According to a report in the Washington Post, a bill recently passed by the Senate Finance and Health Committees, includes a provision that more than doubles the potential rewards and penalties that employers can use to incentivize or motivate employees to lose weight, lower cholesterol, stop smoking or lower their BMI.

"A single employee whose annual premiums cost him and his employer the national average of $4,824 could have as much as $2,412 on the line," according to the report. "Families with premiums of $13,375 — the combined average for employer-sponsored coverage, according to a recent survey — could have $6,687.50 at risk."

Efforts to financially incentivize employees to lose weight has been a controversial aspect to increasingly popular corporate wellness programs, but if incentives do become widespread then wireless health tools could find a willing audience both among employers looking to reduce health costs and employees looking to shape up.

Last week we reported on grocery store chain Safeway's practice of giving employees discounts on their health insurance for having certain body mass indexes, quitting smoking, controlling hypertension or lowering their cholesterol. Safeway CEO Steve Burd told NPR that his company’s employees receive a discount on their health insurance if they have a body mass index (BMI) that is below 30, which is the cut-off at which people are considered obese.

“If it’s above 30, that means they pay about $318 more than someone who is in the other camp,” Burd told NPR. “But the beauty of our plan is that if you make a reduction of, let’s say 10 percent of your body mass index, we write you a check at the end of the year for making that progress.”

Be sure to read the Post's report here for all the details.