Stevan Burd, the CEO of Safeway Inc., has created an employee health insurance program that has cut health care costs for those enrolled, saved the company big dollars and has increased the health of employees.
The Safeway program, called ”Healthy Measures,” is modeled after the car insurance system. Just as the car insurance model provides incentives to those who don’t speed or crash their cars, the Healthy Measures program rewards employees for having healthier blood pressure and cholesterol levels, maintaining a healthy weight and for not using tobacco.
Here’s what Burd writes in his article for the WSJ:
At Safeway we believe that well-designed health-care reform, utilizing market-based solutions, can ultimately reduce our nation’s health-care bill by 40%. The key to achieving these savings is health-care plans that reward healthy behavior. As a self-insured employer, Safeway designed just such a plan in 2005 and has made continuous improvements each year. The results have been remarkable. During this four-year period, we have kept our per capita health-care costs flat (that includes both the employee and the employer portion), while most American companies’ costs have increased 38% over the same four years.
Safeway’s plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.
Read the full WSJ article here.
Burd discusses the Healthy Measure program:
My thoughts…
Burd is also the founder of the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform (CAHR). CAHR is led by business leaders and employers who are focused on reducing healthcare costs to protect American companies and workers.
It seems like a step in the right direction. Having lived in a country with “socialised” medicine, I can see the vast differences. I know that healthcare here costs many times more than identical care in other countries, even compared to when I’ve used private services. Big Pharma is big business around the world, but it has been perfected here. Anything which reduces cost without reducing the level of service is a step in the right direction, but single-payer is the way to go.