Since around Thanksgiving I’ve been receiving these mailers from my health care insurer about the “New and Improved” coverage I would be getting in 2008. Well, come a week or so before Christmas I open the mailbox to find a letter “Inviting” me to lower my health care costs by completing their survey.
I’m getin’ fit and workin’ out now for two months or so and seeing decent results, so I think “Sure, I’ll take their survey and lower my co-pay”, and with the evening off from work last night I logged in and started answering questions.
I did rather well, though I’m apparently needing to eat more grains and dairy.
However, there were two points in this thing proving that these people are in need of psychotherapy themselves and/or need to be locked away:
First, they say that if I weigh more than 199lbs (at my 6ft 4in height) that I am obese. I don’t remember the last time I weighed 200 lbs, but I’m not so sure I was legal to drive. And I know I wasn’t fat.
Secondly, there was an “Injury Prevention” section. In said section, I was asked the following single question:
Yes or No – I do not drink alcohol before driving an automobile or ride with other people who have consumed alcohol, always wear a seatlbelt while riding in a automobile, have multiple working fire alarms/smoke detectors in my home, do not own firearms or allow firearms to be stored in my home.
That single question, that was to be answered with one single answer comprised the company’s entire “Injury Prevention” section.
According to HealthMedia, Inc, formerly Harris Health Trends, owning a firearm or allowing the storage of one in your home is equal to getting drunk and driving a car.
Nice to know my personal information was given to such open-minded folks by my employer.
So I started looking around and found their “About” page.
About HealthMedia, Inc.
MyHealthMedia was developed by HealthMedia, Inc., a company dedicated to the improvement of human life through the creative use of behavioral science and information technology. HealthMedia® develops industry leading, scientifically proven health behavior change programs that are conveniently available online and in print. The company has effectively redefined the way in which people can get the help they need to improve their health.
Based on years of university research, HealthMedia’s revolutionary programs use an innovative tailoring process to produce health improvement plans that are relevant to participants, helping them meet their personal health goals. HealthMedia’s programs increase the ability of individuals to make behavior changes that will improve their overall health and quality of life.
HealthMedia was founded by Dr. Victor Strecher, a leading expert in health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the company began business in July 1998. HealthMedia’s behavior change programs are developed by an expert team that includes behavioral scientists, healthcare professionals, and multimedia and technology designers.
That’s some scary shit right there. “Behavior Change Programs”?
Sounds like “Reconditioning” or “Re-education” to me.
I find another link hidden at the bottom of another page and go to their actual homepage
I see the term “The Revolution” popping up all over the place and clicked a linked marked as such, and find this
Until HealthMedia came along, there were only two choices for behavior change solutions: web content and/or counselor-based interventions.
We have invented and developed a technology that effectively emulates a nurse counseling session. Delivered across wellness, disease management, behavioral health and medication adherence, our web interventions go beyond typical web health education content, infused with over 30 years of proven behavioral science research.
We change behavior by offering you scalable web interventions that produce outcomes.
Every single intervention begins with effective engagement. We study your culture, environment and population to work with you to build an effective recruitment strategy, understanding and engaging your participants from the start— maximizing participation and ROI.
A fusion of our own unique technology and proven behavioral science, HealthMedia’s engaging web interventions are for real people and deliver real outcomes— all at an affordable cost.
Welcome to the revolution.
And the creepiest part is that everyone is smiling. Well, not so much “smiling” their giving off that cult-member looking toothy grin. Like they’ve been eating Soylent Green, know its made from people, and they are loving it anyway.
So, I’ve called and bitched about their bigoted attitudes, though I’m not sure what, if anything, it’ll do. If you’d like to let them know that you as a gun owner are pissed at being compared to a drunk driver, you can contact them at their Ann Arbor, MI headquarters (734) 623-0000 x300.
They sound like some kind of New Age dingbats. I’ll bet they sell tofu on the side…
This is becoming only average in the health care field, as health maintenance organizations get ready to reap the HUGE bucks to be brought in by HillaryCare, which will be shoved down our throats (“offered”) by offering everyone involved in it’s management a dollar payoff of some kind.
I just wrote a stern curmudgeon’s letter to TriWest, the umbrella company for the military’s system, over their intrusiveness about diabetes, and another letter to Providence Medical Group, my actual HOM, advising them that they just violated HIPAA (Health Information Privacy etc Act) by giving TriWest the information that I WAS diabetic without asking my permission to do so. Administrative insurers have NO REASON to have any of your actual medical data, such at diagnoses, etc. They are only beancounters.
Then, we have all heard of the New Yawk City programs of health-nanny harassment.
In case you were waiting for a grand “Ta-Da” and clap of thunder to announce HillaryCare, you and I must have missed it, bro, HillaryCare is already here.
The thing is though, that the insurers and the HMOs have probably pushed too far too fast, and are probably violating HIPAA all over the map with their programs. Now would be the time to get your union involved in fighting them.
I see this as the one great opportunity for the unions to make up for all the insults that they have heaped on us by supporting the Kennedys and their ilk. If they were to pitch in, unite, and bring down socialized medicine, they could still be heroes.
They won’t, though, because every Union business manager has already wet his beak.
The best we can do is dig deeply into the org charts of these insurers and HMOs, find the right people to write letters to, and hammer them (with real letters, not emails), demanding, each time, a reply from the named individual you address the letter to.
CC every letter to the State Insurance Commission. Someone will get all those letters on a public info request eventually, and they will be grist for the anti-HRC mill when we try to unseat her after her first term.
Xavier had a post recently about this.
See this link.
He further links to Doctors For Sensible Gun Laws who have a couple of different ways you can help deal with these “boundary violations” questions.
Try this site, http://www.realage.com. As with your site, they also have a fairly indepth health and lifestyle test, but without the “attitude” and hidden agenda plus I’ve found their health information to be quite helpful.
It was developed by Dr.s Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, of Oprah fame. I think they’re a hoot!
Since I’ve been trying to “improve myself” over the last couple years, I’ve gone from being six to seven years older than I really am – to almost five years younger than the calendar says I should be – does that make sense? Maybe with the changes I’ve been able to make, I’ll be around a few more years.
People:
What was wrong with the practice of medicine when it was a private matter between the patient and the doctor?
My answer is that there was NOTHING wrong with that system, and it didn’t need to be changed at all.
Every time you participate in one of these cockamamie polls or “studies”, you are weakening what is left of the doctor-patient relationship.
Stay away from them! You can get all the free medcial advice you want on the Web without linking to these organizations, ALL of which are out to bust up the privacy between doctors and patients.
Rivrdog – Not to be contrary or testy, but in my opinion, the Dr.s I’ve been to in the last several years leave alot to be desired in the medical advise department. In fact the feeling is, they would rather I not take up their time. And they’re certainly not going to sit and chitchat with anybody. So what kind of doctor-patient relationship is that? With the exception of a specialist now and then who occasionally appears to care, you can have most of the them.
I’ve also found you generally have to know more or less what’s wrong with you when you walk in the door – all the better to be able to ask for the proper meds.
The GP I’ve gone to for the last couple years for my “yearly” woman stuff, can forget to order my flu shot between the exam room and the door – my fault for not continuing to look for another Dr. – maybe.
Or could it be another sign of the times?
I’ve found good medical information from respected institutions in the “puter”. Sites like RealAge certainly shouldn’t be looked at as the be all, know all, but it’s an additional tool. Sometimes I think this privacy business goes a little overboard.
This is not good…
I decided to write about this on my new blog:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7029956609737184772&postID=7170003578547413522
Our company started that questionaire crap to reduce our rates a few years ago. The first year I answered all the questions truthfully and they hounded me with phone calls and e-mails offering this-and-that for bettering my life. Now I just lie on the damn thing and take the dicount.