Ensuring Employees Pay for Extra Cost of Healthcare Essay

Ensuring Employees Pay for Extra Cost of Healthcare - Essay Example Employers should devise an economic program that would ensure employees compensate the extra cost over premiums spent on lifestyle-related diseases. The following is a proposed framework that employers would use to ensure employees pay for extra costs above the coverage premium spent on lifestyle-related conditions. First, employers should schedule all chronic conditions that are lifestyle-related and contribute to the increase in the cost of the premium. A possible list should include conditions such as diabetes, some forms of cancers, heart disease, and obesity-related illnesses. In order to ensure a robust program, accredited health care professionals should approve the scheduled list of complications and ascertain they are lifestyle-related. The second process in the framework should involve calculations of direct and indirect costs incurred from health-related illnesses. The direct cost calculation is simple and can be estimated based on extra expenditure the company has on inpatient and outpatient services. They include extra expenditure on services including surgeries, radiological processes, laboratory tests, and drug therapies. Indirect costs include an estimation of resources forgone by the firm or company because of a lifestyle-related health condition that affects an employee. The value of lost work because of absenteeism should be calculated based on accumulated wages throughout the period. Other forms of indirect cost include the value of increased insurance incurred by the company because of lifestyle-related conditions.  Ã‚