Is Your Company Paying For Diabetes?

The impact of diabetes on your group health benefits plan pricing and how to offset it.

Are you paying for diabetes???

The short answer is YES. Here is why...

If you provide your employees with health insurance benefits, your company is likely paying for overall increased healthcare costs that factor in the cost of diabetes. 22.3 million people in the U.S have been diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. The American Diabetes Association recently shared that the total cost of diabetes in 2012 alone was $245 billion, which resulted in higher overall healthcare costs for everyone.

But it’s not just health insurance costs that force a company to “pay” for diabetes. Think about your workforce. If your top performing sales employee has to leave work this year because an undiagnosed case of diabetes progresses into heart disease, kidney failure or blindness (this is not that uncommon), your company will immediately start losing money until he or she is back to work or replaced. When employees (sales employees especially) are sick and unable to work, the employer loses money. When they need to be replaced, turnover and the cost of hiring is very expensive, not to mention time consuming.

So, what can you do to prevent diabetes among your workforce this year?

Employee Wellness Programs – For starters, have an employee wellness program (EWP) in place. These programs don’t need to be time consuming or costly, either. The primary cause for type 2 diabetes is obesity and if we can create environments that promote, support and encourage healthy habits, we can have healthier employees. At HR Shield, we have an entire section of our blog dedicated to EWPs – click here to learn more!