However, let’s suppose for a minute that you run your own business. That means you don’t have medical insurance, and no one really wants to wait around for the government to figure out what it’s doing in terms of public health care and such.

So, you go out to look for medical insurance. You get sticker shock when you see that it will cost as much as ten times or more what you’d pay as part of a group plan for an employer.

Then, you see what it costs because you smoke. You nearly have a heart attack right then and there. Talk about sticker shock.

So, it’s time to quit smoking. How do you do it? Well, there are a ton of ways you can quit, but they all start with you wanting to do it. You’ve got to want to quit if you’re going to make it happen.

Here are some of the most common ways people quit smoking:

• Nicotine replacement. It’s the nicotine in your cigarettes that makes you want them. There are a number of replacements to make quitting easier, including the nicotine patch, nicotine gum and even nicotine inhalers.
• Medications. There are a number of medications, including Chantix, that can help you with quitting smoking. Not all of these work for everyone, and you’ll need to get a prescription from a doctor to try it.
• Cigarette replacements. New electronic cigarettes offer a way to get the feel of smoking without actually smoking. These are new enough that their effectiveness isn’t yet certain.
• Hypnotism. Some folks believe in it, some don’t. There are also subliminal recordings that claim to help. Give ‘em a try, if you’re into that sort of thing.
• Just quit cold turkey. This is the old fashioned way. It’s harder, but it’s also the way most folks quit.

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Smoking is one of the largest contributors to the rising cost of medical insurance, as a matter of fact. More than $75 billion in excess medical expenditures each year are related to smoking. In addition, there is the cost of lost productivity and the roughly 400,000 deaths from smoking-related illnesses.

While this phenomenon is a general one, creating more health needs and therefore more need for covered services, there are also specific instances in which smoking can directly increase the cost of medical insurance for an individual. Some companies, including both private and public companies, are making the decision to require tobacco users to pay higher premiums. Other companies are offering a no-smoking discount on medical insurance, although this still really just amounts to an increased fee for smokers.

The idea behind this raising of rates is, obviously, to get smokers to quit smoking, reduce the costs of medical insurance and keep employees healthy. There’s a cost benefit for employers, too. One study done in 1992 suggested that nonsmoking employees saved an average of $462 for the company on a yearly basis, in addition to less sick time. Another study demonstrated that smokers have, on average, about a third higher rate of absenteeism than nonsmokers.

Another trend, and one that may in the long run be more effective than raising medical insurance premiums for smokers, is smoking cessation programs. Work-based smoking cessation programs have shown a high rate of success. Some companies will subsidize smoking cessation medications, while others will offer other types of incentives for being in such a program.

Then are other ways to encourage someone to quit smoking, beyond just raising the cost of medical insurance or offering rewards at work. You can take the example of Speck, the son of John Mellencamp. Speck has started a campaign to convince the rocker to quit smoking. Mellencamp has agreed to quit smoking if one million people join the Facebook Group created by Speck. The Facebook group is called: “1,000,000 to join, my dad john mellencamp will quit smoking.”

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