Quote:
Originally Posted by bobabode
'How Healthy Are You? G.O.P. Bill Would Help Employers Find Out' NY Times
"A bill in Congress could make it harder for workers to keep employers from getting access to their personal medical and genetic information and raise the financial penalties for those who opt out of workplace wellness programs.
House Republicans are proposing legislation aimed at making it easier for companies to gather genetic data from workers and their families, including their children, when they collect it as part of a voluntary wellness program.
The bill, the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, introduced by Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, would also significantly increase the financial costs faced by someone who does not join a company wellness program.
The bill, which is under review by other House committees and has yet to be considered by the Senate, has already provoked fierce opposition from a wide range of consumer, health and privacy advocacy groups, as well as by House Democrats. Critics claim it undermines existing laws aimed at protecting an individual’s personal medical information from use by employer and others.
“We strongly oppose any legislation that would allow employers to inquire about employees’ private genetic information or medical information unrelated to their ability to do their jobs, and to impose draconian penalties on employees who choose to keep that information private,” a group of advocates, including AARP, the American Diabetes Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Epilepsy Foundation, the March of Dimes and others wrote in a letter this week to Ms. Foxx."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/h...T.nav=top-news
So much for the conservative mantra of keeping gubmint out of people's personal lives.  |
BS. The key to this entire article -and the bill - is buried in this single paragraph:
Employers would be generally governed by rules established by different agencies. The bill “is trying to streamline the regulatory scheme,” said Kathryn Wilber, a senior official at the American Benefits Council, which represents employers’ interests.
One of the keys to improving healthy outcomes is preventative care, patients getting info about their health, and employers (who pay for the coverage, by the way) able to provide incentives to employees for engaging in healthy behaviors. Large employers have the resources to manage these plans, which require a lot of health and legal expertise. Legal expertise - which doesn't come cheap - because the laws that govern how wellness plans operate are administered currently by different agencies, some of which had competing rules.
For example, under current ACA rules administered by the IRS (yes, the IRS currently has a HUGE rule in administering Obamacare), if an employer had a plan that encouraged wellness by offering lower premiums to employees who met certain health goals, the employer might face increased tax penalty risks under ACA Shared Responsibility rules.
So, to your point, the IRS (the "gubmint") is already injecting itself into the health care arena under the ACA.