Publisher's Point Of View
Robert Allan Hooftallen

With Democrats now in control of Congress, we're already hearing the call again for national health care.

If national health care coverage is ever a reality, so much is going to change in the American landscape. And while employers that pay huge premiums to insure their employees stand to save a great deal of money, I believe they also stand to lose employees.

Nine out of 10 Americans still view health care benefits as being the key reason to take a job. We all know people who keep their job because the insurance benefits are so critical for them and their family.

Would you continue doing what you do for a living if you didn't need your employers' health insurance? What kind of static will that create in our economy if those people start walking off their jobs?

While that's a minor situation that will develop, it's one that has to be considered.

Even if universal health care does not become a reality, the health coverage scene is going to change dramatically over the next decade.

Employers are seeing what people in the health care field have known for years: people who make healthy choices about their lifestyles have far fewer health problems.

And so employers are starting to look at ways to make those who make unhealthy lifestyle choices pitch in more for their health care benefits.

Tobacco users are the first targets. People severely overweight will be next.

Twenty percent of the nation's large employers have begun giving premium discounts for health care coverage to employees who don't smoke; actually, in many cases, premiums have increased for smokers and stayed the same for nonsmokers.

One of the area's largest employers, GKN in Emporium, recently announced that it would follow suit. Beginning Jan. 1 tobacco users will pay more for their health care coverage.

And that has a lot of people extremely unhappy.

From the outside looking in, and since I am a lifelong nonsmoker who lost his father (a heavy smoker) to lung cancer, I think what GKN is doing is a good thing, not because I want to see people with tobacco habits penalized, but rather because I'd like to see them kick the habit.

GKN and the other employers who are taking this step are offering a number of programs and products to help people kick that habit, something they clearly don't have to do.

The majority of the people with whom I've spoken regarding this new policy have been tobacco users. And most of them have been livid about the proposal. They see the policy as being an infringement on their personal rights.

They're wrong.

Companies force people to quit using tobacco, but they have every right to control how much individuals pay into a group health care program that they sponsor. And that's what they are doing.

At the end of the day, every one will come to his own terms with the policy: some will quit using tobacco; some will see it as another tax on their habit and continue on as they are; some may seek new employment.

What excites me is that first group- the people who will take the companies up on their offers to help them kick the habit.

This month is lung cancer awareness month and I sure wish National Fuel Gas would have had such a policy in the 1970 and 1980s. It could very well have saved my dad's life.

I long for the day, and I think I'll see it in my lifetime, when every one sees smoking for what it really is: a costly habit that kills way too many people before their time.