Yes – it all looks great when it starts – a voluntary program for an employee to participate in because your employer wants to give you the tools you need to be a better, healthier person
somewhere between year 2 and 3 of the program – it turns into a vicious big brother type issue -Take the wellness exam or else you will be surcharged $50/month on your health benefits in the next year of benefits – hey folks that $600/year…in an industry that isn’t giving raises or giving 1% raises across the board in some cases – your raise just went to pay more for your medical benefits period.
So, who really benefits from these programs?
They also claim that they don’t have access to the information gained from the wellness assessments – funny you get e-mails that state “based on data from last years wellness surveys”… we have found that less than 1/2 of our employees are doing what they should to manage their weight, get regularly screenings for certain types of cancer or whatever the statistic is –
Anyone read that high school lit classic “1984” recently? Might want to blow the dust off that one and reread it – Big Brother is here and now layered in euphisms and spun as a “benefit”.
Gee: you sound a little disgruntled with your employers health wellness plan. The employers that we work with approach things just the opposite. They reward employees who take the time to better themselves. Obviously there are those that will never take serious the issue of better health management. Lifestyle choices has proven to the harbinger of poor health or good health outcomes.
In every case where a wellnnes plan has been adopted employees that improve their health have been rewarded and those that haven’t, well I will leave that for you to decide what would you do. Reward bad health behavior. I think we already make it too easy for people to fail in this country. this is a huge issue for our country and one we cannot afford to lose.
I don’t believe my health and wellness should be used as a yardstick by my employer when assessing raises. Job performance is what I was hired to do, last time I checked- not loose weight or stop smoking. I’m in agreement with Vicki. “Big Brother” has a vested interest in keeping us fit and healthy: so they can work us and tax us to death! Does anybody seriously believe that Michelle Obama and her cronies give a rat’s rump about the health and well-being of middle-aged white males who would never vote for her husband? Liberals need and endless supply of healthy taxpayers to fuel their socialist schemes.
The entire premise of these programs comes chillingly close to circumventing HIPPA regulations. Face it, obesity has become the new poster child for discrimination, now that it has officially become offensive to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin and all those others factors beyond a person’s control. And it should be so. But take a look at current advertising and media “articles” that are unfairly condescending to those persons in our society who happen to be larger than most; simply becasue of genetics and/or a poorer economic station in life. The same folks who can’t loose weight because all they can afford is white bread and peanut butter will be penalized once again with denial of raises/promotions and thus any chance of bettering themselves, even if they wanted to.
When the bad health habits of my co-workers have a direct impact on my pocketbook (increased health insurance cost for all employees because of increased risk), then I tend to become very judgemental. And believe me, if you can afford bread and peanut butter, you can afford a lot of nutritious food that does not increase your weight.
Yes, I believe Michelle and her “cronies” care about people and their health. What I don’t believe is your conspiracy theory surrounding your Michelle comment. I like how you put race in there as well, not sure what place that has in your statement. Do you think the Obamas hate white people or something? You have to be kidding me.
Last year my employer implemented a small incentive for employees to get a physical exam. This year this expanded to include significant other and also has biometric screening benchmarks as well as exercise tracking in the basic incentive plan. Interesting that my healthcare provider has less stringent definitions of “normal range.” I am known within my company as a fitness/wellness cheerleader. One of my biometric numbers did not meet my employer’s requirement for that piece of the financial incentive. Through a series of fortunate events, I have made a dramatic dietary lifestyle change. Now I find myself coaching my assigned health coach on my new way of eating only nutritionally dense foods. I look forward to my final telephone call w/ my health coach where I can report back on a dramatically improved blood test. I found Hewitt’s website had data integrity issues which also caused grief for me to receive credit for the exercise tracking portion of our incentive program. I hope they work out some bugs by next calendar year.
This is an absurd appraoch You do not need incentives and other carrots and sticks. What you need is common snese applied. The problem is not the high cost of health insurance. the problem is the high cost of group health and self insured group health.
Shut this worthless and unaffordable model down and replace it with a medical expense reimbursement plan funded by individual insurance polciies on each plan participant. Use a secondary payor card to enhance benefits and pay forn that out of the savings. The employer will see a huge reduction in cost to the point that health insurance is no longer a large expenditure and the nemployees likewise benefit in the lower costs and improved benefit structure Or you can waste millions on this drivel. Your choice.
Bill, aside from your many typos, I’m not sure I understand what you are proposing. Who is paying for the “individual insurance policies”? According to our state law, employers can’t pay for individual policies. Then you refer to savings; I assume you are talking about the difference in cost between a group policy and an individual policy. (By the way, group policies cost more because they offer better benefits, on average) But if you spend the savings to buy a “secondary payor card”, there are no savings left, or am I missing something? And I don’t understand how the employer will see the “huge reduction in cost”. Please enlighten us. What you wrote is difficult to follow.
This day and age, it is a blessing if you can even afford your employers health insurance. My husbands health insurance was $264 per week for family coverage, yep, per week, and that was $1 more per week than his take home pay. He lost his job with the good health insurance and the family lost our insurance, and now we have a very high deductible private policy because who the hell can afford $264 per week for health insurance. I think employers feel they can control our lives just because we work for them……while I do agree that it ok for employers to offer information and access to better health, it is not any of their business how many miles I walk per week or how many hours I exercise or what I eat.
Bill Ford….I would like to hear more on what you are talking about.
This is happening with the big corporate office staff not the little offices, the membership on a health fitness center is expensive and some of us cannot afford it, I have not seen any incentives where I work.
My husband just had his annual check. While he is generally in good health and exercises fairly regularly, the labs weren’t great. After finding some recommendations online by the reputable Mayo clinic, he is making small changes and open to talking about how to meet his wants in different ways.
I think that it takes many different ways to motivate the many different flavors of people. One advantage to this method (aside from any concerns about information being used against you), is that these labs are objective and can provide influential input to some people.
Heart attacks and strokes that my coworkers or neighbors my experience are very expensive for me and society in terms of both productivity and cost – and they are often preventable with lifestyle changes.
I work in both the insurance industry(adjuster) and the wellness field(premium wellness coaching)…..balancing your health and wellness while being in the corporate world or self employed work field can be a difficult task…I know from experience….we always seem to come last….
If any one is looking for help in this area or knows of a HR contact looking to implement a program with in your company, feel free to reach out…. http://www.benourishedbynature.com
Or find me on F/B…Be Nourished By Nature…..look for the apple in the sky……:)
I offer complimentary health consults to individuals…..Thanks!!!
This is a very challenging and polarizing issue. There are many realities to face, such as;
1 – Statisics prove that poor health habits have a significant effect on both quality of life and costs.
2 – Even “healthy people” can experience serious illness and high health costs
3 – Education is the only way to change the habits of the population…and CHANGE IS OFTEN SLOW TO COME.
4 – Changes need to come on ALL fronts to beat this epidemic of poor health. i.e. -The foods we eat and make available (at home. work and in restaurants), the activities we do to keep our bodies and minds supple and strong, the chemicals we are exposed to on all fronts-at home, and in the workplace, in food, packaging, cleaners, personal care products, etc.
Ultimately, every choice we make has an associated consequence. We as a society are reaping the fruits (albeit rotten fruit) of our lifelong choices. Change is HARD…but it is always necessary. With the technology that we have and the ability to live longer lives, we now face the challenge of improving the QUALITY of our lives. We can deny that we are killing ourselves with our choices, or we can be open to learning how to make improvements, and demanding that the best options are available to everyone to make their lives and the lives of their families the best they can be!
I smoked for 35 years….live with a hard core-never-gonna quit smoker. I am overweight. I lost my dad at 68 to Diabetes and my brother at 44 to a stroke due to being overweight and having high blood pressure. I have seen FIRST hand what results from both good choices and bad choices.
If you think that the government and employers only care about the bottom line…you might be right. What do YOU care about? Do you want to live on piles of pills and feeling like garbage for the last 10, 20, 30 40 years of your life? Is that what you want for your children? What will we learn from our lives and pass on to the next generation? Fast food, chemical laden-nutrient poor crap and sugary drinks have made us junkies. Artificial sweeteners to appease our aspirations to do better are poisoning our systems as well. We can argue ’til the cows come home about whose business it is to encourage change, but the reality is that our kids may die younger than we do. THAT is a result of a collection of bad choices that WE made for them. They don’t know better! WE taught them. NOW is the time to relearn the right ways again and make a difference.
Sorry for the rant. I am very passionate about this subject as I persoannly struggle to change my own life foe the better. Nobody said it was easy…only that it is worth the struggle.
It’s certinly OK for a person to make adjustments to his or her lifestyle if that’s what they feel they need to do for their own benefit, but it’s not the employer’s – and certainly not the government’s – role to mandate these changes. I personally have made some changes that I felt were needed, but not because my employer told me I had to do so. Read Vicki’s post again – she’s exactly right in stating that we’re continuously relinquishing more and more of our right to live our lives as we see fit.
I hear you an understand your view. The sad thing is that we have been manipulated and marketed to by corporations that have us hooked on things that are SOOO bad for us that we often don’t have the capacity to make intelligent decisions anymore. We are driven by chemical urges that are no differnt from those that a drug addict experiences. Sugar swings and endorphine buzzes when we eat things and buy things….it’s insanity! Corporations are getting filthy rich off of our endless addictions.
I also work in the group insurance arena (in Canada) and so I have some knowledge of the financial effects of high claims on the employer and all of the employees. The biggest challenge is how to be comprehensive enough and flexible enough while keeping costs under control. Philosophically, how much cost burden should be carried by the employer, and how should it be spread amongst the employees? How much responsibility for costs should be paid by healthy people vs. unhealthy people?
The big push to get people educated and then “encouraged” to make the healthier choices arises directly from the ever-increasing costs of health care. Somebody has to pay the bill. Employees think that they should have the “right” to coverage regardless of the financial impact. The freedom to make choices for ourselves comes with a price. Soldiers know it…..employers know it….do we accept the responsibility for it or do we let the fallout rain down on everyone?
I am a proponent for a balance. There will always be illness and accidents that result in high costs. We need to help those who expereince those kind of things. On the other hand, we as individuals must accept not only the freedoms we have, but the consequences that come from taking advantage of those freedoms.
As I said initally…it is a polarizing issue…a double-edged sword. The solutions are not simple or quick ones. All we can do is keep the information adn conversation flowing.
An “intelligent decision” might not be the same thing in one person’s situation as opposed to another. We don’t all fit into a mold. Regardless, it isn’t the employer’s or the government’s role to determine if I have the capacity to make this “intelligent decision.” No objection to making good, informed choices when it comes to lifestyles, but it should be voluntary on the part of the individual and not ordered by Big Brother. What’s next – telling us we MUST buy carrots? An Ipod? A chevy Volt? Health Insurance? (Oh, wait – too late for that one.)
If you have employer paid or government paid health care, then they certainly do have the right to mandate changes. Its their money. If they’re paying the bills, they can decide the rules of the game. If you don’t like that, get your own coverage. And btw, if you ever plan to retire, you will have Medicare, which is government paid health care.
That said, I am personally trying to improve my health. I have biometric screenings done annually due to my employer paid health care, and the numbers are improving. I’m not a health junky, I do eat some garbage food. But, I try to make better choices most of the time.
Its not impossible to do the things the employers (and government) want, its just that most people either don’t want to or get all wrapped up in conspiracy theories.
I also spent 20 years as a firefighter/emt. I really don’t want to end up like my former patients. People should take a long hard look in the mirror and decide if they like what they see. If they don’t, they can take steps to make things better.
Does it have to be an all or nothing? I don’t think so. But, when faced with a choice of fries or a baked potato, pick the baked potato. If you’re thirsty, drink water instead of sugar filled sodas. Want a steak? Pick a nice strip steak over a ribeye. See, you can make better choices without going over the top. Now I’m hungry.
To Vicki’s point: excluding the folks who work for companies that pay 100% of the cost, now a vanishing breed of employer, we have all witnessed our payroll deductions for benefits going up while the medical benefits themselves are going down. 90% of claims come from less than 20% of the population and 70% of claims dollars paid in most company health plans are behaviorally driven, not guy falling off a faulty ladder stuff – personal choice driven stuff. Yet the cost of the claims is the primary driver in the increased payroll deductions for everyone. It is not so much Orwellian as it is economics. We need to take managing the cost of the health plan into the population and out of the C suite. Cash motivates behavior like no other tool.
I need to comment on this from the perspective of someone who owns a company that provides preventive health and wellness solutions. The best way I can describe my position is a true story about my father. He is 70 years old and still works like a horse. He goes to his job and out-performs many of the younger individuals. What else can you expect from a Polish immigrant who has only known how to work hard his entire life. Well, now at his age he has two torn rotator cuffs, two bad knees with ligament tears, heart disease, herniated discs in his lower back and very bad sleep apnea. He sees an orthopedic doctor and his cardiologist very often, takes medications, and spent some time on paid disability after a surgery he underwent. So what does this mean? Let’s put it in terms of numbers:
1 – Each time he goes to work, his production makes the company a few hundred dollars. Missing six months of work due to surgery that could have been prevented cost the company tens of thousands of dollars.
2 – With every inpatient and outpatient visit he makes, insurance companies are disgruntled with his continuous decline in health. No wonder they want to raise his premiums; he’s not healthy and his insurance company is paying out a lot of money.
3 – Had his company invested $400 per year in a proper program that would have educated him on proper nutrition and physical activity practices, the company could have saved and made thousands off this investment.
Come on, realize this from this article. Your employers may have their own agenda for implementing a preventive health and wellness program, but can anyone blame them? Unless anyone here wants to be crippled during their retirement, I suggest you take your employers’ program and utilize it to the best of your ability. I am also an exercise professional and see too many individuals who think they know what they are doing and are dumb-founded when I correct them and show them what they are doing correctly.
Yes – it all looks great when it starts – a voluntary program for an employee to participate in because your employer wants to give you the tools you need to be a better, healthier person
somewhere between year 2 and 3 of the program – it turns into a vicious big brother type issue -Take the wellness exam or else you will be surcharged $50/month on your health benefits in the next year of benefits – hey folks that $600/year…in an industry that isn’t giving raises or giving 1% raises across the board in some cases – your raise just went to pay more for your medical benefits period.
So, who really benefits from these programs?
They also claim that they don’t have access to the information gained from the wellness assessments – funny you get e-mails that state “based on data from last years wellness surveys”… we have found that less than 1/2 of our employees are doing what they should to manage their weight, get regularly screenings for certain types of cancer or whatever the statistic is –
Anyone read that high school lit classic “1984” recently? Might want to blow the dust off that one and reread it – Big Brother is here and now layered in euphisms and spun as a “benefit”.
Gee: you sound a little disgruntled with your employers health wellness plan. The employers that we work with approach things just the opposite. They reward employees who take the time to better themselves. Obviously there are those that will never take serious the issue of better health management. Lifestyle choices has proven to the harbinger of poor health or good health outcomes.
In every case where a wellnnes plan has been adopted employees that improve their health have been rewarded and those that haven’t, well I will leave that for you to decide what would you do. Reward bad health behavior. I think we already make it too easy for people to fail in this country. this is a huge issue for our country and one we cannot afford to lose.
Sorry your experience is dissatisfying to you.
I don’t believe my health and wellness should be used as a yardstick by my employer when assessing raises. Job performance is what I was hired to do, last time I checked- not loose weight or stop smoking. I’m in agreement with Vicki. “Big Brother” has a vested interest in keeping us fit and healthy: so they can work us and tax us to death! Does anybody seriously believe that Michelle Obama and her cronies give a rat’s rump about the health and well-being of middle-aged white males who would never vote for her husband? Liberals need and endless supply of healthy taxpayers to fuel their socialist schemes.
The entire premise of these programs comes chillingly close to circumventing HIPPA regulations. Face it, obesity has become the new poster child for discrimination, now that it has officially become offensive to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin and all those others factors beyond a person’s control. And it should be so. But take a look at current advertising and media “articles” that are unfairly condescending to those persons in our society who happen to be larger than most; simply becasue of genetics and/or a poorer economic station in life. The same folks who can’t loose weight because all they can afford is white bread and peanut butter will be penalized once again with denial of raises/promotions and thus any chance of bettering themselves, even if they wanted to.
Judgementalism of any sort sucks!
When the bad health habits of my co-workers have a direct impact on my pocketbook (increased health insurance cost for all employees because of increased risk), then I tend to become very judgemental. And believe me, if you can afford bread and peanut butter, you can afford a lot of nutritious food that does not increase your weight.
Yes, I believe Michelle and her “cronies” care about people and their health. What I don’t believe is your conspiracy theory surrounding your Michelle comment. I like how you put race in there as well, not sure what place that has in your statement. Do you think the Obamas hate white people or something? You have to be kidding me.
Last year my employer implemented a small incentive for employees to get a physical exam. This year this expanded to include significant other and also has biometric screening benchmarks as well as exercise tracking in the basic incentive plan. Interesting that my healthcare provider has less stringent definitions of “normal range.” I am known within my company as a fitness/wellness cheerleader. One of my biometric numbers did not meet my employer’s requirement for that piece of the financial incentive. Through a series of fortunate events, I have made a dramatic dietary lifestyle change. Now I find myself coaching my assigned health coach on my new way of eating only nutritionally dense foods. I look forward to my final telephone call w/ my health coach where I can report back on a dramatically improved blood test. I found Hewitt’s website had data integrity issues which also caused grief for me to receive credit for the exercise tracking portion of our incentive program. I hope they work out some bugs by next calendar year.
Go Eek a Mouse……nutrient dense foods are the key….
Be Nourished By Nature!!!!
:)
This is an absurd appraoch You do not need incentives and other carrots and sticks. What you need is common snese applied. The problem is not the high cost of health insurance. the problem is the high cost of group health and self insured group health.
Shut this worthless and unaffordable model down and replace it with a medical expense reimbursement plan funded by individual insurance polciies on each plan participant. Use a secondary payor card to enhance benefits and pay forn that out of the savings. The employer will see a huge reduction in cost to the point that health insurance is no longer a large expenditure and the nemployees likewise benefit in the lower costs and improved benefit structure Or you can waste millions on this drivel. Your choice.
Bill, aside from your many typos, I’m not sure I understand what you are proposing. Who is paying for the “individual insurance policies”? According to our state law, employers can’t pay for individual policies. Then you refer to savings; I assume you are talking about the difference in cost between a group policy and an individual policy. (By the way, group policies cost more because they offer better benefits, on average) But if you spend the savings to buy a “secondary payor card”, there are no savings left, or am I missing something? And I don’t understand how the employer will see the “huge reduction in cost”. Please enlighten us. What you wrote is difficult to follow.
This day and age, it is a blessing if you can even afford your employers health insurance. My husbands health insurance was $264 per week for family coverage, yep, per week, and that was $1 more per week than his take home pay. He lost his job with the good health insurance and the family lost our insurance, and now we have a very high deductible private policy because who the hell can afford $264 per week for health insurance. I think employers feel they can control our lives just because we work for them……while I do agree that it ok for employers to offer information and access to better health, it is not any of their business how many miles I walk per week or how many hours I exercise or what I eat.
Bill Ford….I would like to hear more on what you are talking about.
This is happening with the big corporate office staff not the little offices, the membership on a health fitness center is expensive and some of us cannot afford it, I have not seen any incentives where I work.
My husband just had his annual check. While he is generally in good health and exercises fairly regularly, the labs weren’t great. After finding some recommendations online by the reputable Mayo clinic, he is making small changes and open to talking about how to meet his wants in different ways.
I think that it takes many different ways to motivate the many different flavors of people. One advantage to this method (aside from any concerns about information being used against you), is that these labs are objective and can provide influential input to some people.
Heart attacks and strokes that my coworkers or neighbors my experience are very expensive for me and society in terms of both productivity and cost – and they are often preventable with lifestyle changes.
I work in both the insurance industry(adjuster) and the wellness field(premium wellness coaching)…..balancing your health and wellness while being in the corporate world or self employed work field can be a difficult task…I know from experience….we always seem to come last….
If any one is looking for help in this area or knows of a HR contact looking to implement a program with in your company, feel free to reach out….
http://www.benourishedbynature.com
Or find me on F/B…Be Nourished By Nature…..look for the apple in the sky……:)
I offer complimentary health consults to individuals…..Thanks!!!
This is a very challenging and polarizing issue. There are many realities to face, such as;
1 – Statisics prove that poor health habits have a significant effect on both quality of life and costs.
2 – Even “healthy people” can experience serious illness and high health costs
3 – Education is the only way to change the habits of the population…and CHANGE IS OFTEN SLOW TO COME.
4 – Changes need to come on ALL fronts to beat this epidemic of poor health. i.e. -The foods we eat and make available (at home. work and in restaurants), the activities we do to keep our bodies and minds supple and strong, the chemicals we are exposed to on all fronts-at home, and in the workplace, in food, packaging, cleaners, personal care products, etc.
Ultimately, every choice we make has an associated consequence. We as a society are reaping the fruits (albeit rotten fruit) of our lifelong choices. Change is HARD…but it is always necessary. With the technology that we have and the ability to live longer lives, we now face the challenge of improving the QUALITY of our lives. We can deny that we are killing ourselves with our choices, or we can be open to learning how to make improvements, and demanding that the best options are available to everyone to make their lives and the lives of their families the best they can be!
I smoked for 35 years….live with a hard core-never-gonna quit smoker. I am overweight. I lost my dad at 68 to Diabetes and my brother at 44 to a stroke due to being overweight and having high blood pressure. I have seen FIRST hand what results from both good choices and bad choices.
If you think that the government and employers only care about the bottom line…you might be right. What do YOU care about? Do you want to live on piles of pills and feeling like garbage for the last 10, 20, 30 40 years of your life? Is that what you want for your children? What will we learn from our lives and pass on to the next generation? Fast food, chemical laden-nutrient poor crap and sugary drinks have made us junkies. Artificial sweeteners to appease our aspirations to do better are poisoning our systems as well. We can argue ’til the cows come home about whose business it is to encourage change, but the reality is that our kids may die younger than we do. THAT is a result of a collection of bad choices that WE made for them. They don’t know better! WE taught them. NOW is the time to relearn the right ways again and make a difference.
Sorry for the rant. I am very passionate about this subject as I persoannly struggle to change my own life foe the better. Nobody said it was easy…only that it is worth the struggle.
It’s certinly OK for a person to make adjustments to his or her lifestyle if that’s what they feel they need to do for their own benefit, but it’s not the employer’s – and certainly not the government’s – role to mandate these changes. I personally have made some changes that I felt were needed, but not because my employer told me I had to do so. Read Vicki’s post again – she’s exactly right in stating that we’re continuously relinquishing more and more of our right to live our lives as we see fit.
I hear you an understand your view. The sad thing is that we have been manipulated and marketed to by corporations that have us hooked on things that are SOOO bad for us that we often don’t have the capacity to make intelligent decisions anymore. We are driven by chemical urges that are no differnt from those that a drug addict experiences. Sugar swings and endorphine buzzes when we eat things and buy things….it’s insanity! Corporations are getting filthy rich off of our endless addictions.
I also work in the group insurance arena (in Canada) and so I have some knowledge of the financial effects of high claims on the employer and all of the employees. The biggest challenge is how to be comprehensive enough and flexible enough while keeping costs under control. Philosophically, how much cost burden should be carried by the employer, and how should it be spread amongst the employees? How much responsibility for costs should be paid by healthy people vs. unhealthy people?
The big push to get people educated and then “encouraged” to make the healthier choices arises directly from the ever-increasing costs of health care. Somebody has to pay the bill. Employees think that they should have the “right” to coverage regardless of the financial impact. The freedom to make choices for ourselves comes with a price. Soldiers know it…..employers know it….do we accept the responsibility for it or do we let the fallout rain down on everyone?
I am a proponent for a balance. There will always be illness and accidents that result in high costs. We need to help those who expereince those kind of things. On the other hand, we as individuals must accept not only the freedoms we have, but the consequences that come from taking advantage of those freedoms.
As I said initally…it is a polarizing issue…a double-edged sword. The solutions are not simple or quick ones. All we can do is keep the information adn conversation flowing.
An “intelligent decision” might not be the same thing in one person’s situation as opposed to another. We don’t all fit into a mold. Regardless, it isn’t the employer’s or the government’s role to determine if I have the capacity to make this “intelligent decision.” No objection to making good, informed choices when it comes to lifestyles, but it should be voluntary on the part of the individual and not ordered by Big Brother. What’s next – telling us we MUST buy carrots? An Ipod? A chevy Volt? Health Insurance? (Oh, wait – too late for that one.)
If you have employer paid or government paid health care, then they certainly do have the right to mandate changes. Its their money. If they’re paying the bills, they can decide the rules of the game. If you don’t like that, get your own coverage. And btw, if you ever plan to retire, you will have Medicare, which is government paid health care.
That said, I am personally trying to improve my health. I have biometric screenings done annually due to my employer paid health care, and the numbers are improving. I’m not a health junky, I do eat some garbage food. But, I try to make better choices most of the time.
Its not impossible to do the things the employers (and government) want, its just that most people either don’t want to or get all wrapped up in conspiracy theories.
I also spent 20 years as a firefighter/emt. I really don’t want to end up like my former patients. People should take a long hard look in the mirror and decide if they like what they see. If they don’t, they can take steps to make things better.
Does it have to be an all or nothing? I don’t think so. But, when faced with a choice of fries or a baked potato, pick the baked potato. If you’re thirsty, drink water instead of sugar filled sodas. Want a steak? Pick a nice strip steak over a ribeye. See, you can make better choices without going over the top. Now I’m hungry.
To Vicki’s point: excluding the folks who work for companies that pay 100% of the cost, now a vanishing breed of employer, we have all witnessed our payroll deductions for benefits going up while the medical benefits themselves are going down. 90% of claims come from less than 20% of the population and 70% of claims dollars paid in most company health plans are behaviorally driven, not guy falling off a faulty ladder stuff – personal choice driven stuff. Yet the cost of the claims is the primary driver in the increased payroll deductions for everyone. It is not so much Orwellian as it is economics. We need to take managing the cost of the health plan into the population and out of the C suite. Cash motivates behavior like no other tool.
I need to comment on this from the perspective of someone who owns a company that provides preventive health and wellness solutions. The best way I can describe my position is a true story about my father. He is 70 years old and still works like a horse. He goes to his job and out-performs many of the younger individuals. What else can you expect from a Polish immigrant who has only known how to work hard his entire life. Well, now at his age he has two torn rotator cuffs, two bad knees with ligament tears, heart disease, herniated discs in his lower back and very bad sleep apnea. He sees an orthopedic doctor and his cardiologist very often, takes medications, and spent some time on paid disability after a surgery he underwent. So what does this mean? Let’s put it in terms of numbers:
1 – Each time he goes to work, his production makes the company a few hundred dollars. Missing six months of work due to surgery that could have been prevented cost the company tens of thousands of dollars.
2 – With every inpatient and outpatient visit he makes, insurance companies are disgruntled with his continuous decline in health. No wonder they want to raise his premiums; he’s not healthy and his insurance company is paying out a lot of money.
3 – Had his company invested $400 per year in a proper program that would have educated him on proper nutrition and physical activity practices, the company could have saved and made thousands off this investment.
Come on, realize this from this article. Your employers may have their own agenda for implementing a preventive health and wellness program, but can anyone blame them? Unless anyone here wants to be crippled during their retirement, I suggest you take your employers’ program and utilize it to the best of your ability. I am also an exercise professional and see too many individuals who think they know what they are doing and are dumb-founded when I correct them and show them what they are doing correctly.