Introduction
The biggest question with wellness incentives is whether people should be paid to stay healthy? In a run for earning and achieving more, people often ignore their depleting health. While it may seem a personal issue, truth is it impacts their work life as much as their personal life. Organizations incur the cost of non-performance on behalf of their employees. Wellness incentives provide a new motive for people to focus on their health and make an effort to stay healthy. It minimizes employees taking sick leaves and increases the overall performance of an organization. So it makes sense for schools, factories and businesses to give wellness incentives. But surprisingly some health insurance policies also provide wellness incentives. This is because the more you are encouraged to stay healthy, lesser are the chances that you will avail your insurance benefits for intense medical care.
Step 1
Step#1: Wellness lowers premiums
As unbelievable as it may sound but it’s true that some health insurance policies offer to reduce the amount or number of premiums if you promise to stay healthy. If you are able to maintain a good looking medical scorecard and achieve top grades in some regular medical tests you can avail the double wellness incentives of staying healthy and paying lesser premiums for your health insurance. Insurance company will encourage and sometimes pay you to give health risk screenings annually to track your progress.
Step 2
Step#2: Check reimbursement clause
Wellness incentives from your insurance also comes in inform of reimbursements. All you have to do is participate in health related activities such as health club memberships, weight management program, health education training etc and pay for these services. When you procure the bill in front of your insurance company, they get it reimbursed. You can check the reimbursement clause of you insurance policy for a list of health related activities for which they provide reimbursements.
Step 3
Step#3: Measure your health status
People who are at a risk of suffering from a medical misfortune find it very difficult to get a health insurance. With the high cost of medical facilities no one can afford to be treated without an insurance covering for them. One of the wellness incentives of staying healthy is that you are able to get a good policy with low premium and high coverage. Or you may have to suffer the discrimination based on health status from the hands of insurance companies.
Step 4
Step#4: Get assured gifts
If you enroll for a program like weight reduction or smoking cessation, you receive a token of appreciation from your insurance company. But that is not all. You will receive an assured gift from the company upon successful completion of the program. This just doubles your happiness when you get rid of a bad habit or unwanted flab and receive a gift for it.
Step 5
Step#5: Win reward points
While discounts on premium and reduction in co-payments are the most popular wellness incentives given out by insurance companies, there are a few subtler benefits that come in form of reward points. If you stay healthy you get some reward points which you can use for shopping and dining at luxury outlets.
Tip
Check how to know if your health insurance provides you wellness incentives and how to make best out of it.
Source
www.wisegeek.com
