UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest health insurance companies in the country, has launched a new program in conjunction with the YMCA and Walgreens drug stores aimed at reducing the incidence of Type 2 diabetes. It says it will spend “tens of millions of dollars” in the effort.
Type 2 diabetes, the most common variety of the disease, affects an estimated 25 million Americans and is among the most expensive chronic diseases to treat. The obese and overweight are most vulnerable.
A controlled experiment demonstrated that those who lose only 5 percent of their body weight reduce their chances of contracting the disease by 50 percent.
With a new health care bill now on the books that will require health insurance companies to cover all-comers, regardless of pre-existing conditions (such as type 2 diabetes), keeping people well has become an urgent new concern for health insurance companies.
Perhaps with these facts in mind, UnitedHealth announced Tuesday it will work with Y “lifestyle coaches” in seven cities to help people learn to eat better and exercise. The announcement was to be made in Kansas City, where a conference on diabetes is being held by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC will also cover some of the cost of creating and promoting similar Y programs in other cities.
UnitedHealth also plans to pay Walgreens pharmacists in the seven cities where the Y programs are being initiated to help teach people to better manage their conditions and says it hopes to expand the program to other pharmacy chains that express an interest.
Among those cooperating with the fitness center and the insurer is General Electric Co. Of GE’s 304,000 employees, many have expressed a desire to participate in a weight loss program at a YMCA.
Dr. Robert Galvin, GE’s chief medical officer, praised the program. Rather than focusing on paying for health care, he said, it focuses on health; on keeping people well. Dr. Deneen Vojta, a senior executive at UnitedHealth, said the program “absolutely will pay for itself.”
In a New York Times story, it was reported that one in four American adults are considered pre-diabetic and at high risk of contracting Type 2.
By one estimate, the report stated, the cost of treatment of diabetes and pre-diabetes exceeds $200 billion a year, a significant percentage of the nation’s total health care spending.
IT IS BOTH remarkable and encouraging that requiring health insurance companies to insure those with pre-existing conditions such as diabetes can have such an immediate and positive effect.
UnitedHealth will doubtless respond that its initiative was in the works before the bill passed. Most probably. But the writing was on the wall well before Congress screwed up the courage to act: Health insurance companies make more money when they don’t have to insure sick people or people likely to get sick. On the other hand, the sick and sickly have the most need for health care, so a system that denied health care to those most in need was certain to be replaced by a universal care system eventually.
Our nation is now on that path. Not there yet, but on the way.
As a higher and higher percentage of the population comes under the health care umbrella, the only way to keep costs manageable will be to put more and more emphasis on wellness programs.
As UnitedHealth so helpfully demonstrated, requiring insurance companies to cover people most likely to need care recruited a highly motivated and well-financed phalanx of wellness advocates at a single stroke.
There is something about the prospect of making more money that concentrates the corporate mind.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
