ObamaCare chickies come home to roost for unions—and the rest of us

Some union members working for PepsiCo are upset about a sin tax on their health insurance premiums. PepsiCo, like many other companies in the U.S. now charges some categories of workers an additional $50 a month. The trend is a result of expanded political intrusion into the health sector.

If an employee joins a program to stop smoking or lose weight, the fee isn’t levied.

Among the conditions subject to the sin tax are those with diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, asthma and other “conditions that often lead to being overweight.”

The union workers, members of the N.Y. Teamsters locals, have asked the National Labor Relations Board for assistance. Bloomberg said: “[T]he company refused to turn over gender and age demographics the unions needed to shop for an alternative health plan, violating the labor agreement…”

Between 2009-2011, the news service said the number of companies using such penalties rose by 50 percent. Incentives are also given to employees fitting the current political definitions for good health.

President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) contains provisions that require health insurers to provide policies that meet criteria determined by the government, both at the federal and state levels. If those policies don’t meet the criteria, fines ensue.

Consequently, healthcare premiums have risen. Those premiums have also risen due to cost shifting for other reasons, such as vastly expanding Medicaid programs with low provider fees. Private sector workers help absorb the cost of those fees, not only through federal taxes but also via higher premiums.

Pro-ObamaCare groups support government management of certain lifestyle choices, or for that matter, genetic conditions, because they claim health traits or choices in some people result in cost-shifting to healthy people.

Medical organizations have set standards for weight, blood pressure and other individual traits, some of which may be due to genetics, but there is little or no transparency in how those standards are set. There has been little or no public debate, for instance, about the Body Mass Index.

The BMI is based on research done by a Belgian social statistician who died in 1874, Adolphe Quetelet.

I believe Quetelet’s premise would be viewed as racist today. An article published at the University of Minnesota pointed out:

“Quetelet thought more of ‘average’ physical and mental qualities as real properties of particular people or races awaiting discovery and not just abstract concepts. Quetelet helped give cognitive strength to ideas of racial differences in nineteenth century European thought. His conception of ‘average man’ is the central value about which measurements of a human trait are grouped according to the normal curve. The ‘average man’ began as a simple way of summarizing some characteristic of a population, but in some of Quetelet’s later work, ‘average man’ is presented as an ideal type, as if nature were shooting at the ‘average man’ as a target and deviations from this target were errors.”

Many conservatives warned that additional government intrusion into personal health would result in restrictions on individual liberty. While costs are shifted for some personal traits, they aren’t applied to others.

For instance, over-use of pain killers, sexual promiscuity, high risk pregnancies and even risky driving habits or records aren’t considered at present. The door has been opened  for an employer to compile information on any personal habits an employee might have, regardless of the employee’s work performance.

The NLRB didn’t comment on the validity of a sin tax; after all, ObamaCare played a leading role in setting  the standard for such.

Medicare premiums will continue to rise for some income groups as well. Those premiums rose in part because of ObamaCare but also because of the payroll tax cut extension bill.

Most labor unions aggressively pushed for passage of ObamaCare.

For union members—and unfortunately for the rest of us—the ObamaCare chickies have come home to roost.

This should not surprise. Democrats admitted they did not read the more than 2,000-page bill before passing it without Republican support.

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For related reading, see archived columns on ObamaCare at The US Report

To stay abreast of news related to labor unions, visit Labor Union Report.

(Commentary by Kay B. Day/Feb. 9, 2012)