Health policies make workers shape up or pay up

Looking for new ways to trim the fat and boost workers' health, some employers are starting to make overweight employees pay if they don't slim down.

Others, citing growing medical costs tied to obesity, are offering fit workers lucrative incentives that shave thousands of dollars a year off health-care premiums.

In one of the boldest moves yet, an Indiana-based hospital chain, Clarian Health Partners, last month said it will begin charging less-healthy employees up to $30 every two weeks based on three health guidelines.

Employers are getting serious about penalizing workers "because they've run out of other options," said Joe Marlowe, senior vice president with Aon Consulting, a national benefits consulting firm.

UnitedHealthcare, a national insurer, introduced a new plan this month that, for a typical family, includes a $5,000 yearly deductible that can be reduced to $1,000 if an employee isn't obese and doesn't smoke.


Critics of the lose-it-or-pay trend say that companies who charge heavier employees more for their medical coverage are turning the health-care system into a police state. Just as worrisome, they say, employers are working off a false assumption that it is easy for people who are obese and have other health issues to change their situations.

Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a Princeton, N.J.-based employee rights group, called the trend "a very dangerous road that could lead to employers controlling everything we do in our private lives."

Employers have been struggling with how to hold down costs without offending or pushing away workers.

Sixty-two percent of 135 executives responding to a Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey this spring said unhealthy workers such as those who smoke or are obese should pay higher benefit costs, up from 48 percent in 2005.

Still, some lawyers say weight-based compensation plans may run afoul of other employment laws.

"A key protection in the Americans With Disabilities Act is that employers can't discriminate against employees based on their health status," said J.D. Piro, a principal at Hewitt Associates' health-care law group. "This is a fight that's likely going to be dealt with in the courts."

Brittney Manning, 29, a patient advocate at Clarian Health's Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, said many employees were taken aback when the plan was announced. But she approves.

"I think it's fair for people to pay according to what their health-care costs are," she said. Because her weight is "normal," she added, she doesn't expect to have to pay more.

Courtesy of LA Times