No Cost to You
“ Your Wellness Program may be already paid for ... ”
Affordable Care Act
Starting this year, (January 2014) the health care reform law, Affordable Care Act, allows employers to reward employees who participate in workplace wellness programs with subsidies equal to 30 percent of the cost of insurance premiums, or about $1,620 annually per worker.
Reduce medical spending
The programs will reduce medical spending as employees become healthier and thereby avoid expensive conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, (from smoking,) and stroke.
Health Affairs, 2010.
For every $1 spent on wellness programs, more than $3 is returned in reduced medical costs and almost $3 in reduced absenteeism.
(Source: Health Affairs, 2010).
Wellness Tax Credit
The expense of an employer-provided wellness program for employees is deductible as a business expense (section 162).
Health Insurance Premiums
For many employers, wellness programs are a recruiting and retention tool, attracting the health-conscious employees they prefer. The programs also promise to control an employer's health care spending by drastically reducing Health Insurance Premiums. By getting workers to stop smoking they would reduce expensive emphysema treatments, for instance, and by nudging workers to get annual physicals, they are expected to help companies avoid such financial black holes as cancer treatment and stroke rehabilitation.
The Affordable Care Act and Wellness Programs
For decades, health care costs have been rising at exponential rates. Employers, as a primary intermediary for supplying health care coverage, have borne the brunt of these costs. Accounting for 25-30% of those costs are higher-risk employees, usually due to cardiovascular disease – often, a direct result of being overweight or obese. In many cases, these are preventable chronic diseases that result from modifiable behavior. Many corporations and public organizations have turned to wellness programs as a way to address these preventable illnesses and costs.
Implementing and expanding employer wellness programs offer our nation the opportunity to not only improve the health of Americans, but also help control health care spending.
In an effort to support these efforts and create a healthier public, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) included several provisions to encourage wellness programs at the plan, employer, and individual levels. Wellness programs are designed to encourage people to exercise, eat right, and generally take care of their bodies. They exist in many different forms – for example, smoking cessation services, gym memberships, at-work weight loss tools, and so on. In all forms, the main objective is to help people improve their lifestyles and, therefore, their health by creating incentives for healthy behaviors.
The Affordable Care Act creates new incentives and builds on existing wellness program policies to promote employer wellness programs and encourage opportunities to support healthier workplaces. The Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor and the Treasury are jointly releasing proposed rules on wellness programs to reflect the changes to existing wellness provisions made by the Affordable Care Act and to encourage appropriately designed, consumer-protective wellness programs in group health coverage. These proposed rules would be effective for plan years starting on or after January 1, 2014.
The proposed rules continue to support workplace wellness programs, including "participatory wellness programs" which generally are available without regard to an individual's health status. These include, for example, programs that reimburse for the cost of membership in a fitness center; that provide a reward to employees for attending a monthly, no-cost health education seminar; or that provides a reward to employees who complete a health risk assessment without requiring them to take further action.
The rules also outline amended standards for nondiscriminatory "health-contingent wellness programs," which generally require individuals to meet a specific standard related to their health to obtain a reward. Examples of health-contingent wellness programs include programs that provide a reward to those who do not use, or decrease their use of, tobacco, or programs that provide a reward to those who achieve a specified cholesterol level or weight as well as to those who fail to meet that biometric target but take certain additional required actions.
Ensuring Flexibility for Employers
The proposed rules also implement changes in the Affordable Care Act that increase the maximum permissible reward under a health-contingent wellness program from 20 percent to 30 percent of the cost of health coverage, and that further increase the maximum reward to as much as 50 percent for programs designed to prevent or reduce tobacco use. Evidence shows that workplace health programs have the potential to promote healthy behaviors; improve employees' health knowledge and skills; help employees get necessary health screenings, immunizations, and follow-up care; and reduce workplace exposure to substances and hazards that can cause diseases and injury. The proposed rules would not specify the types of wellness programs employers can offer, and invite comments on additional standards for wellness programs to protect consumers. A program intended to improve and promote health and fitness that's usually offered through the work place, although insurance plans can offer them directly to their enrol-lees. The program allows your employer or plan to offer you premium discounts, cash rewards, gym memberships, and other incentives to participate. Some examples of wellness programs include programs to help you stop smoking, diabetes management programs, weight loss programs, and preventative health screenings.
What is in the law?
There are a variety of provisions in ACA that encourage healthier lifestyles through wellness programs. Beginning in 2014, $200 million will be made available for wellness grants for small businesses that employ fewer than 100 individuals that work 25 hours or more per week. The grants will be available to businesses over a five-year period only if the business did not have a wellness program in place when the law passed in March 2010. Beginning in January of 2014, ACA establishes conditions under which employers could begin or continue wellness programs. Certain programs, like fitness center rebates and diagnostic testing, are not subject to requirements by the ACA.
If programs are based on health status, like reducing body mass index, rewards for participating can be up to 30% of the cost of the employee-only coverage under the plan (although the Secretary of HHS could raise that limit to 50%). The reward could be in the form of a premium discount or rebate, the absence of a charge, a waiver of cost-sharing, or coverage of a benefit that would not otherwise have been covered. Of course, the programs must be reasonably designed to promote health and/or prevent disease and must be available to all similarly situated employees.
Let Be-Fit-Wellness and Our Veteran Heroes Show You the Way!
We offer many different types of Wellness Programs designed and tailored for your company’s individual and specific needs. We can build your company a “start slow” type program that slowly gets all your employees involved, or we can “hit the ground running” and get everyone involved all at once. Both of these types of programs have had great success with other companies. We can also take an existing Wellness Program that you have in place and give it a “tune up” of sorts. Keep in mind that all our programs, from beginners to advanced, are designed to be fun and enjoyable by all that participate. “We have a good time, but we also work hard…”
From other Companies that we work with…
"The strongest predictor of whether someone will lose weight or stop smoking is how motivated they are. The Be-Fit-Wellness Team is awesome at getting the right results.”
"Since other wellness programs are usually voluntary, the most motivated employees sign up. That makes it impossible to credit the programs with success in smoking cessation or weight loss rather than the employees' motivation. Done right, (the Be-Fit-Wellness program) requires the integration of clinical data, wellness, health coaching, and work flow.
The initiatives succeed if they have senior level support and a high-degree of employee engagement in healthy behaviors."
Coaching and financial incentives, (such as gift cards, cruises, etc., for reaching certain set health goals,) are often offered to help employees meet certain health metrics, such as losing weight, lowering cholesterol or quitting smoking.
The results of these tests can also be tied to the cost of health insurance, with less healthy workers paying more. Under the Affordable Care Act, up to 30% of an employee's premium in 2014 can be influenced by these programs, an average of $1,620 annually per worker. Wellness programs are designed to lower costs for employers and keep workers healthy. Wellness programs also significantly reduce employer health costs.
Grants for Small Business Wellness Programs
Federal Grants to Small Businesses for Comprehensive Wellness Programs
Health care reform takes many steps to improve our health and prevent problems. One is to work with employers to help people get healthier. Unfortunately, many small businesses can't afford to set up wellness programs on their own. To help, $200 million is available for small businesses to create comprehensive wellness programs for employees. According to the Department of Health and Human Services website, this program is still under development and not expected to be released until 2014.
To qualify businesses must:
-Have no more than 100 employees who work 25 hours or more per week.
-Not have a wellness program. Use the grant for a comprehensive wellness program.
A comprehensive program is one that
-Helps you learn more about your health and how to stay healthy
-Encourages you to participate
-Helps you change your behavior through counseling, seminars, online programs and helpful materials
-Encourages you to eat healthy, get more exercise and improve your mental health.
National Healthy Worksite Program
The National Healthy Worksite Program is designed to assist employers with fewer than 1,000 employees implement science and practice-based prevention and wellness strategies that will lead to specific, measurable health outcomes to reduce chronic disease rates. For most employers, chronic diseases—such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, obesity, arthritis and diabetes—are among the most prevalent, costly, and preventable of all health problems. The National Healthy Worksite Program seeks to maintain good health through prevention, reduce chronic illness and disability, and improve productivity outcomes that contribute to employers’ competitiveness.
Some Short-term benefits / Long term benefits of the Right Wellness Program
Fewer than half of employees participate in wellness programs, which are mostly voluntary. While there was a short-term gain in the rate of smokers quitting, it came with a qualification. Those who participate are often the most motivated, making it hard to tell whether their smoking cessation was due to the wellness program or the employees' motivation. The fix for this is easy, give all your employees incentives to participate; gift cards for reaching set goals, cruises for the healthiest results, etc. Or make the program mandatory. Once people get on a program, they start to feel better and look better, then they are more inclined to stick with it.
So you ask, “My wellness programs have not been successful in the past, why should I invest in one now?”
Quite frankly, most companies invest in the wrong wellness program expecting great results. The truth is that, your wellness program was not designed and tailored for your specific needs. You don’t put a restaurant, a car dealership, or a corporate office on the same wellness program, it just would not fit.
Most companies start out with a program that doesn’t do much as far as incentives for participating in a program, nor hold anyone in the company accountable for the programs‘, or each individual’s, success. After a little while, their program just dwindles off into nothing. Employees just fall back into the same old, unhealthy workplace rut that they were in before and continue to get worse and worse health wise.
Be-Fit-Wellness will tailor a wellness program based on your needs as a company that encourages workplace team building. We get everyone involved and motivated to participate. Employees are standoffish at first, but after a little encouragement, they all begin to trickle in until everyone is abuzz with how great things are going in the workplace and how happy and energized everyone is. Soon, people are working hard and having fun.