Should Safeway charge it's cashiers more for insurance than its managers?

Studies have shown that poor people are less healthy than rich people and poor people will cost the company more money.

It's definitely not fair, but I can't say whether or not it's a form of discrimination. It could be and, in which case, it could end up having legal ramifications for the grocer. If employees with a BMI of over 30 feel at all discriminated against or poorly treated, believe me, Safeway will soon be on the business end of a nasty set of lawsuits.

My thoughts:
Well, I'm thin (I mean thin - no more than 105 lbs soaking wet kind of thin) and I can tell you that being thin doesn't mean that I require less care than heavier people and it certainly doesn't mean I deserve cheaper health care. Before I lost my health insurance, my doctors were telling me I needed to gain weight, which proved easier said than done when all of my health conditions (yes, health conditions that I have to regulate daily) coupled with my metabolism were taken into consideration. I wouldn't mind the discount, of course, BUT I don't think it's fair *at all* to award me with a discount solely based on my BMI and I wouldn't subscribe to any health plan from a company that was so clearly judgmental regardless of the discount they offered. If nothing else, it's a matter of decent morals to me.

I *might* consider a company that implemented a discount-type of reward for *all* patients who show (and prove) continual improvements in their health and habits from year-to-year (note that it would take at least a year to even get the first discount from a physical that showed marked improvement in health from the initial physical a year earlier). This would encourage all patients to work toward taking better care of themselves, not only for the financial benefits their insurance companies would provide, but mainly for their own personal health as well. Unfortunately - to my knowledge - a health care program like this does not yet exist.

As for the CEO's statements (regarding not pulling sugary foods from the shelves and then turning around and only offering discounted premiums to thin employees)....Yes, it is extremely hypocritical of the CEO and the company. Although, the majority of the grocer's business does not come from its employees, but rather its community members. And if the employees feel strongly enough about the matter, they also have a choice: whether or not to spend their money at their place of business. They can easily give their hard-earned money to any number of other grocers.

thin peolple are just as healthy as fat people. if somebody is thin because they dont eat its their fault for being thin. if one is thin even if they eat it just the way they are built but are just as healthy. so there should be no special treatment because either way it nobody's fault let alone the company they are in.

I think it it, because thin doesn't always mean healthy. I'm thin, but I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, so if I would have a discounted health insurance, my insurance would not save money on me.

Only if it's balanced out by pension premiums reflecting the fact that although heavier people might be of greater risk for things like heart attack etc. when younger, if they can get through that and on to retirement, in fact they live longer than skinny people, who can wither away into wracks of bones if they're not extremely diligent about maintaining a healthy diet with activity when they're older.

It might be handy to be thin when young, but that tendancy to not eat so much can seriously backfire as an elder, when the inclination extends to hardly eating anything at all.

My maternal great grandfather was a portly 230 pounds, and he enjoyed his beer, and he would periodically smoke a pipe, and he lived to 96, and was on his own feet all the way right to the end.

My paternal great grandfather, on the other hand, was a wiry whipper-snapper when he was young, and even had a rep for being a real hell-cat in the logging camp boxer's league, but when he got older, he just got thinner, and thinner, until towards the end he wouldn't eat anything other than bread and potatoes, and he spent his last few months as a wrack of bones gazing at the cieling from a bed.