Health survey mandatory?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

For the past several years my husband’s employer has offered a Mayo Clinic health survey to employees and spouses/partners. As an incentive, they gave everyone who took it a $50 gift card. So, $100 per family.
We’ve always participated, and had a nice dinner on the Company.
This year, they have made it mandatory. Well, if an employee or spouse choses not to take it, they will raise that family’s healthcare premiums.
I never minded taking it, but I don’t like being forced. I will, because we just can’t afford another hike in our rates.
Our healthcare premiums have gone from free to $129 per paycheck, ($258-$387 per month) in the past 10 years. That’s with higher co-pays and less coverage.
I can’t believe they can do this outside the contract. Maybe the union will step in.

:frowning:

2

The health insurance provider my company uses did the exact same thing this year. Previous years you got incentives to do them. Guess not enough people did it, so this year they said do it or pay an extra $1000 next year.

My guess is this is just step 1. Next step will be to penalize you because you didn’t make healthy improvements to your life style.

I’d love to tell them to stick it up their asses, but what choice do you have?

3

We have to do an assessment also for a 50% on co-pays. Then, once you’ve completed it, you get a lovely series of phone calls from the health plan nurses telling you how horrible your health is, programs they offer to help you (not covered by said inurance), and when you ask them not to call you again they start bombarding you with letters.

And our union approves it.

4

This sort of thing is only going to happen more as organizations fight to control healthcare costs. It’s one more sign that the system we have is broken and needs radical rethinking.

Here’s a column from Ezra Klein about efforts at the Cleveland Clinic to control employee behavior regarding health issues.

5

Here is a previous thread I started about this same thing. It’s going to cost me an extra $400/yr to keep my healthcare between me and my doctor. I chose to pay it, at least this year. I figured $1.10 per day for my privacy was worth it, considering I pay $10/day just for gas to get to work.

I really have an issue with this. My fear is that, say they diagnose me with borderline hypertension. Nothing to worry about, just keep an eye on it. But in the future, if I ever want to get private health insurance, or life insurance, and have to ask a health questionaire, I can’t claim ignorance. Basically, if my doctor thnks there’s a reason to be concerned, fine. She and I will discuss it then. I don’t want some insurance company flunky telling me I need to adjust my lifestyle.

StG

6

What type of questions were on the survey? Was it more like “Have you ever been told by a doctor that you have ‘hyperhydraulic boonosis’ of either foot?”, more like a list of psychological screening questions (e.g. “Do you ever think of harming yourself?” “Do you feel that you drink too much?”), or was it a physical exam?

And, who exactly got the results of the test? I assume that HR and supervisors didn’t get copies. E.g. “Oh my, this memo says that three of my sales guys have high blood pressure and one has a family history of alcoholism!” Time to start nitpicking so I can give negative evaluations!

A while back, I actually contacted HR and asked if I could get a discount on my health insurance if I agreed to take a drug test (to include nicotine). They said no. But this is a small company and there isn’t an institutionalized health program.

7

The large company I work for has been doing this for at least 5 years (since I started there). They phrase it as “answering the survey gets you discounted rates”, not “ignoring the survey gets you the penalty rates”, but its the same thing.

Of course, they have no way of knowing how truthful anyone taking the survey is, and (I checked carefully), there’s no verbiage anywhere that giving untruthful answers has any penalty whatsoever.

IIRC correctly, it was height, weight, date of last physical, last blood pressure reading, medications you take regularly, how often & how long you exercise, diet questions, alcohol use questions, drug use questions, how often do you speak with friends, how often do you go out with friends, how stressed do you feel, how well do you think you deal with your stress, etc.

8

Hmm. If you say that you are very stressed, what actually happens? Do they call your supervisor and tell them, “Hey, lighten up on robert_columbia for a bit and let him take a vacation so he can improve his health and become more productive in the long run.” Do they actually issue medical diagnoses or make adverse insurance decisions based on your answers?

In other words, what do they USE the results for? Or is it just to guilt-trip the employee by making them THINK about how unhealthy they are?

9

muldoonthief - The questionaire was one thing - I completed that. But starting this year, we had a “health assessment” where they had a nurse (or at least someone in scrubs) wiegh you, take a finger stick and measure your cholesteral, take your blood pressure, etc. All on-site. Plus you had to complete the questionaire.

StG

10

It’s a 5 page questionaire that covers everything from toenail fungus to psych.
I’m the spouse. I’m older than my husband and retired. I hate the fact that they can make decisions on my husband’s employment because I’m old and out of shape.

11

According to the company disclaimer, information is only used for statistical purposes, for setting insurance rates. Information about a particular individual is NOT shared with anyone, ever.

In my experience, I haven’t received any emails or any other contact about my answers, either directly or obliquely (i.e. no “Weight loss clinic being offered” emails). No one I know of has either.

ETA: At my company, only the employee has to fill out the survey to get better rates. Spouse does not.

12

I just finished my not mandatory, but strongly pushed health assessment.
Received a lower score plus an admonishment about not knowing my family history.

I’m adopted. sigh

But I’ll still get my co-pay discount!

13

You should report that to HR, and how upset it made you, just to give them something to get in a tizzy about.

I once had multiple HR reps spinning like mad over the ridiculous requirements for my daughter’s epipen prescriptions - I had put lots of stuff like "How can you tell a parent that their toddler’s current risk of anaphylaxis is ‘acceptable’ " in my initial email - got a phone call from the head of HR at one point. Good times.

14

My company does this as well and it is starting to feel intrusive.

We have to complete a health survey, then get a mini check up (blood pressure, height, weight) and get our blood drawn for cholesterol, tobacco, and diabetes on-site.This earns you a debit card that can be used for medical expenses.

When your results are available and if you are out of range for any of the above, you have to follow up with your private physician and are rewarded with more money added to your medical debit card.

If you ‘opt out’ of any part of this program, you can only buy the crappy insurance plan.

I’m wondering that now that my employer has my blood, what is to prevent them for testing for things they didn’t mention. I’m sure that it’s quite likely there is some clause in the contract that required me to consent for that. Will they hold it for drugs (legal or illegal- will they check to see if I take my cholesterol meds, for example?) alcohol or genetic predispositions? Will they eventually screen me out of insurance plans based on genetics? How long will they keep my sample?

They are basically both threatening me (by limiting my insurance options) and buying my consent (for intrusion into my health privacy) for a couple hundred dollars. And ultimately, there is nothing I can do about it except opt out. Will that risk my employment?

I was looking around for a different job about a year ago and saw signs that read “We don’t hire anyone that uses tobacco in any form and we test for that”. Why don’t they feel the need to alert potential employees that they test for alcohol or drugs as well? Certainly they don’t mean it’s OK to show up to work drunk or high (In fact, it’s not. At my place of employment, if you have and “incident” of any kind at work, drug/alchohol testing is automatic) and that kind of thing should be discouraged, but how long until your employer is telling you what you can and can’t do, eat, drink, etc in your off time?

Now, I understand it’s ultimately about getting healthier and it’s better to prevent disease than treat it, but I’m not sure it’s my employers place to enforce this. And now I’m hearing grumbling from the ‘healthy’ employees that they don’t get the rewards that the ‘unhealthy’ employees are getting.

It all just seems weird to me.

Also, I wish they would let me use my debit card for a gym membership.