Being Unhealthy Could Cost You -- Money (Company trying to tell employees how to live)

[Craftsman]

For employees at Clarian Health, feeling the burn of trying to lose weight will take on new meaning.

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In late June, the Indianapolis-based hospital system announced that starting in 2009, it will fine employees $10 per paycheck if their body mass index (BMI, a ratio of height to weight that measures body fat) is over 30. If their cholesterol, blood pressure, and glucose levels are too high, they'll be charged $5 for each standard they don't meet. Ditto if they smoke: Starting next year, they'll be charged another $5 in each check.

Clarian has been making headlines for its aggressive and unusual approach to covering escalating health-care costs. Rather than taking the more common step of giving employees incentives for merely participating in its wellness programs, such as joining a smoking cessation group or using a health coach, Clarian is actually measuring outcomes. And unlike most employers, it is penalizing workers for poor health instead of rewarding them for taking healthy steps.

"More Transparent"

But some employment lawyers and wellness program administrators believe Clarian's approach may not be so unusual in coming years. They see employers, already overwhelmed by rising health-care costs, getting more aggressive in mandating changes in employee behavior. Garry Mathiason, a senior partner at employment law firm Littler Mendelson, says more than 300 companies have requested its assistance on mandatory wellness initiatives since it released a study on the topic in April. "In reality, you only get a certain amount of participation with incentive and encouragement," he says. "The demand for (curtailing health-care costs) is so great that (employers) are willing to take the next step. It's tough love." As BusinessWeek chronicled in February, some outlier companies have even banned tobacco use for its employees altogether (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/26/07, "Get Healthy -- or Else


http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20070803/bs_bw/aug2007db2007081804238;_ylt=AnfjA2HUjitgtu_075poZhOyBhIF

[rox63]

1. Kills two birds with one stone

It's both insane and discriminatory at the same time.
:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[RB TexLa]

2. They are not telling them how to live.

They are passing the cost of their risk to them. If someone knows their cholesterol is high and does nothing to lower it, should their co workers bear the cost?

By the articles thinking encouraging the wellness programs or smoking cessation encouragement is telling people how to live as well.

I guess when someone's rates go up after a DUI they are being told "how to live," by the auto insurance company.

[Craftsman]

3. Many of the those factors are at least in part genetic, and fat is covered under the ADA

If I am not mistaken.

[RB TexLa]

7. Oh, I forgot cholesterol, glucose levels, and weight can't be treated if they are genetic

I have a cousin I need to call and tell her to stop wasting her money on medications that control her cholesterol since it's genetic and well it can't be controlled. My God what was she thinking.

[Craftsman]

10. Cost of Treating AIDS Patients Is Soaring

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9E0CE4DE163FF930A15754C0A964958260

Cost of Treating AIDS Patients Is Soaring

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN,
Published: July 23, 1992
The cost of treating people infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, is soaring, an international meeting on AIDS was told here today.

The lifetime cost of treating an AIDS patient in the United States is now $102,000, up from $85,333 in 1991, said Dr. Fred J. Hellinger, a Federal official who has been tracking the costs of caring for people infected with H.I.V. for the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, an arm of the Public Health Service. The figure was $57,000 in 1988.

The annual cost of treating an American AIDS patient is now $38,300 and the average cost of treating an H.I.V.-infected individual who has not yet developed AIDS is about $10,000, Dr. Hellinger said. A year ago, the estimated costs were $32,000 and $5,100, respectively.



First they came for the smokers......

[MatrixEscape]

11. The Ministry of Health

thanks you for your practical and sensible approach, good citizen.

We must all learn to comply with incentives to make our lives better and healthier!

Contrary to popular, (terrorist incited) beliefs, there is nothing in our environment that is contributing to illnesses at all! In fact, all American foods are the most healthful and nutrious in the World!

It is our own slovenly, selfish ignorance of mandatory guidelines for a good life that cause problems for ourselves and unfairly penalize our co-workers and families! This incentive is the only way to keep this country both brave, healthy, and free! Hopefully, offenders will eventually have to enroll in mandatory programs for rehabilitation in the near future.

In fact, those who can't, or won't comply, (until resistance is absolutely futile) should consider doing the right thing and ending the burden they put on the rest of us healthy, mindfully complicit workers. The worthless rabble just turn food into fat, clean air into unhealthy smoke, and clean water into alcohol. They are the enemy of our progress and prosperity.

Extra chocolate rations for you! You are doubleplus good. Once we are all purged of our vices and thoughtcrimes, we will have people like you to commemorate after our society is cleansed and finally pure.

Oh, and I want to tearfully thank the fine, upstanding executives of companies who are cracking down on the sickos who are taking so much out of our very pockets. Vulgar excess and frivolty has no place in capitalistic growth for the people!

[azurnoir]

13. A DUI means they broke the law

high cholesterol and hypertension are not, and gee imagine some people with those problems do not respond to drug and /or dietary programs, it is genetic. Hope you are as perfect as you seem to expect everyone else to be.

[melody]

4. Corporate bullying at its highest point

The right-wing must be drooling at the prospect of bullying all those people they hate -- they'll
start telling people what food to eat, with whom to sleep (I mean, really, if you're sexually active,
you might get STDs), how long to sleep, what to do on the weekends, how much time to spend at the
gym every day. My god, they'll have such a great time.

I wish the idiots who supported this kind of thing ("tough love", my ass) would think through what they're
talking about. Beyond all that, if they took a look at the REAL health research (not the diet industry
loving kind the GOP loves), they'd find science directly contradicts their "conventional wisdom" on obesity.
In fact, job bullying is responsible for more stress than most other things in life, but I'll just bet that
won't be calibrated into the numbers.

[TahitiNut]

5. But they can't be responsible for hiring "undocumented workers" ... nope.

After all, who can possibly expect an employer to know that much about the people they hire, huh?

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[Craftsman]

8. I could easily see Corporate America fining or firing people for being Gay

claiming it is an unhealthy lifestyle.

[Lars39]

6. I'd tell 'em to shove that job.

Tough love my ass.

[stirlingsliver]

9. Would The Government Ever Try Something Like This?

I'd be curious to hear from people in Canada and Great Britain about whether their governments have ever tried something like this as a means of either encouraging healthy behaviors or having people pay for the additional costs of health care.

I'd also be curious to know from Canadians and Brtions about what their reactions would be if their government were to implement such a system.

[The Straight Story]

12. We will give up all our rights for corporations to save money, and some even here will applaud it

And they can't me that crap that it is right to pay more if you cost them more - because eventually it will be do it or be fired (like smokers have been told at Scott's and other companies).

Screw the mark of the beast thing, you won't be able to buy or sell cause you won't have a job if you don't conform to what others believe you should.

[pop goes the weasel]

14. This is pure fascism

Henry Ford would be proud. It is one thing for businesses to have policies that cigarettes or fatty foods can't be brought on site. It's another to tell people what they can be doing in the privacy of their own homes.

If the ADA hadn't been so gutted in employment matters, then I wouldn't think Clarian could get away with this. And, no, it isn't because being fat is covered under the ADA. It's because many people have physical conditions that make it impossible for them to keep within insurance company guidelines. If the ADA hadn't been reduced to a virtual dead letter, than all the employees of Clarian, regardless of whether some crooked Republican SCUSA justice considers them to meet their outdated Tiny Tim standard of disability, could look to the ADA for protection, because Clarian obviously considers certain of its employees to have a disability, for which they will be financially penalized. Imagine how you'd feel about this cruel idea if you had chronic fatigue syndrome or quadraplegia or were sixty years old or were pregnant. What Clarian is really doing is trying to get rid of everyone on its workforce who might possibly ever put in an insurance claim, and put the blame for its discriminatory employee policies on the employees themselves, all in the guise of having the employees' health at heart.

[Craftsman]

15. Yes it is