Managed Care - February 2008 - (Page 40) seling along the lines of HR 853. They would have to contain three of four provisions: Winterfeld: Give employers — especially small employers — income, franchise, or corporate tax credits to institute or continue wellness programs that • Health awareness programs that include edudeal with areas such as smoking cessation, weight cation and health risk assessment management, controlling high blood pressure and • Behavioral change programs that encourage cholesterol, nutrition counseling, and promoting employees to lead a healthy lifestyle through exercise through onsite exercise areas, gym memcounseling, seminars, or on-line offerings, inberships, or support for employee sports teams. cluding classes on nutrition, stress manageWhile the overall goals in the states are similar, ment, or smoking cessation the measures vary. Rep. Jayne Crosby Giles, a Re• A “supportive environment to encourage empublican, hopes the Maine legislature will enact ployee participation in the workplace wellher tax credit measure, which has won the enness programs,” which could include offering dorsement of the Legislative Council, a 10-member meaningful incentives to participating empanel comprising House and Senate leaders of both ployees, such as a reduction in health insurparties. ance premiums “This bill is certainly needed,” Giles says.“There’s • An employee engagement committee, a growing obesity epidemic across the nation which would tailor the wellness proand diabetes is also becoming a serious probgram to the needs of the workforce at a lem. Meanwhile, health care costs are skyparticular company rocketing year after year.” Giles’s legislation would give a $100 tax “The rising cost of health care has taken its credit per employee to any business that intoll on individuals, but also on businesses stitutes a wellness program. The credit would that provide health coverage to their embe capped annually at $10,000 and limited by ployees, with employer health care costs ris- Employers a company’s tax liability. The starting date ing by more than 70 percent since the year would receive a for qualified expenses would be Jan. 1, 2009. 2000,” Harkin said. “This trend is affecting tax credit for 10 Qualified expenditures for the wellness years after estabAmerican companies’ ability to remain comprogram tax credit include costs associated petitive in our global economy, and we must lishing a qualified with health education, stress management, wellness program find a way to turn it around.” and smoking cessation programs. Employers under legislation also could qualify by allowing time during the introduced last workday for employees to exercise, by purPending in committee summer by chasing equipment for a workplace fitness Both the Harkin and Knollenberg bills are Sen. Tom Harkin facility, and by providing individual or group pending in committee and not expected to re- of Iowa. memberships in a health club — or by creatceive any additional action until 2009, aling incentives to reward employees who engage in though anything can happen in an election year. S healthy lifestyles. Employers would be responsible 1753 has been referred to the Senate Committee on for recording all usage of facilities and amounts of Finance. HR 853, which has seven cosponsors, has time that employees spend in wellness programs. been referred to the House Subcommittee on The tax credit might not be a huge incentive, but Health. The bill currently has seven cosponsors, it will be enough to encourage businesses to adopt but no hearings are set on either bill. wellness programs and, once they do, they will exSimilar concerns are driving wellness initiatives perience the benefits, asserts Giles. Businesses can at the state level. Amy Winterfeld, who tracks health get as much as a 4:1 return on their investment in care issues for the National Conference of State wellness programs, Giles reports. Legislature, reports that such tax incentives have And, she maintains, her bill goes beyond indibeen proposed in at least 10 states in recent years vidual companies and extends healthy habits — California, Hawaii, Iowa, Indiana, Maine, Misadopted at work to the home. “My idea is to offer sissippi, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and an incentive to companies, not a mandate,” Giles Wisconsin — with varying degrees of success. says. The concept is relatively straightforward, notes 40 MANAGED CARE / FEBRUARY 2008
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