CVS to Workers: Disclose Weight or Pay $600 Fine

CVS has touched a nerve with a new policy requiring workers to disclose a host of health data—including their weight, body fat and glucose levels, and blood pressure—or else pay an extra $50 a month for their health insurance. The move has drawn outrage from at least one national privacy group, the Boston Herald reports. "This is an incredibly coercive and invasive thing to ask employees to do," the founder of Patient Privacy Rights told the paper.

CVS refers to the policy as "a health screening and wellness review," and emphasizes that it won't have access to the information, which will go straight to its health insurance provider. It's also offering to pay for all necessary screenings. But Think Progress argues that the policy is unfair to lower-income workers, who can't afford to pay $600 a year to opt-out if they feel their privacy is being invaded. Fox News, meanwhile, sees this as an early consequence of ObamaCare—and a lawyer tells the network it's perfectly legal. (More CVS stories.)