On Employee Health: Good Ideas That Could Turn Bad

This idea has surface appeal, but also the potential for coercion and undue peer pressure:

Kronos Optimal Health Co. in Phoenix is reaching out to companies to help get their employees healthy.

The company has figured out a way to calculate the annual health care costs of overweight employees, and how to help reduce those costs through various corporate wellness programs.

….. Rather than having employers pay up front for Kronos’ wellness program, Lazar recommends having employees pay the $150 fee, with the potential of earning it back after successful completion.

The article doesn’t address whether or not overweight employees are going to be forced, or strongly “encouraged,” to get into the wellness programs. If they are, I would say that Kronos and its client companies are out of bounds.

In a way, it’s already starting:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — WellPoint Inc. employees will have a personal stake in the health of the company’s customers, thanks to a new plan that ties a portion of their annual bonuses to it.

The nation’s largest health insurer unveiled a plan Tuesday to link 5 percent of every annual bonus to a new measurement called the Member Health Index.

The index will monitor 20 different clinical areas to determine whether patient care is improving.

Could one way of improving “the health of the company’s customers” be to exclude companies in certain industries, or with certain demographic profiles? Or “encouraging” unhealthy members to get coverage at their spouse’s place of work instead of their own?

This idea seems to have a lot of potential for abuse.