Could health insurers soon treat those who drink alcohol regularly the same way they treat tobacco users?
Currently, health insurance companies are allowed to charge higher monthly premium rates to customers who use tobacco products, whether smoking or chewing, than what they charge non-tobacco users.
Now thanks to a new prospective warning from the U.S. Surgeon General, people who drink may be subject to the same rate hikes.
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The warning that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is looking to issue links drinking alcohol to greater cancer risks.
“For an employer, having the surgeon general – who is essentially the nation’s arbiter of health – say this about alcohol use gives some credibility behind the argument that we should be reducing alcohol,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at nonprofit health organization KFF, told USA Today.
Though while Levitt said, “The surgeon general’s report potentially accelerates the conversation over the health effects of drinking,” he also admitted that the stigma that smoking now holds in society hasn’t transferred over to drinking.
“We’re not there on alcohol,” he said, “Our approach to smoking has been decades in the making, building the scientific evidence that smoking causes cancer and other diseases and putting in place widespread efforts to restrict smoking.”
“Generally, you can’t smoke in a restaurant or in workplaces, on public transportation anymore. That's obviously not true for drinking,” Levitt added.
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