Employers’ wellness programs in a Health 2.0 era
Employee wellness is a growth business: 57% of large employers provide wellness programs to employees, increasing from 49% of large employers in 2006. According MetLife’s Sixth Annual Employee Benefits Trends Study, nine of ten companies that offer wellness believe these programs are effective in reducing medical costs. For the average employer, MetLife found, 58% of the total benefits spend goes to medical coverage — an even higher percentage for smaller employers. The most popular wellness programs include smoking cessation, weight management, an exercise regimen and cancer screening among others. While 4 in 5 employers provide incentives to “nudge” people into
Small business and health care costs – 25 years of hurt
The cost of health insurance is the #1 problem cited by small business owners. Health costs beat gas prices, the #2 most severe problem cited by small business, as of March 2008 (when the survey was conducted). This week, small business leaders convened at the annual National Small Business Summit conference of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). The report notes the downturn in the economy during the second half of 2007 when the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index dropped to 94.6 in December, the lowest since 2001. Health care costs rank first in small business problems regardless of
Insured and confused: people want alternative medicine, yet disconnect from wellness programs
Most employees covered by health insurance favor health plans that provide access to and cover alternative medicine services. Yet only one-half of these employees feel it’s important for a health plan to require employees to eat properly and exercise, and to provide evidence of such healthy behavior. There’s a disconnect in consumers’ minds between actual lifestyle behaviors and understanding how to use health benefits. I’ve talked about health plan literacy in Health Populi before. Guardian’s survey demonstrates a facet of that phenomenon. According to the 2008 Benefits & Behavior: Spotlight on Medical survey from Guardian Life Insurance Company,
Medical costs for a family of four = $15,609
$15,609 could cover a lot of household needs for the average American family in the course of a year: utilities, mortgage, gas tank fills. It’s also the cost of health care to cover a family of four in 2008. Milliman notes that the average annual medical cost for a family of four increased by 7.6% from 2007 to 2008. This rate of increase is lower than the 8.4% average annual increase between 2003-2007; however, the burden of overall expense is “steadily shifting to employees,” Milliman attests. Health spending splits into five components, as the Milliman Medical Index
Health Plan Illiteracy, or how not to benefit from the Benefit
Health plan illiteracy is alive and well, according to J.D. Power and Associates. The consumer market research firm’s 2008 National Health Insurance Plan Study finds that 1 in two plan members don’t understand their plan. In this second year of the survey, J.D. Power notes that, as consumers understand the benefits of their Benefit, their satisfaction with the plan increases. Thus, there is a virtuous cycle that happens between a plan and an enrollee when communication is clear and understood. J.D. Power looked at member satisfaction in 107 health plans throughout the U.S. in terms of 7 key metrics:
Nudging our way to healthy behavior
The traditional health behavioralists haven’t succeeded too well in changing our un-healthy behaviors. It may take an economist and a lawyer to sort this out. In the new book, Nudge, Richard Thaler (the economist) and Cass Sunstein (the lawyer) present a useful approach to motivating people toward better health behaviors. One of the scenarios that particularly resonated with me was the empirical evidence that, if you put healthy food at the front of the school cafeteria, kids will eat it. Thaler and Sunstein term this moving of the healthy stuff to the front of the line
Health care ratings games
Most Americans believe there are fair and reliable ways to gauge the quality of health care. 9 in 10 Americans are interested in their health plans having a website where you can rate doctors on issues like trust, communications, medical knowledge, availability and office environment – and participating on such social networks (THINK: The Health CAre Scoop or Zagat/WellPoint). The latest Wall Street Journal/HarrisInteractive survey published March 25 finds that 3 in 4 consumers favor patient satisfaction surveys – once again asserting they value opinions from peers (aka “people like me”) even more than those coming from institutions, whether private
Health Populi’s Tea Leaves for 2008
I “leave” you for the year with some great, good, and less-than-sanguine expectations for health care in 2008. These are views filtered through my lens on the health care world: the new consumer, health information technology, globalization, politics, and health economics. Health politics shares the stage with Iraq. Health care is second only to Iraq as the issue that Americans most want the 2008 presidential candidates to talk about, according to the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. Several candidates have responded to the public’s interest with significant health care reform proposals. But major health reform – such as universal access
The gap between consumer opinions and health plans
An iconic image from Matisse’s Jazz portfolio comes to my mind as I think about the chasm between social media and health on one side, and health plan data on the other. The image is shown on the left; I’m including him here to represent the health consumer engaged with social media, sharing opinions about his experience with health providers, payers, and other touchpoints in his health interactions. A new survey published by the National Business Coalition on Health (NBCH) finds that only 31% of health plans collect and publish patient experience data. And, like the readers of the National
Hammers, nails and health spending – regional variations in the U.S.
There is more money spent on health care for each citizen of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania than for a citizen in Utah, Arizona or Nevada. In fact, per capita health spending was 59% lower in Utah than Massachusetts in 2004. The latest state-by-state spending variations are highlighted in Health Affairs’ web-exclusive feature. Welcome to the statistical phenomenon in health care known as “regional variation.” The guru-researcher of regional variation is John Wennberg, who has detailed these trends in fhe Dartmouth Atlas. New regional health spending data were published in Health Affairs, which we health economists and policy wonks eagerly anticipate
Thanks to Feedspot for naming this blog, Health Populi, as a top 100 best healthcare technology blogs and websites in 2025. It's gratifying to be in such great company with KevinMD, The Health Care Blog, the Journal of AHIMA and other online resources that inform my health-tech views.