Feeling disappointed with yourself for not being able to quit smoking? Have anxiety about the health pitfalls of being overweight? You’re not alone. Your employer may be bugged about your shortcomings, too, and they may begin fining you for it via surcharges and fines for being fat or smoking. And guess what? They’re using new rules under Obamacare to stick it to their employees and working class America. Reuters?reports:
Some [employers] will even force employees to meet weight goals, quit smoking and provide very personal information or pay up to thousands more annually for healthcare.
A breakdown, according to?Reuters:
- Procter & Gamble employees will pay an extra $25 per month in 2014 unless they complete a company-provided program to help them quit smoking.
- UPS workers who are non-unionized will pay up to $1,800 extra per year if they are smokers.
- To get full-coverage insurance, employees at more than 5,000 companies will be required to take part in employer provided health programs, with some requiring employees to meet weight goals.
- Refusal to complete the programs may cause employees to have higher deductibles.
- Almost 40 percent of large U.S. companies will use surcharges in 2014 to target employees who do not achieve goals set by the company.
- By 2015, it’s estimated that two-thirds of employers will be engaging in these tactics.
- Wisconsin and Washington State employees will be penalized up to $600 for smoking.
- Belo, owner of the Dallas Morning News, has informed staff that in 2014, they and their spouses must complete a biometric health screening or they’ll be fined $100.
Something particularly alarming that Penn State tried to implement (and failed):
[…] a plan to charge employees $100 per month if they did not participate in various health screenings and fill out a detailed health questionnaire administered by WebMD, which asked among other things whether a worker had recently driven after drinking too much, whether female employees planned to become pregnant in the next year and how frequently male workers performed testicular self-exams.
Democrats and President Obama are trying to help us out and protect us from Big Business and Big Health.?Obamacare specifies that wellness programs must be voluntary.?But the unethical elite can always find a workaround or loophole that will allow them to charge us surcharges, it seems, and exploit a law that is meant to help middle-class Americans.
