I need to rant about something, or as some in this community might call it "Rance" about something. This is not meant to offend anyone, so if your easily offended, then go check out someone else's blog. This is my opinion and since this is my blog, it’s the place to express it.

A large company that I know is making major changes to its health insurance benefits. Now, if you’ve been reading the newspapers at all or perhaps watching the news nightly then you understand that most companies are making some kind of change to their health insurance packages. The cost of health care has skyrocketed and the "2005 Health Care Cost Survey" released in October by Tower Perrin shows that employers can expect an 8% increase in health care costs next year, which averages out to an annual $582 per employee. This large company mentioned above has roughly 12,000 employees working for them, so you do the math on how much of an increase they will see for 2005, and 2005 will be the first year in a long time that the increase hasn’t been in the double digits. In my opinion, the changes they are implementing are necessary and would rather see them pass on some of the rising costs to their employees than have layoffs or worse go out of business because they couldn’t afford to keep their doors open. Now maybe this is a far fetched idea since it is such a large company, but imagine if it were your place of business and you employed only 250 people. That would be an average annual increase of $145,500 – this would be an ouchie to you and would probably equal more than your take home pay. I’m not sure since my company only employs’ one, but $582 is roughly two monthly payments on my 4-wheeler or a little more than the monthly payment on my Yukon.

Part of my rant is the employees for above said company have spent all day bitchin and moaning about the changes and the fact that their insurance is gonna cost them more money. It’s like their bodies and brains can’t focus on anything else because they are stuck on this. Literally, they have been standing around the water cooler or running in and out of each other’s cubicle’s discussing it. Well what I have to say is "HELLO PEOPLE, THIS IS A BENEFIT".

benefit (bĕn΄ə-fĭt)

a). something that promotes or enhances well-being; an advantage,

b). help; aid.

There is no law that requires a company to provide this or any other benefit like your vacation, sick leave, pension or profit sharing plan. The company pays you an hourly rate for the work you do and if you don’t feel like you’re getting compensated what your work is worth, then either look elsewhere, or change what you do. If you can’t do either of these, then I’m sorry, but you are probably getting paid what your work is worth. When you are provided with health insurance it is called a benefit because it’s exactly that. Not owed to you, but a benefit that the company offers to attract valuable employees.

Actually, we are a part of the reason that health care costs have soared. Maybe not directly, but if we had been made personally responsible for managing out own costs over the last couple of years then they probably wouldn’t have increase as much as they have. Some of the key factors that continue to drive higher costs include the use of heavily promoted prescription drugs instead of generic, higher HMO rates, drastic increases in the price of hospital and physician services due in part to frivolous lawsuits, greater demand for expensive diagnostic tests and higher utilization of certain physical specialists. Another, even bigger factor is the fact that an estimated 61%, yes I said 61% of the population, in the United States is considered overweight, or obese.

This gets us to the other part of my rant! This is a self-inflicted wound and as of the late 1970’s only 15% of us were considered overweight or obese; this is increased by 46 %. 46% more of us are obese than were 30 years ago. Now being overweight brings on its own health problems like heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), gallbladder problems, arthritis and many types of cancer. Yes, our aunt that recently passed away from liver cancer was obese and had been for many, many years. She also was a diabetic. Many of the above disease’s can be eliminated or at the very least managed if we were within our target weight, not 40, 50, 60 lbs over it.

As I sit in my cubical and look at the people around me, I would estimate that actually 75% of them are obese. We have very sedentary jobs and the conversation around here isn’t rock climbing, running or playing rugby, it revolves around food. What are we going to eat for breakfast, where do you want to go for lunch, what are you going to have for dinner, can I get that recipe from you. If you’ve seen that commercial (don’t remember what it is advertising) that starts out with a guy and girl going fishing and some gophers pop up out of their burrows and he has a flash back to his fellow employees popping their heads up above their cubicles and saying "Do you smell food, I smell food" – that so reminds me of my work environment. Now I’m not opposed to eating and have fought my weight since I was a teenager. I inherited the "Fluffy" genes from my dad’s side – sorry dad, I love ya, but could have passed on the second helping of genes. So I know first hand that controlling your weight isn’t easy and have to battle it with every bite. It all boils down to decisions – in order to eat that crème brulee for desert then I will have to run 5 miles to burn off the extra calories and if I know that I won’t have time to run those 5 miles today, then I had better pass on the crème brulee – see I made a decision.

I think that the insurance company’s should offer a bonus for people who choose to live a healthy life style. Kinda like the car insurance companies offer lower rates if you have a good driving record, or offer a discount if you take a defensive driving course. This might be an incentive for some people to get healthy. I read a study a while back that talked about how much more it cost companies when their employees were obese. I don’t see why I should be penalized and have to pay high premiums when I’m rarely sick, eat right, exercise and do preventive measures and my cubical neighbor is so overweight that they had to order an oversized chair for him/her, they call in sick a least twice a month and have chronic health problems. Believe me, this person has gotten where they are due to their mouth, not to running their mouth, but what they put in it. These are the same people who have driven up the cost of health care and want to stand around all day complaining about it. Well – I say – if you don’t like the rising cost of health care, then do something about it and start at home to make the changes.

This is not meant to offend anyone who struggles with their weight, it is meant to say, if you’re going to stand around the water cooler and complain about something that you have indirectly caused, then get off your lazy butt and do something about it no one is going to change it for you!!!!!  I know I've been there, I'm 5'8" and got up to 197 lbs and that was before I got pregnant.  I also took more sick days, went to the doctor more and was on prescription medicine.