OPINION:
Come on, Republicans. Have you gone commie? How else to explain this, from CNN: “While Republicans are pushing to drop the requirement of Obamacare that compels Americans to get insurance, another move in a separate bill could compel employees to participate in workplace wellness programs that collect their and their families’ health and genetic data.”
It’s called the Preserving Employee Wellness Program Act. And here’s the kicker: It’s from Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolinian.
Three Republicans have jumped to cosponsor — Reps. Tim Walberg, Elise Stefanik and Paul Mitchell.
Didn’t know forced workouts were part and parcel of Republican Party platforms.
The bill text, H.R. 1313, opens this way: “Congress has a strong tradition of protecting and preserving employee workplace wellness programs …”
Yeah, about that. Why?
Why does Congress have a “strong tradition” in this matter? Truly, if government should have a hands-off policy about anything, it should be about personal health care choices. Let the couch potatoes be couch potatoes — that’s a good motto for a free society, such as America.
The bill goes on to justify its existence — its legislative, government intrusion existence — by explaining how “health promotion and prevention programs are a means to reduce the burden of chronic illness, improve health and limit the growth of health care costs.”
Remember when Republicans fighting Barack Obama on Obamacare warned that opening the doors to government-run health care would give bureaucrats cause to intrude on all aspects of private life? Case in point, this bill, here and now.
The bill goes on to remind how Obamacare gave employers carte blanche to implement and offer workplace wellness programs that “provide rewards, rebates, surcharges, penalties or other inducements” for overall health in employees. One of those inducements included a reward of up to 50 percent off insurance premiums for those employees taking part in the employer’s and insurance company’s idea of a healthier lifestyle.
Incentive program? Another way to state it: Once again, the government is picking winners and losers.
Police officers in Houston sued the city in 2015 over just this type of incentive program, after they were forced to supply their medical history as part of their department’s wellness program — or face a $300 annual fee for their medical insurance. Their complaint? The fine print of the mandate made clear their supposed private information might be “subject to disclosure” since it wasn’t protected by privacy laws.
That used to be something Republicans fought against, too — the possibility of all this government-controlled health care leading to real privacy dings and online hacks and leaks.
But it’s a new day for the Republican Party, it seems, one that hails to the Democrats.
As CNN noted, this bill from Foxx and her GOP posse would “allow employers to penalize employees if they don’t join workplace wellness programs that collect [genetic] data.”
It’s a brave new world out there.
Dozens of groups, from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the AARP, have signed on to a letter of protest over this bill, and mailed it in to Foxx. So did the American Society of Human Genetics, expressing the sense that the bill “would undermine fundamentally the privacy provisions of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act” by allowing “employers to ask employees invasive questions about their and their families’ health, as well as genetic tests they and their families have undergone.”
Will Republicans cave to the pressure and trash this terrible bill?
Regardless, if nothing else, such legislative offerings, whether passed or tossed, underscore yet one more reason why government doesn’t belong in the health care business — why full repeal of Obamacare and a “No Trespassing” mindset ought to be the only action and attitude of government regarding individual medical care.
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