Excellent article on workplace wellness, with a nice shout-out to the Code of Conduct, in Workforce Magazine.

I’ve always liked this magazine — and not just because, when others wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence, they put me on the cover.  (“Does he have the cure or is he just the cough that won’t go away?”)

ConscienHealth is the go-to site for objective information on the developing understanding of the causes of obesity, as well as reviews of obesity policy. I read it every day and am very impressed with its objectivity. Allotting equal time to each, it reports the good, the bad, and the ugly as regards the science and policy issues surrounding this topic.

That means its next post better be about the good, because I just guest-posted about the bad and the ugly — the corporate-sanctioned weight-shaming that takes the form of workplace wellness, where weight seems to be the only thing that matters these days, and the assumption is that failure to lose weight is a failure of will power.

When my son was little, he had asthma and we didn’t know it. On multiple occasions before he was diagnosed, we would say: “Paul, stop coughing.”  We too thought it was a failure of will power. Obviously, we soon learned better, but most of the wellness industry seems to be impervious to the possibility that their antediluvian ideas might possibly be misguided.

The current issue of Fortune takes a critical look at wellness programs…and how Cummins is leading the way towards a brighter tomorrow. (Did I just say “towards a brighter tomorrow”?  Maybe that’s because March is National Cliche Month.)  Kudos to Cummins for actually looking at their data and acting accordingly.

This is the way wellness — or anything — should be done. Instead of just spouting cliches (do as I say, not as I do) like “75% of cost is due to chronic disease,” or “we have to incentivize people to lose weight,” you actually look at data, adjust your priorities based on the data, and repeat and refine continuously.  In the rest of industry, this is called “standard.” In wellness, this is called “Cummins.”

Cummins is also — no coincidence here — well-represented on the Employee Health and Wellness Code of Conduct too.

Sharon Begley at STATNews broke this wide open. The New York Times followed quickly, with the Washington Post, and New York Magazine also chiming in, More on the way.

If you didn’t see it last time (or click through on a link above), this bill would allow employers to run genetic tests on their employees, as part of wellness programs, and fine employees who don’t submit.

Here is an irony. Though an idea like this would appear to have their fingerprints all over it, the usual suspects at the Health Enhancement Research Organization’s board — Ron Goetzel, Seth Serxner, Paul Terry — had nothing to do with this. I don’t know if that’s because they didn’t think of it, or because none of their board members can make any money off it. Or perhaps it was the reaction to their  “fat tax” idea last year.  One way or another, this is the first horrible wellness idea ever that does not have their fingerprints on it. So kudos to them for not being as unethical, greedy and misanthropic as everybody assumed they were!

Quite the contrary, this idea clearly originates with the Business Roundtable. How do I know?

First, they sponsored legislation with the same exact title in the last session, as a way to pressure the Obama Administration into letting them do administratively exactly what they are trying to do legislatively now.  (Yes, I know lobbying groups don’t “sponsor” legislation, at least in the narrowest sense. However, they own most of the legislators on the relevant committees, so it’s easy to get them to do their bidding. Now just the GOP, but it used to be both parties, back when Democrats mattered.) The difference is, this time they have enough sense to keep a low profile, given the criticism they got last time around.

Second, in the past they have been willing to go to the mat over wellness. Allowing corporations more control over employees is one of their agendas. Saving corporations money is another one. And this genetic testing provision would save tons. No, not by reducing healthcare spending, obviously.  Rather, it would be by increasing forfeitures. The worse the program, the more employees will refuse to submit. And the more employees who don’t participate, the greater the forfeitures.

We are talking a lot of money here. Wellness is roughly an $8-billion industry. Forfeitures? Well, figure an average of $600 in penalties/foregone incentives, about 50% non-participation, and about 70,000,000 employees in wellness programs. That makes forfeitures a $21-billion industry. (Many large corporations view forfeitures as a negative, of course. But the economics for others, for outcomes-based programs, are compelling.)

Hopefully this will all be mooted pretty soon, as opposition is overwhelming to this idea, an idea so stupid that even HERO doesn’t support it.

We are still a few weeks shy of April Fool’s Day, but Congress is celebrating it early.  Using all the fuss about real-and-replace as a smokescreen, the Business Roundtable has gotten its allies in Congress to sneak in a bill allowing employers to require genetic testing in their wellness programs.  This will shock people, but genetic testing loses tons of money for employers, and vendors (in this case, specifically Aetna) lie about savings.

This article isn’t about the lies and the numbers, though. It’s about Congress giving employers basically unfettered rights to collect employee genetic information. You might recall there is a law that says employers can’t genetically test employees, or discriminate against employees on the basis of genes.  The idea of this new legislation is that law wouldn’t apply in the case of voluntary wellness programs. As we learned last year, the Business Roundtable “convinced” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that “required” and “voluntary” are synonyms. Consequently, employers can simply demand that employees submit to this or get fined.

The article, by intrepid reporter Sharon Begley (who also exposed the Wellsteps debacle with Boise), can be accessed here. Add comments to that article, since it is likely to be passed around more than TSW is.