Hastings Cent Rep. 2017 Jan;47(1):4-5. doi: 10.1002/hast.673.
Many employers faced with rising health care costs have adopted "voluntary" wellness programs that urge employees to engage in various health-promotion activities, such as smoking cessation and weight reduction. In the proper setting, measures to promote a more healthful lifestyle are difficult to question, but there is little compelling evidence that workplace wellness programs have significant, sustained health benefits or substantially reduce health care costs other than through cost-shifting to unhealthy employees. Congressional support for workplace wellness programs has persisted on a bipartisan basis for the last twenty years, and the incentives that current statutes allow employers to offer employees have become strong enough that the voluntariness of the programs has been called into question. In recent months, the battleground has shifted to the courts, where federal regulations and employer practices have been challenged. Three recent or pending cases raise questions about whether the incentives are coercing employees into the programs.
许多面临医疗成本不断上升的雇主都采取了“自愿”健康计划，鼓励员工参与各种促进健康的活动，如戒烟和减肥。在适当的环境下，促进更健康生活方式的措施是难以质疑的，但几乎没有确凿的证据表明工作场所健康计划具有显著的、持续的健康益处，或者除了通过向不健康的员工转移成本之外，能够显著降低医疗成本。过去二十年来，国会一直在两党基础上支持工作场所健康计划，而现行法规允许雇主向员工提供的激励措施已经变得非常强大，以至于这些计划的自愿性已经受到质疑。最近几个月，战场已经转移到了法院，联邦法规和雇主的做法受到了挑战。最近或即将发生的三个案例提出了这样的问题，即这些激励措施是否在迫使员工参加这些计划。
