Building Better Bodies

“With fewer employees to rely on, small businesses are particularly vulnerable when workers take sick days or function poorly on the job. Two years ago, Mr. Shirkey [owner of Orbitform Group, a machine tools company with 55 employees in Jackson] helped persuade other business owners in Jackson to join a CEO Roundtable, a forum and self-help group for top executives that is trying to address employees’ health as a crucial part of corporate strategy, rather than as simply a cost-management problem. Kirk Mercer, president of R. W. Mercer, a Jackson-based contractor that builds small factories, doctors’ offices and other commercial buildings in the Midwest, said he was so taken with this approach that he was urging his small subcontractors, each with a handful of employees, to join the wellness roundtable. There, businesspeople share ideas and encourage one another, but each business makes its own health-care decisions and pays for whatever coverage it provides; there is no pooling of employees for insurance purposes or to achieve other economies of scale, and no government contribution to the program. If the strategy works, the result will probably be healthier workers and lower medical costs, and that will be striking, when many small businesses are unable to provide any health coverage at all — and one in seven Americans is uninsured. In Jackson County, 70 percent of adults are overweight or obese, compared with 63 percent nationally, and 14 percent have diabetes, well above the 9 percent national rate. Many people in the county do not realize they are taking serious chances with their health, the survey found; they do not have insurance and cannot afford health services. Jackson’s economic health is shaky as well. As the city’s population has declined slowly to about 34,000, median household income has fallen to $31,000, a third less than Michigan as a whole, and the countywide (metropolitan area) unemployment rate has climbed to 9.7 percent, compared with 9.1 percent statewide in July. If Jackson’s wellness initiative succeeds, the small city may once again be at the forefront of a national trend. At Great Lakes Industry, which makes power-transmission equipment and auto parts, Larry Schultz, the president, marshaled some fellow exercise enthusiasts to clean up a storage area and transform it into a small fitness center. Great Lakes Industry and Orbitform also pay for health coaches, provided by Allegiance Health, who meet several times a year with employees and their spouses to guide them toward goals like losing weight, eating healthy food and lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Great Lakes Industry, which is self-insured, offers single employees a $681-a-year reduction in their health insurance premiums if they participate in the wellness program. Married employees get the same reduction and an additional $681 discount for their spouses, who are required to join. With 95 percent of its 65 or so employees participating in the program, health costs for Great Lakes Industry employees average $7,363 each last year, including $200 for the coach. That was down from $9,158 in 2006.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/business/smallbusiness/01HEALTH.html?_r=1&ref=fitnessandnutrition&oref=slogin