Pay A Penalty If You Are Fat
- 5
- Add a Comment
Lawyers will benefit from Alabama’s new state policy. There will be lawsuits. - In an effort to promote health by financial penalty, Alabama will be penalizing people whom the state deems as “fat”:
“…The state 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.
Alabama will be the first state to charge overweight state workers who don’t work on slimming down, while a handful of other states reward employees who adopt healthy behaviors.”
link: Extra pounds mean insurance fees for Ala. workers
How will the state define what is “fat”? Will the state be asking for medical assessments? - It opens issues of privacy. How much is the employer, in this case the state of Alabama, privy to information about the employee away from work? For example, if the employee has a few speeding traffic tickets, should the employer know? The civil liberties issues that this Alabama policy will test are numerous.
Lawyers in Alabama must be smiling.
Catherine Forsythe
5 Comments
E2001
August 24th, 2008
at 6:11am
You know… I had just wasted the last 15 minutes of my life typing a response to this blog, only to have WordPress delete it because it didn’t like me using the word “c.a.s.i.n.o”.
So, rather than waste ANOTHER 15 minutes of my life re-typing it, I would simply like to tell whoever runs this anti-dissident piece of S.H.I.T blog engine to pull their politically-correct heads out of their fully-automated A.S.S.E.S!
E2001
August 24th, 2008
at 6:47am
And, for what it’s worth, everything you just cited as being an invasion of privacy is already a matter of public record.
forsythe
August 25th, 2008
at 12:17pm
E2001, I am sorry that you are having problems with the comments section. You are not alone. Others are having difficulties too. I have let the people who handle the tech end of this site know.
Catherine
John
August 25th, 2008
at 5:06pm
E2001: I have heard this complaint one too many times. If you’re too dim to copy before hitting the submit button, then too bad on you. Live and learn.
E2001
August 26th, 2008
at 3:07pm
John: If you’ve heard this complaint “one too many times”, then maybe you ought to take it seriously! Just a thought.