In a
deep dark recess of the Federal Register this week,
large corporations quietly received permission to “play doctor” with their employees. Corporations can now impose even more draconian and counterproductive wellness schemes on their workers. The hope of the corporations is to claw back a big chunk of the insurance premiums paid on the behalf of employees who refuse to submit to these programs or who can’t lose weight.
A Bit of Background on Wellness
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed employers to force employees to submit to wellness programs under threat of fines. Specifically, the ACA’s “
Safeway Amendment” — named after the supermarket chain whose wellness program was highlighted as a shining example of how corporations could help employees become healthier — encouraged corporations to tie 30% to 50% of the total health insurance premium to employee health behaviors and outcomes. (As was revealed while ACA was being debated,
Safeway didn’t have a wellness program. The fictional Safeway success was a smokescreen for corporate lobbyists to shoehorn this withholding of money into the ACA.)
Once this 30% to 50% windfall became apparent, many corporations figured out what
this vendor (Bravo Wellness) advertised: There is much more money to be made in clawing back large sums of money from employees who refuse to submit to these programs than in improving the health of employees enough to allegedly reduce spending many years from now. “Allegedly” because — unlike simply collecting fines or withholding incentive payments — improving employee health turns out to be remarkably hard and ridiculously expensive to do. It is so hard and expensive that:
Most importantly, the complete lack of regulation has allowed the wellness industry and health plans to
expose employees to significant potential harms to maximize revenue.
See also: Wellness Promoters Agree: It Doesn't Work
The Federal Government Green Lights “Wellness-or-Else” Programs
There are no regulations, licensure requirements or oversight boards constraining the conduct of wellness vendors, and there is only one agency — the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) — providing any recourse for employees. The Business Roundtable has taken on the latter at every opportunity. First, the Business Roundtable threatened President Obama
with withdrawing its support for the ACA unless he declawed the EEOC. Then, the Business Roundtable arranged for
sham Senate hearings titled “Employer Wellness Programs: Better Health Outcomes and Lower Costs.” Finally, it threatened to push the
“Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act” to legislatively eviscerate the EEOC’s protections.
But it turns out the legislation was not necessary; the EEOC has now caved in. These programs are defined as “voluntary,” yet, as of now, employees can be forced to hand over genetic and family history information or pay penalties. So, as in
1984, where “war” means “peace,” employees can now be required to voluntarily hand over this information.
Let’s be clear. Genetic information isn’t about employee wellness programs,
which do not work. It is all about the penalties. Genetic information is worthless in the prevention of heart disease and diabetes, as
Aetna just showed in a failed experiment on its own employees.
Knowing family history does have some predictive value, but it is unclear how employees are going to benefit from employers collecting it. Self-insured employers could either fire the employee or do nothing. Neither is useful for the employee. If the employer is fully insured, this information is akin to a “pre-existing condition” in the old days. The employer’s premiums will increase as long as employees with bad family histories remain on their payroll.
See also: The Yuuuuge Hidden Costs of Wellness
The Good News, Part 1: Corporations Wising Up
The Business Roundtable — and its friends
at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — might want to connect their computers to the Internet. It turns out that many companies are finally realizing that compelling employees to submit to medical screens just to claw back some insurance money isn’t worth the morale hit.
Increasingly, employers are learning that what the national data shows is also true for themselves: These programs simply do not work. For example:
And the morale hit? A formerly obscure faculty member who led the successful employee revolt against the Penn State wellness program was just elected president of the Penn State Faculty Senate — largely because employees
were so grateful for his leadership in that revolt.
The Good News, Part 2: Wellness for Employees
As a result, many companies are deciding that clawing back some insurance money is not worth the damage done to their workforces. They are replacing “wellness done
to employees” with “wellness done
for employees.” These companies are improving the work environment, upgrading their food service, encouraging fitness or simply adding features like paternal leave or financial counseling. They might still hold a “health fair” every now and then, but their medical tests are conducted infrequently (based on actual clinical guidelines) instead of allowing
vendors to screen the stuffing out of employees to find diseases that do not exist.
Or, companies are actually focusing efforts where they can make a difference, such as steering employees to safer hospitals or educating employees on how to purchase healthcare services wisely. (Disclosure: My own company,
Quizzify, is in the business of teaching employees how to do the latter.)
Notwithstanding this disruption and regardless of the harm it has caused, the $7 billion wellness industry has excelled in perpetuating its own existence. Industry thought leaders recently proposed a scheme to
encourage companies to disclose how fat their employees are and have even managed to get a few large employers to sign on to it.
The sheer audacity of that scheme and the
complete disregard for its consequences on overweight employees means the war on “voluntary” wellness-or-else programs is by no means over. Like every other industry threatened by reality but supported by deep-pocketed allies such as the Business Roundtable, the wellness industry can rely on the government to delay the inevitable.
Consequently, it might be quite some time before the inevitable course of reality overcomes the wellness-or-else pox on the healthcare system.
