Everyone is aware that health care costs continue to skyrocket. Last year we spent an average of $8,687 dollars per person on health care, and the figure—which includes insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance—is projected to rise to $13,100 by 2018 if we do nothing to stop it. It’s enough to prompt widespread panic or wholesale defeat, depending on your outlook.
The good news is that something can be done, even by ordinary people, but first of all it’s important to understand where health care dollars are currently being spent.
Join fight against childhood obesity
The Centers for Disease Control estimates 17 percent of those ages 2 to 19 years are obese and that 1 in 3 children are overweight or obese. During the last 30 years, childhood obesity has tripled, leaving us with a major public health crisis.
Obese children and adolescents are more likely to have risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease such as
Can you solve the health care problem at your organization?
There’s a lot more to a comprehensive wellness program than just nutrition and exercise classes. It requires getting your employees to think about their health and how they spend their health care dollars in a new way.
A few months ago I read The Company that Solved Health Care. The author, John Torinus sets out these five steps for how his company has helped to reduce health care costs. Check out his site here: http://johntorinus.com/how-to-solve-health-care/
His steps are simple and can be implemented at any size organization. We can show you how.
1. Adopt a consumer-driven health plan (CDHP). That means setting up personal health accounts for employees – either an HSA or HRA – as an offset to higher deductibles and co-insurance. Behavior immediately changes, since plan members are spending their own money. Over-utilization disappears. Consumerism appears. Employees start shopping for price, service and quality. Lifestyles improve. CDHP premiums are typically 20%-40% below those of standard plans.
One of our readers recently asked if it was possible to eat healthy from a fast food restaurant.
I'm (Jen) not going to be shy, but upon reading the question, I thought, of course not. However, being a columnist, I decided to review menu items at a few of our local fast food chains and see if any menu items meet the criteria based on USDA and American Heart Association guidelines. I also am making the assumption that the meal would be one of three meals a day and allowed for one-third of the diner's daily allowance with the meal. I also based my parameters on normal, active men and women. Keep in mind that smaller women or sedentary individuals need fewer calories and therefore, less fat, protein and carbohydrate.
Employee wellness programs have often been viewed as a nice extra, not a strategic imperative. But the data demonstrate otherwise, according to Berry, of Texas A&M University; Mirabito, of Baylor University; and Baun, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Their research shows that the ROI on comprehensive, well-run employee wellness programs is impressive, sometimes as high as six
