You can now add into the cost of a bag of chips an additional premium to your health insurance. More companies are looking for ways to offset the rising costs of healthcare and, after cutting benefits to "alternative" treatments such as chiropractic and massage, they are looking for more ways to save. Enter the age of the healthcare penalty premium. Here's how it works: your company requires to to submit to a health evaluation (which may consist of anything from weight and blood pressure screening to a complete work-up of your daily habits). Then, your company evaluates the results and determines whether you meet predetermined markers for health. If you do not you can be charged a higher rate for healthcare premiums or will be asked to participate in a program to address your healthcare issues to hold the increased rate in abeyance.
Or, your company may want to mirror the policy CVS has enacted. "A 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" according to Steve Osunsami of ABC News. That fine is $50 per month and employees that agree to submit their health stats through a work-up by their doctor will not see an increase. Think of it as an opt out program. The idea is similar to that of companies who automatically enroll all eligible employees in a retirement savings plan and force employees to take an action to opt out.
This, of course, creates quite a push back from not only individual employees who see this as an unfair practice and an invasion of their privacy but also from groups like the Patient Privacy Rights. Founder DR. Deborah Peel states: "The approach their taking is based on the assumption that somehow these employees need....to be penalized in order to make themselves healthy".
The practice, though, of passing along a "surcharge" for an unhealthy lifestyle is not relatively new. But what about offering a carrot to those employees who participate in company wellness programs? Surely that must be okay, right? In fact, industry experts like benefits consultant Towers Watson, predict a significant rise in the number of companies that implement the practice. In the New York Times article The Smoker's Surcharge, Reed Abelson points to a concern. "Some benefits specialists and health experts say programs billed as incentives for wellness, by offering discounted health insurance, can become punitive for people who suffer from health problems that are not completely under their control".
So....what to do? Let me throw one final thing out there to think about. Choice. How much of an employee's health is related to the choices they make? Choices in the foods they eat, the level of activity they have, etc.. Where do you draw the line of personal and governmental responsibility (for allowing the phenomenal rise in artificial ingredients and food processing)?
Okay....off my soap box now...
