6'2" and 240 pounds
Posted on 07/29/2007 10:08:11 AM PDT by BGHater
To hold down medical costs, some firms are penalizing workers who are overweight or don't meet health guidelines.
Looking for new ways to trim the fat and boost workers' health, some employers are starting to make overweight employees pay if they don't slim down.
Others, citing growing medical costs tied to obesity, are offering fit workers lucrative incentives that shave thousands of dollars a year off healthcare premiums.
In one of the boldest moves yet, an Indiana-based hospital chain last month said it decided on the stick rather than the carrot. Starting in 2009, Clarian Health Partners will charge employees as much as $30 every two weeks unless they meet weight, cholesterol and blood-pressure guidelines that the company deems healthy.
"At first, I was mad when I thought I would be charged $30 for being overweight," said Courtney Jackson, 28, a customer service representative at Clarian. "But when I found out it was going to be broken into segments — like just $10 for being overweight — it sounded better."
Jackson said she was going to try to slim down before the plan took effect. "If I still have weight to lose when it starts," she said, "I'll deserve to pay the $10."
Employers are getting serious about penalizing workers "because they've run out of other options" said Joe Marlowe, senior vice president at Aon Consulting, a national benefits consulting firm.
Locally, the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has 90,000 employees, is researching financial incentives and disincentives to help bring down healthcare costs.
UnitedHealthcare, a nationwide insurer, introduced a plan this month that, for a typical family, includes a $5,000 yearly deductible that can be reduced to $1,000 if an employee isn't obese and doesn't smoke.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It would be better if, everyone minded their own business. Across the board, it would be a full time job. Blackbird.
Will employers now ask for DNA samples to determine that the employee doesn’t have any genetic disposition to expensive diseases like cancer or heart disease?
I have mixed feelings about this.
These people are working afterall and making a contribution to society - so somehow punishing them doesn’t seem right.
It also won’t help the problem either.
Many people eat more because of stress, and if the employer places more stress on them by punishing them for their weight, they’re going to pick up more ice cream on the way home.
On the other hand, rewarding people for healthy behavior through discounts on insurance sounds like a good idea.
This is getting sickening.
With government health care just three or four years away, expect more of this everywhere.
Smoking two or more packs a day can be your undoing just like drinking a 5th of booze a day or eating more than one Big Mac.....all things in moderation. I am amazed at the number of people who think obesity has something to do with being a diabetic......nothing could be further from the truth....obesity is 85% self inflected and may be more. People gain weight because they eat foods that are fatty or have lots of sugar and probably do little exercising. I suffer because I have an awful full time craving for Blue Bells Pralines and Cream….working full time on Will Power. *~* Beware the Insurance companies and lawyer pitfalls....lawsuits are costly to all involved.
“Back in the good ole days companies searched desparately for ways to compensate people without increasing their salaries.”
The current system of employer sponsored medical plans grew out of a combination of World War II wage/price controls and a provision of the tax code that allowed employers to deduct the cost of medical/dental benefits as a business expense, while exempting that benefit from the wage control laws. Thus adding “free medical benefits” became a legal way to compete for employees by increasing indirect compensation.
After the war, the tax benefit remained, but it has now become less attractive because it hides the cost of medical care, which has been spiking as the Medicare/Medicaid cost shifting to private insurers and individuals has driven up the sticker prices for private purchasers of medical services. Thus, unless you are enrolled in some medical group plan that is far enough up the “food chain” created by the tax code and govt program cost shifting, and group plan negotiating power with larger medical service providers, the costs end up getting shifted to you.
It is encouraging that some physicians are opting out of this and setting up practices that do not take government-paid patients or private group plan discounts and, with less “cost shifting” in place, charge their private patients less than would be necessary for a clinic that had the various cost-shifting vampires sucking away its revenues.
However, any of the “universal health care” schemes will likely make such practices illegal. The “public” will then get everything it deserves in the way of mandated medical care services, with the same problems as would be faced in obtaining other services extracted from an enslaved class.
I smoke only 5-10 cigarettes per day, but get charged extra on my health insurance for it. My boss’s boss is hugely obese, we’re talking large pannus here, and she doesn’t get charged a dime extra.
That may change, because the policy is nationwide. I am laughing here, because it serves people right. How many would weigh a lot less, if they smoked 5 cigarettes per day? I’m guessing a number of them.
This is hilarious. It all depends on whose ox is gored, doesn’t it? The nanny state turns her disciplinary eye on the next “bad” group of kids.
” Muscle weighs more than fat, so a well muscled person will appear to be overweight according to that chart.”
yes...the BMI index is useless in this regard.
The better measurements come from caliper pinch measurements or underwater weighing in determing percentage of body fat.
If companies truly want to reward fit people who have developed strong muscles, many of those people are going to fall into the “overweight” category on the BMI chart.
“This is getting sickening.
With government health care just three or four years away, expect more of this everywhere.”
Especially with this attitude ingrained: “I’ll deserve to pay the $10.”
I wonder if this is still the USA?
If you mean the Uninformed Slaves of America, then yes.
Or is it the United Slaves of America?
6'2" and 240 pounds
Next we criminalize obesity. “Maam you are hereby under arrest for gross public obesity”
If we ever have Beauty Police, all the feminists will be going to jail.
Smoker here too. The number per day being about as relevant as globull warming considering I have a FRiend that will go to the ends of this earth to get his one a day at bedtime and he is considered a smoker by his Insurance Company as well. I also have Family that have smoked since they were 8-9 years old, Home Runs and Camel non-filtered, that have lived well into their 90's. It's about money and power. Blackbird.
It started with smoking bans and so many thinking companies banning smoking on and off the job was for employees own good. Many tried to warn of how far it could go, even non-smokers.
What else will employers decide employees cannot do?
It boggles the imagination what will be next.
‘It would be better....P>’
“It would be better if, everyone minded their own business. Across the board, it would be a full time job. Blackbird.”
I agree. As it happens, I’ve been involved in the medical/dental/etc insurance benefits procurement process for my company for 18 years, so it kind of is my business, at least in part.
I think we would all be better off to get rid of the “food chain” created by the perversion of the tax code to engineer desired social results, and using government programs to dun the healthy in order to subsidize the expensive lifestyles of the unhealthy.
I’m not under any illusion, however, that this is likely to be taken seriously in a culture that has become addicted to getting its way through government coercion. As Mencken noted, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
This could be good...fire the fat,the diabetics,the hypertensive,the smokers,the gamblers, make lots of room to hire illegals.
But all those adjectives apply to illegals, too.
This chart is manure if you exercise.
A low body fat percentage coupled with high muscle density puts you at overweight.
a 6 foot male at 165 would look sickly.
“This chart is manure if you exercise.”
exactly right.
They will wind up enacting a policy that will punish the very behavior they are trying to reward, all in the name of “doing something”.
Unless there is a true effort to accurately measure bodyfat percentage the policy is useless, and I doubt companies are going to get much compliance when they tell employees it’s underwater weighing day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.