokers can sometimes be as much as forty percent higher than that of a non smoker.

By quitting smoking, this person not only has a chance to lower insurance rates in the long run by being in a healthier category, but also to save the money regularly spent on cigarettes. A heavy smoker can easily save several hundred dollars in cash per month by eliminating their smoking habit.

Another important factor which affects your health insurance premium is exercise. Improving your cardiovascular health will result in fewer diseases and a cleaner bill of health from your doctor, which can greatly lower your high insurance rates.

Obesity is another major cause of high insurance premiums. Losing weight can dramatically change the structure of your insurance plan. Cutting out alcoholic beverages and fast food meals and not making them a part of your regular diet can get you on the right track. Overweight smokers are paying their way into an early grave. Many insurance companies will reject these people all together and not even offer them a plan, not even one with an outrageously high premium.

And if all that's not bad enough for smokers, many employers are beginning to add surcharges to these people's monthly premiums to motivate them to think about quitting in the future. A tobacco surcharge for one two week pay period can be thirty five dollars or higher. Statistics compiled by the US Centers of Disease Control show that the amount of money in expenses resulting from treating smokers is now in the billions. The employers who have tacked on these additional charges for smokers will most likely remove them if the employee quits successfully. They feel that these extra measures are motivating enough for overweight smokers to get out there and start running their way to saving money and improving their long term health by quitting smoking for good.