You’re all costing your employers too much money in health care costs and they’re done being nice about encouraging you to get healthier.
The wife of a Las Vegas casino dealer recently wrote us at MSNBC upset that her husband was asked by his managers at the hotel where he works to take a biometric health assessment test. Such tests typically include a health professional taking an employee’s blood and then having it tested for an array of ailments.
The reader wrote that her husband would be fined $500 if he refused to take the test. Such assessments, she added, were “an egregious violation of my husband’s medical privacy.” She’s contacted the Nevada Department of Labor and the ACLU in order to get help to fight the requirement.
Unfortunately, the couple may not have a legal leg to stand on if the dealer doesn’t allow them to prick his finger.
About 70 percent of larger employers now conduct employee health assessments, and more and more are considering taking the stick approach to workers who refuse to take such exams.
According to November report by health consulting firm Mercer:
Workforce health management, or “wellness”, has emerged as employers’ top long-term strategy for controlling health spending. When asked about a long-term response to the changes initiated by health reform, an astonishing 87% of large employers say they will add or strengthen programs or policies to encourage more health-conscious behavior.
Forcing employees to take medical tests was considered a no no by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because the agency saw it as violating disability discrimination laws, but a court ruling last year gave employers the green light to perform such exams as part of their wellness efforts, and include penalties to get reluctant workers to play along.
That doesn’t mean employers can fire you or demote you because they find out your have some sort of underlying disability. That’s still illegal. But they can penalize you for refusing to take the test. There are limits on how much they can penalize you though. At this point, employers can only limit the fines to 20 percent of the cost of an employee’s total health insurance premiums. But under healthcare reform, that percentage will climb to 30 percent.
There are also strict privacy rules when it comes to your health information. Employers are restricted from seeing the results of your test and are only given aggregate information about what’s wrong with their overall workforce. The employees, however, can get a detailed report on a host of medical issues, including everything from your cholesterol to glucose levels.
The whole process does smack of big brother, but for now with little legal challenge to the recent ruling, workers may just have to offer their finger to their employers, or they can decide to give the finger and risk getting hit in the wallet.
January 11th, 2012 at 10:07 am
My primary concern is that the companies that are taking the tests will retain the results, and eventually resell them to other parties. The other risk associated with such firms having your data is that a data breach may disclose your health information (in addition to other information identity thieves typically want). Even if laws and rules are in place that specify specific rules for data protection, who will audit these firms to determine whether or not they are complying with those controls?
In the technology world, we have a principle called Meek’s Law. It says, “If any technology can be exploited, it will be exploited.”
We also have Meek’s Corollary: “Every technology can be exploited.”
January 12th, 2012 at 9:06 am
It may be illegal for companies to discriminate against people with existing health conditions, but that may change someday too. What if they collect enough statistics from these tests that relate test results with job performance? Laws change if the lobbyists push hard enough, and shareholders will push.
January 12th, 2012 at 10:23 am
The real problem that I see is this: one the one hand, employers demand healthy (therefore cheap) employees. On the other hand, employers demand round-the-clock work from their employees. Got to sleep sometime. Also, exercise (biking, gym, etc) is required for good health. If an employer works their people so hard that they don’t have time to take care of themselves by getting enough sleep and exercise…well, that’s a Catch-22. Employers want to have their cake and eat it too. This is a typical conflict between what’s wanted and what’s physically possible. When the economy is good, workers can leave an employer that mistreats it’s people and get a better job; when the economy is in its current shape, the employer is in the driver’s seat and it may not be possible to change bad employer behavior with supply and demand economics.
January 12th, 2012 at 10:34 am
The future is complete DNA printing, detailed urinalysis screening, and 14 point blood tests. I have already been doing this since 2007 to work foreign military contracts, and it is legal and a condition of employment to pass all tests. At some point a company will be able to determine statistically how many sick days a person will take off, the ability to work 16 hour days without collapse, and potential for injury on the job. Your common access card will carry all the data in a gold plated circuit.
The tests do not determine job performance or economic viability of the employee. I have seen an individual rejected for having a slight amount of blood in his urine, the result of a sports injury several days earlier. The tests do not screen out abysmal knuckle heads either and many of them are hired.
January 12th, 2012 at 11:14 am
John, what you envision about predicting sick days is disturbing, but I can see how so much of this can go to far. I’m surprised someone was rejected for having blood in his urine. I wonder if he would have been covered by the ADA.
And you’re right Todd, it’s such a Catch 22. The big problem with so many wellness programs is that employees often can’t participate because of time constraints. Alas, I don’t see many employers giving workers the time the need to get healthier.
As far as laws changing Ken, we can find some comfort in the fact that it’s always harder to get rid of a law than introduce a new one.
January 12th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
This is unfortunately an inevitable consequence of a culture that shuns a public health system. Health care has become an employer’s responsibility because most people can’t afford or obtain private insurance. As costs continue to rise, it becomes more of a financial burden to employers who have no choice but to do more to control it. Heath care costs put U.S. employers at an increasing competitive disadvantage against employers in other developed countries. Employees fear to leave an unhappy situation because they’ll lose their health insurance, so are reluctant to go out and start their own businesses. All of this is bad medicine for the U.S. These things don’t happen in countries where your health care is not tied to your employer. The cost in taxes is far less than what U.S. employers pay to pad the pockets of health industry investors.
January 12th, 2012 at 3:55 pm
I love it. Healthcare reform, the save all and end all, makes you lose your privacy or cost you a bunch. It is time to be good engineers and get rid of the stupid bill and find solutions to the problems of costs which end up being government regulations, covering nonpaying sutomers, and lawyers.
January 12th, 2012 at 4:38 pm
If all of the employees band together and say no, then it won’t go any further.
I had a friend once and that happened at her workplace. It was for drug testing. All employees said no, and the company couldn’t fire their entire workforce (not easily anyways). They had everyone sign an affidaffit that they were not doing drugs at work.
For a low paying job, that was rediculous. They were all smoking marijuana actually, or most of them. So the affidaffit wasn’t worth anything, but it was a way for the employer to save face with a new client. Funny, it was for a Medical Answering Service.
January 13th, 2012 at 11:13 am
The worst thing employers (especially in technology) actually do is polluting the environment. Pollution is harmful to the environment and as a consequence to human and animal health and welfare. I believe citizens and employees should react to unfair and illegal practices by exposing what employers are actually causing in the environment, which is generally indisputable according to the same “scientific principles” that they use “at the right time” for their unfair practices. And the worst thing is that pollution is generally not reversible.