Should Your Business Give You Free Drugs?
February 28, 2007
"For year," The New York Times tells us, "employers have been pushing their workers to pay more for health care, raising premiums and out-of-pocket medical expenses in an effort to save money for the company and force workers to seek only the most necessary care.
"Now some employers are reversing course, convinced that their pennywise approach does not always reduce long-term costs. In the most radical of various moves, a number of employers are now giving away drugs to help workers manage chronic conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, and depression."
Pitney Bowes, Marriott International, and Mohawk Industries, to name three, have begun free drug programs for employees, hoping to avoid paying for more expensive medical treatments later.
Uwe E. Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University, told the NYT that "if you get people's obesity down, cholesterol down, asthma down, you save a lot of money."
The Times article is stupid in many ways - ways you might expect from a newspaper that prides itself in knowing next to nothing about business, especially small business. But it is right about the facts - that when it comes to health care, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Here's what is wrong about the article:
* Not all businesses have been pushing workers to pay more for health care.
* Those that are doing so aren't necessarily doing it to save money for the company (which would be unbelievably dumb) but because the cost of health care has been skyrocketing.
* There are three reasons why health care is skyrocketing.
1. A big part of the cost of health care - the part that goes for surgery and drugs (including many procedures and medicines that have little or no scientific support) - is dictated by drug companies.
2. More and more elective procedures are being allowed by insurance programs. (Why? Because it fattens everybody's pockets at the expense of health consumers and the companies that subsidize them.)
3. Health care costs are huge because Americans are huge. Obesity is the number one health problem in America, and none of the drugs mentioned by the NYT will do anything to make obese people thinner. They will just mask the symptoms of their obesity-related diseases.
The way to reduce rising health insurance premiums in America is to get Americans to lose weight by eliminating chemicals from their diets (including chemicals produced by the big drug companies) and switching to natural medicines and natural foods.
I believe that businesses should pay for the health care of their employees if they can. Small businesses, which account for the majority of new employment in America, can't usually afford to do that. But larger, more profitable companies can and should.
I also think businesses should take an active role in trying to encourage their employees to be healthier - but I agree with the NYT when it says that most people simply won't listen.
The responsibility for your health lies with you, not your company. Paying for health insurance is certainly something companies should do to attract and keep good employees, but health insurance doesn't make you healthy. And neither do most drugs. Eating well, keeping your stress down, and staying off the couch - that is the best thing you can do to live a long and active life.
posted by M. Masterson @ 11:14 AM,
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