Pressure on Your Health Benefits

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Humana offers customers several wellness components in their plans. One includes a point system, designed by British firm Virgin, in which a pedometer records an employee's movements. Each step, with extra credit for exercise activities, is converted into points that can buy music, sports equipment and even airline tickets. At Illinois-based International Truck and Engine Co., a similar program has its workforce racing CEO Daniel Ustian to better health. A quarter of its 17,000 employees put in 27 miles a week.

It's not the walkers who are the problem, though. Since 10% of employees account for 70% of costs, identifying and caring for those at the highest risk for illness is a priority. Employees at South Carolina's private utility SCANA who fill out annual health assessments get a special break: their premiums don't rise. Of the company's 15,000 workers, 94% took advantage of that offer this year. The data SCANA and other companies collect can then go toward disease management for such illnesses as diabetes and high blood pressure. At International Truck and Engine, where costs have remained flat the past two years, health professionals call chronically ill employees regularly (unless they opt out) to offer advice on care and medication. SCANA provides drugs through an in-house pharmacy. "We then can buy drugs at a wholesale price," says Joe Bouknight, SCANA's human-resources director. "In 2007 that will represent a nice discount for us and our employees." If only that were true for the rest of us.