A recent survey by the Healthcare Trends Institute sheds light on employer attitudes towards the health insurance landscape, particularly wellness initiatives.
The survey, which polled over 100 HR managers across the country, showed that wellness initiatives are growing in popularity but are far from universally embraced as a key part of employer-sponsored health plans.
Specifically, just over a third of employers said they have already put implemented some type of incentive-based program aimed at encouraging employees to adopt healthier lifestyles. One-fifth of employers said they were considering such a program in the future, while 16 percent said they were still learning about the concept. Fut a full quarter of employers reported no interest in implementing such a program.
Wellness-based incentives have come under fire from some who say it is a backdoor method for employers to shift health costs onto employees under the guise of encouraging healthy behavior.
Al Lewis, CEO of Quizzify, a company that aims to teach employees how to avoid unnecessary health costs, has been a particularly vociferous critic, arguing that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that such initiatives succeed in improving worker health or reducing employer health costs. He has even suggested that such programs do more harm to a company by reducing worker morale through “weight-shaming.”
Many employers that have not put in place incentive-based wellness initiatives nevertheless offer programs aimed at educating employees about ways to improve their health. According to the survey, 45 percent of employers offer at least one wellness program.
Nearly half of those surveyed (48 percent) said that the main effect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been an increased shift in costs onto employees.
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