Here is an article I found that talks about the impact on employers. http: // employmentlawpost . com/hrnews/2009/11/03/house-reveals-health-care-reform-legislation/?HLR Some key things here: 1. Penalties for employers that don't offer insurance. 2. Changes to HSA (and other similar plans) in terms of what is an allowable expense under the legislation

For the boss to want to take such a strong stance on this, it seems to me that this has been a big issue for your company. I think the better solution then putting together a policy is to find out why. If you are finding a number of your employees' resumes online, then you need to find out why these individuals want to leave. Is it the environment (culture), job duties, pay, hours, benefits, etc? If I find an employee's resume online, I will sit down with them or have the manager sit down with them.

Why such a large increase? Why are some refusing to quote you? What justification did they give you? Where I am, depending on how small or large the company is, the biggest factor for increases is either average age or claims rating. If you already have a HSA for medical, then you already have a high deductible plan. You can see if their is a higher deductible plan you can go to, but you won't be very popular with the employees. But then again a 34% increase isn't going to be popular either.

I have never really been a fan of suspensions. I have used them in some major situations where we needed to do an investigation into what happened, but I don't like to use them for general disciplinary issues. I agree with others that you need to look at the training the employees are receiving. Do you have documented procedures that these employees must follow? Have you gone over these procedures and have the supervisors monitored to make sure the individual is following the procedures?

TXHRGuy is right, all legal issues aside, one of the things you need to think about is employee morale. What is the reason for wanting to do this? Is the owner trying to save money? What have you done in past years?

I knew it was only a matter of time before this issue came up with drug tests, but here is an article about the DOT ruling on this issue. http:// www . jacksonlewis . com/legalupdates/article.cfm?aid-1887 I didn't realize that so many states had decriminalized the use of this. I thought it was only California. (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nev ada , New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) Federal law still lists the the drug as illegal.