In a post on The Health Care Blog, Stephen Soumerai, ScD, Professor of Population Medicine and Director of the Drug Policy Research Group discusses how this year, under the Affordable Care Act, companies can assess 30% surcharges to employees with medical conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. The supposed rationale is to use financial penalties as incentives to change unhealthy behaviors, thus reducing health care costs, but no evidence exists to support such benefits and the charges may do more harm than good.
Dr. Soumerai reports that the obesity epidemic is extremely complicated and typical “wellness” programs do not achieve meaningful weight reduction. For example, there is a predisposition to obesity, making it much easier for some to gain weight, as well as childhood environmental factors that lead to obesity and diabetes -- conditions that are extremely difficult to reverse.
According to the author, fining overweight people is immoral and disrespectful, and may even be a violation of federal discrimination laws. Rather than fining individuals, we need to focus on population-based prevention efforts, such as better access to healthy foods, increased school physical education budgets, and higher taxes on high calorie beverages.