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Democrats’ Health Care Plan Out of Sync with President’s AMA Address


Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today criticized the Kennedy-Dodd health care bill for banning new incentives for employers to lower health care premiums for employees who exercise regularly, eat healthy diets and do not smoke.

“The President talked to the American Medical Association today about the importance of helping people make healthy decisions, but the Kennedy-Dodd bill would actually ban new incentives for healthy behaviors,” Enzi said. “That’s not going to help us achieve cost savings, and it’s not going to help people live healthier lives.”

Giving employers the flexibility to set up innovative programs is a proven method of actually bringing down costs and improving peoples’ health. The national grocery store chain Safeway, for example, established an innovative program in 2005 to encourage healthy behaviors by offering lower health insurance premiums. In the last four years, while health insurance rates for most companies have gone up 38 percent, Safeway’s health care costs have remained the same.

“I agree with President Obama – we should help employers adopt and expand programs like the Safeway program. Unfortunately, the Democrats’ bill would prohibit additional companies from following in Safeway’s trail-blazing, successful footsteps,” said Enzi, the Senate’s only accountant and the only Senator serving on the HELP, Finance and Budget Committees, which share jurisdiction over health care reform.

In last week’s HELP Committee roundtable on health care, authors of the Kennedy-Dodd bill acknowledged that their bill would prohibit employers from developing new programs to reward healthy behaviors.

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