How Intrusive Should Employee Health Programs Be?

We had previously posted about Weyco, the company which fired workers who would not submit to testing to see if they were smoking after-hours.
Today the Washington Post reported on a growing number of firms which are developing increasingly intrusive efforts supposedly to improve their employees' health. One example is PacifiCare, the West Coast managed care organization. The current PacifiCare health promotion program is strictly voluntary, but includes, for example, the availability of computer software into which the employee enters a record of his or her entire dietary consumption and exercise. However, the program's leader, Dr. Sam Ho, PacifiCare's Chief Medical Officer, reportedly said that "the company plans to introduce modifications to make it stricter in the next few years. Parts of the program may become mandatory, and there may be monitoring of reported indicators of health such as weight loss and exercise."
Other examples include "a Florida sheriff's office is requiring some applicants to take a polygraph test with questions about their smoking habits. Omaha-based Union Pacific Corp. last fall stopped hiring smokers in seven states."
But, as Lewis Maltby, President of the National Workrights Institute, asked, "do we really want employers conducting an extensive sruvey of employees' every unhealthy lifestyle choice? Do you really want your boss asking you what you eat and what you do for recreation?"
Again, some of this reflects a fundamental confusion. Because of US tax law and history, employers often pay for health insurance on behalf of their employees, using presumably dollars that would have gone into the employees' salaries instead. But some employers now thinks this makes them responsible, not just for paying for health care, but for their employees' health in its entirety.
I submit that large corporations, no matter how well intentioned, cannot possibly make better health care decisions for their employees than their employees could make for themselves. And not all may be so well-intentioned.