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Share your quitting journey

Health Insurance Change

TW517
Member
1 4 99

My health insurer (Optima) has always required me to do a Biometric Screening every year where they would basically just take your vitals and ask you some questions.  A few years ago they started giving a premium "discount" if you were a non-smoker, and another if your Body Mass Index was under 25.  Of course, if you smoke or are overweight, you think of this as a penalty, not a discount.

Anyway, I always got both "discounts".  I've always been underweight so my weight/height ratio is what it is.  But the test for smoking was a CO2 breathalyzer.  I could easily beat this by just going on nicotine lozenges for 24 hours prior to my test, then literally lighting up as I walked to my car from the Biometric Screening.  No more.  They are going to a blood test now for nicotine.  So even if you haven't lit up in years, but continue a NRT, you lose.  Seems unfair.

It makes me wonder if it was just too many people like me gaming the system that brought about the change?  Or is there some new research suggesting that NRT's aren't successful enough for an insurer to consider you "quit"?  Thankfully, I decided to go without NRT's on this quit.

53 DOF for me.  Will be 70-80 by the time I do my test.  Hopefully I won't have any lingering nicotine in my body by then.

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