No fatties here
Don’t fat people have it
bad enough? Now they face the risk of losing money at work if they don’t shape up.
Thanks to
new federal regulations that went on the books this summer, companies are allowed to charge unhealthy, aka overweight, employees more money for their health care premiums than their skinny counterparts.
I’m not kidding, folks. It’s time to put away the Twinkies and Big Macs. Your boss really wants less of you, and since wellness programs and free pedometers didn’t get you dropping those pounds, some employers now think its time to hit you below the belt -- in your wallet, that is.
Small business owners
have it the hardest when it comes to health insurance. They pay more than big corporations, and because they have fewer employers there are fewer people to spread the risk. That means a couple of obese employees with major health problems can send a small firm’s insurance premiums through the roof.
While you don’t hear a lot about it, entrepreneurs have been trying for years to adopt wellness programs similar to those you see at big firms, but American workers just keep getting fatter and fatter.
Most small business owners, even though they’re pulling their hair out over rising premiums, are using the carrot instead of the stick right now, says Stephen Glick, administrator of the
Chamber Insurance Trust, which administers health plans for 50,000 small businesses in Connecticut and western Massachusetts. What he’s seeing is firms offering incentives such as gifts and free weekend getaways for workers who slim down -- not financial disincentives.
But the tide is turning, says Jerry Ripperger, director of consumer health at
Principal Financial Group. Before the federal health insurance laws on penalizing employees were clarified in July, he got about one call a month from employers asking whether they can charge unhealthy workers more for premiums. Now his phone is ringing off the hook.
He even got a call from a business owner wondering if he could drop health coverage for an employee whose body mass index was too high.
That’s going too far, and is not legal under the new regs. What an employer can do is charge employees up to 20 percent of the value of the coverage if they don’t play by the “keep-your-butt-skinny” rules. (The new rules cover employers with two or more workers.)
Ripperger advises small business owners to focus on getting employees to participate in wellness programs at work rather than penalizing them for being fat. If they don’t participate in health screening or take advantage of exercise programs at work, then go ahead and dock their pay.
But beware if you start randomly penalizing workers you deem to be a drain on your health coverage dollars just because they are wearing plus sizes.
“We encourage employers to make this a positive experience,” Ripperger adds.
I’m going to guess this is going to be anything but a positive experience for workers who hate working out but love pigging out.
No one wants to be told what to do, even if it’s good for us.
Small business owner Nancy Trent encourages the 17 employees of
her marketing firm to eat right, but she says it has nothing to do with keeping premiums low. "When people look better and feel better they have more confidence and perform better socially and professionally. Therefore penalizing someone for being overweight detracts from the goal and will make them feel less valuable to the organization."
Good ol’ pressure from the boss can do the trick. One of Trent’s employees, Pamela Wadler, says: “We are encouraged to eat healthy. Soda and snack foods are so frowned upon a new girl snuck a Snickers bar and ate it quickly under her desk.”
