Quote:
Originally Posted by Kobi
new policy by CVS Pharmacy requires every one of its nearly 200,000 employees who use its health plan to submit their weight, body fat, glucose levels and other vitals or pay a monthly fine.
Employees who agree to this testing will see no change in their health insurance rates, but those who refuse will have to pay an extra $50 per month - or $600 per year - for the company's health insurance program. All employees have until May 1, 2014, to make an appointment with a doctor and record their vitals.
"The approach they're taking is based on the assumption that somehow these people need a whip, they need to be penalized in order to make themselves healthy," Patient Privacy Rights founder Dr. Deborah Peel said.
Critics are calling the policy coercion, and worrying that CVS or any other company might start firing sick workers.
"It's technology-enhanced discrimination on steroids," Peel said.
The policy change was introduced to employees in a memo highlighting the change in the health insurance plan.
CVS, which is based in Rhode Island, said the health screening was voluntary and the company would never see the test results. In an email to ABC News, CVS explained that its "benefits program is evolving to help our colleagues take more responsibility for improving their health and managing health-associated costs.
"The goal of these kinds of programs is to end up with a healthier work force. If your employees are healthy they're going to work better and they're going to cost the employer a lot less money," ABC News' chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser said.
CVS insists that the use of health screenings by employer-sponsored health plans is a common practice. A quick search of the Internet shows many websites and message boards filled with questions from families asking if similar programs and policies are legal.
Brad Seff, a former Broward County, Fla., employee, learned the hard way that it is legal, according to one court. Seff sued the county in April 2011 after it charged him an extra $40 per month for health insurance after he refused health screenings.
In the suit, Seff said the wellness program violated the Americans With Disabilities Act because the county was making medical inquires of its employees. Seff lost his suit.
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Health profiling?
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I don't want to derail things, but this one really stuck in my craw. I did a little look around, no deep research or anything, in fact all I did was google the line I bolded above. I came up with a summary report from 2011 that hits on the high points of what companies of various sizes are doing to prepare for national health care.
This is the
Mercer's National Survey I ran across. I am still going through it. Pages 4 and 9 show the ramp up to national care. Page 33-34 is a clearly stated objective. Starting on page 51 are the plan incentive ideas. Page 87 is interesting as well from a retirement point of view. Page 92 and on show the already in place ramifications of the national health policy coming. Page 94 confirms these 'incentives' are here to stay.
A couple of terms tossed around in the report are
CDHP: "The concept of a CDHP is to return control of health care dollars to the person who uses them, the consumer. The consumer is given a financial incentive to control costs and as a result tend to become more directly involved in the selection and usage of health care services."
And
PPACA: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act
If anyone is interested in this approach to health care that we are seeing, you might want to have a glance, it certainly opened my eyes. This report is a couple of years old and the emphasis is on using positive reinforcement. It would seem that CVS has decided to take the carrot and turn it into a stick. I have seen some plans where a person could protect their privacy for a one time lost discount of maybe $50-100 per year, but at $600 per year as mentioned in the article, I don't think the majority of CVS employees are going to see that as a viable option.
While I agree with the concept of making healthy lifestyle education available to all people (something to counter the current marketing of crap food and latest drugs model), I really don't see forcing it down someones throat as making it somehow more effective. On the contrary, I see it as an effective way to create resentment on a large scale.
I can't wait to see what will be on the table for non-corporate yet required insurance programs for those not currently insured.
Just my .02
Derail/rant over, carry on.