Smokers Would Pay More For Insurance, Non-Smokers Less, if Md. Allows Tobacco-Use Surcharge

Low-income Marylanders could see the greatest impact if the legislature updates the state health exchange’s online platform to allow insurance carriers to add surcharges to tobacco users’ premiums, state insurance officials said Tuesday. “There is no question that people who are at the lower levels of income, people who have other challenges that they’re dealing with, people who have oftentimes been least able to stop smoking, are the people who will have the greatest impact with respect to a surcharge because that [money] means more to them,” Maryland Insurance Administration Commissioner Kathleen A. Birrane told the House Health and Government Operations Committee at an afternoon hearing.