Cost of health benefits may get you fired.
Bad habits may get your fired. Over the last several months media sources have reported stories about companies that have targeted employees with bad habits. These so called targeted employees have found themselves in the cross hairs of company managers for termination. Termination solely based on “bad habits. Smoking is the favorite vice that has some companies up in arms. In an attempt to mitigate health benefit costs – at least the company’s out of pocket expenses – workers are losing their jobs because of their personal habits.
One Delaware news source reports on yet another go round for this business tactic and how employees are basically helpless to bring any kind of legal action against offending companies in states where there is an “employment at will” doctrine.
Smoking, drinking, being overweight, not exercising regularly, at what point does the line get crossed? Some elicited comments have suggested these types of strategies parallel communist actions when your employer can suddenly dictate your personal habits away from work.
The growing price tag of healthcare is certainly concerning, with some estimates suggesting a national cost of $4 trillion by the year 2017. Today millions of people are without adequate health insurance and business are seeing their bottom lines affected by rising insurance premiums. Hospitals too are in the squeeze financially. Safe to say the cost of healthcare is everybody’s problem. Healthcare costs are also a global issue, as other nations continue to grapple to find solutions to rising healthcare expenses.
Of the 301 million people that reside in the United States give or take a few hundred thousand, it is doubtful that terminating those individuals for their alleged bad habits is going to significantly impact the bottom line of corporations. These terminations however will add to the growing 47 million Americans that don’t have health insurance.
The predominate perspective continually seems to be mitigating insurance costs as the solution to the healthcare price tag issue. The cost of healthcare needs to be addressed at the grassroots level. Circumventing the true nature of healthcare expenditures by targeting payment systems (insurance companies) seems a bit backwards.
To even dignify this issue with further comment seems absurd. If companies wish to improve their profitability by lowering their out of pocket expenses for health benefits, alternatives to the practice of firing employees certainly exist. Termination is a knee jerk response; it demonstrates a myopic view of reasonable options, and does little if anything to improve the cost of healthcare at any level.
Mike Pringle provides regular commentary for Red Scrubs and editorial content for Future Healthcare. He has over 20 years of nursing experience working both domestically and internationally. Mike has a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing and a Masters Degree in Public Administration with a healthcare emphasis. He specializes in both Emergency and Critical Care Nursing. Mike has held positions ranging from department staff and Nurse Manager to Executive positions.
