Benefits Buzz

The Nuclear Option: GE Moves to Only High Deductible Medical Plans...

If you're like me, you've pondered moving to high-deductible plans at some point in the last five years.  Whether you made the move or not, this much is certain:  Companies that started with a traditional PPO plan have generally kept those plans in place, bringing in the high-deductible/consumer-driven plans as an option, then attempted to draw employees into those plans with premium cuts and funding of health-care accounts (HCAs).

Not GE.  They went nuclear.  More from BusinessWeek:

"It's been a hard year to work at General Electric (GE). Salary freezes have hit its famously performance-driven employees, with some managers taking pay cuts. And now GE is making changes that could deal another blow to morale. The company is forcing its 75,000 salaried U.S. employees and 8,000 retirees under the age of 65 to choose what's known as a consumer-directed health plan, which includes deductibles that run as high as $4,000 a year. Traditional plans, where employees pay higher premiums in exchange for predictable co-pays up front, are no longer available for salaried workers. One employee says his colleagues "are looking at this as a cut in pay."

That's what's called a BOLD move people.  Like so much else in today's world, it all comes down to money:

"GE says the plan is being rolled out to make employees better health-care consumers and to coincide with its new "Healthymagination" strategy, a companywide initiative for health-care innovation. While GE says its future cost savings are unclear, people with knowledge of the situation estimate it could save $1 billion over the next decade or so. With three tiers of premiums and deductibles, GE spokesperson Sue Bishop notes, employees still have options. "It's not that different from their car insurance," she says. "You get to choose the amount of your premium, and that determines the amount of your deductible."

Moving from PPO to high-deductible only.  That's the nuclear option.  Will the bold move by GE spawn a bunch of similar "me-too" moves?  I suspect only after the move looks to be on track to save 1 billion with limited downside in terms of retention, etc.

Who Would’ve Thought I’d Have Anything in Common With Whole Foods CEO John Mackey?

I have a confession to make.  I get my groceries at Wally-World.  There’s one near my house, their prices are lower than another nearby grocery store, and I don’t mind the inevitable overcrowding on Sunday afternoon.  Some of you will count this against me since, for years, this establishment was known to have had a less than stellar track record in the way it treated its workers, and it may be single-handedly responsible for ending the age of mom-and-pop stores of all varieties (grocery, specialty, you name it).  To the first issue, I would say that Wal-Mart heard your concerns and has made efforts to improve relations with its employees.  And to the second, if it hadn’t been Wal-Mart, it would’ve been someone else putting mom-and-pop out of business.  It’s called capitalism.

My second confession is that I don’t eat anything organic (unless by accident).  Only God (and perhaps the FDA) knows what sorts of chemicals I’m ingesting when I eat the food purchased at my local Wally-World.  It hasn’t killed me, yet, so I’m not terribly worried.  So, who would’ve thought I’d come down on the side of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in the debate over health reform.

In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Mackey makes his proposals for health reform, and I agree with most of them.  What I admire about him is that he puts his money where his mouth is.  Whole Foods rolled out a Consumer Driven Health Plan (CDHP) with a Health Savings Account (HSA) several years back and has been serious about promoting it with employees and teaching them how to use it.  Employees are educating themselves about the plan and are, in fact, doing what CDHPs are designed to encourage them to do: shopping for health care services.

To be sure, I’m not certain CDHPs are going to save our health care industry.  But I do think they encourage people to think more carefully about their health care decisions.  I think that CDHPs should  be carefully designed to cover preventative things like regular checkups at low or no cost (i.e., not subject to the deductible).  Otherwise, some people will be inclined to avoid checkups in order to preserve their HSA balance.  That said, putting more responsibility on consumers seems like something else I remember that made this country great.  Oh yeah -- now I remember.  It’s called capitalism.

Mackey’s other proposals?

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits.
• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines.
• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.
• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost.
• Enact Medicare reform.
• Revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Enacting any one of these changes would be challenging (an understatement?) given the interests that would be affected.  Nevertheless, to me, these are reasonable proposals for health reform that would encourage market-based solutions and deserve as much discussion as the options currently being debated.

Editor's Note - Greg Dagley is a Benefits Consultant for a large multinational employer in Houston, TX. While his company has employees all over the globe, his job keeps him focused on US benefits and spending a lot of his time managing external vendors.  Is there any doubt his Excel skills are more advanced than yours?

Time Magazine - Exercise Doesn't Help You Lose Weight...

Weight Loss has long been thought to be a calories in, calories out type of thing that was aided by exercise.  Now, Time Magazine's throwing one of those cover articles out (titled, "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin") that's sure to make a lot of people say "A-HA!!!"

More from the Time article:

"In general, for weight loss, exercise is pretty useless," says Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and a prominent exercise researcher. Many recent studies have found that exercise isn't as important in helping people lose weight as you hear so regularly in gym advertisements or on shows like The Biggest Loser — or, for that matter, from magazines like this one.

The basic problem is that while it's true that exercise burns calories and that you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise has another effect: it can stimulate hunger. That causes us to eat more, which in turn can negate the weight-loss benefits we just accrued. Exercise, in other words, isn't necessarily helping us lose weight. It may even be making it harder.

Earlier this year, the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE — PLoS is the nonprofit Public Library of Science — published a remarkable study supervised by a colleague of Ravussin's, Dr. Timothy Church, who holds the rather grand title of chair in health wisdom at LSU. Church's team randomly assigned into four groups 464 overweight women who didn't regularly exercise. Women in three of the groups were asked to work out with a personal trainer for 72 min., 136 min., and 194 min. per week, respectively, for six months. Women in the fourth cluster, the control group, were told to maintain their usual physical-activity routines. All the women were asked not to change their dietary habits and to fill out monthly medical-symptom questionnaires.

The findings were surprising. On average, the women in all the groups, even the control group, lost weight, but the women who exercised — sweating it out with a trainer several days a week for six months — did not lose significantly more weight than the control subjects did. (The control-group women may have lost weight because they were filling out those regular health forms, which may have prompted them to consume fewer doughnuts.) Some of the women in each of the four groups actually gained weight, some more than 10 lb. each.

What's going on here? Church calls it compensation, but you and I might know it as the lip-licking anticipation of perfectly salted, golden-brown French fries after a hard trip to the gym. Whether because exercise made them hungry or because they wanted to reward themselves (or both), most of the women who exercised ate more than they did before they started the experiment. Or they compensated in another way, by moving around a lot less than usual after they got home."

The article's a good read, so give it a run.  The problem with mass media articles like this is that they tend to not change anything, with the exception of making those avoiding exercise feel emboldened like they are somehow doing the right thing.  I haven't been exercising, but guess what?  Time ran that big article that said exercise doesn't work - so there's no reason for me to start.

Meanwhile, regardless of the reality regarding exercise's impact on weight loss, that same group gets none of the other postive impacts of exercise in their daily lives.

Worse yet, their kids grow up with no exposure to exercise as a part of a healthy lifestyle.

Thanks Time...

Utah Plans a Marketplace/Exchange for Healthcare....

As the future of President Obama’s health care reform initiative and its ambitious timetable grow more uncertain, you may be interested in learning how some states are taking matters into their own hands with practical solutions that can be quickly implemented – rather than waiting around for a federal plan.
 
The State of Utah passed legislation in late 2008 that mandated the creation of a health insurance “marketplace” or “exchange” that connects consumers to a Website where they can evaluate insurance options and make informed purchasing decisions.  The first phase of the Utah Health Exchange, a “defined contribution” model for small employers (2 to 50 employees), is now underway and will be launched in November, 2009. 

In the first phase of the Exchange’s implementation, the plan will create the “defined contribution” model for small employers (2 to 50 employees).  In this model, employers define a specific dollar amount to contribute to their employees’ health insurance premiums and then employees can “shop” at the Exchange from a menu of plans offered by participating insurers.  This model enhances private competition and transparency in the health care system by giving employees the necessary information and purchasing power to make informed health insurance choices.  It also offers relief to employers who will no longer bear the full burden of administering a health plan for their employees.   

The technology behind the Utah plan is suited to the Exchange’s model because it can present consumers with side-by-side comparisons of plan options and costs with “drill down” details and links to forms and documents all in one location and at the “point of purchase.”  It can also handle the numerous administrative complexities raised by this approach, including the transmission of electronic feeds to multiple carriers and the funding of health insurance premiums from multiple sources such as the government or a spouse’s employer.  

Interesting times...

Barack Obama and Heath Care Change

There has been more excitement surrounding the election of Barack Obama as President than any president that I remember, and my memory goes back to Nixon in 1972. President Obama seems to have an ability to inspire people and bring them together at a time when we are all desperately in need of that.

We all know that one of President Obama’s passions is <health care—specifically, the idea that everyone should have access to affordable, high quality health care coverage. And we also know that there have been many failed attempts to reform a system that everyone already admits is broken.

So why is this so hard? And what really needs to happen?

It’s hard, frankly, because a lot of people spend a lot of time pointing fingers at other people. And a lot of people’s livelihoods are attached to the current system not changing very much.

At Hewitt, we’ve identified the key elements that we think are necessary for successful health care reform. It’s a long list. But I think two things are really important—critical to the whole effort. If Congress can get away from the financial crisis and spend some time on health care, two “must haves” are keeping employers at the center of the system (at least for now), and helping them to be more aggressive in improving health.

Employers should >Still Drivethe Bus

.

Even though it is an accident of history, employers have been in the health care game for a long time. If we were building a brand new system, would we put the employer at the center of it? Maybe not. But let’s face it—there is no easy way to pick up the health care coverage of over 150 million Americans without breaking the bank. Employers providing health care may not be ideal, but it works pretty well right now. In fact, group purchasing lowers health care costs and enables those who are less healthy to secure affordable coverage for themselves and their families. Additionally, the system has encouraged employers to be innovators of health care solutions through things like wellness and disease management programs.

Let’s Expect More of Employees, and Their Families

One good reason to have employers continue to provide health care is that they are direct beneficiaries of a healthy, productive work force. And they have tremendous opportunities to improve the health of their employees and their families.

We should quit smoking, lose weight, exercise more. In fact, the Centers for Disease Controlrecently revised their exercise guidelines which should make it easier for everyone to meet the recommendations. And yet we do not do it. We need to have a better understanding on what motivates people to change. We need to give employers the flexibility and support to try new and different approaches that are aimed at improving the health of their populations. So long as they are not punishing the sick, employers should be given broad flexibility to try new health improvement programs and techniques—including rewarding the healthy.

By agreeing to support just these two elements we can go a long way toward ensuring effective and robust reform.

Jeff Munn, principal at Hewitt Associates

Overdosed America - Taking On The Health Care Crisis One Step At A Time

I work for a Veteran's Health Research organization so naturally we get November 11th off each year as a holiday. Not so for me this year. Instead I attended a "Wells Fargo Health Solutions Seminar with Dr. John Abramson".

I wasn't sure what to expect as the title was a little vague and I hadn't yet heard of Dr. A. All I knew is that our broker at ABD kept saying what a great event this was going to be. I had no idea I would come away all fired up and politicized, ready to demand my rights as a consumer and take on the entire Health Care Crisis singlehandedly.

...Let me explain...

In 2004 Dr. Abramson wrote a book called "Overdo$ed America The Broken Promise Of American Medicine--How The Pharmaceutical Companies Are Corrupting Science, Misleading Doctors, And Threatening Your Health (And up in the left hand corner there is a little balloon that says "The Truth About Vioxx, Celebrex, Statins, and More). OK, that's all you need to know--end of POST--just READ THE BOOK... In it he totally busts Big Pharma and a lot of the so-called research findings that come out of studies funded by Pharmaceutical companies. I know this isn't necessarily news to many of us, however the facts and statistics he lays out, and analysis he uses to derive his conclusions are very compelling. In person he is an impassioned speaker on behalf of reasonable, sane, effective health-care reform. Do away with the expensive drugs and procedures as routine, matter of course

From the book, pg 209-210...

"Pretending to care about our health is often just part of the drug and other medical industries' overall strategy to increase their sales. They dominate the medical journals, airwaves, newspapers, and magazines with "information" designed to convince doctors and patients that their products are essential for good health. They focus attention on the health problems and solutions that are the most commercially advantageous rather than most beneficial for our health." ...

"The truth, as we have seen, is that the benefits of medical care are real but limited, and more is not always better, and is often worse. These awkward facts get shoved into the background of our common wisdom buy the bright lights of advertising and medical news that shine incessantly on the "breakthroughs" in medical progress and the drugs you should "talk to your doctor about." By saturating our sources of information, the medical industry has convinced most Americans that the answer to almost every health problem can be found in a brand-name pill or high-priced medical procedure.

That's the bad news. And it's very bad, costing Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and even worse, compromising our health and quality of life. But there is good news too--and it's enormously good: the evidence from study after study, including gold-standard randomized clinical trials, shows that we can usually do a great deal more to maintain our own health than the medical industry, particularly the drug industry, promises it can do for us."

In subsequent posts I'll discuss what Dr. Abramson suggests we can we can do, from the inside, as Benefits Professionals, to begin to make an impact and change how things are now to how they could possibly be in the future.

Editor's Note - Joan Gibson is a Benefits Analyst for NCIRE, which is the non-profit organization charted by congress back in the 80's to manage all the government funding/grants/contracts for the medical research projects happening at the SF VA Medical Center.  When she's not attending a conference, you'll find her on the phone trying to squeeze usage stats out of unsuspecting targets like the NCIRE EAP vendor....

Portable Medical Histories - Is Walmart Now Progressive with Employees?

The company many of you love to hate - Walmart - hit the headlines recently for being progressive via a company-wide rollout of digital medical history technology across its employee-base. 

Why's that news?  A quick jog of your memory might have you recall this is the same company that once wrote a memo to its board on controlling healthcare costs and - get this - recommended job redesign so checkout employees had to go retrieve carts in the parking lot during their shifts.  The thought was that the most unhealthy in the ranks wouldn't be able to do that part of the job, so they'd have to leave the company and take the high cost of sponsoring their healthcare elsewhere.

Nice!  If you forgot that blast from the past, you can see the entire memo of Darwinian ideas here.

Still, Walmart's been doing better on the PR front lately, so let's give them a chance.  More on the e-Health initiative from Walmart from BusinessWeek:

"Starting early next year, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) employees will spend less time filling out forms in the doctor's office. They'll be able to log on to the company's intranet to download and print any medical records their physicians require: allergy information, prescriptions, blood tests, entire health histories if necessary. After nearly a year of pilot tests, the Bentonville (Ark.) retailer made this option available to 1 million U.S. staffers who are eligible for insurance under its benefits enrollment program this fall. Thousands of employees have signed up, making this initiative one of the most ambitious thrusts into digital medical records, or "e-health," by any U.S. company.

Wal-Mart's program is part of a larger strategy embraced by incoming Chief Executive Michael Duke both to improve the company's image as an employer and to cut long-term costs. The retailer faces steadily rising health-care expenses, and it's not alone. A recent survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. companies by global consulting firm Mercer found that health-related costs are up 6%, on average, for the fourth straight year. Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's executive vice-president for benefits and risk management, believes digital records will help by fostering "healthier associates who are more productive." And the move has an impact on other companies wondering "how to make a business case," she says. "It's easier when someone like a Wal-Mart goes first."

Walmart's biggest challenge with potable medical histories will be getting past the employee trust issues based on the PR of the past.  Even though the service is provided by a non-profit technology collective, as long as Walmart is footing most of the bill, many employees will remain skeptical of the service.

Also, as someone who pays medical costs for my employer, I don't know how the medical histories create healthier associates who are going to save the company a lot of money.  As the article says, I know accurate medical histories enhance the accuracy of care, but to really have healthier employees, you need them to do two things - exercise and eat right. 

Sadly, I don't think the software will create opportunities in either of those areas.

The company many of you love to hate - Walmart - hit the headlines recently for being progressive via a company-wide rollout of digital medical history technology across its employee-base. 

Why's that news?  A quick jog of your memory might have you recall this is the same company that once wrote a memo to its board on controlling healthcare costs and - get this - recommended job redesign so checkout employees had to go retrieve carts in the parking lot during their shifts.  The thought was that the most unhealthy in the ranks wouldn't be able to do that part of the job, so they'd have to leave the company and take the high cost of sponsoring their healthcare elsewhere.

Nice!  If you forgot that blast from the past, you can see the entire memo of Darwinian ideas here.

Still, Walmart's been doing better on the PR front lately, so let's give them a chance.  More on the e-Health initiative from Walmart from BusinessWeek:

"Starting early next year, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) employees will spend less time filling out forms in the doctor's office. They'll be able to log on to the company's intranet to download and print any medical records their physicians require: allergy information, prescriptions, blood tests, entire health histories if necessary. After nearly a year of pilot tests, the Bentonville (Ark.) retailer made this option available to 1 million U.S. staffers who are eligible for insurance under its benefits enrollment program this fall. Thousands of employees have signed up, making this initiative one of the most ambitious thrusts into digital medical records, or "e-health," by any U.S. company.

Wal-Mart's program is part of a larger strategy embraced by incoming Chief Executive Michael Duke both to improve the company's image as an employer and to cut long-term costs. The retailer faces steadily rising health-care expenses, and it's not alone. A recent survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. companies by global consulting firm Mercer found that health-related costs are up 6%, on average, for the fourth straight year. Linda M. Dillman, Wal-Mart's executive vice-president for benefits and risk management, believes digital records will help by fostering "healthier associates who are more productive." And the move has an impact on other companies wondering "how to make a business case," she says. "It's easier when someone like a Wal-Mart goes first."

Walmart's biggest challenge with potable medical histories will be getting past the employee trust issues based on the PR of the past.  Even though the service is provided by a non-profit technology collective, as long as Walmart is footing most of the bill, many employees will remain skeptical of the service.

Also, as someone who pays medical costs for my employer, I don't know how the medical histories create healthier associates who are going to save the company a lot of money.  As the article says, I know accurate medical histories enhance the accuracy of care, but to really have healthier employees, you need them to do two things - exercise and eat right. 

Sadly, I don't think the software will create opportunities in either of those areas.

Will You Eventually Have a Heath Care Score Similar to Your Credit Score?....

Imagine a Health Care system that functioned like the consumer credit industry.  Scott Kornhauser has.  The CEO of Healthation thinks the system will ultimately deliver a personal health care score (like a credit FICO score) that drives what consumers pay for healthcare, complete with the ability to improve rtheir rating over time with the right behaviors/performance. 

That tidbit was part of the vision Kornhauser delivered in "Processing the New Business of Health Care in a Retail Marketplace" at the World Heath Care Congress.  Kornhauser's bigger vision is that the retail transformation of the U.S. health care delivery system is going to demand real time claims adjudication.  To make real time claims adjudication a reality, Kornhauser sees a combination of indexes and other data points coming together to make the real time claims process work.

What the heck does that mean to a HR Pro?

In Kornhauser's vision, consumers will have the ability to opt in or out of sharing their data with various types of providers.  However, to get the best health care credit score possible, they would have to share a great deal of data and then have their overall health judged - via a numerical score that looks a lot like the FICO score that drives your personal access to credit.

Ready to tell Danny in Accounts Payable he has a health care credit score of 500 and will have to pay double what others do for healthcare?

Great!

Have a bad health care FICO score like Danny?  In Kornhauser's world, you'd probably pay more for medical premiums.  But like the credit FICO score, you could improve your health care credit score by demonstrating desired behaviors - like paying your bills on time (easy for Danny, right?) or losing weight to get your BMI score within an acceptable range (harder for Danny...).

Imagine a Health Care system that functioned like the consumer credit industry.  Scott Kornhauser has.  The CEO of Healthation thinks the system will ultimately deliver a personal health care score (like a credit FICO score) that drives what consumers pay for healthcare, complete with the ability to improve rtheir rating over time with the right behaviors/performance. 

That tidbit was part of the vision Kornhauser delivered in "Processing the New Business of Health Care in a Retail Marketplace" at the World Heath Care Congress.  Kornhauser's bigger vision is that the retail transformation of the U.S. health care delivery system is going to demand real time claims adjudication.  To make real time claims adjudication a reality, Kornhauser sees a combination of indexes and other data points coming together to make the real time claims process work.

What the heck does that mean to a HR Pro?

In Kornhauser's vision, consumers will have the ability to opt in or out of sharing their data with various types of providers.  However, to get the best health care credit score possible, they would have to share a great deal of data and then have their overall health judged - via a numerical score that looks a lot like the FICO score that drives your personal access to credit.

Ready to tell Danny in Accounts Payable he has a health care credit score of 500 and will have to pay double what others do for healthcare?

Great!

Have a bad health care FICO score like Danny?  In Kornhauser's world, you'd probably pay more for medical premiums.  But like the credit FICO score, you could improve your health care credit score by demonstrating desired behaviors - like paying your bills on time (easy for Danny, right?) or losing weight to get your BMI score within an acceptable range (harder for Danny...).

Domino's - Spending R&D Money to Destroy the Health of Your Employees....

OK, this video is a total farce from the Onion... But, with recent brainstorms/innovations in the pizza industry, like the stuffed crust pizza and bacon as a topping, can it really be far from the truth?

So, do this - get the double crust WITH Bacon three times a week for the next year.  Cholesterol and risk for a cardiovascular event higher as a result?  Who cares?  You still pay the same employee contributions for health care as the skinny guy eating carrots and running in the heat at lunchtime.

That makes you the clear winner.  Right?

Put The Krispy Kreme DOWN! Because Ulrich Says So...

Going through Medical Plan renewal in our company, so living healthy, and the cost of not living healthy, is kind of on my mind.  Then I got the latest issue of Time, which confirms that the unhealthy trend is a lot bigger than what I can influence with Consumerism in my medical plan...

From Time, focused on the supersizing of America:

"We're not only programmed to eat a lot," says Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History, "but to prefer foods that are high in calories." What's more, the better we got at producing food, the easier it became. If you're a settler, you eat a lot of buffalo in part because you need a lot of buffalo — at least after burning so many calories hunting and killing it. But what happens when eating requires no sweat equity at all, when the grocery store is always nearby and always full?

What happens is, you get fat, and that's precisely what we've done. In 1900 the average weight of a college-age male in the U.S. was 133 lb. (60 kg); the average woman was 122 lb. (55 kg). By 2000, men had plumped up to 166 lb. (75 kg) and women to 144 lb. (65 kg). And while the small increase in average height for men (women have remained the same) accounts for a bit of that, our eating habits are clearly responsible for most. Over the past 20 years in particular, we've stuffed ourselves like pâté geese. In 1985 there were only eight states in which more than 10% of the adult population was obese — though the data collection then was admittedly spottier than it is now. By 2006, there were no states left in which the obesity rates were that low, and in 23 states, the number exceeded 25%. Even those figures don't tell the whole story, since they include only full-blown obesity. Overall, about two-thirds of all Americans weigh more than they should."

The first thing I thought of after reading that is what a muscle-bound cat I would have been in college back in 1900.  6"2", 170, and I would have looked HUGE!!!

Second thing I thought of was that not many cats went to college back in 1900.  No Internet either...

Third thing, and the most sobering thought, is that I'm limited in my ability to control the lifestyles of employees via adjustments to our Medical plan.  It's a society thing, and the most progressive of programs are going to struggle against that.  Even with the headline focused on the guy losing 80 pounds eating nothing but McDonalds....

Dave Ulrich said it best in the most recent issue of Workforce when he said the following about his own weight loss - "Those who have not seen me for five or six years almost always remark that I have lost a lot of weight.  They want to know how I did it, and are suprised when I tell them that I have in fact discovered the secrets of losing weight.  With bated breath, they listen to my secrets: Eat less, eat right and exercise more".  As the reality of these "insights" sinks in, they are disappointed".

Everyone's looking for the gimick.  Ulrich's advice sounds simple, but it's hard to implement for so many people.  For a variety of reasons. 

So take your double digit trend increases to your Medical plan, and sit down... There's not a big turnaround in sight....

Going through Medical Plan renewal in our company, so living healthy, and the cost of not living healthy, is kind of on my mind.  Then I got the latest issue of Time, which confirms that the unhealthy trend is a lot bigger than what I can influence with Consumerism in my medical plan...

From Time, focused on the supersizing of America:

"We're not only programmed to eat a lot," says Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History, "but to prefer foods that are high in calories." What's more, the better we got at producing food, the easier it became. If you're a settler, you eat a lot of buffalo in part because you need a lot of buffalo — at least after burning so many calories hunting and killing it. But what happens when eating requires no sweat equity at all, when the grocery store is always nearby and always full?

What happens is, you get fat, and that's precisely what we've done. In 1900 the average weight of a college-age male in the U.S. was 133 lb. (60 kg); the average woman was 122 lb. (55 kg). By 2000, men had plumped up to 166 lb. (75 kg) and women to 144 lb. (65 kg). And while the small increase in average height for men (women have remained the same) accounts for a bit of that, our eating habits are clearly responsible for most. Over the past 20 years in particular, we've stuffed ourselves like pâté geese. In 1985 there were only eight states in which more than 10% of the adult population was obese — though the data collection then was admittedly spottier than it is now. By 2006, there were no states left in which the obesity rates were that low, and in 23 states, the number exceeded 25%. Even those figures don't tell the whole story, since they include only full-blown obesity. Overall, about two-thirds of all Americans weigh more than they should."

The first thing I thought of after reading that is what a muscle-bound cat I would have been in college back in 1900.  6"2", 170, and I would have looked HUGE!!!

Second thing I thought of was that not many cats went to college back in 1900.  No Internet either...

Third thing, and the most sobering thought, is that I'm limited in my ability to control the lifestyles of employees via adjustments to our Medical plan.  It's a society thing, and the most progressive of programs are going to struggle against that.  Even with the headline focused on the guy losing 80 pounds eating nothing but McDonalds....

Dave Ulrich said it best in the most recent issue of Workforce when he said the following about his own weight loss - "Those who have not seen me for five or six years almost always remark that I have lost a lot of weight.  They want to know how I did it, and are suprised when I tell them that I have in fact discovered the secrets of losing weight.  With bated breath, they listen to my secrets: Eat less, eat right and exercise more".  As the reality of these "insights" sinks in, they are disappointed".

Everyone's looking for the gimick.  Ulrich's advice sounds simple, but it's hard to implement for so many people.  For a variety of reasons. 

So take your double digit trend increases to your Medical plan, and sit down... There's not a big turnaround in sight....

Test

This is a test