firecat: damiel from wings of desire tasting blood on his fingers. text "i has a flavor!" (Default)
[personal profile] firecat
Penn State faculty are organizing a campaign against the university's new punitive wellness program, which reduces employees' compensation by $1200 per year unless they undergo medical testing and provide personal information to online data collector WebMD (including such information as whether they are having marriage problems or are planning to become pregnant).

http://pa-aaup.com/2013/07/30/the-penn-state-healthcare-mandate-and-a-call-for-civil-disobedience/

There is a change.org petition.
http://www.change.org/petitions/penn-state-president-rodney-a-erickson-benefits-office-and-trustees-stop-the-new-penn-state-wellness-program-and-its-surcharges

Here is another article about it.
http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2013/08/12/penn-state-to-faculty-were-doing-this-for-your-own-bad/

Date: 16 Sep 2013 05:56 am (UTC)
wild_irises: (sumo)
From: [personal profile] wild_irises
Oh, that sucks SO MUCH!

You might want to look at <a href="http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2013/09/10/obesity-and-the-ama-part-two/>this</a>, and maybe point them at it, since it has some serious pointers on the legal ways to get around this crap.

Date: 16 Sep 2013 11:38 pm (UTC)
libskrat: (self-respect/entitlement)
From: [personal profile] libskrat
I have friends who work there. I am sideeyeing this SO HARD, and hoping the protest succeeds because I don't want other people's employers -- or mine, for that matter -- getting ideas.

Date: 17 Sep 2013 01:26 am (UTC)
libskrat: (pika omgwtf)
From: [personal profile] libskrat
GAH. Fair to say I don't shop there any more.

Date: 17 Sep 2013 12:17 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I dearly hope that the campaign is successful and this program gets shut down.

Some of my friends are dealing with similar forms of discrimination and privacy violation at their workplaces. Legal precedent must be made to stop this kind of abuse.

-graymalkin

Date: 17 Sep 2013 12:21 am (UTC)
silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
From: [personal profile] silveradept
Glad to hear that they're fighting back against this.

Date: 18 Sep 2013 02:28 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] flarenut
A lot of those questions are ones that employers can't lawfully ask. No doubt they're going to claim that there is a complete well between the data collection and the employer, and no doubt they're going to be shocked, shocked to find out that isn't true.

Evil and stupid, because they're giving the notion that it's a good idea to take care of yourself a bad name.

Date: 15 Sep 2013 11:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cappyhead.livejournal.com
Ugh. My company offers up to $600 per covered plan member that gets put in your health savings account if you get particular wellness check-ups and either meet their BMI goals, or lose a particular percentage of your body weight, or undergo a telephonic "coaching" series. So it's not punitive, but rather a "bonus", but I still don't like it. And at least we don't have to submit personal information to an outside vendor.

Date: 16 Sep 2013 01:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yarram.livejournal.com
My employer is pushing a similar thing. I am complying only with the bits that I find personally useful. I am refusing all medical / blood tests that seek data already available in my medical files. (Cholesterol, etc.) My insurer has access to these in aggregate form, and as far as I can tell, they make no promise to keep my individual data confidential from my employer, which means they aren't getting anything I don't already consider public information.

Date: 12 Oct 2013 03:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yarram.livejournal.com
Yes. I don't get the discount. If I do not participate in the vendor's health awareness activities next year, I will have to continue paying a higher rate for health insurance coverage in 2015.

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