CREEPING CORPORATE TOTALITARIANISM

From AlterNet:

CVS to Penalize Workers Who Don't Fork Over Personal Health Information

CVS Pharmacy announced a plan to coerce employees into handing over personal health information in an effort to offset rising healthcare costs. The nationwide chain says employees have until May 1, 2014 to dish out their weight, body fat, blood pressure, glucose levels and other private details to the company—or else face a $600 annual fine. 

Privacy advocates say the policy is inhumane, adding that this could lead CVS, which employs 200,000 Americans, to fire less healthy workers to minimize costs related to health insurance. Patient Privacy Rights founder Dr. Deborah Peel called it “technology-enhanced discrimination on steroids” in an interview with ABC News.

More here.

This is how it works.  A given corporation makes a call based on how it perceives its bottom line relative to what it thinks it can get away with, and then implements it.  Same thing happened back in the 80s with drug testing.  And they got away with that.  After all, who could oppose wanting people to be drug free?  But drug testing had nothing to do with morality or health or anything positive; insurance companies offered corporations a break if they submitted their employees to what would be a massive and unconstitutional invasion of privacy if the institution doing it had been the government.  But because the relationship between company and employee is considered to be a voluntary and private association, in spite of the fact that people need to work in order to survive, there was no constitutional violation.

This is why I hate the Libertarians so much.  They go on and on and on about government power and freedom while completely ignoring that business has a great deal of control over our day-to-day lives.  And that control just keeps strengthening itself.  Couple that with how big business exerts profound influence over the government Libertarians so fear and despise and it's clear that we are enduring something of a full court press.  And the Libertarians just confuse everybody acting like it's all about government.  Fools.

So here we are with CVS asserting a rather frightening doctrine: your employer has a perfect right to your health information, just because you work for them.  Apparently, your work isn't enough to justify whatever piss-poor wage they're paying you.  They also get to have private information.  But hey, it's all okay because it's a voluntary and private association!  You can just walk away if you don't like it.  Of course, if this becomes a standard employment practice, and it probably will if CVS is allowed to get away with it, you CAN'T walk away from it.  

This is just awful.  What will our employers demand next?  I'm not sure, but I'm pretty certain that they will demand something--I mean, a lot of corporations already insist on seeing your credit history; still others want access to your facebook account.  This is what corporations do.  They push and push and push.  And then they get it.  Because money talks.  I'm pretty horrified by the potential here.

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