EEOC Offers Proposed Rule Regarding Collection Of Health Information For Wellness Programs
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Proposal would amend the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has introduced a proposed rule that would allow employers offering voluntary wellness programs with their group health plans to provide incentives in exchange for health information, including some genetic details, about the employee and their spouse.
According to the EEOC, the rule would amend the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA), which also relates to employers seeking health information about employees' covered spouses. Title II of GINA offers protection for individuals from employment discrimination based on their genetic information, prohibiting employers covered by the law from using it to make decisions about employment. Significantly, it also bars employers from requesting, requiring, or purchasing such information, except in six narrow exceptions. One of those exceptions applies to voluntary wellness programs.
The EEOC says it is “mindful that this change creates an exception to the general rule that no incentives may be provided for an employee’s genetic information.” As a result, the agency says it has interpreted the exception as narrowly as possible and it has explicitly excluded the seeking of genetic information about an employee's children.
Under the proposal, employers and insurers would be able to offer financial incentives for employee participation as high as 30 percent of the cost of a family health plan, a significant increase over the earlier EEOC rule limit of 30 percent of the cost of employee-only coverage. Kaiser Health News notes employers had been pushing for permission to tie incentives to the cost of family coverage.
The proposed rule is open for a 60-day comment period, and feedback is particularly welcome regarding questions of whether to address protection of personal health information and whether to prohibit wellness programs from obtaining genetic information from claims data and medical records.
“Our goal in developing this proposed rule is to provide clarity for employees and employers,” said EEOC Chair Jenny R. Yang. “We spent considerable time working with our partners at the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury to construct a rule that protects workers and their families while encouraging wellness programs that benefit employers and employees alike.”
A list of questions and answers about the proposed rule and fact sheet about how it would affect small businesses are available on the EEOC website.