Posted on 08/12/2007 10:47:36 PM PDT by melt
Companies seeking to cut rising health care costs are starting to dock the pay of overweight and unhealthy workers.
Clarian Health, an Indiana hospital chain, will require workers who smoke to pay $5 out of each paycheck starting in 2009. For workers deemed obese, as much as $30 will be taken out each paycheck until they meet certain weight, cholesterol and blood pressure standards.
Clarian employees will also be required to take part in a health risk appraisal that will inform the company which employees smoke.
Such appraisals are becoming a popular tool for businesses to determine the health of their work force. The type of health benefit program Clarian is setting up could become a model for businesses in coming years, analysts say.
"We anticipate that more employers will require employees to complete a health risk appraisal and participate in screenings," said Tracy Watts, a health benefits consultant for Mercer Human Resource Consulting. "We also are seeing more interest in rewards for healthy behaviors such as participating in health management-related programs and for healthy behaviors such as not using tobacco products."
A survey of nearly 3,000 employers last year by Mercer found that 53 percent required a health risk assessment of its workers. That number is up from 35 percent in 2004.
And 62 percent of the 135 top executives who responded to a PriceWaterhouseCooper's survey this year said their companies should require employees who show unhealthy behaviors to pay a greater share of their health care costs.
Weyco, a Lansing, Mich., benefits administrator, recently adopted a policy to completely eliminate tobacco use from its work force. In 2003, the company introduced a policy of not hiring tobacco users and began offering smoking-cessation programs to employees, who were given a year to quit.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Ping!
No, no they need “Romney Care”
“Fat people got no reason.....fat people got no reason...
Don’t want no fat people.....don’t want no fat people round here....”
Are they going to dock the pay of homosexuals? How about those who have a few drinks after work? There are infinite ways for meddling do gooders to punish any behavior they don’t agree with.
Health insurance for a self-emplyed person is 100% deductable of the general tax on the 1040 form but you still pay the 15%+- fica on it because it cannot be deducted as a business expense.
“It’s discrimination, man...”
I think he’ld be right. I would like to apply certain mental health criteria at my place, like finding a way to screen out the neurotic impulse that motivates control-freaks.
I have seen insurance companies go both ways on considering people “high risk”. On one hand people with the risk factors of weight, blood pressure, and lipids. On the other hand people who are extremely fit were considered “high risk” by the same company - anyone who did more than the lowest common denominator health club routine. One company even considered anyone who bicycled more than 75 miles per week to be “high risk” on the grounds of “excessive exercise”.
Ha, they would cut the payroll in half here. I swear 90% of the women here are overweight, and many of them smoke as well. Make that 95% now that I think about it. I can count the fit girls on one hand. The guys run about 50% and only a few smoke.
Nanny state Pingeroo!!!!!!!!!
That was the theme of the movie Gattaca (derived from the four letters of the genetic code, GTCA).
That's different, though. The turbines do not know what a person looks like, or if 370# is one passenger, or two standard passengers. It simply costs so many pounds of jet fuel to accelerate and lift a certain amount of mass. That's why, if you bring along your collection of decorated anvils, you have to pay excess baggage. Maybe if a flight is empty it should not matter I suppose.
Not surprising in a country where people regularly pee in a cup for a job.
I thought it was something like 80% of healthcare dollars are spent taking care of patients in the last 9 months of their lives.
Of course, during this treatment, no one knows it's the last 9 months.
My insured brother-in-law had adult leukemia. His bill for treatment was something like $400,000. He didn't make it. Given the end result, the cold, hard fact is that the money was wasted. But it was the right thing to do, since there was a chance.
Wouldn’t it be better if, instead of this leap of “big-brotherism”, companies simply provided a set dollar amount towards an employee’s health insurance and then let the employee pay the rest? Why go through all these gyrations and the invasion of privacy when the answer is so simple?
So does life insurance. Smokers, the obese, the elderly, all pay more. Now there's discrimination.
” $30 will be taken out each paycheck until they meet certain weight, cholesterol and blood pressure standards.”
Interesting, because the chloesterol level in the blood is not a good indication of the health of an individual. Individuals with higher cholesterol tend to live longer than individuals with low cholesterol. It is not a factor in determining heart or cardiovascular health. Cholesterol as a “disease” is a scam to promote the sale of cholesterol lowering drugs.
TVA, part of the federal government, started doing this a couple of years ago. I would not participate because my physical condition was none of their business. It's an invasion of privacy, plain and simple.
There's plenty of other socialist/big-brother activities that TVA did that were rather outragious as well, but I won't get into those.
As fat as he is,I doubt he has enough time left to make another movie.
I’m all for private business to run the way they see fit...
Health insurance/care from the employer is an archaic concept anyways....
I want car insurance from my employer....
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