If you want a good example of the wide gulf between Democrats’
rhetoric on health care and the real world implications of their
policy proposals, you need look no further than the issue of
prevention and wellness.
President Obama and Democrats have made cost control central to
their health care push, and a key part of their argument has been
that we have to encourage people to live healthier lives so they
don’t get sick in the first place.
Grocery chain Safeway has been one of the leading success stories
on this front, because it’s been able to keep its health care
costs flat by providing financial incentives for its employees to
be healthier. Obama met with the company’s CEO, Steve Burd, last
month and
praised the company as being among “the best practitioners of
prevention and wellness…in the private sector.”
Under the Safeway program, employees pay less for their health
care if they refrain from smoking as well as maintain a
reasonable weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol level. This
has encouraged workers to drop their bad habits so that they can
save money, and as a result Safeway boasts lower obesity and
smoking rates than the national average. Burd described the
program before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee on Thursday – and received praise from both Republicans
and Democrats.
But there’s one big problem. The current Democratic health care
legislation that emerged from the committee this week contains a
provision known as “community rating,” a popular feature of many
liberal proposals, which bars insurers from charging people
higher premiums based on a person’s health status. So in other
words, if you’re a marathon runner with ideal health habits, you
have to pay more or less the same for health insurance as an
obese smoker with heart disease.
When asked in his testimony, Burd acknowledged that if community
rating were adopted, Safeway would be unable to continue its
program – the very program that Obama and Democrats are holding
up as a model for the nation as to how to reduce costs by
providing incentives for healthy living.
