Tuesday, 12 June 2007
More Companies Stressing Wellness in the Workforce
A recent New York Times article points out a new trend in group health coverage — employers setting “wellness goals” for their employees. A healthier workforce means lower insurance premiums, and employers are willing to try nearly anything to keep their costs down.
At Intuit, a California software company, employees are paid $100 to take a medical questionnaire. The questionnaire is designed to catch potential health problems and point employees toward solutions.
Another company, BB&T Corporation, gives workers a 20% discount on their insurance premiums for answering a questionnaire, providing a blood sample, and taking a fitness test. Employees with potential health problems are assigned a nurse who helps set health and fitness goals.
Some experts see this as step in the right direction for American healthcare. They argue that the American healthcare system has traditionally placed too much emphasis on treating health problems rather than preventing those problems in the first place.
However, others are raising privacy concerns as employers take a more active role in their workers’ health. Current U.S. laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibit employers from having access to specific health information about individual employees. Even so, privacy advocates worry that such data could be used inappropriately when managers decide which employees deserve to be promoted and which should be laid off.
Advocates of “Workforce Wellness” dismiss these concerns.
“While anything is possible, there are already a fair number of protections in these laws to try to protect employees,” said Andrea I. O’Brien, a Washington lawyer who specializes in employee benefits.
“There's nothing helpful for us in knowing it,” said Steve Reeder, benefits manager at BB&T. “We certainly don’t want managers to know that information and making bad decisions based on that information.”
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