Whether it’s the politicization of holidays, infringements on religious liberty, programs seeking to get Americans to inform on one another, or the weaponization of the bureaucracy such as the IRS targeting program, a steady feature of the Obama years has been the attempts to erode civil society. The latest example has to do with ObamaCare.
The unpopular health-care reform law contained in it rules that increased businesses’ ability to incentivize better health among their employees. Since ObamaCare contained an insurance mandate, it also included allowances for companies to try to recoup some of the health-care costs they were now shouldering. Those rules went into effect in 2014, and their effects–while predictable–are starting to show.
Reuters notes that the workplace “wellness” programs, which “big business lobbied for,” can take the form of “either rewards or penalties.” This is ostensibly to defray health costs if employees opt out of workplace wellness programs. Apparently about a quarter of companies are choosing penalties. And, of course, they’re not stopping at the wellness programs:
For some companies, however, just signing up for a wellness program isn’t enough. They’re linking financial incentives to specific goals such as losing weight, reducing cholesterol, or keeping blood glucose under control. The number of businesses imposing such outcomes-based wellness plans is expected to double this year to 46 percent, the survey found.
“Wellness-or-else is the trend,” said workplace consultant Jon Robison of Salveo Partners.
Incentives typically take the form of cash payments or reductions in employee deductibles. Penalties include higher premiums and lower company contributions for out-of-pocket health costs.
Financial incentives, many companies say, are critical to encouraging workers to participate in wellness programs, which executives believe will save money in the long run.
“Employers are carrying a major burden of healthcare in this country and are trying to do the right thing,” said Stephanie Pronk, a vice president at benefits consultant Aon Hewitt. “They need to improve employees’ health so they can lead productive lives at home and at work, but also to control their healthcare costs.”
Could there possibly be a better motto not just for ObamaCare but for liberal nanny staters’ agenda overall than “Wellness-or-else”? At one time the great fear was that ObamaCare would put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor. That is indeed what happened, but now they’ve added to it: before you can get to the bureaucrat that is between you and your doctor, you first must be examined by your supervisor at work. Then you can see your bureaucrat. Then you can see your doctor–if you’re lucky, anyway, since ObamaCare also took away many patients’ access to their doctors or put Americans on Medicaid which had nonexistent doctors.
But it’s not just about the intrusive nature of all this. There are two more major problems with it. First, it may be flatly illegal:
Last year, Honeywell was sued over its wellness program by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC argued that requiring workers to answer personal questions in the health questionnaire – including if they ever feel depressed and whether they’ve been diagnosed with a long list of illnesses – can violate federal law if they involve disabilities, as these examples do. And, if answering is not voluntary.
“Financial incentives and disincentives may make the programs involuntary” and thus illegal, said Chris Kuczynski, an assistant legal counsel at the EEOC.
And second, it isn’t saving money on health expenditures so much as lining the pockets of those seeking to impose the penalties:
But there is almost no evidence that workplace wellness programs significantly reduce those costs. That’s why the financial penalties are so important to companies, critics and researchers say. They boost corporate profits by levying fines that outweigh any savings from wellness programs.
“There seems little question that you can make wellness programs save money with high enough penalties that essentially shift more healthcare costs to workers,” said health policy expert Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Exactly. The program, as currently set up, is not saving on overall health spending. It’s merely shifting that cost even more onto patients. It should be obvious at this point why businesses lobbied for these obnoxious Orwellian scams.
Health spending was supposed to be a major target of ObamaCare’s reforms. And maybe it will, somehow, still get there. But right now, what’s clear is that the law as written is designed to reward big business by fleecing the taxpayer. That was always the plan, but incentivizing company executives to decide their employees are overweight and then penalize them for it is a particularly cruel way to go about it.