Mitch McConnell took to the Senate Floor earlier today to go
after Democrats for something I've mentioned a
number of
times -- that President Obama has touted a health and
wellness program run by Safeway that provides financial
incentives for employees to maintain healthy behavior, but the
Democratic health care bill would actually kill it.
McConnell said:
"In fact, during a speech last week to the American Medical
Association, the President discussed one particular wellness
and prevention program at the Safeway supermarket chain, which
has dramatically cut that company’s health care costs and
employee premiums. The President even said he’d be open to
helping businesses across the nation adopt wellness and
prevention programs like the Safeway plan....
"And yet the bill that Democrats are now trying to rush
through the Senate would actually ban this program from being
copied and implemented by other companies....
"The Safeway program has proven so successful that the company
wants to increase its incentives for rewarding health behavior.
Unfortunately, current laws restrict it from doing so. But
instead of offering legislation that corrects the problem, the
so-called reform bill being pushed through the HELP Committee
would do the opposite: it would actually prohibit companies
from implementing the Safeway program.
"Let me repeat that: The bill that’s currently being
pushed through the HELP Committee doesn’t let companies
consider an employee’s health status when providing insurance —
meaning employers would be banned from rewarding healthy
behavior like Safeway does and offering lower premiums to
workers who manage their chronic diseases, eliminate high-risk
behaviors like smoking, or lose weight. In other words, it
would prohibit companies from implementing programs that have
been proven to cut health care costs. I thought that was the
point of health reform…
There is a danger that this argument gets too far into the weeds,
but it's an important one to make because it demonstrates the
fundamental dishonesty in Obama's declaration that he wants to
pursue a non-ideological approach to health care based around
what works. Here we have a program that everybody sees as a
success, and yet it will be outlawed if Democrats get what they
want because liberals believe that fairness is a higher goal. In
this case, they think it's unfair for smokers or overweight
Americans to pay more for their health insurance, even though
they incur higher health costs, even though the costs get shifted
on to the healthy, even though charging them more would encourage
them to lose weight and quit smoking, and even though it would
save the system money.
…for 22% of total revenues in 2008. It is marketed and sold as a natural way to lose weight and has been shown to be 76.9% effective in clinical trials. Active ingredients McConnell Hammers on Dems’ Safeway Contradiction - Spectator.org Mitch McConnell took to the Senate Floor earlier today to go after Democrats for something I’ve mentioned a number of times — that President Obama has touted a…
…percentage was 27%. I could only do a couple of push-ups and could barely run a few minutes without getting tired. My diet was abysmal, consisting of a lot of greasy fast McConnell Hammers on Dems’ Safeway Contradiction - Spectator.org Mitch McConnell took to the Senate Floor earlier today to go after Democrats for something I’ve mentioned a number of times — that President Obama has touted a…
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