This new post by Kristin Madison appears on the Health Affairs Blog concludes the blog series stemming from the Fourth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 29, 2016.
Wellness programs remain a popular feature of the employer landscape, but the legal environment surrounding them has long been uncertain. In April 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission took a significant step toward resolving this uncertainty by formally proposing a ruleclarifying the applicability Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) to wellness programs.
In doing so, it staked out middle ground between an approach that would have sharply limited the use of incentives in wellness programs, and a more permissive approach consistent with regulations already in place under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The proposed rule has the potential to shape, or reshape, future wellness programs. The extent to which it will do so, however, remains uncertain. […]
Read the full post here.