Obamacare gave employers permission to charge smokers up to 50% more for health insurance, as a way to incentivize healthier behavior. But to make sure smokers had a fair chance to avoid these penalties, the law required employers to provide tobacco cessation programs to anyone facing such a surcharge.
Almost half of the companies who charge smokers more for health insurance are breaking the law.
That’s a conclusion reached by a team of researchers who studied the health benefits employers offered to their employees in 2016. The team evaluated almost 2,000 randomly selected companies. They honed in on small employers, those with less than about 50 or 100 employees (the number varied between 50 and 100 across states, depending on the specifics of how those states regulate insurance companies.)
What did they find?
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