Companies May Hit New Anti-Discrimination Law When Asking Workers About
Health Issues
Feb 01, 2010 - Kaiser Health News
Employers offering wellness and preventive health
programs can sometimes run afoul of a new anti-discrimination law restricting
their ability to ask workers about family medical histories, The Wall Street Journal reports. "Many employers offer
workers cash incentives or insurance-premium reductions to fill out health
surveys and some use that information to offer health advice or direct at-risk
employees to disease-management programs. But the Genetic Information
Nondiscrimination Act, which took effect last year, restricts employers' and
health insurers' ability to collect and disclose genetic information." This
restriction not only applies to genetic-test results, but family medical
histories. "Some employers say the law is stymieing their efforts to
promote employee wellness because it bars them from offering workers financial
incentives to complete health surveys that ask about family history." In
general, the law is designed to prevent "insurers and employers from
using genetic information for coverage and employment decisions" (Tuna, 2/1).
Meanwhile, the Los
Angeles Times reports on efforts to control obesity and promote wellness.
"As more people over the last decade have tipped the scales toward obesity,
normal weight folks have signed up for employee wellness programs that offer
them lower premiums and other financial perks as a reward for their healthy
weight -- and that indirectly penalize heavier workers. They've crafted
policies, most unsuccessful, to compel individuals to lose weight. They've
become vocal, sometimes vehemently so, in their support for 'sin taxes' on junk
food and soda. And they've increasingly attacked, with words or actions, the
overweight and obese." Among the examples cited by the Times was plan at a
college in Pennsylvania to require obese students to lose weight before
graduating, a proposed bill in Mississippi to let restaurants prohibit obese
patrons from dining and advertising campaigns against obesity (Jameson, 2/1).
In a separate article, The Los Angeles Times reports on employers' efforts to control
rising obesity rates. "Employers of the overweight and normal weight co-workers
have managed to nudge overweight colleagues toward healthier behaviors, if not
actual weight loss. The number of employers offering weight-management programs
increased from 6% in 2006 to 25% in 2009, according to the Kaiser Family
Foundation's 2009 Annual Employee Benefits Survey." The increase, during the
same time period, was even greater among among large employers
(Jameson, 2/1). (KHN is a project of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)
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