Drug Education and Intervention in the Workplace

Over the past decade healthcare insurance premiums have climbed steadily. This is taking a toll on the bottom-line of organizations, cutting into profits, limiting growth and forcing a reevaluation of the employee benefit system. According to a projection by McKinsey & Co., at the present rate, by 2008 health benefits will eclipse profits at the average Fortune 500 organization.

Corporations, through private healthcare insurance corporations, are the leading provider of medical services in the U.S.. In 2004, 59.8 percent of Americans were covered by a business-based healthcare insurance program, accounting for 88 percent of all private healthcare insurance. Yet the escalating costs of Medical Care, ever-growing prescription prices and a steady rise in chronic diseases have brought the corporate culture to a breaking point.

For many employers the increasing burden has become too difficult to carry. Over the past five years health insurance premiums have raised an average of 11.6 percent each year, more than four times the average rate of inflation and employee earnings over that time.3 Not surprisingly, this growth in premiums has caused the number of employers offering Medical Care services during that time to drop from 69 percent to 60 percent.4 In addition, in 2005,  health insurance premiums jumped 9.2 percent, more than three times the rate of inflation – and that was the lowest increase in the past five years.

In this environment corporations need to find innovative ways to stem the rising costs of Health Care coverage. Seemingly, the easiest strategies to accomplish this goal would be to cut benefits coverage or pass on arising burden to workers and retirees. Greater than 80 percent of corporations have chosen one or both of these cost saving measures in the past several years and almost half of all sizable corporations are likely to increase the amount workers pay in 2007.5

Nevertheless, these approaches do nothing to address the fundamental causes of rising premiums, one of which is a population that requires increased healthcare. To make a long-term and substantial influence on premiums and central health, corporations need to look beyond a traditional reactive-based approach.