A few weeks back, BusinessWeek ran an interesting story called Get Healthy–Or Else, about how Scotts, the lawn-care company, is tackling the high cost of health insurance. Some might argue their approach is forward thinking (one employee’s life was saved by being nagged to go to a physical) or invasive (another employee was let go for failing a drug test for…tobacco.)

In this week’s issue there was a two-page spread for feedback from readers called Wellness–Or Orwellness? Whether you agree or not with what Scotts is doing it makes for thought-provoking reading. Readers raise issues of privacy, fairness, and whether healthy people should be paying for obese people’s health care costs.

My .02? Companies should get out of the health care business. Employees often feel trapped in a job (not here at flyte!) because they’re afraid they’re going to lose health insurance. Some employers may subconsciously (or even consciously) hire younger, seemingly-healthier people to lower premiums. Health care costs are part of what’s crippling the American auto industry. (Lack of foresight, over-reliance on trucks and SUVs and bad management also factor in.)

By getting businesses out of health care and letting them focus on their core business would be a boon to companies and the people who work there. 

Comments

In the past couple of weeks he’s been blogging up a storm with fun stuff for developers, here’s a sample:

Maryam was just watching me type this post out and says she likes Scott (she hosts Webcasts for MSDN). “Why?” I ask. “He always answers his email,” she answers. She also says that two weeks ago Scott held a Webcast that had the most attendees they’ve ever had (about 1,000 people watching live, 5,500 registered but it turns out that the technology they are using, LiveMeeting, can only handle about 1,250 attendees if there’s desktop sharing going on).

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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