Employers upping the ante on wellness incentives
January 11, 2011 by Christian SchappelPosted in: Health care, In this week's e-newsletter - benefits, Incentives, Latest News & Views, Money, Pay and benefits
It’s been proven time and again: Wellness programs with high participation rates achieve significant cost savings. But few companies are reaching the participation levels they need, so they’re bringing out the big guns.
Pretty soon, simply completing a health risk assessment or answering a health questionnaire won’t be enough to earn employees incentives — like breaks on their healthcare premiums or discounts on gym memberships.
This year, to cash in on some of the generous incentives employers are offering as part of their wellness programs, employees will actually have to do something more exhaustive — like participate in a class that helps them lose weight or quit smoking.
In fact, 42% of large employers said they’ll require their workers to complete a health coaching class or disease management program to earn a financial incentive in 2011, according to a survey of 507 employers by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health.
And according to a report in the Los Angeles Times, a separate study by Towers Watson revealed that 62% of employers said that instead of offering employees incentives to participate in wellness programs, they’ll only pay up after they see demonstrated action and results.
However, the news isn’t all bleak for employees. In that same study, nearly two thirds (65%) of employers said that they’ll increase the incentives they offer to take part in wellness programs this year.
So the payoff for employees to improve their health should get even bigger in 2011.
Tags: discounts, disease management, health risk assessment, healthcare premiums, Incentives, National Business Group on Health, participation rates, quit smoking, Towers Watson, wellness
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January 25th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Americans pay the highest percentage of GDP for health care of any country in the world…by far. We now spend 17-18% of our GDP, even while more than 40 million people don’t have health insurance.
Most Americans don’t realize how much they are paying for health care because, just like with many other segments of the economy (particularly transportation), we manage to externalize many of the costs.
Most people with health insurance through their employers are accutely aware of the sizable chunk of their paychecks that goes towards their premiums, however, this is only one of the 5-6 places where Americans are paying for health care. The first, as just mentioned is in employee contributions to employer-provided health care plans. The second, is through reduced pay due to what companies end up paying in employer-side health care premiums which reduce the amount they are able to pay their employees. The third place is in health care co-pays for when health care services are actually used. The fourth, fifth and sixth are in Federal, State and Local taxes. There are literally thousands of tax payer funded health care programs at every level of government which pay for substantial portions of American’s health care bills. These funds come directly from tax payers.
The reality is that separating our health care bills into all these different pies does nothing to reduce what we actually pay for health care, in fact, the complexity actually adds costs through greater administration.
A far more sound health care policy would be one where everyone just pays 17% of their income, or perhaps, (if we must) split the 17% between employees and employers, into health care funds which could be a single-payer style system or paying those monies to existing HMOs and other health care providers.