We don’t know if this program has reached the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle, but workers at Hearst’s Houston Chronicle are being asked to provide blood samples in return for lower health insurance premiums. Apparently such programs have helped employees spot life-threatening diseases, but Houston Chronicle columnist Loren Steffy writes: “Giving blood to stave off higher premiums is just one more indignity in the modern workplace. We can’t get a job without handing over a cup of our urine to a prospective employer. … Under the guise of “wellness,” a little more of our private identity falls away, consumed by an ever more intrusive public domain. It may make us healthier, but we pay the price as surely as if we’d posted our Social Security number on the front door.”