Legislating Wellness
As our legislators decide what to do about health care reform (confession: I started this blog a few weeks ago when there was an end game in site for something passing…but life has changed as we know it in the last couple of weeks), Senators Tom Carper of Delaware (D) and John Ensign of Nevada (R) recently drafted an amendment to the Senate’s most recent version of the health care reform bill that would allow companies to offer workers insurance discounts for making healthy lifestyle choices.

Should that bill or any bill ever see the light of day, under the provision companies can offer an insurance discount to a healthy worker equal to no more than 30 percent of the total cost of that worker’s plan. The worker could qualify for the discount by meeting certain health milestones, like maintaining a certain BMI, reaching a cholesterol level or giving up smoking. The provision leaves it to the employer to decide how the 30 percent discount should be implemented. (Should be said that this is not entirely new. Current policies allow for discounts  of up to 20 percent for workers who take better care of themselves.)

Health advocacy organizations such as the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network and many more organizations had urged lawmakers to do away with the amendment as the Senate and House health care bills were being merged. The groups argued tying financial incentives to a workers’ health status could increase insurance costs for unhealthy employees who may suffer from chronic conditions, perhaps pricing them out of the market and undermining the goal of health care reform.
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