Mandatory Health-Related Standards In the Workplace: Beyond Voluntary Programs And Toward New Questions

When Your Boss Makes You Pay For Being Fat by Leslie Kwoh.  The Wall Street Journal.  April 5, 2013.

To restrain healthcare costs, firms are moving beyond voluntary programs to deal with obesity  and smoking toward penalties including rules against hiring smokers.  For the example the print edition finds that the University of Pennsylvania Health System has recently stopped hiring individuals who smoke.  The Cleveland Clinic instituted that practice in 2007.  These policies have provoke ethical and social policy  questions.  In addition  to healthcare costs, employers are concerned about productivity with smokers missing 450 million more hours from work as compared with nonsmokers according to statistics cited.