Will county employees soon be buying their health insurance by the pound?

That is to say, they may end up paying more premiums the more they weigh. There was a workshop at 5:30 before the county commission meeting. Unfortunately, I caught only the last 5 minutes of it. As I understand it, there was a consultant there pushing some sort of "employee wellness" plan. The idea was that employees could earn points based upon there BMI (Body Mass Index) (fatness, or, more correctly, their skinniness) and certain lifestyle indices, like not smoking, having normal (low) blood pressure, low cholesterol, etc. If you are healthy (skinny), your deductible could be as low as $200.00. If you're fat, smoke, and have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, you would be looking at a $2,500 deductible. Apparently, from remarks Commissioner Berry made, I missed the part of the PowerPoint presentation where they showed how much higher the premiums would be for "at risk" (fat) people, but it sounds like it was significantly higher. All five commissioners demonstrated that they were acutely aware that no county employees were as yet so fat as to be unable to get through the door of their polling place. They wisely decided to have a workshop on the idea at a future date rather than adopt it tonight as the proponents were pushing for. Oh, and the county administrator presented - via Mike Fender - a PowerPoint presentation of where all $632,000 (shortfall amount) could be cut from various budgets without layoffs. However, this cure included delaying some $750,000 in employee COLAs. They are not yet absolutely certain there will be a $632,000 short fall. Depends on the governor. See T&G for details.