2011 Health Care Benefits New York Conference Feedback
tPF attended the above on March 7, 2011 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. This annual event -- this was the 7th edition -- is an opportunity for health care, benefits and compensation professionals to convene and evaluate new health care practices and pending legislation. Most of the attendees were HR and benefits administrators from large organizations in the New York metropolitan area.
In addition to touring the exhibit halls and hearing what the vendors had to say, tPF had the opportunity to sit in on two general sessions presented by Patrick Kennedy (former Rhode Island Congressman) and David Tinkelman (MD/wellness expert at National Jewish Health, Denver, CO).
Kennedy: Loyal to the clan, his entire focus was on the CLASS act, one of the legacies of his dad, the late Ted Kennedy. CLASS, a specific provision of the PPACA, offers caregivers and care recipients an alternative to the traditional long-term care insurance products that have cluttered the marketplace in recent years. "If it's successful, if a large enough number of people sign up, it will transform long-term care," says James Firman, president and CEO of the National Council on Aging. He adds: "it will create a market-based economy for keeping aging people at home." Given the competition from the crowded long-term care insurance product field, and the resounding inertia that keeps the current health care delivery system in place, it will not be an easy task. Kennedy urged those in the audience to lobby for the retention of CLASS within the Act, and to get involved in demonstration projects to help actualize the idea. Most of the people in the audience appeared baffled; not sure if it was because they had no idea what CLASS was actually about, or if they had no idea how they were supposed to introduce it to their organizations. Kennedy asked the leading question: "Why do we want to be paying for higher-priced care?" Obviously, no one does, but the question is, how do you get such a huge program off the ground? Kennedy mentioned that there is already $2 billion earmarked for community colleges to design and deliver curricula to bridge theory with reality. That alone should lead to the anticipated line-item cut that Kennedy urged us all to avoid at all costs. Big on hype and short on detail, I felt pretty much the same as everyone else in the audience -- why so much emphasis on this particular provision of the Act? And if it is so important, why couldn't any kind of quantitative, substantive information be included as part of the slide-free presentation?
Tinkelman: Before writing anything about his presentation, it's only fair that I let readers know that I am kind of a wellness-skeptic. I have been hearing about how wellness is going to take off for the last 30 years. Good thing I didn't hold my breathe waiting for my wellness program to come save me from God-knows-what kind of enjoyable behavior. So Tinkelman launched a stop-smoking and weight-loss program at his place of employment, National Jewish Health (a respiratory hospital) in Denver, CO. Now he is trying to spin-off and sell his wellness success to other organizations. Before I get into how his presentation degenerated into a Weight-Watchers Session ("Get on the scale!"), I will share with you some interesting information in his presentation:
-- there is no medical code for obesity; so when your doctor sees you, you could fit nicely on the height/weight chart or you could be literally spilling over the scales, but from a recordkeeping standpoint, you'd have to back into the differences (e.g., diabetes) from one patient to the next, you wouldn't be able to figure it out easily. As he put it: "Obesity is pervasive but you wouldn't know it since it's not coded."
-- 40% of the deaths in the US are attributable to preventable situations -- smoking and obesity -- 20% of the US population is smoking (down from 26% due to pervasive smoking cessation programs) but this will soon rise to 21% as state funding for smoking cessation programs ends as one state after another goes bankrupt
-- obesity is the leading killer (under the preventable disease heading) but smoking will surpass this as smoking cessation programs decrease (they have proven to work) and smoking increases in its wake.
What's interesting is that even sans coding, obesity is every bit as much a killer as smoking, but, while our culture now freely condemns smokers and openly discriminates against them, overweight people continue to get a pass, while they continue to gobble down a disproportionate share of the health care meal. I guess smoking is in a class by itself due to the secondhand smoke issue, but from a cost standpoint, smoking and obesity share the same ashtray/plate.
As the stakes continue to go up, the cultural condemnation line will have to move even more. The only chance that overweight people have to continue to receive discounted health care (paying the same health insurance premiums as healthy people and taxing the hell out of the health care delivery system) is if the spotlight somehow shifts to all the illegals from Guatamala, El Salvador and Mexico tieing up the emergency rooms throughout the US and not paying a peso for their wonderful American health care.
Finally, I would advise Dr. Tinkelman to do a little market research before spinning off his in-house project into his FitLogix and Quitline Programs. It's really hard to sell anything when you haven't taken the time to learn about what the competition is doing. You ended up getting charged up about stuff that is falling on deaf ears because they have heard it so many times before. Better that the competition be acknowledged and then defeated through lucid market differentiation. Something like: "yeah Weight-Watchers is great, but boy have we come up with a better solution and hear is why!" Now I am listening.
In addition to touring the exhibit halls and hearing what the vendors had to say, tPF had the opportunity to sit in on two general sessions presented by Patrick Kennedy (former Rhode Island Congressman) and David Tinkelman (MD/wellness expert at National Jewish Health, Denver, CO).
Kennedy: Loyal to the clan, his entire focus was on the CLASS act, one of the legacies of his dad, the late Ted Kennedy. CLASS, a specific provision of the PPACA, offers caregivers and care recipients an alternative to the traditional long-term care insurance products that have cluttered the marketplace in recent years. "If it's successful, if a large enough number of people sign up, it will transform long-term care," says James Firman, president and CEO of the National Council on Aging. He adds: "it will create a market-based economy for keeping aging people at home." Given the competition from the crowded long-term care insurance product field, and the resounding inertia that keeps the current health care delivery system in place, it will not be an easy task. Kennedy urged those in the audience to lobby for the retention of CLASS within the Act, and to get involved in demonstration projects to help actualize the idea. Most of the people in the audience appeared baffled; not sure if it was because they had no idea what CLASS was actually about, or if they had no idea how they were supposed to introduce it to their organizations. Kennedy asked the leading question: "Why do we want to be paying for higher-priced care?" Obviously, no one does, but the question is, how do you get such a huge program off the ground? Kennedy mentioned that there is already $2 billion earmarked for community colleges to design and deliver curricula to bridge theory with reality. That alone should lead to the anticipated line-item cut that Kennedy urged us all to avoid at all costs. Big on hype and short on detail, I felt pretty much the same as everyone else in the audience -- why so much emphasis on this particular provision of the Act? And if it is so important, why couldn't any kind of quantitative, substantive information be included as part of the slide-free presentation?
Tinkelman: Before writing anything about his presentation, it's only fair that I let readers know that I am kind of a wellness-skeptic. I have been hearing about how wellness is going to take off for the last 30 years. Good thing I didn't hold my breathe waiting for my wellness program to come save me from God-knows-what kind of enjoyable behavior. So Tinkelman launched a stop-smoking and weight-loss program at his place of employment, National Jewish Health (a respiratory hospital) in Denver, CO. Now he is trying to spin-off and sell his wellness success to other organizations. Before I get into how his presentation degenerated into a Weight-Watchers Session ("Get on the scale!"), I will share with you some interesting information in his presentation:
-- there is no medical code for obesity; so when your doctor sees you, you could fit nicely on the height/weight chart or you could be literally spilling over the scales, but from a recordkeeping standpoint, you'd have to back into the differences (e.g., diabetes) from one patient to the next, you wouldn't be able to figure it out easily. As he put it: "Obesity is pervasive but you wouldn't know it since it's not coded."
-- 40% of the deaths in the US are attributable to preventable situations -- smoking and obesity -- 20% of the US population is smoking (down from 26% due to pervasive smoking cessation programs) but this will soon rise to 21% as state funding for smoking cessation programs ends as one state after another goes bankrupt
-- obesity is the leading killer (under the preventable disease heading) but smoking will surpass this as smoking cessation programs decrease (they have proven to work) and smoking increases in its wake.
What's interesting is that even sans coding, obesity is every bit as much a killer as smoking, but, while our culture now freely condemns smokers and openly discriminates against them, overweight people continue to get a pass, while they continue to gobble down a disproportionate share of the health care meal. I guess smoking is in a class by itself due to the secondhand smoke issue, but from a cost standpoint, smoking and obesity share the same ashtray/plate.
As the stakes continue to go up, the cultural condemnation line will have to move even more. The only chance that overweight people have to continue to receive discounted health care (paying the same health insurance premiums as healthy people and taxing the hell out of the health care delivery system) is if the spotlight somehow shifts to all the illegals from Guatamala, El Salvador and Mexico tieing up the emergency rooms throughout the US and not paying a peso for their wonderful American health care.
Finally, I would advise Dr. Tinkelman to do a little market research before spinning off his in-house project into his FitLogix and Quitline Programs. It's really hard to sell anything when you haven't taken the time to learn about what the competition is doing. You ended up getting charged up about stuff that is falling on deaf ears because they have heard it so many times before. Better that the competition be acknowledged and then defeated through lucid market differentiation. Something like: "yeah Weight-Watchers is great, but boy have we come up with a better solution and hear is why!" Now I am listening.
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