May 18, 2011

• The Wellness Program 

  My workplace is starting a wellness program and it sounds fishier than yesterday’s chowder.  The company has never spent extra money to improve the health tried to lessen our health insurance load.  Now they want to “care” about us and want us to kick off the wellness program by going to get a blood/health analysis at Quest Diagnostics.  The testing if free and we get to take a half day off for a one hour test.  This is from a company which won’t even give our employees a paid two hours off so that we can attend a funeral of a fellow co-worker. 

  The testing is voluntary.  It has been said that after they get the results back (they won’t see individual results, just a summary of the whole branch), then they’ll take that and manufacture a program from that.  Since I try to keep up with things, some employees have been asking me, “What do you think of it?  Are you going to take it?” 

  What I’ve noticed is that the fairly healthy people have scheduled their testing.  I have not seen any fatties put in for their free four hours of vacation testing time.  If I really wanted this test done in the past, I could go get a physical, then at the end of it as my doctor if he could also authorize a sexual diseases test to see if I have the herps as well as authorize a fat/blood/sugar content test all for the same price.  It’s not like the test would cost me more to do myself.  If I’m already getting an exam, then it would be covered under my insurance. 

  Why am I skeptical?  Has anyone ever told you they’d make you money, just write them a check and they’ll invest it for you?  Would you give it to them?  No.  You’d ask what they’d be investing in.  Stocks?  Real Estate?  Used copper wires?  A new yogurt store?  No one would go in blind.   The company is telling us to get tested, individually we can see our results while the company sees the summary, then they’ll… they’ll… they’ll… what? 

  I asked, “Has the company thought about putting in exercise bikes or ellipticals?”  I got a run around answer.  Invest $4,000 for 4 machines for 130 employees is a small price to pay to improve health.  Those are low impact machines, it’s not like they’d be a huge liability.  Heck, they’ve never even offered to reimburse us a $10 bucks a month if we sign up for a gym membership at 24 Hour Fitness. 

  I’m skeptical because with rising healthcare costs, who’s to say that the laws won’t change in a few years, that high risk fatties will have to pay a higher insurance premium than their fellow co-workers because they are more “at risk.”  I was trying to find instances on the net where this has already happened.  Guess what?  It’s already happening.  Some workplaces are offering an insurance ”discount” if an employee takes part in the wellness program.  Instead of marketing fatties as paying more, they are marketing it as skinnies paying less. 

  My co-workers don’t think about these things.  The company is not going to do anything that strictly benefits us.  I think they’d only implement this if it would reduce their group insurance rate (by having a wellness program in place) or so that they can set up a foundation for filtering out the more at-risk fatties a few years down the line.  As one of my sales producers once said, “I can expense all the alcohol I want and drink myself to death while on the road, but I can’t expense a $10 gym fee at a hotel.” 

  Does your workplace have a wellness program?  What’s your impression of it?  Do people in your company get charged different rates for medical insurance for being healthier/fatter?   

  • 2:34 am
  • 3 Comments