What's Costing Us So Much?

With health care cost rising faster than the GDP, this presents a serious threat to helping US businesses remain competitive.[i] By 2014, the US will be spending $1 in every $5 on health care, totaling $4T.[ii]

So what's costing us so much?

First, we must recognize that the current health care system is based on the treatment of chronic diseases. While we call it 'health care', it is really 'sick care'. Approximately 75% of all health care spending in the US is focused on patients who have one or more chronic health condition.[iii] Yet research shows that most chronic disease is preventable or can be better managed.

Chronic disease such as diabetes, obesity, and cardio vascular disease are all linked to unhealthy behaviors such as the use of tobacco products, particularly smoking; poor diet and insufficient exercise. An Institute of Medicine survey determined that to effectively impact reducing chronic disease we need to focus on three things:

Helping people develop skills they need to change their behavior
Provide comprehensive and sustained interventions
Ensure access to social and other support that help people maintain behavioral changes.

Individuals that make healthy lifestyle choices are less likely to have risk factors and therefore, will have lower annual per capita health care costs.

In the workplace, there are a number of things we can do to encourage and support healthy lifestyles:

Offer behavior change programs such as smoking cessation programs,
Develop workplace policies that provide opportunities to practice skills and make healthy choices, such as establish a no smoking campus policy, vending machine policies, display of calorie information in the cafeteria, encourage use of stairs
Promote regular physical activity by starting a walking club or having a team competition to increase physical activity.
Taking proactive steps to encourage your employees to live healthier lives will pay big dividends.

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[i] Heffler S, Smith S, Keehan S, Borger C. U.S. health spending projections for 2004=2014. Health Affairs, 23 February 2005: 74-85

[ii] S. Keehan et al., Health spending projections through 2017. Health Affairs 27 (2008): w145 -w155

[iii] Thorpe KE, The rise in health care spending and what to do about it", Health Affairs 24, no. 6 (2005)