Employers Get Tough
Once a year, employees of the Swiss Village Retirement Community in Berne, Ind., have a checkup that will help determine how much they pay for health coverage. Those who don’t smoke, aren’t obese and whose blood pressure and cholesterol fall below specific levels get to shave as much as $2,000 off their annual health insurance deductibles.
Julie Appleby’s article in USA Today.
Ouch.
It’s not a large group, only 230 employees, so by random chance some years they won’t have people with half-million dollar-plus treatments, and other years they will (hence a 14 percent premium increase this year).
This notion is somewhat controversial. However, whenever I have traveled to speak at conferences and groups, attendees from the Left and Right all seem to agree that people should probably pay more for unhealthy behaviors.
I personally don’t have a problem with charging people more who smoke, are overweight, don’t control their blood pressure or watch their cholesterol. If your expected medical costs are higher, then you should pay more if these health metrics are things you have control over.
Moreover, employers don’t bear the cost of employee health plans – workers do. The company health plan is merely a form of employee compensation. Why should one employee have to subsidize the cost for unhealthy lifestyle habits of another employee?
And if one has hypertension or high cholesterol that does not respond well to treatment, this is charging people for things that are beyond their control.
In short, a fine example of a public health fad (everyone can modify cholesterol or high blood pressure and not to do so, regardless of side effects, is “unhealthy”) running ahead of understanding. And it casts another light entirely on guaranteed issue–yes you get health insurance, but if you are an underwriting risk because you’ve developed a disease, you get your premiums adjusted every single year.
This is supposed to be an improvement over one-time individual market underwriting at policy issue?