Smoking is an easy target for lowering healthcare costs

These statistics from the CDC really paint the picture…

– Smoking is estimated to cost businesses over $170 billion a year.
– Every smoker on the payroll is costing the company more than $3,500 annually in increased health insurance premiums, increased absenteeism and lost productivity.
– Smokers take, on average, 6.5 more sick leave days a year than non-smokers.
– Smokers cost 35-50% more to insure, a figure which is increasing rapidly as healthcare costs spiral.
– On average, up to 40 minutes of the working day is spent on smoking breaks, which equates to 21 working days of lost productivity per smoker per year.

This is certainly why you see companies trying to avoid hiring smokers. For those that show pictures of them smoking on Facebook or in other social media channels, this might be a risk (although I’m not sure if it’s legal to use that).