Clarian Health Ties Employee Compensation With Health And Fitness Levels
Chalk one up for companies that are making a difference in enforcing Wellness in the Workplace. I wrote about my opinion that wellness should determine health benefits more than a year ago and this week I found out that Clarian is answering this clarion call!
Clarian Health, a large provider of health care services to the residents of Indianapolis, Indiana began 2007 with a new Mission Strategy, “A Call To Change”, urging the residents of the Hoosier State to take charge of bettering their health. In addition, Clarian is boldly going where pretty much no other company has gone before. Putting it’s money where its mouth is, the company is tying employee compensation and benefits with the individual’s health and habits.
Clarian Health is announcing changes to employee medical insurance plans in order to promote healthier lifestyles. Beginning in 2008, all employees wishing to enroll in Clarian-sponsored plans will have to report all potential health risks, including whether they use tobacco. A health risk charge of $5 per paycheck will be assessed to employees who have used tobacco within six months of their health risk assessment completion date. Beginning in 2009, employees will also have to participate in a complete health screening.
-Inside Indiana Business
Now, that’s what I call getting serious about making people value their health insurance (often provided free or at reduced premiums). When the individual employee realizes that there are no rights without corresponding responsibilities, everyone benefits. It goes without saying that a company’s group insurance premiums would reduce considerably if the average health-levels of its members increased and if no member smoked or was overly obese.
Workers who were moderately obese had health-care costs that were 21 percent, or $670 a year, higher than workers with normal weight, according to a recent study by Thomson Health Care. For those with severe obesity, annual health-care costs rose 75 percent, or $2,441 per person.
- IndyStar
From 2009, Clarian will begin to charge employees $30 every two weeks if certain serious issues are not brought under control. Employees will be screened for 5 major health indicators: Body Mass Index, LDL (bad) Cholesterol, Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar (Glycemia) and Smoking Status. While the company will provide for free smoking-cessation and wellness programs, employees who still don;t make an effort will see themselves being hit where it hurts the most - their paycheck.
But is it legal? Well, while employees cannot be discriminated against (by being provided less coverage than others), …
employers, who typically pay the bulk of employee health insurance premiums, are allowed by law to use financial incentives in wellness programs to motivate workers to adopt more healthy lifestyles, said Mike MacLean, a partner at Indianapolis law firm Baker & Daniels.
Kudos to Clarian for leading the way for large companies that are making an exceptional effort to bring America’s workforce onto the fitness bandwagon.
As always, it looks like nothing will make a person sit up and listen like money can!
Technorati Tags: health, fitness, exercise, overweight, obesity, Clarian Health, workplace wellness
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Comments
While attempts to make people responsible for their own health are great, I still find that I am leery of the proposed changes to Clarian’s benefit. I do not know what Wellness Plan Clarian had in place for 5 years that was not successful in reducing costs (http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/iw2/Story.nsp?story_id=108794982&ID=iw&scategory=Healthcare&P=&F=&R=&VNC=hnall ), or what research was done to determine that this next step would save money and how much it would save. But, the inclusion of risk factors such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and Glycemia concern me. Our growing need to turn everyone into a patient, through Wellness programs, will eventually cause more problems than we solve.
Example: Why should someone who is otherwise healthy be penalized for high cholesterol? Show me a valid, non-biased study free of conflicts of interests that shows a value to lowering a persons cholesterol who is otherwise healthy? The 1995 WOSCOPS study was hailed as clear proof that lowering cholesterol works for healthy people over age 45, because those on the statins tested had a 1.2% death rate to heart conditions in the next 5 years compared to the rate of 1.7% for those on a placebo. Considering the known risk associated with statins and the costs does this justify forcing people to reduce their cholesterol level or pay a higher premium? Is a 0.5% difference even statistically valid? According to this study, you would need to treat 200 people for 5 years with a statin to maybe save one life. And if you are doing the math at home don’t forget to add in the costs for the office visits and lab tests to assure the liver is functioning properly.
When we start down the path of considering risk factors to be diseases that need to be treated aggresively, because that is what will be happening, we will have found we have lost our way.
Although it is a shameless advertisement, I agree with Mike Chapman’s approach to wellness. Controlled weight loss, smoking cessation and exercise are still the most effective means to improving ones health and they come at a reduced costs. If programs could focus more on these elements, review the foods that they themselves provide on site, and work to achieve compliance with evidence-based medicine we would be better off for it. Until any of this happens and as long as the current approach continues I will just sit back and earn money on my investments in Rx companies.
Final note: If Clarian is successful in reducing their costs, they may also succeed in losing their best client.
What next? Penalize women for having babies over a certain age. Penalize black workers for living in areas of high crime. Penalize white males for drinking too much alcohol.
Congratulations to Clarian Health for leading the way for large companies to hold employees accountable for improving their own health.
Employees and their spouses who are at an acceptable weight, exercise and don’t use tobacco help their employer and their fellow employees keep group medical insurance premiums low, and keep their employer more productive since they have less absenteesim.
Employees and their spouses who are overweight or obese, who do not exercise and who use tobacco can cost their company and their fellow employees hundreds of thousands of dollars in resulting medical claims, higher premiums and lost wages.
It is not fair that an employee or spouse who does nothing to prevent such a preventable lifestyle disease Clairian pays the same for their portion of their group health insurance premiums as an employee who takes care of their own health. Clarian’s move actually puts fairness back into their group health and employee benefits plans by holding employees accountable for their own lifestyles.
And for a similar but simpler approach that works for the small businesses in America that employ about 90% of all non-farm labor, check out the recent wellness posts at http://www.GroupBenefitsAdvisors.com. This is a “scaled down” wellness plan structured along the “KISS” concept that concentrates solely on weight, exercise, and tobacco use, is very affordable for small businesses, and simple to administer with no specialized training required. In fact, when this plan is combined with a health reimbursement arrangement and/or Medical Expense Reimbursement Plan, there is no additional out of pocket cost to the employer. And for each dollar spent on the wellness plan, an employer should expect to save about four dollars in reduced medical claims and premium increases, and reduced absenteeism.