Either the health care pool is shared or it’s not, and I say this as a non-smoker.
What about gay men? Their lifestyle poses a great health risk. Heavy people. Daredevils. People with unsafe cars. People who live in bad neighborhoods. Black people have higher incidents of high blood pressure and diabetes. Women cost more.
When you get right down to it, isn’t it cost effective to hire young straight white males? Float that at the next egghead meeting.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors will vote this month on whether to refuse to hire smokers and put a major pinch on the pocketbooks of those who already work there.
The two-part policy would take effect in July 2015. It prevents the county from hiring smokers and slaps a 30 percent health insurance surcharge on employees who do smoke or use other tobacco products.
County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote on the ban during their Dec. 16 meeting.
County health officials predict the new policy could save the county more than $1 million annually on health-care costs as tobacco-users retire and are replaced with healthier workers, according to a memo issued by Huckleberry.
“Our taxpayers pay for our health insurance because we are self-insured,” Huckelberry said in an interview. “Anything we can do to reduce the cost is beneficial.”
ht/ finai
Great point Fur.
I believe that 44 yr old, 980 pound guy who recently died was a non-smoker.
I hate smokers. They are pigs. They chain smoke, and throw their filthy butts out their car window, anywhere..except into their own trash.
Then, they sue the cig companies while on their death bed, to shove the last butt up our collective ass.
FU, smokers.
I saw the picture of oblow and thought you meant the other kind of smokers.
Smokers Suck what’s your vice? I smoke and I hate fat people. They are often lazy and move to slowly to do anything properly. I also don’t like to listen to them breathe heavily when too much effort is required to blink.
I hate liberals.They are fascists.They chain folks,
and throw their filthy regulations on everyone..except themselves.
Then they tax companies until the country is on it’s deathbed,
to shove that last fist up our collective ass.
FU liberals
(There,I fixed it for you,you’re welcome!)
Cool…..LGBT Marlboro Man….who knew?
I used to smoke, I loved it, it was very relaxing.
I quit in ’75 and I can’t stand to be around a smoker today.
But, I do respect their right to smoke as long as it doesn’t interfere with us non-smokers.
I can see both sides of the issue.
Wow smokers suck, aren’t you the Nazi. It’s a free country bro. Well maybe not anymore.
This seems out of character for Pima County. They are currently auctioning all their confiscated firearms to FFLs. I’m registered for the auction but Im a Cali FFL and am worried about buying something illegal in Cali. So we won’t bid.
@FU Smokers Suck: In addition to BFH’s thoughts… and first responders and medical personnel come into contact with patients with: Hep B/C, Aids, TB, Ebola, MRSA, other Blood borne pathogens, etc… and then go home to their families. I’ll take the smoker any day. FU (and no one in my family smokes).
Oh, and you’re a greater risk because you own a firearm. You might shoot yourself or your mouth off.
Yep, “Bad_Brad”, smokers do suck as do loud-mouthed pussies like you. Kiss my ass, you virtual wimp.
And Gina, fat people suck too.
A good time to repost this classic, about how all this shit turns everyone else not into their brother’s keeper, but their brother’s minder. A huge difference. http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=1224
“Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband. Fine by me. And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above. That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox. Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences.”
P.S. @ Smokers Suck, sanctimony kills, IYKWIM.
Smokers suck. Honestly ass hole, that is the Lefts Narrative. You should drift.
“Bad_Brad”, you are all font and no fight. Stick with your bottle and computer screen.
C.S. Lewis wrote this for folks like Smokers Suck, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
Jeremy’s back!
Who is this ass hole? Obviously a Troll. Probably a wheel chair bound 99 percenter, or what ever percent they think they are up to now.
Brad,
Pay no mind to the cowardly SmegmaSuck dude. He’s gotta pick on somebody every night to ease the pain of his small dick. He just started on you tonight, but tomorrow it’ll be somebody else.
i thought a great t shirt would be “don’t hate me for smoking. i have aids.”
Smokers Suck, how many skin flutes you smoke per day? Merry Christmas and God bless.
Anybody want a big ol’ greasy dab?
3….2….1….I’m going to Rag Doll your ass
Gotta be the same lib ass hole.
If you do dabs, I guess you’re really not smoking. At least that’s the way it was explained to me. But damn, that dude sure did cough.
Yeah, you’ve got the “personal choice” to smoke. However, when you get into an insurance pool of other people who don’t, and they get stuck paying for the health problems that result from your very unhealthy habit, then it’s just a tad unfair to them. Buy your own insurance, or pay for your own healthcare. Otherwise, don’t piss and moan when companies don’t want to finance you on your road to self-destruction.
And, oh yeah. Smoking stinks and so do smokers. *sticks out tongue*
My dad quit smoking at 52 in 1970. I was 16.
He had a small heart attack, which had he not smoked he would have been fine.
But… 3 days in the hospital and he died. His lungs just could not oxygenate the blood enough.
So I’m not a big fan of smoking.
WOW!
Smokers bringing the world down?
Really?
Indoctrination is a helluva drug!
While I thoroughly agree smoking isn’t going to earn you a 27.9 decal or whatever. I cannot be so crass as to be so critical how people choose to while away their days.
But then again, I’m not that far up my own ass.
JannyMae, And that’s why anybody that rides a Harley, Skateboard, or Bicycle should be required to wear head protection. That’s why you NEED to wear your seat belts. That’s why you are required to be this tall to ride this ride. Oh yeah, no riding in the back of a pick up truck bed. It’s all the same shit.
I say we put a pole (smokers) tax on Obozo.
@ Smoker’s Suck
You must be Larry. Haven’t seen you in a while. Are you now off your meds? Perhaps you should get back on them.
No it wasn’t me and I smoke
@ JannyMae- The idea of group insurance is risk pooling. You don’t want to be pooled, go buy your own policy. As long as smoking is legal it can’t (shouldn’t) be a segregated risk behavior. But, then again, neither should flying or SCUBA diving, which will geometrically increase your life insurance premium or disqualify you altogether. So, you’re right: life’s not fair.
Huck Chuckleberry? Really?
I don’t care for cigarette smoke, at all, but I can always move up wind. What I CANNOT TOLERATE, is LEFTIST STINK!!! And in this part of AZ, you can’t get away from it.
Chuck Huckleberry is a HUGE Leftist canker on the ass of So. AZ who has been foisting his Marxist crap on Pima County for years. And they don’t seem to mind as the city clowncil & school board are so close to being 100% Dhimmicrat, Weepubicans should be listed as an endangered species..
Tucson (Pima county) has one of the most corrupt & “efficient” vote manipulating schemes in the country (vote by mail!), and Chuckleberry is the chief operator. The area is such a huge cesspool of commie idiots, they Gerrymandered the city to make TWO left leaning congressional districts. It’s so bad, many RINO’s surrendered altogether and switched parties.
Tucson – acts like Berkley, looks like Detroit, stinks like Mexico. WTH do you do with a place where Che T-shirts are best sellers, and they have a statue of Pancho Villa in the downtown?
Smoke. Don’t smoke.
You’re gonna die, either way.
Fat. Skinny.
You’re gonna die, either way.
Sanctimonious. Non-sanctimonious.
You’re gonna die, either way.
Stay fit, eat healthy, don’t smoke.
Die anyway…
I do believe that those who engage in high risk behaviors should be footing the bill for it themselves.
ps. Smokers stink, literally, which is why I spend as little time around them as I possibly can.
The issue I have is that I have a bus stop right next to my residence, smokers litter my property with their cigarette butts and also shove the packages deep into the topiary and I have to dig their garbage out every weekend when I work in my yard.
I was off work for 14 months a few years back and could stand in my back yard, behind a six foot wood fence and watch the goings on and although 95% of the litter was cigarette related the remaining 5% that was not cigarette butts and packaging material was also thrown on my property by people who smoke.
That is the problem I have with people who smoke cigarettes.
Minnesota is now in the process of banning those e-cigarettes. This whole smoking war is fake. It’s not about who smokes or not or whether it’s hurting anyone. It’s about the power people have to control you and what you do.
A few of the reasons given for considering the e-cig ban:
– It confuses kids (one Mom said her daughter saw someone using an e-cig and thought it was real and had a meltdown because smoking is baaaaad)
-“They” say that not enough studies have been done to know if e-cigs are safe (bullshit)
– Kids can put pot in them
Mental. Minnesota is spiraling down the mental vortex of stupidity.