Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Are Employers' Lifestyle Policies Discriminatory?

(CBS) 
James Ramsey, the president of the University of Louisville, says the cost of bad behavior by university staff was getting out of hand. "The Band-Aids weren't working. The quick fixes weren't working. We can do mail order form pharmacy. We can do all those kinds of things to control cost. But our costs are going up."

So the university is trying another tactic. They instituted a so-called "wellness program." If employees shape up, slim down, and fill out a questionnaire, a kind of confessional of your health, eating and sexual habits, they get a $20 monthly credit on their health insurance premiums.

Ramsey signed up himself and says he saw a dramatic improvement in his own health. "I've lost 30 pounds. And I don't have to take blood pressure medicine." And he says he has never felt better and is working out five times a week.

Part of the university's program are coaches who essentially nag participants about their weight, eating and other lifestyle habits.

"Isn't that going a little far in terms of the private lives of the people working for you?" Safer asked. "If I volunteer for a program, then I'm volunteering to be nagged and to be pushed. And it works," says Ramsey.

He says it is too soon to know if the wellness program is controlling costs.

But Mark Rothstein, a bio-ethics professor at Louisville, did not sign up.

Rothstein says wellness programs may lead to better health, but questions whether people can trust in the confidentiality of the questionnaire they filled out. "People who work for employers who perhaps don't have the best record of keeping privacy might well be concerned that the information could filter back to the company. And they could be adversely treated."

"Not get that promotion," says Safer. "Exactly. There's a tremendous incentive for employers to try to weed out high -ost healthcare users. Five percent of employees represent 50 percent of healthcare costs. And if you're an employer and can identify who these people are, you can save a lot of money to your bottom line," says Rothstein.

Which is what this is all about. Countless companies like Quaker Oats, Johnson and Johnson, Honeywell, Motorola and IBM claim to have saved millions after instituting wellness programs. But all that good health might not necessarily make for the best workforce.

The city of North Miami, Fla., used to require that all its new police officers be non-smokers. But two years ago, the city quietly dropped the smoking ban.

"We realized that at best, we may save five percent on our insurance premium. But now we are having a problem with trying to recruit and hire highly qualified candidates. And we’re competing against agencies that did not have that policy," says Chief of Police Gwendolyn Boyd.

Boyd says dropping the ban helped her recruiting efforts.

Officer Juan Mayato believes that the city ultimately learned that those smokers, more often than not, make pretty good cops. "I mean, what does smoking have to do with the way you perform your job out here. There's a lot of people that smoke that are well qualified for this job and it doesn't affect them. And, you know, they couldn't hire them."

That was the problem CNN faced, and after 13 years of a ban on hiring smokers, it rescinded the policy.

Even so, Lewis Maltby says it's going to be near impossible to marshal support for smokers. "Smoking has become more than a health issue. Smoking has become a moral issue. Somehow people look at smokers and say, 'You're a bad person because you smoke.' I don't know quite how that happened. But it has."

But Howard Weyers would even like to extend his smoking ban to spouses of his employees.

"It's a little like, you know, the old communist Eastern Europe. Big Brother is watching you all the time," said Safer.

"Well, maybe Big Brother should be watching because we have to eliminate that problem," Weyers replied.

"Even if it means snooping into their private lives?' Safer asked.

"I don't snoop into their private lives. When they leave here, I don't follow them," Weyers said.

"Well, you do after a fashion," Safer said.

"Well, a policy does," Weyers answered.

"And you are the policy," Safer said.

Weyers agreed. "Yeah, that's right. I'm the policy maker. Yes, sir."