Promote Health and Wellness - What the Government Should Do

Encourage Employee Wellness Programs

BCBSA recommends the government enact reforms to support employer efforts to promote healthy lifestyles:

• providing wellness incentives for individual workers by removing legal barriers that hinder employer efforts to encourage healthy employee lifestyles (e.g., requiring employers to give non-smoker discounts to smokers who enroll in, but do not successfully complete, cessation programs)
• establishing lifestyle factors for group rating by preempting state rules that limit insurers' ability to give group discounts for smoking and wellness rating factors
• offering other employer incentives such as tax incentives to encourage employers to adopt smoking bans, providing employees with exercise time during the work day and offering subsidized gym memberships and implementing OSHA workplace best practices

Educate Children on Healthier Lifestyles

BCBSA also believes one way to influence long-term health costs is to provide federal support for school-based programs that ensure children learn healthy lifestyles. BCBSA recommends the following:

• establishing new federal funding to support increased physical education requirements to five days a week at all grades, providing health education on diet/nutrition and tobacco use prevention and implementing body mass index (BMI) screening programs
• conditioning existing federal funding for school meal/snack programs on better nutritional quality (e.g., more vegetables and fruits and other healthy choices)
• funding school-based programs to ensure recommended vaccinations are provided to all children

Provide Incentives and Education on Nutrition and Health

BCBSA also recommends a variety of approaches to help low-income families lead healthy lifestyles:

• creating incentives and improving coverage for smoking cessation for Medicaid enrollees and incorporating wellness and disease management program features into Medicaid
• offering nutrition and meal planning/preparation education to Food Stamps enrollees and providing incentives to use Food Stamps for healthy foods
• providing tax and other incentives for grocery stores to locate in underserved low-income neighborhoods