— Benjamin Campbell @ 9:53 pm — 
September 6, 2010Income protection insurance providers are increasingly offering promotions to encourage policyholders to adopt a healthier lifestyle, a research company has found. Independent financial services researchers Defaqto said companies were running initiatives to encourage healthier living, including discounted health club membership and free assessments. Protection analyst at Defaqto, Ben Heffer, said: “The provision of health and wellbeing services for policyholders is a welcome move to engage with the customer and encourage them to lead a healthier lifestyle. “This has clear benefits for the policyholder: not only in terms of the peace of mind provided by the protection policy but also, as a result of adopting a healthier lifestyle, less likelihood of actually suffering an illness or incapacity.” Heffer said this was also a ‘win-win’ scenario for income protection insurers as a healthier client base should reduce incidence claims. Deafqto’ Read full post…
This is being written as a bad-tempered debate rages in Congress on a bill to reform the healthcare service. Depending on who who listen to, this will either be the saving of millions of American lives or the start of an era where death panels of bureaucrats decide who gets to live and who dies. It is rare to find such extreme language of fear being used to debate what should be a reasonably dry subject. With almost 50 million adults in the US without a health plan and the hospital emergency room service buckling under the strain, we should be having a discussion about the morality of leaving so many people to die without help. And, before you all start complaining about unverified assertions, try googling the death rate among the uninsured and see just how many government-based reports there are of higher mortality among the poor and uninsured. There are myths and facts out there. Work out for yourself what the facts are.
Why should there be so much opposition to a measure to improve the quality of healthcare?
Looking at the title of this article again, it seems a little strange. Surely it goes without saying that having a company insure your health is a good thing? How can it not be good? Surely people who are insured have better health and live longer? One of the more interesting things about the so-called scientific method is that everyone knows how it is supposed to work. You have to start with a hypothesis. In this case, it would be: people with health plans enjoy better health. You then devise an experiment involving a statistically significant number of people. One group, drawn randomly from the population have health plans. The other group (the control group) do not have health plans. Researchers then monitor their health for, say, ten years. Data is collected and analyzed. Results are published in a peer reviewed journal. Human knowledge is increased. Except, the US has been running this experiment for decades. Millions of people across the age range and with differing levels of health are uninsured.