Comments on: Wal-Mart Trying to Cut Health Costs by Encouraging Fit Workers

By: An Interested Party

An Interested Party — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 17:32:25 +0000

"Dare they raise the gay/HIV issue in employment that profiles unhealthy people for rejection."

Pardon me. I didn't realize that only gay people had HIV...

By: Josh Cohen

Josh Cohen — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 12:56:39 +0000

I hate the cost-cutting health care changes. For three years I had BCBS PPO, and I could go basically anywhere, to any doctor, without a referral.

Then, summer of 2004, they changed us to Aetna. They started taking more money out of my paycheck and giving me fewer services (in other words, HMO instead of PPO).

Last summer, they started taking even more out of my check AND increased our copay.

I am the health-insurance provider for my family. My wife doesn't have a full-time job. So I'm stuck.

Dammit.

By: Victor

Victor — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 02:37:45 +0000

I honestly don't understand any of this. Would we prefer that Wal-Mart have no incentive to keep their workforce healthy?

I mean, this is one of the major advantages of our group health insurance system ... employers that attract healthy employees and help them keep that status are rewarded. Employers in dirty industries that chew up workers get hammered. A single-payer system forces employers focused on providing healthy work environments to subsidize employers who aren't.

Giving everyone the incentive to stay healthy and keep their workers healthy is a good thing, not a bad thing.

By: NIF

NIF — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 23:49:35 +0000

Gonna be a long day!

Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... a simple Wednesday edition (+ open trackbacks)

By: DL

DL — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:39:15 +0000

Dare they raise the gay/HIV issue in employment that profiles unhealthy people for rejection.
HIV can be awfully expensive.

By: ann arnold

ann arnold — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:15:58 +0000

My husband and I are retired employment and labor lawyers, and during our careers represented companies ranging from very small mom n' pop to Fortune 5 (not 500, not 100 but 5.) We were both laughing hysterically at the memo. All employers want to avoid hiring disabled employees (any one with a disability is per se not "in good health") because they use a great deal of health care. It is also unlawful to refuse to hire people because they are disabled - a good policy unless society prefers that those with disabilities just go off in a corner and quietly starve to death living on the average $800 a month that Social Security Disability pays and with no housing available for 2 out of 3 people. It is also unlawful to refuse to hire people because they are older than 40. It is unlawful to deliberately change the job duties in order to exclude people with disabilities from being able to do the job. In all our years of practicing employment law, neither of us had ever seen seen a major corporation so deliberately, openly and unabashedly state that it was going to try to implement policies in order to violate the law. To put it in writing reaches new heights of stupid. Advising the miscreant company who did such a thing would be simple: shut up; immediately disavow the policies; fire all who suggested it; accept you will lose every age discrimination(references to "coronary disease" and "aging workforce" who they want to replace with college students) and disability discrimination case filed for the next decade; and smile nicely when there is consent decree entered in Federal Court putting all your employment decisions under Court supervision for the next millennium OR ignore this advice, spend 100 times the cost in litigation and still get the same results. So goes the cost of stupidty and greed.

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 22:05:18 +0000

Do most people search for panaceas? Or just for something that's better than what they've got? Or don't have? If there's a libertarian, market-oriented solution to the problems with our healthcare system that's politically possible, I'd sure like to see it and I'd like to hear more supporters of the power of the market pitching it.