CVS Employees Penalized For Not Reporting Weight, Body Fat To Insurance
Pharmacy workers, including New Milford employees, who don’t take part in the voluntary health program will have to pay an annual $600 penalty.
CVS Caremark, owners of the CVS Pharmacy chain with two New Milford locations, announced Wednesday it is telling workers who use its health insurance plan to have a doctor determine their height, weight, body fat, blood pressure, cholesterol and other health indicators as part of a new “wellness review,” according to a published report.
According to The Huffington Post, quoting a published report in the Boston Herald, the company is also asking workers to give permission to the insurer to turn over that information to a firm that provides benefits support to CVS, the Boston Herald reports.
Workers who don’t take part in the voluntary “wellness review,” paid for by CVS, will have to pay an annual $600 penalty, the report says.
Michael DeAngelis, a CVS spokesman, wrote in an e-mail statement to The Huffington Post that, compliant with privacy laws, the company will not have access to the health information. Instead, the information will only be reviewed by the firm administering CVS’ benefits.
A company spokesman told ABC News Wednesday night, “All of the people we cover under our health plans will be more accountable for taking control of our health and our costs.”
Michael DeAngelis, a CVS spokesman, said in a email to The Huffington Post, “Our benefits program is evolving to help our colleagues engage more actively to improve their health and manage health-associated costs,. An initial step to accomplish this goal is a health screening and wellness review so that colleagues know their key health metrics in order to take action to improve their overall health, if necessary,” he wrote.
The ABC report said if employees screening numbers for body weight, blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure are not good, they will be given a year to “make the numbers better or you may have few health options to choose from next time you enroll.”
CVS Pharmacies are located at 364 River Road and 830 River Road in New Milford.
Tomasina Schwarz
10:48 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
None of this sounds legal. Doesn't CVS realize that incentives work better than punishment? My husbands employer offers monetary incentives if you don't smoke. CVS needs to stay out of the business of telling their workers what to do. As long as the federal government allows food manufacturers to create addictive food products that are not healthy for anyone, then employers should back off. Instead, they should have workout facilities and affordable cafeterias that only sell healthy food choices-this will help their workers stay healthy. Charging them six hundred dollars accomplishes nothing. Obesity is a psychological illness that results in physical symptoms. Offer weight management programs and mental health services for free, that is $600 well spent by CVS !!! I am sure they will be stopped by litigation, the policy is down right stupid.
Arlene M. Baladi
10:57 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
What information will they ask for next, their shoe size? This could be misconstrued as an attempt to discriminate!
robin commerford
12:51 pm on Friday, March 22, 2013
Isn't there a health privacy law like hippa? Yes we should all be proactive when it comes to our health, our health is so important of course and our employer should not dictate to us what we should do, at our own expense! I think cvs is acting in a reprehensible way, especially they don't practice what they preach by stocking their shelves with very unhealthy merchandise! Shame on cvs.