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NEW YORK In an effort to motivate workers to kick unhealthy habits, U.S. companies are hitting them where it hurts: in their wallets.

But meddling in workers’ lifestyles through financial penalties risks lawsuits, say some consultants and lawyers.

Employers who provide health insurance often use financial incentives, such as contributions toward premiums, to encourage workers to participate in wellness programs like smoking-cessation courses.

Now some employers are wielding the stick, as well as the carrot. Employees at some companies who are overweight, smoke, or have high cholesterol, for instance, and who don’t participate in wellness programs, will pay more for health insurance. In extreme cases, employees’ insurance deductibles could rise by $2,000.

“The bottom line, is that employers want to see results,” says Tom Parry, president of the Integrated Benefits Institute, a nonprofit focused on health issues.

Starting in 2008, Tribune Co., which owns newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, will apply a monthly surcharge of $100 to family premiums of workers — or dependents — who use tobacco.

Clarian Health, an Indianapolis-based hospital chain, will fine employees who are smokers $5 a paycheck.

Small employers, who are the most at risk from rising health costs, have gone the furthest in forcing unhealthy employees to pay more for insurance.

In most states, people with health problems already pay more for health policies in the individual insurance market. But for employer- sponsored plans, federal law dictates that all workers covered under the same plan must pay the same premium irrespective of their health.

Recent legislation granted some exceptions to this standard through the vehicle of wellness programs. Critics say employees will be hurt. Indeed, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it is looking into wellness programs to see whether they sometimes violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“If we allow employers to control off-duty behavior when it’s related to health, then we’ve given them the authority to control virtually everything in our private lives,” says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, a New Jersey group that advocates for workers.

For now, the legal landscape is murky. Any wellness program that requires “answering questions relating to health or meeting a certain health standard should be thoroughly vetted by an employer’s attorneys,” says Sharon Cohen, consulting firm Watson Wyatt’s group and health care benefits counsel.

Starting in 2008, Kellogg Co., the Battle Creek, Mich.- based cereal giant, will raise insurance premiums for salaried and nonunion employees by $360. But it will also offer what it describes as financial incentives to employees who take a voluntary health risk assessment and participate in wellness programs.

A Kellogg’s spokeswoman confirmed that employees who opt out will face higher premiums, while those who participate will see no change.

Financial penalties do motivate some workers to improve their health.

Three years ago, Melissa Bergman, who works at Bank of Geneva in Geneva, Ind., was upset when her health insurance deductible rose to $2,500 from $500 the prior year. The only way she could reduce her insurance deductible was if she met health benchmarks in a screening for cholesterol, body mass index, blood pressure and tobacco use. Each test passed would earn her a $500 credit toward the deductible.

While the 35-year-old earned one credit for being a nonsmoker, she learned in a screening her cholesterol was dangerously high. Within days, her father died of a heart attack, and Bergman went on a regimen of cholesterol-reducing drugs and exercise. Last year, Bergman passed the blood pressure test and this year she hopes to earn a credit for cholesterol, she says.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prohibits discrimination against workers in group health plans on medical grounds. But last December, federal agencies published final rules that granted exceptions effective from this past July for certain wellness programs.

Some experts, however, say wellness programs that involve penalties may not comply with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Karen Politz, a research professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, wonders, “When you have such pointed incentives involved, is it really voluntary, or coercive?”