Have You Gotten Your Biometric Screening Letter from Your Employer, Yet?

Freedom By The Way: 

Big Brother has arrived...neatly packaged in “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” AKA Obamacare. Hubby received a notice today at work about “FREE BIOMETRIC SCREENINGS” for himself and his dependents that could save us from $17-$34 a month on premiums. (which, of course, doesn’t do much to  offset the 29% increase which went into effect July 1, but I digress). 

Right now, the biometric screening is voluntary. Which is a good thing because we have no intention of selling out our privacy for $34 a month. However, employer biometric screening and individual wellness plans will be MANDATORY under Obamacare in the not too distant future.

From a press release from a company called BIOQ, published August 14, 2013:

BioIQ Helps Employers Comply with New ACA Wellness Requirements

Health Improvement Technology Company Helps Companies Engage Employees in a Non-Discriminatory Manner to Measure Individual and Population Health

Santa Barbara, Calif. – August 14, 2013 –

BioIQ announced that its health-improvement technology platform helps employers comply with the final regulations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Leveraging the BioIQ platform, organizations throughout the United States can increase wellness program participation, avoid discrimination, and meet stated health and wellness goals…

BioIQ offers a comprehensive set of products and services to help employers achieve and verify compliance with ACA wellness requirements. For example, BioIQ Dimensions offers several health-screening methods for gathering biometric data from employees and dependents to enforce nondiscrimination. BioIQ program participants who are unable to take a blood test or meet stated health standards due to a medical condition are allowed to request an alternative or a waiver. BioIQ Axis connects individuals to specific interventions based on their identified risks and needs. BioIQ Ecosystem funnels participants into an array of complementary health, wellness, and disease-management solutions to improve their health. This patented “closed-loop” wellness platform helps all participants to earn rewards by meeting agreed-upon milestones and outcomes. Specific risk-factors trigger targeted interventions. Secure personal health dashboard enable participants to track their progress and allow administrators to manage participation, outcomes, rewards and incentives, all while protecting personal health information as per HIPAA requirements.

“To comply with the ACA mandates, employers need to engage the entire population, carefully track the results, and provide direct interventions to help participants achieve healthy outcomes and meet personal wellness goals,” said Justin Bellante, CEO of BioIQ.,,,

Outcomes-based programs (also called health-contingent wellness programs) not only require participation; they also require individuals to attain or maintain specific health outcomes as measured by biometric screening or a health risk assessment. Corporate wellness programs must track individual results related to each requirement and allow employees to take additional steps to achieve the stated outcomes to obtain wellness incentives or rewards. These programs must also offer reasonable alternatives for people who have a specific condition that precludes them from achieving the outcome, so that the individual can earn the incentives via other agreed-upon means, as validated by a recent Internal Revenue Service bulletin.  Read the entire press release here: https://www.bioiq.com/press

So now your employer will be involved in tracking your health & lifestyle? That’s right folks!

If your cholesterol is too high…you smoke…you drink too much…you take sleeping pills…you are overweight…your employer must design an individual program for you to improve.

Can we just do the jobs employers hired us to do? Do you have to take a sample of my blood and tell me how to live?

Belize is looking better and better.

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,biometrics,behavior,Behavior Based Health Costs,ACA,Big Brother,Employers,Wellness

Binge Drinking

Binge drinkers may not drink every day. They may drink weekly or less often, although studies show most drink about twice a week. They may or may not be addicted to alcohol.

Binge drinking statistics tell us that binge drinking peaks between the ages of 18 and 22. Many of these drinkers are college students. However, high school students binge drink as well. Statistics indicate that binge drinking often begins as young as 13 years of age.
The Dangers of Binge Drinking

There are a large number of dangers of binge drinking. Health-related binge drinking statistics can be alarming. The following health problems have been found to be associated with binge drinking:

• Alcohol poisoning.
• Liver disease.
• High blood pressure, stroke, and other forms of cardiovascular disease.
• Neurological damage.
• Sexually transmitted diseases.
• Unintentional pregnancy.
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (if pregnant women binge drink).
• Unintentional injuries (such as car accidents, falls, etc.).
• Intentional injuries (such as injuries from firearms, domestic violence, etc.).

In addition, it should be noted that the younger one begins drinking, the more likely they are to develop alcohol dependence. For instance, nearly 25% of those who begin drinking alcohol before the age of 17 become alcoholics, compared to 10% of those who begin drinking alcohol after 21 years of age.

Alcohol Poisoning

Alcohol poisoning is one of the greatest dangers of binge drinking. It is a serious condition that can occur when the blood alcohol concentration rises too high. Symptoms include severe vomiting, depressed respirations, and seizures. It can result in coma and even death. Alcohol poisoning requires medical attention and often requires hospitalization in order to stabilize and monitor the patient. Binge drinking is not the only cause of alcohol poisoning, but it is a common cause.

Prevalence of Binge Drinking

The binge drinking statistics tell us that binge drinking as a whole is on the decline, yet it is still very common. Consider the following statistics:

• Binge drinking is most common between ages 18 and 22.
• 42% of college students report binge drinking.
• One in five college students is a frequent (weekly) binge drinker.
• Half of all students who binge drink do so more than once a week.
• Two-thirds of alcohol consumed by college students is consumed by binge drinkers.
• 60% of all problems with the police on college campuses (such as injuries, vandalism, etc.) involve binge drinkers.

College students often over-estimate the number of their peers who drink, however, and the amount of alcohol consumed by their peers, creating a false sense of pressure to drink.

Preventing Binge Drinking

Binge drinking statistics tell us that the following interventions help to reduce the incidence of binge drinking:

• Reduce access to alcohol on college campus by having fewer stores selling alcohol nearby.
• Education by high schools and colleges about the dangers of binge drinking.
• Physician screening, counseling, and referral for treatment of alcohol problems.

Some also suggest raising the cost of alcoholic beverages and taxes on alcohol to prevent binge drinking. As you may imagine, this strategy is at best controversial. However, it would likely cut down on alcohol abuse altogether, not just binge drinking. It would particularly cut down on alcohol use and abuse among young people, who have less discretionary income, and might have a fairly significant impact on underage drinking.

Technorati Tags: binge drinking,alcoholism,addiction,teens,students,escapism

Why morning people rule the world

Philip Delves Broughton - 05.07.10

We are all morning or evening people. Scientists have established that our genes dictate around half of what they call our “chronotypes” — our natural preference for certain times of the day.

Evolution has produced a range of humans capable of being alert to danger at every hour of the day. Our experience confirms these findings. We all know people who love to be at work bright and early, with a cup of coffee to hand and decisions to make, and others who would rather stumble through the day until reaching a state of relaxed clarity around dusk, when their minds are purring.

The problem is that those with the genetic gift of “morning-ness” tend to be more highly rewarded. Morning-ness is perceived as a sign of activity and zest, whereas evening-ness implies laziness and loafing. How often did we have to see David Cameron on one of his early-morning runs to get the idea that here was a leader of potency and vigour? How different would it have been if he slunk out of bed to work, then exercised at around 8pm? Could a Prime Minister be elected today who worked like Churchill, reading, writing and thinking in bed before getting out of it at noon?

History is full of great bores praising the virtues of early rising, but few have made the case for letting the day drift by until you kick into gear around happy hour.

Yet the research continues to mount, arguing that evening people have qualities which should be nurtured. They tend to be more creative, intelligent, humorous and extroverted. They are the balance to morning people, who are said to be more optimistic, proactive and conscientious.

Evening and morning are the right and left sides of our brain, the creative and the analytical, both of which we need to organise, process and advance our lives.

New research by Christoph Randler, a biology professor at the University of Education at Heidelberg, however, concludes that morning people are more likely to succeed in their careers because they are more proactive than evening people.

He surveyed 367 university students, asking them when they were most energetic and willing to change a situation. It was the morning people who were more likely to agree with statements such as “I feel in charge of making things happen” and “I spend time identifying long-range goals for myself.”

Discussing his research in the Harvard Business Review, Randler says: “When it comes to business success, morning people hold the important cards. My earlier research showed that they tend to get better grades in school, which gets them into better colleges, which then leads to better job opportunities. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimise them. They're proactive.”

Christopher Coleridge, the founder of V Water, the fast-growing vitamin-enhanced water brand, has a different view on the advantages of morning-ness. “Morning is always the best time to get people to make decisions because people are full of optimism in the morning. By 9am, nothing really can go wrong. You're full of hope. By 4pm, at least six annoying things will have happened, so by the evening you're slightly annoyed and frustrated. Fortunately, you then have the rest of the evening to pick yourself up.”

Earlier in his career, when Coleridge worked in advertising, he found the culture much more focused on the evenings, when conversations over drinks would lead to creative ideas. But as an entrepreneur, he found mornings were the best time to corral people's energies.

Evening-ness, he says, can be exploited by companies that are full of young people. But mornings appeal more to people with families who want a schedule which allows them to get in early and leave on time. For the growing army of part-time and freelance workers, tight schedules are just as important. “They tend to be very focused because they are moving from project to project and they don't have time to yack away.”

In certain environments, morning-ness is unavoidable. In the City, many of the most significant meetings take place before the markets open. Schools, however, force morning-ness on teenagers at a moment when everything else in their lives — their hormones, their social lives, their working patterns — is drifting towards the evening.

But can one change one's chronotype from evening to morning? Randler says “somewhat”, but it can be hard. He cites one study that showed half of school pupils were able permanently to shift the time they woke up by one hour. Chronotypes, however, do evolve over one's life. Adolescents tend towards evening-ness; from the ages of 30 to 50, people are evenly split between morning and evening; and over-50s are more morning types.

The challenge for companies, Randler says, is to accept that evening-ness is an inherent trait and, rather than battling against it, find ways to “get the best out from their night owls”.

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