Posts Tagged ‘obesity’

A 10 year anniversary Health Wonk Review & more noteworthy news

Thursday, September 22nd, 2016

It’s Health Wonk Review week! Louise and Jay Norris host a special edition at Colorado Health Insurance – not only is it a mere 46 days to the next election so that has the wonkers opining – it is also the 10th blogging anniversary for the hosting blog – The “We’re Ten!” Edition of the Health Wonk Review. There are great entries from both the usual subjects and some fresh faces. Louise is a great host, framing everything nicely. Congratulations on 10 years of blogging, Louise & Jay. *clinks champagne glass*

More news of note

Just by way of coincidence, September is our birthday month here at Work Comp Insider, too – we launched in 2003! That makes us a grizzled old timer in Internet time.

Oklahoma and opt out– in case you missed it, the Oklahoma Supreme Court Ruled Workers’ Comp Opt-Out Unconstitutional:

Justice Watt, in the Court’s highly anticipated written decision, said the OWCC previously found the Opt Out Act: “1) constituted an unconstitutional special law; 2) denied equal protection to Oklahoma’s injured workers; and 3) denied injured workers the constitutionally protected right of access to courts.”

And the high court agreed, finding that the core provision of the Act “creates impermissible, unequal disparate treatment of a select group of injured workers.”

The PCI and AIA were quick to applaud the decision. Joe Paduda hopes this is the end to what he sees as the pointless debate about Opt-Out (we hope so too). Bob Wilson looks at some of the loose ends in the wake of this decision.

Psych indicators – Most of us in the industry are pretty familiar with triggers or warning signs that would indicate an accident investigation or the need for early medical intervention — but perhapsare  less familiar with indicators that might signal the need for a psychological evaluation. Our friends at Work Comp Psych Net have posted a handy reference list of Predictive Psychosocial Triggers For Workers’ Compensation Claims.

Obesity’s toll on WC – A new study in the September Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine shows that obese and overweight workers are more likely to incur high costs related to workers’ compensation claims for major injuries;

But for workers with major injuries, high BMI was associated with higher workers’ compensation costs. In this group, costs averaged about $470,000 for obese and $270,000 for overweight workers, compared to $180,000 for normal-weight workers.

After adjustment for other factors—including high-cost spinal surgeries or injections—obese or overweight workers with major injuries were about twice as likely to incur costs of $100,000 or higher. Body mass index had no effect on costs for closed claims or for less-severe injuries.

Safety Culture Does Not Exist!  – This is a half-hour podcast interview with Dr. Edgar Schein, Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. Well worth a listen. We weren’t aware of this podcast series and it looks great: The Pre Accident Podcast is an ongoing discussion of Human Performance, Systems Safety, & Safety Culture. The Dr. Schein interview is the #88th edition!

Speaking of safety …. It’s Farm Safety & Health Week from September 18-24.

More news of note

Studies: Opioid epidemic grows; Is obesity a smoking gun in rise of prescription drugs?

Wednesday, January 13th, 2016

You may have taken hope from studies that pointed to a decrease or leveling of the rate of deaths related to opioid and prescription drug use in 2012-2013. If so, the Centers for Disease Control wasted no time this year in throwing some cold water on those hopes.

On January 1, via the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the CDC issued new data on Increases in Drug and Opioid Overdose Deaths — United States, 2000–2014.

                      Age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths and drug overdose deaths involving opioids: US 2000–2014

mmwr opioid trends

Here are some of the key findings:

  • During 2014, a total of 47,055 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States, representing a 1-year increase of 6.5%, from 13.8 per 100,000 persons in 2013 to 14.7 per 100,000 persons in 2014.
  • Rates of opioid overdose deaths also increased significantly, from 7.9 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9.0 per 100,000 in 2014, a 14% increase.
  • In 2014, there were approximately one and a half times more drug overdose deaths in the United States than deaths from motor vehicle crashes
  • The 2014 data demonstrate that the United States’ opioid overdose epidemic includes two distinct but interrelated trends: a 15-year increase in overdose deaths involving prescription opioid pain relievers and a recent surge in illicit opioid overdose deaths, driven largely by heroin.
  • From 2000 to 2014 nearly half a million persons in the United States have died from drug overdoses.
  • The rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137%, including a 200% increase in the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids (opioid pain relievers and heroin).

The 2013-2014 increase was geographically pervasive. In 2014, the five states with the highest rates of drug overdose deaths were:

  • West Virginia (35.5 deaths per 100,000)
  • New Mexico (27.3)
  • New Hampshire (26.2)
  • Kentucky (24.7)
  • Ohio (24.6).

States with statistically significant increases in the rate of drug overdose deaths from 2013 to 2014 included Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

For more analysis of the data, see Kim Krisberg’s story at The Pump Handle.

Obesity: A Smoking Gun?

Is obesity a contributing factor to the opioid epidemic? That’s certainly an avenue worth further investigation. Recent research shows more evidence of the increase in prescription drug use and study authors suggest an obesity connection.

In November, researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health issued a report which was published in in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association: Trends in Prescription Drug Use Among Adults in the United States From 1999-2012

NPR’s Alison Kodjak reports on the study in Americans Are Using More Prescription Drugs; Is Obesity To Blame?

Two of the key findings:

  • 59% of adults used a prescription drug in a 30-day period, up from 50% a decade earlier.
  • The share of people taking more than five prescription drugs in a month doubled to 15%.

Lead author Elizabeth Kantor said that:

” … the rise in prescription drug use may have to do with the rise in obesity, since many of the most widely prescribed drugs treat obesity-related conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. The study found, for example, that the share of people using cholesterol-lowering agents, mostly statins, jumped from 7% to 17%.”

 

Related opioid reading matter:

One of the most dangerous jobs in America

Wednesday, February 11th, 2015

NPR featured the first in a series of reports on one of the most dangerous jobs in America, one that they say has more debilitating back injuries than the construction industry or law enforcement. In Hospitals Fail To Protect Nursing Staff From Becoming Patients, Daniel Zwerdling investigates the high rate of back injuries that plague the nursing profession, largely the result of poor patient lifting practices, which are greatly exacerbated by the obesity epidemic.

The impact of obesity cannot be overstated – nurses are required to lift or support morbidly obese patients as many as 15 to 20 times a day. NPR puts this in context, citing NIOSH manager James Collins: “… before studying back injuries among nursing employees, he focused on auto factory workers. His subjects were “93 percent men, heavily tattooed, macho workforce, Harley-Davidson rider type guys,” he says. “And they were prohibited from lifting over 35 pounds through the course of their work.”

Yet nursing employees in a typical hospital lift far heavier patients a dozen or more times every day. Tom Lynch discusses safe lifting limits in a prior post:

“… according to NIOSH the most a nurse or aide in the 90th percentile of strength should lift at any one time is 46 pounds. But a typical 8-hour workday in this field involves lifting about 1.8 tons. Twelve percent of registered nurses who quit the field report that they do so because of back pain due to patient handling.”

A Case in Point

Zwerdling talks to a number of nurses who discuss their injuries and how they happened. He focuses on the experiences of nurses at Kaiser Permanante in Walnut Creek, which he notes is no worse and perhaps better than many healthcare facilities. Although the hospital had dedicated lifting equipment and teams, there were not enough machines and not enough teams to staff them when needed. When patients need help, the need is often urgent and immediate.

Nurses who worked at Kaiser Permanante asked for a state investigation into lifting practices shortly after California’s 2012 Hospital Patient and Health Care Worker Injury Protection Act went into effect. In January 2014, a state Administrative Law Judge issued an order that declared that Kaiser had failed to have “specific procedures in place to ensure that sufficient staff was available to perform patient handling tasks safely.”

While this report is one that frames the issue in terms of nursing injuries, it’s also a safety issue for patients.

The American Nurses Association tracks legislation related to safe patient handling and mobility (SPHM). They note that:

“…eleven states have enacted “safe patient handling” laws or promulgated rules / regulations: California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Washington, with a resolution from Hawaii.

Of those, ten states require a comprehensive program in health care facilities (California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington), in which there is established policy, guidelines for securing appropriate equipment and training, collection of data, and evaluation.”

Exacerbating Factors

In our prior post cited above, Tom talks about some additional factors contributing to the problem – the aging work force and nursing shortages.

“The average age of a registered nurse is now nearly 47. For Home Health Aides (HHA), it’s 46; for Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA), 39. Wages for the aides and assistants average between $11 and $12. Forty percent have been on food stamps and many get their own healthcare through Medicaid. (See: HHS Direct Care Workforce) The BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) estimates that the demand for HHAs between 2010 and 2020 will grow by 69%; CNAs, 40%. Collectively, we are confronted with a critical shortage of healthcare talent. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, “Direct care work is difficult, the wages are low and fringe benefits are often limited.”

It’s the same with registered nurses where, oftentimes, the shortage is self-inflicted. A study of 21 hospitals in the Twin Cities found that when registered nursing positions were decreased by 9%, work-related illnesses and injuries among nurses increased by 65% (Trinkoff, et al., 2005).”

Related Resources:

Prior Workers Comp Insider posts highlight other dangers involved in nursing:

Update on Obesity in America

Wednesday, September 10th, 2014

Trust for America’s Health and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently released The State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America, a 136 page report that can be downloaded in PDF.
obesity
This is the most recent in a series of updates on the topic of obesity, and while the report is guardedly more optimistic about the nation’s obesity rate — “there is increasing evidence that obesity rates are stabilizing for adults and children” — the overall situation is still plenty bleak. Here are some highlights:

  • Adult obesity rates rose in Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, New Jersey, Tennessee and Wyoming
  • More than a third of adults (34.9 percent) were obese as of 2011 to 2012.
  • More than two-thirds of adults were overweight or obese (68.5 percent).
  • Over the past 35 years, obesity rates have more than doubled. From 2009 to 2010 to 2011 to 2012, rates remained the same. The average American is more than 24 pounds heavier today than in 1960.
  • Two states have adult obesity rates above 35 percent (Mississippi and West Virginia), 20 states have rates at or above 30 percent, 42 states have rates above 25 percent and every state is above 20 percent. In 1980, no state was above 15 percent; in 1991, no state was above 20 percent; in 2000, no state was above 25 percent; and, in 2007, only Mississippi was above 30 percent.
  • The 10 states with the highest rates of type 2 diabetes are all in the South. Alabama had the highest rate at 13.8 percent.

highest
lowest
Related medical conditions
The report also discusses obesity’s link with other serious, life-limiting illnesses. Here’s a sampling:

  • Diabetes rates have nearly doubled in the past 20 years — from 5.5 percent in 1988 to 1994 to 9.3 percent in 2005 to 2010.
  • More than 25 million American adults have diabetes and another 79 million have prediabetes. The CDC projects that one-in-three adults could have diabetes by 2050.
  • One in four Americans has some form of cardiovascular disease.
  • One in three adults has high blood pressure, a leading cause of stroke.
  • Approximately 30 percent of cases of hypertension may be attributable to obesity, and the figure may be as high as 60 percent in men under age 45.
  • People who are overweight are more likely to have high blood pressure, high levels of blood fats and high LDL (bad cholesterol), which are all risk factors for heart disease and stroke.

The report contains significant detail about adult demographics and a special focus on childhood obesity rates, recommendations and policy initiatives.
Obesity and the Work Comp Nexus
How does obesity affect workers’ comp? Here are a variety of studies, reports and news related to workers compensation and obesity – from our own pages and from other sources. .
Weighing the Obesity Factor in Workers’ Compensation
The Influences of Obesity and Age on Functional Performance During Intermittent Upper Extremity Tasks
New Study Shows Significant Health Risks for Long-haul Drivers
AMA declares obesity a disease
Comorbidities in Workers Compensation, NCCI 2012
Indemnity Benefit Duration and Obesity, NCCI 2012
Safety 2012: Ergonomic Strategies for Managing Obesity in the Workplace
Plump my workforce: new studies document obesity-related work costs
The Not-So-Hidden Cost of Obesity
New York Weighs In on Obesity
Compensable weight loss surgery? A new wrinkle in obesity
The effect of obesity and other comorbidities on workers comp
Weighty matters: the high cost of obesity in the workplace
Obesity in Workers Comp: Duke Sounds the Alarm

Risk, creeping catastrophics, fraud, obesity, pachydermodactyly, and more

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

Risk RoundupCavalcade of Risk #159 – Early Edition is posted at My Wealth Builder. We’d like to highlight Jason Shafrin’s post as particularly noteworthy for our readers: Healthcare Costs to Rise by over 7 percent in 2013.
Creeping catastrophics – Our colleague Mark Walls has a good article in Business Insurance on Creeping Catastrophic Claims – How to Spot Them and Stop Them. “These claims start out like any other case, usually with a back, knee or shoulder injury. However, because of a series of events, they end up costing the employer hundreds of thousands of dollars. These developmental claims share many common characteristics that, if identified and addressed in a timely manner, can prevent significant adverse development of the claims.”
Big bucks fraud – John D’Alusio unpacks the AIG debacle and explains how it hurts us all in his post Gaming the Workers Comp System at Workerscompensation.com.
Ergonomics of obesity – What does obesity look like to a workplace ergonomist? “Increased obesity in the workplace means more arthritis, larger waist circumferences, additional work limitations, compromised grip strength, decreased lower limb mobility and medical risks. Obese employees might be more vulnerable to falls and their manual material handling ability may be compromised. Obesity also can impact self-esteem, motivation, absenteeism, presenteeism, premature mortality and more.” More at Ergonomic Strategies for Managing Obesity in the Workplace
Case Law – The Tennessee Supreme Court found for an employer in a statute of limitations case involving PTSD. The employer argued that the statute of limitations clock began ticking when the event that caused the trauma occurred (viewing the bodies of two co-workers killed on the job), but the court found that the statute of limitations does not begin to run until an employee discovers the injury and, in this case, the employee did not know he had PTSD until some time after the workplace deaths occurred.
DOL Transparency – In 2011, the Department of Labor proposed a rule strengthening safety provisions for children under age 15 who work on farms. The rule had a parental exemption so that kids could still work on family farms. Apparently, industry pressure led DOL to withdraw the rule. DOL also removed the proposed rule from its website and Celeste Monforton posts that Government transparency groups are asking the Labor Dept to restore info scrubbed from website.
Texting while driving – Steve Yahn of Risk & Insurance looks at how Companies Fight Against Texting and Driving. He notes, “Gavejian and other experts who work with companies to develop cell phone and texting policies said that businesses need to first assess how technology is used in their workplace on a daily basis.”
Food processing hazard – A new report describes two cases of poultry workers who developed chronically swollen knuckles, the hallmark sign of a rare skin condition known as pachydermodactyly: Hand deformities turn up in poultry workers, report finds.
Other noteworthy news

Health Wonk Review, Worker Memorial Day, OK, Obesity, Appendectomies & more

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Health Wonk Review – Jennifer Salopek and Sarah Sonies have posted Health Wonk Review: Shiny Happy (Mostly) Edition, an excellent hosting debut at Wing of Zock, a blog sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges for practitioners of academic medicine. Make sure you click through to learn the origins of the fanciful name of the blog.
April 28 is Worker Memorial Day – an event dedicated to remembering those who died on the job from workplace injuries and diseases. It’s also a time to commit to doing better, to renew efforts for safe workplaces. The National Council for Occupational Safety & Health has a list of Workers Memorial Day events throughout the country, as well as fact sheets and resources in both English and Spanish.
Oklahoma decides against “alternative workers comp” – Last week, the Oklahoma Senate gave the nod to a bill that would allow some employers to opt out of workers comp system by offering a comparable alternative, but the OK House rejected the opt-out measure. Last week, Senator Harry Coates had issued an editorial discussing the opposition viewpoint: Be careful what you ask for. See Dave DePaolo’s take on OK’s non-subscription model and the recent Walmart opt out in Texas.
Is it OK to discriminate against obese people? – In what may be a first among hospital hiring restrictions, Victoria Hospital in Texas has stated they won’t hire very obese workers. HR pro Suzanne Lucas (also known as “Evil HR Lady”) asks if it is okay to discriminate against obese people, offering 5 reasons why she feels it is a bad policy. In addition to potential illegality, another issue she raises is that many health professionals consider the BMI or Body Mass Index a faulty indicator of health. The first link quotes a physician as noting that “A professional football player might have a body mass index of 32, which is technically obese, but only have 7 percent body fat.” (Be sure to check out the Flickr gallery of real people and their BMIs that Lucas links.) Now whether or not this is the wrong “solution,” the fact that obesity is a workplace problem is not at issue. A new Cornell study says that obesity accounts for almost 21% of U.S. healthcare costs, and “An obese person incurs medical costs that are $2,741 higher (in 2005 dollars) than if they were not obese.”
Usual and customary? – How much will an appendectomy cost you in a California hospital? It might depend on your insurance coverage. In one hospital, the cheapest procedure was $7,504 and the highest cost in the same hospital was $171,696. See more in Merrill Goozner’s post on the Anatomy of A Walletectomy.
Jail time for scofflaws/ – Jon Gelman notes that North Carolina is raising the stakes for employers that don’t carry workers comp – “the first contempt hearing is scheduled for May 22 when 125 uninsured employers have been noticed to appear in court.” The state says pay up or go to jail.
Sex, workers comp & horseplay – Joe Paduda posts about compensable sex on the road, an Australia case where a worker was injured while in flagrante delicto. My colleague discussed this case previously in his post Compensable Sex, Down Under? We don’t get to talk about sex very often on this blog, although there was a spanking incident a number of years ago (sadly the link to the news item appears broken.) The spanking post dealt with an instance of horseplay – an issue that Cassandra Roberts poss about at LexisNexis in her post A Roll In the Hay: Delaware’s Horseplay Defense and Australia’s Sex Romp Case Revisited, where she lists an array of quirky cases in which the horseplay defense failed.
More Noteworthy News

Risk roundup, pill wars, odd lot, obesity & more

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

Risk Roundup – Emily Holbrook hosts Cavalcade of Risk #152 at Risk Management Monitor
Florida’s pill war – Timothy Martin and Arian-Campo Flores of the Wall St Journal take in the Florida landscape after the pill mill crackdown in New Front Opens in the Florida Pill War. They note that, “One former hot spot in Broward’s Oakland Park now has just two pain clinics, compared with 26 a few years ago, said Lt. Pisanti. “It changed almost overnight,” he said.”
However, the addicts haven’t gone away. The authors note that, ” … drug users and dealers adapt to the changing landscape and pill demand shifts to retail pharmacies and other establishments that appear to have been set up to skirt the new restrictions.” The article talks about the pressure pharmacists are facing and an increase in forged prescriptions.
Pill pushing docs, take note – My colleague recently posted about the prosecution of Ohio’s Dr. Paul Volkman, the single most prolific prescriber of Oxycodone and related opioids in the entire country. (Four life sentences) Individual states and the feds are starting to get tough about cracking down on this stuff. Joe Paduda talks about the prosecution of drug-dealing docs in CA, FL, CO and other states. Also see Roberto Ceniceros’ blog post on the race to stop opioid abuse.
“Odd Lot” Doctrine – Dave DePaolo talks about the psychology of disability and the inter-relatedness of disability and mental health as illustrated by a case of a injured Wyoming worker. After his claim wended its way through the courts, the worker was granted permanent total disability benefits under the “odd lot” doctrine.
Is obesity getting a bum rap? – Maggie Mahar challenges assumptions about obesity in her post Obesity: Fact vs. Fiction at Reforming Health blog. As with everything Maggie writes, it’s worth a read!
ADA and Veterans – The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently released a new Guide for Employers on Veterans and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). EEOC says that, “The revised guides … make it easier for veterans with a wide range of impairments – including those that are often not well understood — such as traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to get needed reasonable accommodations that will enable them to work successfully.” Related:
Guide for Wounded Veterans, which answers questions disabled vets may have about the protections and rights when returning to their former job or looking for civilian jobs.
Market Pulse – Clair Wilkinson of Terms + Conditions posts about more evidence of a slowly turning market citing new reports and studies.
Quick takes

Obesity and Smoking: Pay to Play?

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

We all know that people who smoke and/or are obese tend to have more medical problems, of greater duration, compared to people with healthier lifestyles. The higher medical costs associated with smoking and obesity translate into higher cost for insurance. As a result, it is no surprise that there is a strong trend among employers to charge more for the insurance premiums of workers who smoke or who are obese.
The Insurance Journal writes that the use of premium penalties is expected to climb in 2012 to almost 40 percent of large and mid-sized companies, up from 19 percent this year and only 8 percent in 2009. An Aon Hewitt survey released in June found that almost half of employers expect by 2016 to have programs that penalize workers “for not achieving specific health outcomes” such as lowering their weight, up from 10 percent in 2011. The premium surcharges usually come hand-in-hand with incentives to quit smoking and lose weight. Unfortunately, the carrot of incentives, by themselves, have not succeeded in lowering health costs. Hence the big stick.
Taxing the Poor?
As is often the case, lower paid workers bear the brunt of the higher costs. Obesity and smoking often – but not always – accompany lower income lifestyles. Low income workers already pay a larger proportion of their income for health insurance; now they will pay more for the consequences of their smoking (a formidably taxed bad habit) and obesity (the result of poor dietary habits). The working poor often live in neighborhoods with limited fresh foods and nothing much in the way of health clubs – which they can’t afford anyway.
There is evidence that the carrot and stick approach actually works. We have written about the Cleveland Clinic, which refuses to hire smokers or obese individuals and which fosters healthy lifestyles among its 40,000 employees. The clinic has seen medical costs grow by only 2 percent this year, far below the national average of 5 to 8 percent.
The Big “But…”
The move to force people into healthy lifestyles does raise a few interesting issues.
1. In cases where obesity or other unhealthy conditions are beyond the control of the individual (genetics, specific diseases, etc.), the higher premiums might be considered discriminatory, although there has been little such litigation to date.
2. Healthy lifestyles (including regular exercise) may well result in higher medical costs for maintaining well-tuned bodies: the ever-growing incidence of knee, hip and shoulder replacements among active people.
2. The goal is to reduce medical expenses, but the leverage exists only with the principal policy holder: there is no way to force other family members to abide by the lifestyle guidelines.
3. The imposition of wellness standards can lead to legitimate privacy issues: for example, holding employees accountable for behavior away from the job (smoking, drinking, eating).
If all goes as planned, medical costs will indeed come down and people will live longer and longer lives. As people with healthy lifestyles live longer, we will have succeeded in transferring costs from private insurers (who cover working people and their families) to social security (which covers retirees). That will require a hike in social security taxes, which the working poor, among others, can ill afford. It seems that every solution carries the seeds of new problems, just as every problem gives rise to new solutions. It is a privilege, of course, just to watch the entire process as it unfolds before us.

Plump my workforce: new studies document obesity-related work costs

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

How bad is the obesity epidemic? Bad enough that car makers are increasing the size of cars to accommodate our collective expansion – typical family cars have gained about a foot of width over than half a century ago. And in a Plump My Ride research initiative, at least one luxury automaker is researching how obesity affects mobility while driving.
A recent study by Gallup says that obesity and related conditions total $153 billion in annual productivity losses. U.S. workers who are overweight or obese and have other chronic health conditions miss an estimated 450 million additional days of work each year compared with healthy workers. The study also notes:

“The $153 billion in annual lost productivity costs linked to unhealthy workers in the United States is more than four times the cost found in the United Kingdom. The striking difference is the result of fewer unhealthy workers in the U.K. About 14% of full-time U.S. workers are of a normal weight and have no chronic illness, compared with 20% in the U.K.”

Julie Liedman discusses obesity and its effects on the workplace in a recent article in Risk & Insurance. She cites a new report by Lockton Inc. that documents other costs related to obesity:

  • Some 74 percent of the adult U.S. population, aged 20 years and older, is either overweight or obese
  • Medical costs associated with obesity are estimated at $168.4 billion per year
  • The increase in obesity prevalence accounts for 12 percent of the growth in health care spending

Liedman notes that this report suggests traditional wellness programs aren’t enough to tackle the issue of morbid obesity and employers should consider offering benefits that cover more dramatic interventions, such as bariatric surgery.

“A person with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight; a person with BMI of 30 to 39.9 is considered obese and a person with BMI of 40 or more, or a BMI of 35 or more with an obesity-related disease such as diabetes, heart disease or sleep apnea is considered morbidly obese. People with BMI of 40 or more, or 35 or more with an obesity-related disease, are considered candidates for surgery.”

We’ve previously discussed obesity costs as they relate to workers comp based on an NCCI study. While some might think that the suggestion for employers to consider benefits to cover bariatric surgery to be a radical response, it may be a Hobson’s choice of “pay for it now” or “pay for it (more) later.” We’ve pointed to several cases that determined employers must pay for weight reduction surgery as part of recovery from a work-related injury. See Compensable weight loss surgery? A new wrinkle in obesity and New York Weighs in on Obesity.
By the way…
Do you know your own BMI? Use this BMI calculator to check your own weight or to use in your wellness communications.
Related past posts
Tip Toeing Around Obesity
The Cost of Getting Better
Injuries at the gym: compensability, incentives, and wellness
Morbid Obesity and the Essential Job Functions of a Cop
Weighty matters: the high cost of obesity in the workplace
Obesity in Workers Comp: Duke Sounds the Alarm

Health Wonk Review and a news roundup

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

It’s deja vu all over again at Managed Care Matters, where Joe Paduda hosts commentary on the rematch of the healthcare reform debate in this week’s Health Wonk Review: Repeal, replace, renew, revise, revisit – what the bloggers say. It’s a great issue with good contributions and diverse opinions on the matter. Check it out!
The skinny on fat – As a follow-on to my colleague’s post on the not-so-hidden-cost of obesity earlier in the week, we offer this visualization – the obesity map from the CDC, which shows the dramatic rise in obesity rates from 1985 through 2009. You can also see a state-by-state breakdown of obesity rates.
Underwriting front and center – Dan Reynolds of Risk & Insurance does a great job of outlining just how much of an underwriter’s nightmare workers comp has become and looking at how much worse it could get – and why. Chad Hemenway of PropertyCasualty360 (formerly known as National Underwriter) reports on a recent presentation by Insurance Information Institute’s Bob Hartwig who says that the industry is at a tipping point, and underwriting will be the driving force in profit or loss for 2011.
Horseplay ruling At Business Insurance, Roberto Ceniceros reports on a recent Virginia high court ruling which allocated benefits to a worker injured during horseplay. The injured employee was a victim, not the perpetrator, of the horseplay. “The state high court also relied on a theory of recovery, which has found that joking actions of co-workers are a risk of employment because humans are playful and from time to time engage in pranks, which can be dangerous.”
Aging & Workers CompWorking Safer or Just Working Longer? – new study by California’s Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation. The report contains a lot of interesting information and notes that “Interestingly, despite the large increases in the fraction of workers 55+, the impact of the aging workforce on expected workers’ compensation costs is modest. Frequency and duration effects partially offset each other and older workers still represent a minority of all workers. The aging workforce will increase workers’ compensation costs only about 2% as of 2030 above the cost if the distribution of workers by age had remained the same as 2000.”
And about those seniors… – Jon Gelman posts about a push to put a cap on workers comp for federal workers based on age. According to Senator Susan Collins, “At the U.S. Postal Service, for example, 1,000 employees currently receiving federal workers’ compensation benefits are 80 years or older. Incredibly, 132 of these individuals are 90 and older and there are three who are 98.” Gelman’s post includes links to states and counties who are also looking at this issue.
OSHAOSHA’s Top 10 Safety Violations for 2010 – In 2010 OSHA issued over 94,000 safety-related citations for violations. OSHA stated that nearly half of the total violations were accounted for by the top 10 safety violations.