I guess I saw that coming

[cellio]

A couple of years ago my employer earnestly announced a health fair to "help" us better manage our health, and if we would agree to supply certain data like our cholesterol numbers and BMI and other stuff to them (in aggregate only, they assured us), we would be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card. A raffle ticket with that kind of expected value did not entice me. They did it again, raising the raffle stakes some, but I still didn't bite. (If it's for my own benefit, after all, then my annual physical should do the job, no?)

This year they announced that health-care costs are going up, but if we supply this information -- which we can get from a conveniently-scheduled health fair -- our cost will be $500 lower than it would be otherwise. I signed up. I guess we know what I am; we're just haggling over price.

Comments

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

Oh, you have to do lots of things: Get an in-house physical (company brings in medical pesonnel to building, they take your bp, weight, height, do bloodwork), and agree to complete a certain number of phone calls with a "Health Coach" - basically someone in a call center who has been trained to talk with you about certain issues based on the outcome of your in-house physical.

There are a bundle of employee concerns about the program, mostly surrounding privacy. Particularly the issues of what health information is being shared with the company (adding to the mix is the fact that the company is self-insured -- they 100% finance the insurance program and only use the agency for administration), and the real confidentiality of conversations with the health coaches, who are not by any stretch of the imagination medical professionals. Can the records of those conversations be subpoenad, for example? No one can be sure. But just about everyone participates anyhow, because what choice do they have??