Delta (the airline, not the variant) is raising health insurance premiums $200/month for the unvaccinated starting 11/1.
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I sent this to my brother, who works for Delta and doesn’t want the vaccine. 
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Do share the reply.
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I wonder if that is actuarially sound?
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The $200 surcharge? I was wondering that too. Treatment is expensive, but it does seem like a lot.
I guess we could do some math…
First, I’ll do the easy part: $2400/year in premium difference.
I’m going to guess this is largely punitive.
However, Delta Airlines (gotta include the whole name) is in a higher COVID risk industry for many of its employees.
Didn’t the article mention that each COVID hospitalization was costing Delta Airlines $50K each on average and that all recent hospitalizations were from unvaccinated employees?
Some quick math is $2,400 X ~91,000 employees x ~25% unvaccinated = $54.6M in premiums which would cover cost of roughly 1,100 hospitalizations from their ~23K unvaccinated employees annually.
Best guess is very few Delta employees think their principals of being unvaccinated is worth $2,400 a year and they get the shot or find other employment.
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February it was still very hard to get an appointment for a shot
Um, and?
Here’s some info, thank to YT:
So, assuming I do the math right, the claim cost (say, PMPM), ignoring Plan Design, of course, of COVID is 145 times more in the unvaccinated than in the vaccinated?
And did this factor into Delta Airlines’ bump in employee contribution?
So to finish your math, that’s around 4.8% of unvaccinated people requiring hospitalization from Covid annually.
Technically it should mean that the percentage of unvaccinated population that requires hospitalization should be X + 4.8, where X is the percentage of vaccinated people requiring hospitalization.
That seems high. Guess we could subtract out some overhead, but it still seems high. Guessing it’s largely punitive. Maybe also to cover some sick time expense too.
I’m pretty sure it was designed to be punitive and not actuarially determined.
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As usual, your assuming makes an a$$ out of u…
The “29 times more likely” is the unconditional number:
I saw this and wondered about the legality of it. I work in health but not on the health benefits side, so was wondering if someone here does and can explain what’s allowed and what’s not for employee premium rate differential. I thought you aren’t allowed to charge differently for employee health status so I’m assuming being vaccinated doesn’t count as that. Would this pass the anti-discrimination tests if more unvaccinated employees are low wage earners?
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I think the way they are doing it is charging everyone $200 more but giving a $200 rebate for being vaccinated. At least that’s the way someone else explained it to me but I don’t know for sure. Apparently you can give discounts for certain things which is Ok. But I’m a pension guy so don’t know the ins and outs of ACA and what can and can’t be done.
I thought you could charge smokers differently than non-smokers, and that the allowed differential for smoking was pretty high, like 1.5x that of a non-smoker? Maybe that’s not group plans. I don’t work in commercial health insurance. Not that smoking and vaccinations are comparable, just that I do think there are some allowed differences by health status.
A health insurer can charge for age (3:1 limit), family size, smoking status (1.5:1), and geography on small group and individual plans. Nothing else allowed for rate differentiation.
Large group plans the health insurer can still underwrite based on claims experience.
Self funded plans the insurer isn’t footing the claims bills, so they don’t set the premium.
What Delta is doing falls under a completely different set of rules though as it is not the insurer setting the premiums for employees but the employer making that determination. Those are the rules I don’t know, though I do know there are some anti-discrimination tests they have to pass based on income level testing. I’m sure I had to learn the other rules for one of the FSA exams, but that was some time ago and I don’t work on that side of things so I promptly forgot. These rules are the ones I was hoping someone would know if they work for a Mercer or WTW that deals with self funded groups (like I’m assuming Delta would be)
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And that “unvaccinated but they were eligible” sounded kinda judgy when at the time they got the virus most eligible people were having trouble getting shots.
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I feel bad for the people who were trying to get shots and couldn’t when they were scarce.
I don’t feel bad for people now when multiple walk in clinics are having vaccines expire.
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A local health insurer (actually one of the biggest in our market, owned (or used to be owned) by a local hospital/clinic chain, just announced a $100 payment for their members who get vaccinated.