CVS demanding to know how fat workers are
By Christine McConville, Boston Herald
A national data privacy group is seeing red over a new CVS policy that requires workers who use company health insurance to report their weight, and body fat and glucose levels to the insurer — or pay a $600-a-year penalty.
“This is an incredibly coercive and invasive thing to ask employees to do,” said Patient Privacy Rights founder Dr. Deborah Peel, adding that mounting health care costs have made these policies increasingly common.
“Rising health care costs are killing the economy, and businesses are terrified,” Peel added. “Now, we’re all in this terrible situation where employers are desperate to get rid of workers who have costly health conditions, like obesity and diabetes.”
Rhode Island-based CVS Caremark, which has 200,000 employees, told all workers who use the company insurance plan to have a doctor determine their weight, height, body fat, blood pressure and glucose and fasting lipid levels by May 1.
The company has dubbed the request “a health screening and wellness review so that colleagues know their key health metrics in order to take action to improve their numbers, if necessary.”
CVS says it will pay for the weight, body fat and blood screenings.
But in exchange, workers must sign a form saying the screening is voluntary, and that the insurer can give test results to WebMD Health Services Group. The firm provides health management programs and benefit support to CVS.
If workers don’t sign up, their medical coverage will jump by $50 a month.
Peel said the $600 noncompliance penalty shows the program isn’t voluntary.
“How is it voluntary if you are a low- or medium- wage person?” she said.
CVS spokesman Michael D’Angelis defended the policy, saying, in an email, “Our benefits program is evolving to help our colleagues take more responsibility for improving their health and managing health-associated costs.”
He said CVS bosses won’t be able to access workers’ personal health records.
“All personal health data is kept private by our wellness program’s third party administrator and is never shared with CVS Caremark,” D’Angelis said.
Peel said workers should be wary. “There’s no chain of custody for health data,” she said, “so there’s no way to verify that they don’t really look at it.”
MIT health economics expert Jonathan Gruber said he’s not sure where he stands on the effort.
“There is an important line here between a valid method of incentivizing wellness versus discriminating against sick workers, but I’m not sure where that line is,” he said.
Instead of charging unhealthy people more, they should give premium discounts to the healthy workers. No different than car insurance and life insurance.
As an HR person, all I can say is what a disaster and their HR/Benefits Dept has their heads somewhere (and I am not a person who talks like that!). What a PR and legal disaster. Voluntary? Not one bit. Our last benefits carrier (SeeChange) solved this by saying that after meeting your deductible, if you took a few tests (same as these) they would cover you at a higher rate than those who didn’t take the test (80% vs 50%). Was simple, truly voluntary and got to the same result.
My company offers a $200/year discount for those who voluntarily participate in health screenings. It appears that CVS and their carrier stupidly sent a very negative message to their employees. And $600 a year is a lot of money considering most of the clerks are minimum wage. Really badly done, heads should roll in their HR dept.
Harrah’s/ Harvey’s has been doing this for years. I like Johnny GP’s idea. GIVE ME A DISCOUNT!
what about the workers that smoke and drink. Maybe they should get charged because of the costs to treat the disease and health risks their life styles incur. And what about the people who, through no fault of their own, have illness that is congenetal, or those that practice unprotected sex. Where does it stop? The health care insurers are some of the wealthiest ticks in the world and should have to change their practices and have health care affordable to all, despite the little personal issues. A policy is a policy. I hate health care insurance agencies and the people that think they are so “persecuted”.
No matter what people are afraid to say, obesity is not a protected category under federal or state law. For some reason most people are afraid to call it what it is. Obesity does not have the same protections as sex, race, religion or sexual orientation. Why should my insurance rates be higher when I exercise regularly, eat healthy and take care of families health when I have co-workers who hit the McDonalds drive though daily, run only to the store (in their car), drink diet coke like it’s going out of style and complain that it’s a thyroid disorder. I should not have to pay the same for my heath care just like I pay less for my car insurance because I am a safe driver.
Except that some people are ectomorphs, and some are endomorphs. Some people, roughly 10% of the population, don’t have bodies that respond to exercise in ways that lower blood glucose. It is as genetic as race and sexual orientation.
So we should let a corporation ignore reality and do what they need to do lower their bottom line? If CVS was remotely concerned with anything other than the money, they wouldn’t be selling so much high fructose corn syrup and be part of the solution. Because better dietary decisions benefit everyone regardless of genetics.
Biometric screening and an annual physical may prevent people from having problems they may otherwise be unaware of. They may also receive information or programs to improve their health when they would otherwise be ignorant of the situation. Do I personally believe insurance companies are doing these things from an altruistic outlook? Absolutely not. It’s all about the money for them. If the by- product of their greed is better health in a few individuals though, I am all for it. Single payer universal care is what is really needed. Do away with the worry and stress created by working within the current system and worker productivity should also increase. That will be fought by the AMA and lawyers associations to the bitter end though. The American Dream works like this, work hard and save your whole life so that when you get to the end the doctors and lawyers can take it all while “saving” you from the inevitable.