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Old 03-24-09 | 09:32 AM
  #25  
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ItsJustMe
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Joined: Sep 2005
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From: Michigan

Bikes: Windsor Fens, Giant Seek 0 (2014, Alfine 8 + discs)

Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike
Those reductions in group health insurance and improvements in the overall employees' weight and chronic health sound more like the making of a nice Urban Legend. Any evidence of any employer, anywhere, ever getting a group health insurance break because of a company sponsored bicycling specific program? Or even any evidence that such a bicycling specific program has ever had any significant effect on improving the participating employees' weight or health?
This is indirect evidence at best, but our company has historically informally promoted physical activity. All bathrooms have showers and lockers, there are basketball hoops in the parking lots, we have pickup basketball games and a "Gus Hacker" (we're programmers) tourney in the spring, there are incentive programs for logging X hours a month of exercise, there are groups who run, and we have a pretty nice exercise room with machines and free weights.

We were purchased by an international company which has major operations in Manhattan and other large cities, and people who have visited the other sites say that the average employee there looks a lot larger and less healthy than here.

Then a few years back we were forced into the same health care program and group as the rest of the business units. Our costs spiked up significantly. Officially this was done in the name of normalizing everyone's care and simplifying paperwork, but unofficially, several officers admitted that we were being forced into their groups because our employees were on the average way healthier than their sedentary life forms, and the others saw their health care costs go down for a year or two as a result. So we got paid for being healthy by having to subsidize those who are not.
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