The Harsh Realities of the Employee Wellness Plans

November 29, 2015

changes made in the recently released reports

There have been some changes made in the recently released reports about the employee wellness programs and plans by the Government and there are some striking alterations that weren’t expected. Recently the employees of the federal government have received some orders in their mailboxes telling them to provide the government with their cholesterol levels, weight, age and other details or end up paying up to 2500 dollars in penalties on their health insurance. This value can go up to 4100 dollars if you are a married person.

These packages were sent to the Honeywell employees which is a group of companies that manufactures products up in New Jersey. This was as part of the health plan enrollment program that happens annually. These penalties have been made a little less dangerous sounding for the coming year and now have an upper limit of 1500 dollars.

The problems that the employees are raising in this regard are that some of them have their own privately hired health care and other programs and they would want the selection of such programs to be made voluntary. There are some employees that have a completely polar verdict too. They believe that these keep the employees up to date about their health and also motivated to keep working to avoid penalties.

While these programs can be beneficial for some of the employees, it’s still not going to harm anyone if they were made voluntary with a choice provided to the employee to undertake or to just say “I pass”. The government is currently in dispute over this matter too but it’s expected that soon enough there is going to be a verdict but at-least for the coming year, we would have to bear with this rule. Here’s hoping that a win-win situation for both parties can somehow be found in this regard.