posted August 18, 2007 08:37 AM              

Workers told to shape up or pay up

Aug. 10: Clarian Health decided to penalize their employees if they're unhealthy. Is this discrimination?

By Mike Celizic
Updated: 9:01 a.m. CT Aug 10, 2007

Packing a few extra pounds? Still smoking like a chimney, despite all the evidence it can kill you?

Well, if a new practice an Indiana company is putting in place catches on, one day soon your employer could demand you pay a price for your unhealthy lifestyle.

Like a growing number of companies, Clarian Health Partners has for a number of years had a program that rewards employees for getting healthy. But now, Clarian is telling its workers, it's time to shape up or pay up.

“For several years, we’ve had a reward program, where if you cease smoking and do a self-assessment, you receive a reduction in your [health care] premiums,” Clarian president and CEO Daniel Evans told TODAY co-host Matt Lauer on Friday. "[But] our health care costs were going up and our employees were not taking full advantage of the programs we had in place.”

To combat the problem, beginning in 2009 Clarian employees will be charged up to $30 every two weeks for failing to meet standards set by the company in a number of areas. That breaks down to $10 for a body mass index that’s too high, and $5 each for smoking, high cholesterol, high blood sugar and high blood pressure.

The unique approach is likely to stir controversy, and could spawn lawsuits.

“Getting employees healthy is a good thing,” said Jeremy Gruber, the National Workrights Institute legal director. “[But] are they going to do it by working with employees, or are they going to do it on the backs of employees by charging them money and punitive assessments?”

Gruber advocates programs that offer rewards to employees for getting healthy, which Clarian has had. Other companies with such policies include Dell, Pitney Bowes, IBM, Kellogg’s and Time-Warner.

“We believe, from a lot of testing over the past 15 years, that the carrot is far more effective than the stick,” Pitney Bowes executive chairman Michael Critelli said in a taped interview. His company’s employees can earn up to $225 a year for participating in corporate-sponsored workout programs.

Dr. Robert Goulet of Clarian said on tape that the company’s home state is a factor in the decision to charge workers for not meeting company health guidelines.

“The population of Indiana is one of the unhealthiest populations in the country,” Goulet said. The state has the fourth-highest level of obesity in the United States and the second-highest rate of smoking.

“The ultimate goal isn’t to collect more money,” Goulet said. “The ultimate goal is to create a healthier population.”

Privacy concerns
The problem that Gruber and other critics see is that programs like Clarian’s collect personal medical data on employees.

Today, it’s information on blood pressure and cholesterol. Tomorrow, as Lauer wondered aloud, will it be asking single employees about their sexual habits and their use of condoms?

“You can turn health care into a police state,” Lauer said, asking Evans where the line is to be drawn.

“You draw the line with our program,” Evans said. “Confidentiality — we’ve got these problems thoroughly solved.”

Gruber wasn’t buying that.

“These programs are highly invasive,” he said. “They regulate private behavior. They amass huge amounts of health information. What’s happening to this information? What type of employees’ private behavior is being regulated?

“We’re supposed to be living in a free country." he added. “How do we go about that when employers have policies which dictate how we go about our lives?”

posted August 18, 2007 08:45 AM              

Cooking up universal health care

Aug. 16: For the Massachusetts experiment in universal health insurance to succeed, young people who think they can’t get sick will have to be persuaded to sign up.

The 2006 Massachusetts Health Reform Law requires nearly everyone to have health insurance by Dec. 31. Here are the basics of the new plan. (For the main story, click here, and read a conversation with the head of the program.)

The context
Massachusetts might be one of the easiest states in which to adopt mandatory insurance.

Surveys have shown that Massachusetts already had one of the lowest rates of uninsured: about 370,000 to 500,000 people, or about 6 percent to 8 percent of the 6.3 million people in the state. It also had in place consumer protection laws, including a "guaranteed issue" law allowing anyone, whether sick or not, to buy insurance.

The progress so far
About 170,000 of the uninsured have signed up — but most of them are the poor. Just 17,500 have signed up for the unsubsidized health insurance plans, at least through July, but those plans became available just on May 1.

That leaves about 200,000 to 300,000 people uninsured.

Paying the penalty
This year the incentive is weak: Those who can't show proof of insurance by the end of 2007 lose their state tax exemption when they file their income taxes in 2008, about $219.

The penalty increases when tax time comes in 2009. For every month in 2008 that they don't have insurance, residents pay a penalty of half the cost of the lowest-cost plan. That's about $150 a month.

Not just any insurance
The Massachusetts experiment means very little now to the 90 percent of people in the state who already had insurance. But in 2009, their insurance must be good enough to pass a test: It must have prescription drug coverage, and it must have a deductible of no more than $2,000 a year for an individual or $4,000 for a family — low enough for them to avoid big bills for health care. No annual limits or lifetime limits are allowed. An estimated 200,000 people in the state have insurance now that won't meet these tests.

Employer responsibility
Employers who don't either get 25 percent of employees to sign up or else make a one-third contribution to health coverage will pay an annual penalty, called a "fair share contribution," of $295 per worker. This applies only if they have 11 or more employees (or full-time equivalents, counting the hours of part-timers).

Employer groups warn that some employers may reduce the hours of employees so they fall below the law, and some employers offering health insurance now may decide that it's cheaper just to drop it and pay the $295 fee.

posted August 18, 2007 11:07 PM            

As for the corporate wage slaves, they already willingly endure demeaning and abusive practices all the time. The motto for such souless worker drones should be, "Moo!"

posted September 02, 2007 10:46 PM              

TIPTON, Iowa - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat "the first trace of problem." Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

"The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death," he said.

The former North Carolina senator said all presidential candidates talking about health care "ought to be asked one question: Does your plan cover every single American?"

"Because if it doesn't they should be made to explain what child, what woman, what man in America is not worthy of health care," he said. "Because in my view, everybody is worth health care."

Edwards said his plan would cost up to $120 billion a year, a cost he proposes covering by ending President Bush's tax cuts to people who make more than $200,000 per year.

Edwards, who has been criticized by some for calling on Americans to be willing to give up their SUVs while driving one, acknowledged Sunday that he owns a Ford Escape hybrid SUV, purchased within the year, and a Chrysler Pacificia, which he said he has had for years.

"I think all of us have to move, have to make progress," he said. "I'm not holyier-than-thou about this. ... I'm like a lot of Americans, I see how serious this issue is and I want to address it myself and I want to help lead the nation in the right direction."

He said he would not buy another SUV in the future.

The Ford Escape, the first hybrid SUV on the market, gets an estimated 36 mpg in the city and 31 mpg on the highway.

By AMY LORENTZEN
Associated Press Writer
Sun Sep 2, 6:30 PM ET

posted September 02, 2007 10:52 PM              

a way to further enslave people...most probably a pre-requisite for the medical biochip implants...making them mandatory as well ~

U.S. wants to create implantable biochip
CLEMSON, S.C., July 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Defense awarded Clemson University a $1.6 million contract for implantable biochip research.

The award given the university's Center for Bioelectronics, Biosensors and Biochips is for an implantable biochip that can relay vital health information if a soldier is wounded in battle or a civilian is hurt in an accident.

The biochip, about the size of a grain of rice, is to be designed to measure and relay such information as blood lactate and glucose levels in the event of a major hemorrhage.

Professor Anthony Guiseppi-Elie, the center's director, said the biochip device has other potential applications, such as monitoring astronauts' vital signs during space flights.

"We now lose a large percentage of patients to bleeding and getting vital information such as how much oxygen is in the tissue back to ER physicians and medical personnel can often mean the difference between life and death," he said. "Our goal is to improve the quality and expediency of care for fallen soldiers and civilian trauma victims."

The biochip also might be injected as a precautionary measure in anticipation of future traumas, he said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-2 0070730-16373500-bc-us-biochip.xml

original post by Blue Roamer ~

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/003508.html

posted September 09, 2007 10:06 PM              

quote:

---

The unique approach is likely to stir controversy, and could spawn lawsuits

---

This can't possible be legal in any way or form to do this to current employees!

If however [new employees] were hired with this as a condition of employment it could in fact be legally enforced.

Health care reform at it's finest -geesh!
nice post btw naiad.

Article #2 Massachusetts Health Reform Law
ughhh... This could and never would work efficiently in California. You see already with the laws in effect here. Many employers have opted to only employ part timers thus not being held liable to offer medical insurance at all.

Dervish, I too would like to see the finer details of this plan...

Article #3 John Edwards backs mandatory preventive care

Does your plan cover every single American?
If so, at what cost? [privacy, etc.]

Article #4 American Medical Association/Pharmaceutical Companies/US Government, Etc.
ughhhhh!
BIOCHIPS

Linda Goodmans Wisdom

posted September 09, 2007 10:48 PM            

However, there's the argument that they can always elect to quit.

I do see a kind of a sheeple mentality with many people who work in Corporate hell. However, corporations average higher wages all around than small businesses do...so many of these people are hardly "wage slaves".

If someone gets themselves into huge debt because they live beyond their means (I'm not talking the necessities, I'm talking iPods, iPhones, video games, trips, partying, etc), and as a result they have to stay in a ****** job that penalizes them for being 30 lbs overweight...are they a wage slave, or a slave to Citicard?