Is this employer going to far?
Sharon McKnight SPHR
737 Posts
For workers at CVS, body fat can be costly http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=a4f7a17e-22ef-4ea7-86e1-a57cf6312cb4
Share your thoughts?
Share your thoughts?
Comments
We have all covered employees complete a HRA with a third party. If you do not do the HRA, you pay an extra $50/mo for insurance. We only see results in aggragate form, and no one is penalized if they don't lose weight or lower their blood pressure.
Personally, I love our HRAs. You get some blood drawn, have your blood pressure taken and fill out a short questionnaire. It takes 10 minutes. Later you get a complete report letting you know a multitude of numbers and describing where they should be and why. It also rates you with positive and negative points so you can compare year over year. The first year we started this, we had a handful of people who were living with dangerous health conditions and didn't know it. One would probably have been dead within days without treatment.
People who have issues, like diabetes and high blood pressure can get further advice and guidance by the 3rd party, but no one is required to act on it. An HRA forces people to think of their health at least once per year. The penalty for not participating motivates employees to do it. I just wish we would begin to include spouses.
As far as CVS is concerned, any organization which holds itself out as part of health and wellness solutions should encourage their employees to be healthy in any way possible. This should not be geared only towards higher paying jobs (the author made a big thing of the fact that many workers there are in lower paid jobs). Everyone deserves to be healthy and be treated as if their health matters. Besides, the employee who can afford ill health the least is the lower paid worker.
Just my 2 cents.
If we work more then 40 hours a week, EVEN IF WE get a salary, we may still be entitled to overtime!
What the heck does that mean? Are they going to offer fewer options? less coverage (higher deductibles, etc)? no coverage? I am pretty sure you cannot discriminate between healthy and unhealthy participants right now. Perhaps they are looking down the road to PPACA changes. I hope they clarify things soon. I would not want to work for an employer whose communcations are so unclear and ambiguous.
Probably not an appropriate post for this discussion either, but I'm just saying....
It IS scary and it doesn't seem like it would be legal, but a close relative works for a health care provider who is supplying that information because they have to make up the money they lost in other federal funding cuts.
Here is another employer that tried to use a stick (instead of a carrot) to get employees to participate in its new wellness program. tk