Posted on 12/29/2011 4:54:10 PM PST by Born Conservative
Health care provider announces that tobacco users will not get jobs.
Smokers need not apply.
That’s the message Geisinger Health System is sending to future job applicants.
Starting Feb. 1, Geisinger will no longer hire applicants who use tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars and chewing or smokeless tobacco, the health system announced on Wednesday.
“Geisinger is joining dozens of hospitals and medical organizations across the country that are encouraging healthier living, decreasing absenteeism and reducing health care costs by adopting strict policies that make smoking a reason to turn away job applicants,” Richard Merkle, chief human resources officer, said in a press release.
Merkle said non-nicotine hiring policies are legal in 20 states, including Pennsylvania.
Current employees are not affected by the new policy. Geisinger isn’t the first local employer to implement a no-nicotine hiring policy.
Anthony Matrisciano, a spokesman for Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania, said the health insurance provider implemented such a policy at the beginning of this year. Blue Cross also prohibits employees from smoking within 200 feet of the building.
Wyoming Valley Health Care System and Community Medical Center in Scranton did not return calls inquiring about their smoking policies.
Amy Brayford, vice president of Human Resources for Geisinger, said saving money on health care costs related to smoking was not the impetus behind the hiring policy. “The driver for it is … improving the health of our employee population and creating a healthy environment for our patients and employees,” Brayford said.
Geisinger will spend nearly $100 million on employee health care and prescription drug coverage for its nearly 15,000 employees in 2012. There were more than 2,800 new hires in 2011.
While Geisinger hopes to see health care savings in the long run, Brayford said implementing the policy will cost Geisinger money because a nicotine test will be added to the routine pre-employment drug screenings.
During the hiring process, all applicants – including those seeking full- and part-time positions, flex, volunteers and students enrolled in Geisinger-based schools – will be tested.
The urine test will include screening for cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, snuff, nicotine patches, nicotine gum and cigars. The test only detects active nicotine users, not those exposed to second-hand smoke.
Applicants who test positive for nicotine can re-apply in six months; a list of smoking cessation resources will be provided.
Brayford said there are no plans to randomly test new employees – or any employees – for nicotine or any other drugs.
“You have to have a trust relationship with employees, that is very important to us,” said Lynn Miller, executive vice president and chief administrative officer, Geisinger Clinical Enterprise.
As a reward for healthier living and incentive for current employees who smoke to quit smoking, Geisinger will offer discounts on employee contributions to their health insurance plans for non-smokers beginning in 2013. Matrisciano said Blue Cross makes contributions to employees’ health care savings accounts when they achieve certain health milestones in the company’s wellness program, such good cholesterol and blood pressure levels and not smoking. The accounts can be used to pay for things such as co-pays on doctor visits and prescription drugs.
Miller said the decision to implement the no-nicotine hiring policy was well thought out, as was the health system’s decision to make all Geisinger campuses tobacco-free in 2007.
Marcy Marshall, Geisinger director of communications, public relations and marketing, said Geisinger has disciplined and even fired employees for smoking on campus.
The American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society and the World Health Organization all have similar hiring policies, and there are hospitals in Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas that do not hire smokers, Marshall said.
Julie Kissinger, spokeswoman for the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, said such policies are a growing trend, statewide and nationally.
Did this professor also tell you how many develop COPD? Smoking is nasty but I do not like the obvious discrimnation. I wonder how much homosexuals cost us annually with mental help issues/ sexually transmitted diseases, in addition to the rampant drug use in these communities.
False argument. No government agency is telling them to do this.
My first wife was an OBGYN Nurse there in the 1970’s. She was the only nurse who did not smoke in her group.
“I learned in grad school from a nursing professor that only 15% of smokers will actually develop cancer. Where he got that stat & if it’s true I don’t know but it’s interesting.”
Never mind cancer it is COPD that you have to worry about. When I hear of someone getting that I know why they got it SMOKING! Like my last idiot redneck neighbor who was ordered by her doctor to quit smoking because she was getting it but still took off her patch to smoke. I don’t feel any pity for her in fact when she has to haul an oxygen tank around 24/7 I will laugh in her face and say “you just had to smoke didn’t you?”
and raybbr you are correct is it private business let them hire who they don’t want!
You are darn right about COPD! See my post 44! I would dare to say it is worse to die of COPD than lung cancer. The last stages the person is on oxygen 24/7 and never really catches their breath. Constant labored breathing if you can imagine. Like an asthma attack that just never ends.
I met a high school friend not too long ago and found out that people I knew back then are already dead. One is dead of COPD! It bothers me that this person was only 35 when they died! I knew this person smoked clear back to Jr. High but for real. What a way to die! NOT! (As we said in school)
Makes economic sense — the cost to insure smokers is higher.
I wonder if smokers-only and non-smokers-only water fountains are up next?
Nanny State PING!
The #1 cause of COPD worldwide is unvented wood and coal fires. It also has causes other than smoking.
“Geisinger is joining dozens of hospitals and medical organizations across the country that are encouraging healthier living,decreasing absenteeism and reducing health care costs by adopting strict policies that make.....”
A hiring men only policy pfeferable..... OK, how would that be accepted? Heck, given the potential for the added costs of matertinity leave, the costs that children bring into health insurance, etc. Then it must be OK to hire only men....
Lets see.... You use correlation as your basis for logic and then hold up the UK’s NHS as an example.... I smell ozone.
” I do support businesses’ rights to choose who they serve.”
Says a proponent of gov’t banning tobacco use on privately owned property....
That may be so but in the case with my inbreed neighbor when the doctor tells you to quit because you are in the first stages of COPD then one can only suppose it is more than a “good idea”. I should also say this inbreed was/is an obama voter so we know who is and will be paying for her death long battle with COPD. So why should she care? She just takes of her nicotine patch that was “given” to her and smokes some more at the expense of all of us.
Freedom means just that.
Only one thing - If a company can base hiring decisions on smoking, can a company hire ONLY smokers and not hire nonsmokers ONLY because they don't smoke?
Do you have anything to back up that claim or are you just blowing smoke?
Sure they can hire who they want, but to single out one group and then call it logical is just pc bs. What about diabetics, or people who eat garbage, or people who only play video games and never exercise? What about women of childbearing age, or women with children? They miss more work than the average person, and they use insurance a lot. How about excluding those with any kind of pre-existing condition, or how about anyone who has any kind of mental illness? The list is endless, and once exhausted you will have zero employees.
What if I am a smoker and I don't need your insurance?
People who think that it is okay for businesses to dictate what employees do while not at work are no better than commies.
Businesses can make all the rules they want, and as long as people agree to them, fine. What I do not understand is why so many conservatives think it is okay for Boss Man to have his nose in any aspect of your personal life.
Good point that homosexual behavior is one of the risky behaviors which spread disease. But since gays are a politically correct, officially approved aggrieved group, they will get a pass under such review of one’s lifestyle and one’s health risks.
Sure. Why not? Their insurance bills will skyrocket but that's their choice.
Huh? That wasn't my quote. It got missed in the italics.
Other than middle school girls and elderly Chinese, does anyone smoke much anymore?
Hoo Boy, talk about nasty, because that's what it would become.
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