Article contains a good concise primer on the two ways people think about health (insurance): risk sharing or moral hazard. Risk sharing: exactly what it sounds like; we share the risk of spendy health problems using pooled resources. Moral hazard: well, if we make it too easy for people to get that protection they're not gonna take care of their health; "moochers" will intentionally get sick, etc.

Moral hazard is a crock of shit. I mean that both in the sense of policies based in it shit on the nondeserving, and in that it doesn't fit modern theories of personal and population health. I mean, I'm a public health person, I extremely don't like it anyway! but it's the thinking that's behind conservative health-related policies: it's for the deserving. If we make it easy to get, people won't work hard. "it" = insurance, homes, food, TANF, etc.

Hoooly shit. "Program features have ranged from the useful (fresh produce sales on corporate campuses) to the dubious (long-form questionnaires assessing workers’ mental health) to the creepily invasive (‘‘laughter cards’’ which ask workers to record whether they experienced levity at least 10 times in a day)."

That's not even considering the biometric assessments considered as standard. My employer does not need to know my cholesterol levels, blood pressure, etc; not sure whether that counts as more or less invasive than "laughter cards" (?!?!?!?wtf).

And weight-oriented wellness programs (which most of them are, at least a little) don't end up saving money for the employer on healthcare, nor do they end up with long-term weight loss on the group level. None of which is surprising if you take a health at every size perspective (#HAES heck yeah) vs the fatness hyperfocus that happens in healthcare today.