In March, a controversial bill called the Preserving Employee Wellness Program Act (H.R.1313) was introduced to the House by Republican Virginia Foxx, who stated, “Employee wellness programs have long enjoyed bipartisan support because they result in lower health care costs and a healthier workforce.”
She added that the legislation, “....will ensure employers have the legal certainty they need to offer this innovative benefit, which provides working families with greater control over their health care dollars.”
According to the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which last week passed the new legislation by 22 to 17, an increasing number - about 61% - of companies offer workplace wellness programs. Nearly 90% of large organizations offer them, with participation growing when Obamacare allowed employers to offer 30% of the value of their benefits in incentives, although surveys have shown that few do offer that big a benefit.
Experts say that these programs were originally introduced to assist employees to get and stay healthy and to improve their safety. It was also the aim of companies to increase productivity and to keep down health insurance costs, but there are those who raise privacy concerns.
Opponents of the bill believe that employees should not feel under pressure to participate in health screening that collects blood samples to check for high levels of cholesterol, or other factors that when discovered, enable treatment to be given to help prevent diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. They claim that compelling employees to undertake genetic counselling would leave them open to discrimination by employers, who are being empowered by the bill to penalize those employees not joining workplace wellness programs that collect this type of information. Additionally, they are also against employers providing incentives - for example, discounts on health care premiums - for screenings that ask about family medical history.
However, the sponsors of the bill say that it would clarify conflicting rules for incentives paid to employees who participate in voluntary health screenings – some of which could include genetic testing. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports that a fact checking website states:
“H.R.1313 does not allow employers to force all their workers to submit to genetic testing.” In short, “The bill allows offering benefits for ‘voluntary’ workplace programs that may include ‘health risk assessments’ but does not enable mandatory genetic testing of employees.”
Currently health and genetic information is protected under federal nondiscrimination and genetic privacy laws. This means employers are not allowed to use workers' genetic information in employment decisions and they are not allowed to request or purchase their employees' genetic information unless it is a part of a wellness program that is voluntary.
SHRM’s Vice President of Government Affairs, Mike Aitken told NBC News, “Employers do not have access to this genetic information. Information can only be collected and shared with a third-party provider such as a health care professional.”
But critics say the new bill could provide employers with a way around.
