The company I work for started a “wellness” initiative beginning this year. Our insurance company didn’t raise our premiums this year but in order to recoup the added costs of complying with PPACA, my company raised the cost sharing (i.e. the employee’s share of the premium) by 5%.
However an employee received a 5% discount if they completed 2 out of 3 items: 1) completed an on-line health assessment/questionnaire with the insurance company, 2) certified oneself by signing a statement as a non-smoker and having been a non-smoker for at least 1 year or 3) had a preventative exam or care within the last 12 months; the list of qualifying preventative exams or care were, among several, a routine preventative physical (not a regular office visit or for treatment or follow up for an existing condition), a mammogram, a colonoscopy, a routine electro cardiogram, even getting a flu shot.
As far as the preventative exam and on-line health assessment and privacy concerns at least related to your employer, at my company, we in HR only received confirmation from the insurance company that they were completed and on what date and none of the results or details is shared with us as the employer as to do otherwise would be in violation of HIPAA.
I fully expect however that next year the costs will go up and the requirements will increase. For instance there was some consideration this year about excluding smokers from receiving the discount even if they completed the on-line heath assessment and had a preventative care exam. I also expect in the future that having too high of a blood pressure or having too high of a BMI, etc. will exclude people from receiving the “discount” or that they will be assessed a “surcharge”. Under HIPAA, the insurance company may not share the results but I “think” they could communicate a pass/fail grade.
I am of two minds on this. I agree with you that it smacks of an invasion of privacy. On the other hand, companies are doing everything they can to keep ever increasing health insurance and regulatory costs down.
Just be grateful that your company is keeping an employer sponsored group health insurance plan, at least for the time being and haven’t figured out, as some companies have, that in some cases it might be cheaper for them to eliminate the employer sponsored group health insurance, pay the government fines and force you to either buy very expensive private insurance or get insurance under one of the government insurance exchanges.
But you know that Obama and Polosi promised us that we could keep our current insurance plan, that nothing would change, that costs would go down….blah, blah, blah….. / sarcasm.
“voluntary compliance”....Google it