With news of Delta charging unvaccinated employees $200 per month to stay on the company’s health plan, you might be wondering if your insurance rates will be affected by your vaccination status. It’s (unsurprisingly) complicated, but so far, employers and companies that provide health and life insurance are reluctant to increase premiums based on vaccinations status—although that could change if the pandemic gets worse.
Will health insurance premiums increase for unvaccinated individuals?
Federal law prevents employers and insurers from charging higher prices to people with pre-existing health risks (whether you’re a smoker is an exception). However, per Time, there’s an exception found in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which allows employers to use penalties as part of a workplace wellness program, and that’s how Delta’s $200 unvaccinated workers would be charged.
However, this is not typical. Most companies take a simpler path to encourage vaccination: an “all employees must be vaccinated” mandate, in which an employee can be fired for non-compliance. The company has the legal right to do so, although they can’t fire workers who refuse that vaccine for religious reasons, or for reasons related to a disability (for more on how that works, check out this Lifehacker post).
In Delta’s case, they’ve cited “work culture” as a reason why they don’t impose a vaccination mandate on its employees, so they’re doing it through healthcare payments instead. Delta is an outlier, though—most employers are encouraging vaccinations through mandates.
What about life insurance?
Per Fortune, most insurers aren’t taking a person’s vaccination status into account during the underwriting process for new applicants or existing life insurance policies. However, there are exceptions—a few companies ask for an applicant’s vaccination status in “select cases” where the applicant has heightened risk factors relating to a comorbidity.
As it stands now, you might be asked about vaccination status for a life insurance policy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that status will be used to calculate your premiums. Why would that be so? Well, as insurance agent Chris Huntley explained to Yahoo:
My guess is they think it’s a short-term issue, not a big enough mortality factor to change their insurance application [processes] or pricing.” Huntley also sees COVID-19 vaccinations as among “dozens of variables [insurers] could factor into their pricing but don’t.
However, this could change if the pandemic gets worse, as suggested by the American Council of Life Insurers’ Jan Graeber, in an interview with Fortune: “There may be near- and long-term considerations based on experience with COVID, new strains, vaccines, and consumer behavior.”