Smoking and the ACA

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has created a wonderful laboratory for studying the impact of changes in healthcare policy. One of the more interesting papers on the topic appears in the latest Health Affairs (Evidence suggests that the ACA’s tobacco surcharges reduce insurance take-up and did not increase smoking cessation). (You’ll need a subscription to read the full article.) Health plans can’t charge higher prices to people who are sicker, but they can tack on surcharges of up to 50 percent for tobacco users. States can limit or ban the surcharges, and some do. Not surprisingly, people subjected to high surcharges are a lot less likely to purchase insurance, especially because the way the surcharges work has a very significant impact on their out of pocket costs. Beyond the headlines, there were several additional findings: When smokers faced no, moderate or high surcharges rates of smoking cessation were unaffected Low surcharges significantly reduced the degree of smoking cessation Young smokers were much more likely than older smokers to be deterred from health insurance coverage by the imposition of surcharges Surcharges were typically higher than the extra medical costs incurred by smokers These findings have some interesting implications: If the goal of the surcharge policy is to get people to quit smoking, then it doesn’t seem to be working very well. The least effective approach of all is to impose low surcharges. The authors specu...
Source: Health Business Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Health plans Patients Policy and politics Research Uncategorized Source Type: blogs