I guess I saw that coming

[cellio]

A couple of years ago my employer earnestly announced a health fair to "help" us better manage our health, and if we would agree to supply certain data like our cholesterol numbers and BMI and other stuff to them (in aggregate only, they assured us), we would be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card. A raffle ticket with that kind of expected value did not entice me. They did it again, raising the raffle stakes some, but I still didn't bite. (If it's for my own benefit, after all, then my annual physical should do the job, no?)

This year they announced that health-care costs are going up, but if we supply this information -- which we can get from a conveniently-scheduled health fair -- our cost will be $500 lower than it would be otherwise. I signed up. I guess we know what I am; we're just haggling over price.

Comments

[sethg]

My company isn’t raising the employees’ share of the health-insurance premiums (presumably someone realized that after announcing mass layoffs and distributing a pathetically low performance bonus, Nokia needs to give the rest of us some reason to stick around), but they are nudging us to get involved with their healthy lifestyles blahblahblah program.

I suspect there is some consulting firm that goes around telling corporate executives that if they do this kind of thing they will save millions of dollars in premiums. Of course, those consultants are charging millions for setting up healthy lifestyles blahblahblah programs for their clients.

[cellio]

That seems likely, yes. This is looking remarkably consistent from company to company; where there's a pattern there's probably a consultant...

We pay a fixed percentage of our health-insurance costs -- I think 20% but I'm not certain. Somewhere near that, anyway.