Help Wanted. No Smokers Need Apply (Ep. 123)
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(Photo: Julie Bocchino)
Our latest podcast is called “Help Wanted. No Smokers Need Apply.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript.)
In many states (21, to be precise), it is perfectly legal for an employer to not hire someone who smokes. This might seem understandable, given that health insurance is often coupled to employment, and since healthcare risks and costs are increasingly pooled. And so: if employers can exclude smokers, should they also be able to weed out junk-food lovers or motorcyclists — or perhaps anyone who wants to have a baby?
That question is the thrust of this podcast, which features a conversation with Zeke Emanuel. He is a Penn medical professor/bioethicist; a former White House healthcare adviser; the author of Healthcare, Guaranteed
(and Brothers Emanuel
, about growing up with Rahm and Ari); and a coauthor, with Harald Schmidt and Kristin Voigt, of a recent New England Journal of Medical article (previewed on our blog) called “The Ethics of Not Hiring Smokers”:
EMANUEL: I’m a cancer doctor. I find smoking disgusting. I find smoking horrible. I wish that everyone who did it could quit. But I also recognize that it’s not voluntary, that most people start before they’re adults and that it’s incredibly hard to quit once you’ve started.”
Emanuel also appeared in an earlier Freakonomics Radio podcast, “Is the Obesity Epidemic for Real?” In this podcast, he argues that not hiring smokers lies somewhere between discriminatory and unethical. Give us a listen and let us know your thoughts.
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