Employers get nosy about workers' health
Looking to cut the rising costs of employee health insurance, a growing number of company's are beginning to ask employees about their drinking, smoking and exercise habits, offering incentives for healthy behaviors, and in some cases penalizing workers for unhealthy ones. While some companies have reported real savings from such programs as insurance costs decrease with falling illness and injury rates among their workforces, workers and privacy advocates are questioning the implications and legality of the programs. With forty-two percent of employers now using bonuses, penalties, or some combination to shape the health-related behavior of their workers, and major health insurance companies starting to get in on the act, the possibility of more coercive enforcement of "healthy living" has some worried.
See "Employers get nosy about workers' health", JULIE APPLEBY, USA Today, March 5, 2003