Health advocates have been very focused on preventing discrimination in insurance rates related to health status, which is reflected in the reform law. But the insistence that health status or health behaviors cannot be used to set rates or other terms of coverage, along with wage nondiscrimination provisions in the disability discrimination laws, may have the effect of encouraging individuals to lead less healthy lives, since there are fewer consequences for doing so. A new paper from the National Bureau of Economics examines the overall likely effects from implementation of these anti-discrimination provisions. (NBER Paper) The paper used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to build a model to examine the impact, individually and together, of several health and wage non-discrimination policies. The analysis suggests that while each policy, if implemented in isolation, protects individuals from income loss and from a societal perspective, preserves overall spending; but when implemented jointly, there is a net negative impact that results from individuals losing incentives to be healthy and being protected from the consequences of unhealthy behavior. This likely also leads to more spending on health care by society. One provision of the reform law, the one which allows firms to penalize/incent employees for wellness behaviors, may ameliorate some of the effects in the private, employment-based health plan market. But that does nothing to help in the Medicaid and Medicare markets, which account for the bulk of health spending and where individuals can behave as irresponsibly as they want with no impact on their health costs.
✅ Subscribe via Email
About this Blog
Healthy Skeptic Podcast
Research
MedPAC 2019 Report to Congress
June 18, 2019
Headlines
Tags
Access
ACO
Care Management
Chronic Disease
Comparative Effectiveness
Consumer Directed Health
Consumers
Devices
Disease Management
Drugs
EHRs
Elder Care
End-of-Life Care
FDA
Financings
Genomics
Government
Health Care Costs
Health Care Quality
Health Care Reform
Health Insurance
Health Insurance Exchange
HIT
HomeCare
Hospital
Hospital Readmissions
Legislation
M&A
Malpractice
Meaningful Use
Medicaid
Medical Care
Medicare
Medicare Advantage
Mobile
Pay For Performance
Pharmaceutical
Physicians
Providers
Regulation
Repealing Reform
Telehealth
Telemedicine
Wellness and Prevention
Workplace
Related Posts
Commentary
March 31, 2023
Electric Vehicles Suck
Electric cars are more expensive to buy and operate than gas ones, and worse for…
Commentary
March 31, 2023
Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 202
Such a depressing world and I am not sure these research summaries are particularly elevating.
Commentary
March 31, 2023
And Then There is This…
Some supposed conservatives just spout conspiratorial nonsense that ensures that we lose, which is one…