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http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2013/03/20/17387406-cvs-to-workers-tell-us-how-much-you-weigh-or-itll-cost-you-600-a-year?lite

And so we enter a new chapter.

Say whaaaaaaat?

Overweight people do not enjoy political protection. Can you imagine if CVS demanded that people reveal their sexual proclivities? You will be charged 50 dollars a month if you have unprotected sex and do not take measures to change that.

Being fat and being a smoker relegates you to second class citizenry in some companies. It would be great if the pharmacists simply quit and went to work at Rite Aid/Walgreens etc. Pharamacists are in demand and, unlike clerks, cannot be easily replaced.

What's this? A free healthcare check for employees?! Disgusting....

Really though, looking at the votes at the bottom of the page says it all. 27% of responders think that you should take some responsibility for your own health and well being, 27%?! That's just sad, and it's a sign of how things are going across America and Europe. "Take responsibility for myself and my actions? That's someone else's job!, I'll keep eating fast food, drinking to excess and smoking like a chimney. When I get sick, it'll be some else's job to care for me!"

Take responsibility for your own actions for feths sake. Eat a salad once in a while, cut down the smokes and take up running. If I were to employ someone, especially in the States where almost all healthcare costs, I'd want to make damn sure that they are not going to keel over with a stroke or a heart attack within a week of starting the job, thus costing me a small fortune in medical bills..

Wow, that's four different kinds of fethed up.

bs. Im heavy, but im as health as can be. I can carry carts up hill for hours, life heavy boxes and then some. Weight =/= Unhealthy.

 sarpedons-right-hand wrote:
What's this? A free healthcare check for employees?! Disgusting....

Really though, looking at the votes at the bottom of the page says it all. 27% of responders think that you should take some responsibility for your own health and well being, 27%?! That's just sad, and it's a sign of how things are going across America and Europe. "Take responsibility for myself and my actions? That's someone else's job!, I'll keep eating fast food, drinking to excess and smoking like a chimney. When I get sick, it'll be some else's job to care for me!"

Take responsibility for your own actions for feths sake. Eat a salad once in a while, cut down the smokes and take up running. If I were to employ someone, especially in the States where almost all healthcare costs, I'd want to make damn sure that they are not going to keel over with a stroke or a heart attack within a week of starting the job, thus costing me a small fortune in medical bills..

To be fair, that poll is crap. What about people who think it's an invasion of privacy but that people should be responsible for their own health at the same time? I highly doubt that people are at either one of these scale ends, and that most people are being forced to vote for whichever one is closest to their own thoughts.

Yup... my Health Insurance for years had us enter a Health Risk Assessment (HRA) survey in order to get the "Gold" plan. This survey ask your height, weight, waist size, if smoker, HDL / LDL levels and a plethora other questions. If not, we'd only be relegated to the "Silver" or "Bronze" plan... which essentially just raises the co-pays. I normally just put down some bs response.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
bs. Im heavy, but im as health as can be. I can carry carts up hill for hours, life heavy boxes and then some. Weight =/= Unhealthy.

It's not saying that weight=unhealthy, it saying "if you don't allow us to keep an eye on your health it will be $50 more for you per month" still pretty bad, but not quite as bad as people in this thread are making it out to be.

Sgt Scruffy has the right of it. Obesity (and smokers, which are similarly positioned) is not a protected class, and CVS is free to discriminate against them as much as they'd like, short of some state law precluding such. As most states are at-will employers, your rights are simply to walk away and choose employment elsewhere.

 whembly wrote:
Yup... my Health Insurance for years had us enter a Health Risk Assessment (HRA) survey in order to get the "Gold" plan. This survey ask your height, weight, waist size, if smoker, HDL / LDL levels and a plethora other questions. If not, we'd only be relegated to the "Silver" or "Bronze" plan... which essentially just raises the co-pays. I normally just put down some bs response.

Yup, it is all part of the social engineering process businesses are trying to do to their employees to reduce insurance cost. Pretty standard practice now for at least a decade.

Seems like a symptom of our screwed up healthcare industry as opposed to the root cause.

Biggest problem of American healthcare is that it is a system that focused on disease managent, not health management.

But anytime you try to setup any kind if health management people start to march

I’ve just skimmed the story but it seems to be related to a health insurance plan the company is providing its workers. Would it be compulsory to be a member of such a plan?

If the company is offering it employees free health insurance then it seem logical that they should need to provide some information about their physical fitness. If they don’t want to offer the information then I assume they can simply opt out of the plan?

 LuciusAR wrote:
I’ve just skimmed the story but it seems to be related to a health insurance plan the company is providing its workers. Would it be compulsory to be a member of such a plan?

Truely, you would think so. Without going into detail, it wasn't a year ago. See below.

If the company is offering it employees free health insurance then it seem logical that they should need to provide some information about their physical fitness. If they don’t want to offer the information then I assume they can simply opt out of the plan?

You can absolutely opt out... for the average going rate of $1,200.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/obamacare-cbo-report_n_1898370.html

Of course, you could simply refuse employment, but then you're unemployed, and still owe the average going rate of $1,200.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oooh oooh!!! Or, you could secure health insurance as an individual!








AHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I crack myself up sometimes.

Seriously, our system was fethed. Now, it got worse. I envy the British in this regard.

My own company does this same thing. Submit to a "wellness biometric screening" or suffer a $30 per pay period penalty for a full year.

All so that an undertrained, overbusy health "professional" can draw blood, take some numbers off a scale and a cheapass blood pressure machine and then declare you scanned.

You can, of course, do it at your doctor's office instead, but that will come with the cost of one copay.

 Ouze wrote:
Sgt Scruffy has the right of it. Obesity (and smokers, which are similarly positioned) is not a protected class, and CVS is free to discriminate against them as much as they'd like, short of some state law precluding such. As most states are at-will employers, your rights are simply to walk away and choose employment elsewhere.

All I can say is, I'm glad to live in a country where discrimination laws apply regardless of your belonging to a group listed in the law.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
All I can say is, I'm glad to live in a country where discrimination laws apply regardless of your belonging to a group listed in the law.

Are you sure about that? I'm not a Canadian national, obviously, so I'm not sure, but it appears that your laws protect based upon specific classes in a nigh-identical manner. The only additional protection I see is political belief and association, which we don't have.