Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth — there is not one corporation that cares about its workers’ health.
If gorging on quadruple-patty burgers topped with mounds of bacon and cheese were shown to bolster productivity and engagement, then companies would be serving McFat platters daily for lunch. If growing waistlines were to yield growing profits, then every business would encourage workers to partake in a corporate un-wellness program.
So please, can we euthanize the warm and fuzzy charade that organizations are like mothers nurturing their newborns? It’s sickening.
The flap over the CVS “voluntary” wellness plan
As it turns out, there’s good reason for companies to prefer not to employ overweight people puffing away their well-being during cigarette breaks. Given skyrocketing health care expenses, unhealthier people equals an unhealthier bottom line.
Of course, and rightly so, you can’t legally fire or refuse to hire someone based on ability to race a marathon, but is there anything wrong in persuading your people to replace their fries with celery, nix the nicotine, and maybe hop on a treadmill?
That depends. Recently, drug store chain CVS “asked” its 200,000 workers to participate in a new “voluntary” wellness program. The quotation marks are there for a reason, the manifestation of much uproar.
If you want to continue using the pharmacy’s health-insurance plan, CVS explained to employees, then you must get an annual company-sponsored health screening and submit to WebMD your weight, body-fat percentage, cholesterol, glucose numbers, and other stats — so that you can then receive “guidance” on improving your health. (See the quotes again. Look, you already likely know your shortcomings.You don’t need some website’s condescension explaining that apples are more nutritious than Oreos, or some lame “you go, girl” thinspiration.)
Employees who opt not to complete the assessment and report numbers must fork over a $50 monthly penalty. This is voluntary, CVS explained, because workers have the option to decline the company’s insurance plan.
Is this really a privacy issue?
Except, especially for many of CVS’s lower-earning staff, paying an extra $600 a year versus $800 or so per month for an independent health plan versus buying no insurance is hardly a choice. It’s practically mockery, which has caused some people’s blood to boil. (So much for wellness.) It’s my body, and I’ll decide if I want a health assessment, and my weight is none of my company’s business.
Actually, it kind of is.
Those arguing that CVS’s new effort invades privacy and will enable the organization to rid itself of employees too porky to grace a Muscle & Fitness magazine cover are right — to an extent. CVS can do this, but it probably won’t.
Let’s all take a Xanax for a moment.
Even without a wellness program, many companies have varied access to medical records, and if they want to discriminate based on EKG results, there’s nothing but HIPAA stopping them. (Never mind that your employer doesn’t need to see your blood work to form opinions about your health.) Playing the privacy card to criticize CVS for its new initiative seems ignorant at best, disingenuous at worst.
What then, is so upsetting?
Here’s what: Any perceived impingement on our freedom to order KFC, smoke a Marlboro, do a push-up, and yes, get a health assessment — or not — feels less like persuasion and more like coercion. So the real question becomes: Is CVS really twisting the arms of its employees?
Yes. And no. And it doesn’t matter.
The real issue: it’s about bad marketing by CVS!
Here’s why: If the company had instead raised the cost of insurance for everyone, as often happens yearly, and then offered discounts to those who’d get the health exam and report specific findings, would people be as angry? Probably not, because they’d be pondering a $600 reward rather than a $600 fine.
But this psychological mind game of semantics clouds the logical point that, ultimately, one person’s reward is another’s punishment — those who’d choose not to get the health checkup would still pay more.
Furthermore, there’s nothing wrong — and maybe something very right — with charging people differently based on health status, within reason, of course. Indeed, 57 percent of organizations offer incentives for completing a health-risk assessment, according to a Buck Consultants survey.
Now, we can debate the meaning of “within reason,” but make no mistake: CVS’s real crime is one of marketing. By making it appear as if employees must pay penalties for noncompliance, the organization invoked feelings of disgust and anger.
People like to feel like they’re getting, not losing, something. In short, the outcry over CVS’s new plan has nothing to do with health care and everything to do with the notion that the pharmacy is striking its people with sticks rather than offering carrots.