Editorial, Opinion

EDIT: CVS requires employee health information

A new CVS policy requires workers who use company health insurance to report their weight, body fat and glucose levels to the insurer or pay a $600-a-year penalty, according to The Boston Herald. The Herald also reported that privacy groups are calling the requirement “coercive” and “invasive,” a breach in employee privacy.

CVS has said this is not the aim of the new requirement. According to the Herald, the company has dubbed the request “a health screening and wellness review so that colleagues know their key health metrics in order to take action to improve their numbers, if necessary.”

Still, workers must sign a form claiming that the screening of their health is voluntary and that the insurer can provide their test results to WebMD Health Services Group. This, indeed, is a breach in privacy. The privacy groups enraged by the policy claim that the $600 fine prevents the procedure from ever being voluntary, according to the Herald.

“There is an important line here between a valid method of incentivizing wellness versus discriminating against sick workers, but I’m not sure where that line is,” said one privacy activist to the Herald.

On the one hand, doesn’t a company providing health insurance to its employees have a right to know about the general health of its employees in the first place? It’s possible that the disclosure of such information is a good thing, so that CVS can be prepared to provide employees with the best healthcare coverage necessary.

However, it does seem as if CVS is planning to discriminate against those employees who are less healthy than others — and a person’s weight and glucose levels should not affect whether they get and stay employed, or are eligible for company health benefits. It is unlikely that CVS can legally discriminate against employees who are unhealthy and thus costly to the company. It must make sure that its new requirement is for health-encouragement purposes only.

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2 Comments

  1. did you know that certain departments in BU do this as well? You have to take a health screening and if you don’t you get hit with a charge on your paycheck. Though if you take it you get a credit.

  2. The question no one is asking is this:

    Where will it end?

    The answer:

    It won’t.

    The inevitable conclusion to this path is genetic manipulation to ensure “health”, which I’m not necessarily against. Still, people should at least understand the road they are choosing and where it leads. Very sad that that is rarely the case.