WASHINGTON – A Republican attempt to promote wellness programs among employers ran into a blast of one-size-must-fit-all rhetoric Friday and lost on a vote of 34-24 in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Making the case for employer-based wellness programs, U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., pointed out that President Obama was a fan of providing incentives to improve health. He said the proposal allows employers to pay up to half of health benefit costs instead of the current limit of 20 percent.

“Healthy people cost less,” Buyer said. 

That concept didn’t seem to convince U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., who raised the specter of mandatory medical exams, penalties for obesity and increased premium costs and denounced the Buyer wellness proposal as dangerously discriminatory. “I’ll also put on the record that the administration opposes this,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., however, wondered exactly “how is it punitive or discriminator when you’re not raising the premiums for those who don’t choose to participate in a wellness program?”

“You’d think that other people who choose not to participate are being discriminated against,” he said. “What’s discriminatory about them paying the standard rate for the standard group health insurance policy, but rewarding others who lower the costs by their behavior?

“We ought to encourage this kind of wellness activity, not discourage it,” Gingrey said. 

Evidently worried about being held to account for casting votes against wellness, Democrats promised to offer an amendment of their own, but later.

The amendment and roll call tally can be found here.