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Jun 29

Health Plan Costs For Obese And Smokers Could Rise After Supreme Court Ruling

A little-discussed ramification of Thursday’s landmark Supreme Court health care decision is that it could make things harder for the nation’s heaviest workers.

The decision upholding the Affordable Care Act has cleared the way for a planned increase in the penalties that employers can impose on workers who don’t participate in company wellness programs and, in some cases, who don’t meet certain health targets such as an appropriate body mass index. In other words, the obese may wind up paying penalties for being overweight. Smokers, too, may get hit.

The language of the penalties under corporate health plans is often written in terms of “incentives,” where the “absence of a surcharge” on health care premiums is an “incentive” for employees to agree to take part in a wellness program. Read another way, that means workers who don’t agree to participate have to pay a fine. President Barack Obama’s health care law raises the limit on how high a penalty employers can set to “incentivize” participation in the programs, which typically consist of health risk assessments (often including blood tests), fitness classes, disease management plans and nutrition education.