Density of Lead: Stupidity is Painless.

However we hope to be back and "active" within the month...without the spammers who have been making our lives miserable in Administration (you don't see them because we "kill" them in Moderation. ).

Will we open up comments on this blog? Depends on whether we can set this blog's settings to make sure the spammers stay out. If we cannot solve that problem soon, we will try to get the DoL discussion board going again so you can tell us your own stories (and give us your two cents).

We are also working on changes to make DoL a more interesting place while we are at it.

So please be patient a little while longer while we clean up and re-do things (we do have day jobs, you know).

Thank you.

Administration Team at DoL.

Lose the weight in one year or be forced to pay for insurance they now get for free.

This "MSNBC" article,"Alabama workers to pay for extra pounds: Next year, the state will add a $25 insurance fee for being overweight" (originally from the Associated Press [original article here]) is another example of "nannyism" (read: Bigotry in disguise.) gone bad... and is proving to be a BIG marketing-by-press-release opportunity (as a "Google" search shows):

...The state [of Alabama] has given its 37,527 employees a year to start getting fit — or they’ll pay $25 a month for insurance that otherwise is free.
...

Uh...is it really because the state of Alabama is so concerned about the health of their employees? I doubt it. Instead, this appears to be an attempt to cover revenue shortfalls while making "obese" employees (whose numbers are far from the 37,000+ claimed in the article) decide getting a job somewhere else (saving the state money on personnel costs) might be in order?

Or, worse still, is this an attempt to get employees to agree to get their personal health information into a state tracking database?

The State Employees’ Insurance Board (1) this week approved a plan to charge state workers starting in January 2010 if they don’t have free health screenings.

That threat is the "stick" for which a "carrot" is offered to get people to sign up for Dr. Big Brother's tracking database:

If "issues" with certain surrogate measures of health status--blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose or obesity--turn up, the patient has a year to make progress in "shaping up" with the employer paying the doctor bill, by enrolling in a "wellness program" or on their own. If they fail, dollars will be "shipped out" of the paycheck starting in January, 2011.

Other than the question of whether "improvements" in those surrogate measures (NOT hard clinical endpoints)have been proven to be of any real value anyway (they have not; the data is questionable at best if not fraudulent), is there anything else wrong here?

There certainly is: These same surrogate measures naturally increase with aging. In addition, the standards now used as "cutoffs" are so low, few people who are older than a 20-something person and/or in not an athlete in training WILL NOT meet them unless they are put on a "cocktail" of medications. Medications that--either as individual meds or as a mass--may well create more health problems than they solve and/or attack easily measured indices that may or may not deal with the real health issues (if any) at all.

In other words, this is nothing but a veiled attempt to get rid of people that are NOT young, thin, athletic, white and healthy from the state employee rolls by forcing these same people to pay for the privilege of being employed by the state (and nobody else is). If the Alabama insurance board came right out and said that they were going to make some low-income workers, women and minorities, and older people pay for their insurance coverage because they "just happened" to be the same populations who tend to not meet some arbitrary "health" standard? The Alabama government and their agents and assigns would be in BIG trouble under civil rights laws.

But...if they use an excuse such as this...

“We are trying to get individuals to become more aware of their health,” said state worker Robert Wagstaff, who serves on the insurance board.

they are allowed to get away with doing the exact same thing!

Never you mind that the state of Alabama has not even decided the standard for what is considered "progress"!

The board has not yet determined how much progress a person would have to show

Even they must admit (and recent studies have indicated) that too much "fat" does NOT equal unhealthy and picking on the fat is not fair:

A recent study suggested that about half of overweight people and nearly a third of obese people have normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, while about a quarter of people considered to be normal weight suffer from the ills associated with obesity.

What are these people likely to get as "help"? Not likely much; the "advice" may well be the same "weight loss" advice that has failed at least 95% of those who have ever followed it AND for which there is NO good data to prove it works. Walther Lindstrom of the Obesity Law and Advocacy Center in California--who can hardly be considered a friend to the fat person (they are advocates for the bariatric surgery industry and work to try to get insurers to pay for weight loss interventions)--fears just that will happen. According to him, all the employee will likely get is, in essence, a diet and exercise brochure or a bunch of fancy words instead of help. As a result, the unlucky employee will end up NOT getting the medical care they may really benefit from receiving.

And did I say that it appears the real motivation is the state's trying to save itself some money? William Ashmore, executive director of the State Employees’ Insurance Board, said the state will spend an extra $1.6 million next year on these "feel-good" "wellness" interventions, but believes that they will save $1,748 on the average on "excessive" medical costs that people whose BMIs are between 35 and 39 as compared to those with a BMI less than 25.

Indeed, this program is aimed at that 35-39 BMI population of Alabama state employees and ONLY them. The selection of this range raises questions.

Questions like:

"If an employee has a BMI greater than 39, are they healthier than an employee whose BMI is either under 25 or 35-39?

"Is the same true of an employee whose BMI is 25-34?"

"Are diseases such as diabetes any less devastating to the thin...the overweight and mildly obese...or the really obese...than to this target population?

If not, will these interventions draw away money that should be used to help these people in order to pay for programs to "nanny" a subpopulation of "fat-fat-fatties" who were chosen to be a target population simply because they may happen to be the biggest (no pun intended) target due to their numbers on the employee rolls?"

As for the ones who should be advocating for the employees, the Alabama State Employees Association? Well...with "friends" like this...

Alabama’s new policy is drawing no objection from the lobbying group representing state workers.

Mac McArthur, executive director of Alabama State Employees Association, said the plan is not designed to punish employees.

“It’s a positive,”

who needs enemies?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

(1)An attempt to access this report on the Alabama State Employees’ Insurance Board website has failed to the time of posting this article because the server won't respond. Attempts to find the actual report will continue.

A.) MSNBC website, "Alabama workers to pay for extra pounds: Next year, the state will add a $25 insurance fee for being overweight", downloaded August 22, 2008; originally published as "Extra pounds mean insurance fees for Ala. workers", by Phillip Rawls, at the AP website, updated 7:36 p.m. ET, Thurs., Aug. 21, 2008; downloaded on Aug 22, 12:19 AM EDT.

And someone, apparently, made an impression...but...

No matter what one might really think about the H.R. person, it's best to keep it to oneself if one wants the job.

Thanks to "FAIL Blog".