I have to have a blood draw tomorrow at work. It is for my medical insurance through work.
They say it will effect my insurance rates for next year. I am not a happy camper.
Anyone else going through this at their place of employment?
You should run your BG down to 50 or so and alarm them…
ha
I don’t quite understand this. This seems like a major breach of confidentiality regarding your medical history. You have to be personally identified in order for them to give a rate increase, correct? I think it’s a bunch of crap to be honest!
I have seen this coming for a looooong time. I know others have, too.
First it was supposed to be about getting better rates for making healthy lifestyle changes (quitting smoking, participating in a stretching class, riding your bike to work once per week).
Now they’re moving on to penalizing the genetically challenged.
Just think about how much money you’re going to make off of these buzzards once the class action lawsuit is up and running. ;0)
Take THAT, monsters of greed.
Oh, go for 42 – make them soil themselves and offer you a lifetime supply of free test strips!
I am a full time mom so of course my insurance is through my husband but yes starting this past year we have to have a yearly physical and blood work done for our insurance. Actually my physical last year is how they found my diabetes!
We had the same thing at work, but if you did the screening you got a 50 per pay credit. I throught that maybe today they wont base what insurance costs based on your health but they could eventually do it. I opted out to not give any information. The credit was not worth my employer knowing what my medical history is. My insurance company already knows what my ailments are.
Ok, we can joke about this, but when I hear about this sort of stuff, alarm bells go off all around me. I am with Karen, I would not be happy. Only “bad” things can happen from this sort of thing. Let me repeat. “Only bad things can happen.” It is all fine and dandy to have an annual checkup with your doctor, but to have specific screening for insurance coverage is not good.
There are two major ourcomes that could come from this type of test. The first is called a “recission.” This is where they terminate your health insurance. The worst and most vicious is a “retroactive recission.” If you look like an expensive customer, insurance companies will try to drop you. And worst, by forcing you to submit to additional qualification tests and information disclosures, they grab more information to use against you. The absolute worst is if you had to have something like a kidney transplant, you get approved, have the transplant and then the insurance company attempts a “retroactive recission” based on a claim that you “lied” on your application. There you would sit with $100Ks in medical bills and no insurance coverage. Did you say you were well controlled and then had a 40 mg/dl on the screening test?
The other outcome is that the insurance company will look at the entire pool of insured at your work and consider you a risky group of patients. The result is what is termed in the insurance jargon a “purge.” They will increase your rates, often by a huge amount with the expectation that you will drop them as a carrier or most of the employees will choose to go without insurance. This is the main reason that most small businesses have had to drop insurance.
My advice is to do everything you can to evade this test. Ask if you can opt out. Ask them to inquire with your doctor. Tell them that you can “prove” you have seen your doctors for a full range of wellness tests. Do anything you can to avoid this test.
Just my opinion.
Well, I am harsh with the insurance companies, but in truth some of the blame should be on our government for catering to the corporate greed. Insurance is about shared risk, it is not about picking the lowest risk and assuring profits. Forcing small businesses into their own insurance pool of very few people is hardly sharing the risk. And your description is actually heartbreaking. Those are huge dispproportionate costs. And I blame not just the insurance companies, but also our government for the sad state of affairs.
Yeah, that’s the amazing thing about being a T1 with some knowledge of insulin dosing. With the same effort I do every day to keep my bg in range, I can dial in any bg number I want for an upcoming test.
I used to hear jokes about “studying for the eye exam at the DMV” but this takes it to new extremes, and is for real.
I could probably even pass a glucose tolerance test if I dosed for it and didn’t let them do the second draw until I knew I was in “the right place”.
They shouldn’t be basing their rates on a small group.
They should be basing their rates across the ENTIRE population of the insured.
The young and healthy will get older and sicker someday. They need to stop cherry-picking, stop recision, stop all the monkey tricks and just calculate rates based on the entire population.
They know this is the right thing to do. They make record profits avoiding it – and millions go without insurance because of their greedy monkey tricks.
That’s why we need a single payer system based on every man, woman and child in the U.S. – one great big pool of 300+ million.
I am also concerned about a possible breach of information to the employer. I don’t like the whole idea of this taking place at your work location. Maybe if they are sending a test tube of blood in to a lab, but if they are taking health histories and working up tests right there on the job site (blood sugar, blood pressure, etc), I think there are huge confidentiality issues. If info leaks out…employees with expensive health issues might be waiting for the pink slip.
What health insurance carrier is this?
So, how do you feel about good employees that have sick family members driving up the cost of your insurance? You don’t have to answer that. The system is screwed up.
I think this is a step above having a screening in your workplace. If you go to a physician’s office your info is shared between the doctor and the insurance company. Walls talk…I do not think it is appropriate for medical screenings to take place at work.
It would be interesting to know what they are screening for. Many of the genetic tests are still very expensive, I don’t know if they would run these or not (they could be doing a high volume though). Bunch of crap.
Smart way to play it. I would be sick or on vacation that day as well.
I agree 100%. Go home ill, have a family emergency, flat tire, whatever it takes.
My advice is to do everything you can to evade this test. Ask if you can opt out. Ask them to inquire with your doctor. Tell them that you can "prove" you have seen your doctors for a full range of wellness tests. Do anything you can to avoid this test.
But insurance companies almost always look at your medical history anyway. They WANT to know what your issues are/conditions are/pre-existing conditions are.
The OP mentioned a blood draw only, not a medical screening. Meaning…the blood is going to be sent off to a lab anyway, not be evaluated there. What is anyone going to talk about? The only thing I could see them do there, that would be logical, is to check blood sugar. But everything else is going to require a laboratory.