America aims having smoke-free workers to save medical bills
Washington, Oct 26 (UNI) Several business houses in America are conducting help-programmes to encourage their workers to stop smoking in order to reduce their medical bills.
A recent survey indicated that one-third of companies with at least 200 workers offered smoking cessation as part of their employee benefits package.
The companies have to spend as much as 900 dollars to give a participant free nicotine patches and drugs to ease withdrawal.
Phone sessions with smoking addiction counselors can cost more than the estimated 16,000 dollars including the additional lifetime medical bills that a typical smoker generates, according to federal health data.
That federal figure does not count the costs of absenteeism or the drain on productivity when smokers periodically duck outside for a cigarette, New York Times newspaper reported.
With business employers accounting for about 650 billion dollars of the nation's 2 trillion dollar annual medical bill, companies have monetary incentive to get workers leave smoking.
United Parcel Service began offering a smoking cessation program in February to the estimated 13 percent of its employees who use tobacco.
''We decided this was the time to do this,'' said UPS health and productivity manager Judy Pirnie Smith.
The Union Pacific railroad adopted the program two years ago that helped cut the smoking rate to about 17 per cent of its work force.
''Tobacco cessation has been the hot topic for the last year,'' National Business Group on Health president Helen Darling said.
The programmes are another example, along with various other corporate wellness efforts like weight management and diabetes control, of how private employers are taking health care reform into their own hands.
There are more than 44 million smokers in the United States.
The habit is blamed for 435,000 premature deaths annually, and adds more than 75 billion dollars to annual spending on health care, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
''The
number
of
people
who
enroll
in
the
programs
and
then
slip
back
into
smoking
in
the
first
three
months
is
high,''
said
Watson
Wyatt
Worldwide
benefits
consulting
firm
executive
Bruce
C
Kelley,
adding
that,
''people
who
quit
for
12
months
the
recidivism
rate
is
very
low.''
UNI