'Wellness programs '

I had a general meeting at work today and we had our insurance people come in and talk about a wellness program.

I tend to think these are complete bull**** used by them to try to track the employee in more ways and to try to get them to give the company more health information than necessary. So that they can then use it against the employee. Which omg sounds so conspiracy notice when I wrote it out like that...

I used to not qualify for **** because my BMI was significantly too high at 63. Now I don't qualify for this program because my bmi is a 22 lol! That really made me laugh.

They claim this program is not tied to anything. That it's purely to encourage employees to get healthier, eat healthier, and to lose weight.

Am I being unreasonable by automatically assuming the worst here?

I don't know how your program is structured, but I think your assuming the worst. Our wellness program requires us to earn 100 wellness points, and we have a few methods to do it (going to the gym, x # of steps, nutritionist visit, veggie co-op participatin, dental/blood screenings, smoking cessation, health survey etc). No one is excluded from our program- the goal is for people become more aware of their heath status by 'forcing' them to get this info. It's amazing how many people don't use their health plans! With our wellness plans, if you don't participate you pay a higher contribution for your coverage. Smokers also pay a higher rate. I like how they've modeled our plans- and think it's brought to a lot of people's attention the need to at least be informed of their health status...

Ooh, I think that's actually worse if you're punished if you don't use it.

I've been part of programs with insurance companies in the past that had that kind of system and you were penalized if you didn't enroll. As someone with a genetic disorder that has been in the past and will definitely be in the future discriminated against by insurance I have an issue with my insurance company gathering certain information on me unless I would like them to have it. So to then be financially penalized - I have a big problem with it.

Ours isn't run by the insurance company-- it's a third party administrator.

But I have my suspicions about if the info gets back to the insurance company somehow. They say it's doesn't.

We pay so little for healthcare in gov't that having to pay 'extra' still pales in comparison to what those in private industry pay.

Ours is like this, too -- and I don't qualify either due to my BMI being "normal" --

I sat in on one of the "healthy eating" groups and surprise surprise: it was all outdated food pyramid **** from years ago -- you know, "low fat" and eating plenty of "whole grains" ****

They actually have a competition for weight loss, too -- and they don't separate male from female -- nor by severity of weight problem. So, as you can imagine, someone who has a 100 pounds to lose that is male is always going to win. In fact, last time it was a man who had recently had the sleeve surgery done -- which I thought was completely unfair to the rest of the participants.

There is also a Type II diabetes thing, too.

They do document weight/bmi/etc -- as well as submit to smoking cessation groups -- etc.

I also think it's giving more information to my employer than I'd feel comfortable giving. JMHO.

If it truly were about health and wellness, everyone should have access to the program and it wouldn't be tied to BMI :/

It sounds discriminatory to me....there are laws against that!

I'm actually in HR and it's not discriminatory. I just personally don't agree with it.

I'm on our company's "Working on Wellness" committee, and our program (tied in with BCBS) isn't insidious at all (IMO).

To participate in some of the program activities, you need to provide health information to the insurance company. However, BCBS is prohibited from sharing individual data with the workplace. At year end, my company gets an overall summary of participating individuals' health scores and the top 5 health concerns, but nothing linked to specific people.

There's also some legal information that says that information you provide to the wellness program may NOT be used to make any decisions related to coverage. They can use it, with my permission, to send me information on various health stuff (asthma management programs, etc.), but it has zero interaction with claim status, and I'm pretty sure there's something legal involved to prevent it.

I can understand being concerned about improper sharing of information, but I don't know that you need to automatically assume nefarious intent.

Yours sounds very well put together!