OBESITY

I know everyone keeps hearing in the news that healthcare costs are rising which is very true. There are many reasons why; seismic retrofitting for hospital, nurse staffing rations, our uninsured population, etc.... Another reason for our healthcare costs, believe it or not is OBESITY in California!! Crazy but VERY TRUE! I just read this article that says over half of our HMO population in CA are obese! That equates to about $5 million people! Isn’t that insane?

Now rather than having all these health plans increase our premiums because of these increased costs, they, meaning health plans and employers should work together to seriously develop programs to help people lose weight. Health plans should work with employers to create programs that will help people lose weight and also help people become healthy. They should create programs that will give employees financial incentives to lose weight. For example, $100 to work toward a goal of losing this amount of weight, or what not. Honestly, I’ve seen case studies where employers have created these programs and because of these programs where they’ve helped employees control their weight and take care of their diabetes, less of their employees go to the hospital, thus decreasing the costs for their health plans and therefore decreasing the employer’s premiums. It seriously works! And I know OBESITY might not seem like an increase to healthcare costs but it is... Obesity leads to diabetes, to heart problems and a lot of other problems. It is such a domino effect. And I know, we do have Gastric Bypasses, but that can’t be the answer to everyone’s problems. Plus its so expensive!!! So yeah – many employers refuse to create these programs because it’s expensive. But if health plans and employers work together to create these programs it wont be AS expensive. It’s to both of their benefit anyway!! In the long run it saves both of them money. And it creates good morale for their employees.