SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) — Pharmacy giant CVS has told workers in the Bay Area and around the nation to reveal their weight and other health information, or pay extra for health coverage.
The company announced Wednesday what it called “A Plan for Health,” that features a mix of rewards and penalties for employees.
Among the measures, employees must report their weight, body fat, cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Workers must also be tobacco free or enroll in an addiction program by next year.
Employees who refuse will have to pay $50 more for health coverage each month, totaling $600 a year.
In a video released by CVS, a top executive said the plan is progressive and cutting edge. “These changes aren’t just about costs, they’re about us, each of us taking personal accountability for our own health,” said Lisa Bissacia, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer.
“(CVS Executives) better get some pretty good legal counsel and decide whether your policy is really legal, because the policy as announced is not legal,” said Richard Schramm, a Bay Area employment lawyer.
Schramm told KPIX 5 the company is trying to tell employees what they can and can’t do on their off time.
“If we granted that right to employers, employers could tell employees who to date, who to see, what kinds of foods to eat, what to drink, all kinds of behavior off site could be controlled. And that’s absolutely not the law in California,” he said.
KPIX 5 tried talking to employees at a CVS location, but they refused to comment on the plan.
Company officials said personal information is given to WebMD, and that CVS will not have access to employee’s personal health information.
In 2011, more than 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain at a cost of around $600 billion a year in medical treatments and lost productivity, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
Phillip Pizzo, MD, of Stanford University School of Medicine and chair of an IOM committee commissioned by Congress said that “for many patients chronic pain becomes a disease in its own right. We need to address this in a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary way and include prevention as a very important goal.”
WebMD has a 15-question Pain Quiz that takes only a few minutes to complete. Click here!
Keep busy with activities that take your mind off pain
Know your meds; educate yourself about other treatment options
Reach out: Tell friends & family; ask for help
Two things that aren’t on the above list are buried in the correct answer to one of the questions in the Pain Quiz:
Positive thinking: People who expect less pain may feel less pain.
Intense feelings of lovecan provide pain relief similar to the effects of painkillers, according to a Stanford study.
The latter — intense feelings of love — may explain my best friend, FOTM’s Joan’s management of her constant excruciating pain, from osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia. In addition to medication, she offers her pain as redemptive suffering to Christ.
Rudy Eugene, the Miami cannibal, had seemingly superhuman strength and eventually was shot dead by the first police officer who arrived on the scene. The president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, Armando Aguilar believes Eugene was on a new street drug called “bath salts.” Emergency room doctors at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital said they have seen a major increase in cases linked to the new drug. Dr. Paul Adams, of the hospital’s Emergency room, said in many of the cases, the person’s temperature has risen to an extremely high level and they become very aggressive. Some have used their jaws as a weapon during attacks. The patients were in a state of delirium and “Extremely strong, I took care of a 150 pound individual who you would have thought he was 250 pounds. It took six security officers to restrain the individual.”
Since then two further incidents have been linked to “bath salts.”
The first occurred on June 2, 2012, when a snarling homeless man, Brandon De Leon, threatened to eat two officers, echoing the Miami attack.
Police were forced to fit 21-year-old De Leon with a Hannibal Lecter-style mask after he was arrested for disturbing the peace in North Miami Beach. When put in a police cruiser De Leon slammed his head against the plexiglass divider and shouted at officers, “I’m going to eat you,” NBC Miami reported. He then growled, gnashed his teeth and tried to bite the hand of an officer attempting to treat his head wounds. Miami police said they believe he was on a cocktail of drugs, including “bath salts” called Cloud Nine.
Brandon De Leon (l); Carl Jacquneaux (r)
The second incident also took place on June 2, in Scott, a city in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. 42-year-old Carl Jacquneaux bit off a chunk of a man’s face in a bloody attack. An arrest warrant affidavit charges that Jacquneaux “began biting the victim in the face, removing flesh the size of a quarter below the victim’s left eye” and “biting off half his cheek.” A friend of the victim said that Jacquneaux had been using bath salts prior to the attack.
If the people on “bath salts” seem more than addicts but demonic to you, you will find it interesting that Freddy Sharp, a former bath-salts addict, describes the drug’s effect as “evil.”
As recounted by CNN’s Ashley Hayes, June 4, 2012, Sharp had to be strapped by paramedics onto a gurney and restrained, yet he’s singing, making faces and twitching. He told CNN’s Don Lemon that he was hallucinating about being in a mental hospital and being possessed by Jason Voorhees, the character from the “Friday the 13th” movies:
“I’d never experienced anything like that. You feel like you’re 10 feet tall and bulletproof, and you actually do not feel any pain. It really actually scared me pretty bad. I just felt all kinds of crazy. It felt so evil. It felt like the darkest, evilest thing imaginable.”
Sharp said he never felt the urge to “eat anybody’s flesh” while under the influence of bath salts. But he said his overdose was a turning point and described the experience as “Fear. Darkness. It felt like impending doom was coming down on me … I felt like I was about to bust loose and actually hurt somebody. I felt like if I lost that control, anything could happen.”
He said the experience was the worst of his life: “it will destroy your life. It will destroy your family. It will destroy everything.” And coming off the drug was also difficult, quite aside from the withdrawal. He said “whenever it comes out of you, you can smell it in your hair–unclean, nasty, unkempt, chemically-type smell. It’s so nasty.”
See Sharp for yourself in this CNN video. He looked like he needed an exorcist!
So what are “bath salts”?
To begin, they are not the same substance used to scent your bathwater. Those bath salts are Epsom salts. The evil “bath salts” contain amphetamine-like chemicals such as methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV) and are sold as “cocaine substitutes” or “synthetic LSD.” Its effects include paranoia, hallucinations, convulsions and psychotic episodes.
I compiled the following from an article by Matt McMillen for WebMD. The article is in the form of an interview McMillen conducted with Zane Horowitz, MD, an emergency room physician and medical director of the Oregon Poison Center.
What are “bath salts”?: “Bath salts” are a synthetic or “designer” drug made from three chemicals — the synthetic stimulants mephedrone, MDPV, and methylone. Newer pyrovalerone derivatives are being made by illegal street chemists. Nobody really knows what goes into the making of “bath salts” because there is no way to test for these substances. People are making this drug out of household products, stuff that’s in their kitchens.
Why are they called bath salts?: By marketing the synthetic drug as bath salts and labeling them “not for human consumption,” the makers have been able to avoid them being identified as illegal.
Street names for “bath salts”: Some examples are Ivory Wave, Purple Wave, Vanilla Sky, Bliss. I found these (see below) by doing a Google search. Many of them are for sale online.
How are “bath salts” taken?: The people who take them are very creative. They snort it, shoot it, mix it with food and drink.
What do you experience when you take “bath salts”?: It’s a very scary stimulant that induces high blood pressure, increased pulse, agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, psychosis, chest pain, and suicidality that persists even after the stimulatory effects of the drugs have worn off. “Bath salts” have sparked thousands of calls to poison centers across the U.S. over the last year. But right now, there’s no test to pick up this drug. The only way we know if someone has taken them is if they tell you they have.
Are “bath salts” addictive?: We don’t know, because we have not had enough long-term experience with it. Acute toxicity is the main problem. But many stimulants do cause a craving.
Are “bath salts” illegal?: No. They are sold in mini-marts and smoke shops as Ivory Wave, Bolivian Bath, and other names. The people who make “bath salts” have skirted the laws that make these types of things illegal. While several states have banned their sale, ultimately it will have to be a federal law that labels these as a schedule 1 drug, which means it has no medicinal value but a high potential for abuse, and declare them illegal.
What is the federal government doing or not doing about it?: In October 2011, citing an “imminent threat to public safety,” the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) made illegal the possession and sale of the three chemicals commonly used to make bath salts. The ban is effective for at least a year, during which time, the agency will decide whether a permanent ban is warranted. It’s most likely that the DEA will make permanent the illegal possession and sale of the chemicals that are used to make “bath salts”. But cocaine, heroin, and marijuana are also illegal, and they are all still out there.
Why “bath salts” are an especially terrible drug: The drug combines into one the effects of methamphetamine (paranoia and aggressiveness), LSD (hallucinations), and PCP (extreme paranoia), resulting in unpredictable effects on human behavior [such as cannibalism!] It can take five or six grown men to restrain a bath salts user. It’s PCP on crack. Last year in Panama City, Florida, police saw two violent incidents linked to use of bath salts. In one, a woman allegedly tried to behead her 71-year-old mother; in the second, a man on bath salts used his teeth to tear up the back seat of a patrol car.
