HIPAA Blog

[ Monday, April 12, 2010 ]

 

HIPAA (but not privacy) News: there's a part of HIPAA that prevents health plans from discriminating based on health condition (to keep insurers from cherrypicking or charging more for those with worse health conditions). The regulations for the nondiscrimination provisions are cowritten by HHS, the IRS, and the Dept. of Labor, since they tend to impact those administrations. And the major focus is on "wellness plans," making sure they aren't surrogates for discriminating, where "wellness" is code for "healthier."

As originally drafted, the benefit an insurer (typically an employer) could give a beneficiary (typically an employee) as a bonus for complying with a wellness plan was an amount equal to 20% of the total premium (what the employer pays plus what the employee pays). The PPACA (the health reform law) has now increased that benefit to 30%.

Jeff [8:56 AM]

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