http://www.wsj.com/articles/wellness-program-at-honeywell-faces-test-1414626180
"While the Obama administration and the agencies that oversee the Affordable Care Act tout wellness plans as a way for employers to promote worker health and cut insurance costs, the EEOC has repeatedly cautioned that such measures might violate the law when the penalties or rewards become so extreme that employees essentially cannot afford to decline.
Employers are watching the EEOC’s actions closely and are hoping the agency will issue guidelines to help them design programs that won’t stray into questionable territory, attorneys and trade groups say.
At Honeywell, two employees filed discrimination charges with the EEOC soon after receiving information about the screening policy, claiming that the request violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the more recent Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
The Honeywell policy also applies to spouses or domestic partners who are covered under the company’s plan. So far 60% of participants in the screening program have reduced at least one of their health risks, according to the company.
“Honeywell wants its employees to be well-informed about their health status,” a company spokesman said. “We don’t believe that those employees who do work to lead healthier lifestyles should subsidize health-care premium for those who don’t,” he added.
This is the employment commission’s third legal action regarding wellness programs. The two other suits, against plastics manufacturing company Flambeau Inc., owned by Nordic Group of Companies Ltd., and Orion Energy Systems Inc., involved instances where the companies canceled a worker’s insurance completely or an employee was fired, allegedly for refusing to participate in wellness initiatives."
Mark my words, these wellness check initiatives are going to be a major privacy breach, will be considered discriminatory, will raise the cost of healthcare, etc. It's going to be a pervasive problem.
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/he...concerns-other-companies/stories/201412020038
"Major U.S. corporations and business lobbying groups have grown audibly critical of the Obama administration’s workplace discrimination enforcers, who have “struck an inflamed nerve” by challenging the legality of corporate wellness programs.
As a result, those corporations and their CEOs are threatening to undermine the 2010 Affordable Care Act, saying that the most recent legal action by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission targets a company that has tried to comply with the health overhaul.
Some of those corporate officials — members of the Business Roundtable, an economically conservative Washington, D.C., association of 200 U.S. CEOs, whose firms employ more than 16 million and sponsor health plans for 40 million — were set to meet President Barack Obama in a closed-door session Tuesday, according to Reuters news service.
“If the EEOC were to be successful in this lawsuit, it would set a precedent that would make it fairly difficult for a lot of wellness plans as they now exist to go forward,” said Mike Fischer, an employment law attorney and a partner in the Milwaukee office of Quarles & Brady LLP.
Earlier this year, the EEOC sued two small Wisconsin companies — Flambeau Inc., and Orion Energy Systems — claiming their wellness programs violated federal law, but the actions didn’t generate much backlash. In both cases, the companies were alleged to have engaged in clear-cut violations: Flambeau was accused of cancelling the medical insurance of an employee who didn’t particulate in a wellness program, and Orion is alleged to have fired an employee who objected to health screenings.
But when the EEOC’s Chicago office sued corporate giant Honeywell International Inc. on Oct. 27 on similar grounds, alarm bells were sounded. Honeywell’s CEO, David M. Cote, is a member of the Business Roundtable, and sits on its executive leadership committee.
“It’s hard to overestimate the amount of anxiety that this EEOC action has caused,” said Gretchen K. Young, senior vice president of health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee in Washington, D.C. Honeywell operates “a relatively mainstream wellness program. People said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”
Wellness programs, at the employer level, use a variety of carrots and sticks to motivate employees to lose weight, quit smoking and take their own health more seriously, in hopes of keeping the workforce healthier and reducing corporate health claims. Most programs include some combination of medical physicals, biometric screenings, smoking cessation incentives, at-work flu shots and weight-loss programs, and wellness quizzes meant to show employees how lifestyle choices affect their own health."
If you think the old school wellness programs are what is being talked about post-ACA, then you're not considering that long list of welness checks that are part of the ACA. The implications of mandating wellness checks is a far different animal then the standard smoking cessation program.
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