Exercise is good for you. It helps you to lose weight, and it keeps you in shape. Exercise can help prevent certain health conditions, and ease the symptoms of others. Considering the benefits of exercise, shouldn’t health insurance companies have to cover its costs? A researcher from Florida thinks so.
Dr. Marco Pahor, who is the director of the University of Florida Institute on Aging, has stated his opinion that health insurance should cover the cost of structured exercise classes. He feels that private insurance companies should cover this, and so should federal health insurance programs like Medicare.
The main idea seems to be a simple one. People who get a proper amount of exercise can improve their health. Those who can improve their health can reduce the amount of doctor visits that they need, and may not require as many medical tests or medications as a person who is in poor health does. The cost of the exercise classes will cost the insurance companies some money to cover, but it will be less than the cost of health care they would have to cover if their customers remain in bad health.
In the past, some employer sponsored health insurance plans offered incentives for people who did certain things that improved their health. Again, the idea was that having healthier customers will reduce the expense paid by the insurance company, as well as the employer.
If employees lose a certain amount of weight, or manage to stop smoking, then their employer might drop the cost of their health insurance premiums by a certain percentage. Or, the employee might be offered a prize, or even some cash. Employees that hit a target goal for their BMI, blood pressure, or cholesterol on a regular basis would be eligible for these rewards.
The difference, though, is that the employees would have to pay for the exercise class that helped them to lose weight, or the nicotine patches that helped them to quit smoking, out of their own pockets. Dr Pahor wants the exercise classes to be something that all health insurance companies provide coverage for, automatically.
Dr. Pahor points out that the people who will get the greatest benefits of physical exercise are going to be the people who have the highest risks for health. For example, people who have type 2 diabetes, and who get a regular amount of exercise, can find that the exercise helps them control their blood sugar. He published a paper that details the clinical trials of the effects of exercise on the ability for diabetics to control blood sugar.
Researchers have also found that older adults, who are getting regular exercise, see slower increases in their health care costs. A study showed that older adults who visited a health club at least twice a week for over two years incur $1,252 less in health care cost during that second year of exercise. Considering this, it makes a certain amount of sense for insurance companies to cover the cost of exercise classes in their health insurance plans. Healthier customers mean less expense for the insurance company.
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