Children Obesity
A federal health care law now demands that health insurers and employers cater for the cost of screening children for obesity as well provision of appropriate counseling to them. This is line with the new demands of the federal health care law. According to current government statistics, about one in three children in the U.S. are obese or overweight. It is on this background that the federal government has seen the need of such program to address the issue of childhood obesity.
According to experts, however, implementing these programs will prove rather problematic for the U.S. government. This is because there are minimal tested and proven models for assisting both children and adolescents achieve and maintain a healthier weight. In addition, there little understanding among researches as to risk factors for the rapid rise in childhood obesity in the recent past.
The Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative, among other several community efforts is aimed to have every child feed well and exercise more. Large health insurers such as Well Point, UnitedHealth Group, and Weight Watchers as well as drug companies and medical device makers are working to develop programs targeted at children and teenagers. The aim of the programs is to help children grow into a healthier weight as opposed to actually losing pounds. There is also need for the programs to focus on the entire family – changing what everyone eat and the length of time they stay active. The sessions where young children or teenagers talk about their individual struggles with food and exercise are meant to be friendlier, more cost-effective alternative to the traditional hospital programs. During the sessions, the participants get to learn about the kind of foods they ought to eat, reasons for children overeating, and to balance their food and activity. Children, especially teenagers, are more likely to be indifferent to an overly strict regime necessitating for a program that focuses on implementing smaller, sustainable changes in their eating habits and lifestyle.
Preliminary results of the UnitedHealth’s pilot program showed that a 84 percent for the 155 children and teenagers successfully completed the program and registered an average 3.5 percent reduction in weight within six months. Presently, UnitedHealth is collaborating with Texas and Louisiana to offer the same program for those children under the insurer’s Medicaid plans. A UnitedHealth pediatrician and executive, Dr. Deneen Vojta, expressed confidence that the requirement for insurers and employers to pay for child obesity services will make the market to respond with more better treatment options.
Given that most established treatment interventions for childhood obesity are found at hospitals and academic medical centers, experts observe that they are best placed for overweight children or those who has not yet developed serious medical condition such as diabetes and are not suitable candidate for bariatric surgery. To this effect, WellPoint has opted for a different health plan where it trains doctors and link them with dietitians. The health plan thus pays four up to four visits to the doctor as well as four visits to the dietitian, where improvement of the diet of the whole family is the top agenda.
In my opinion, the new federal health care law requiring health insurers and employers to pay for cost of screening children for obesity is noble idea but would be challenging to implement. Insurers and employers are likely to device creative ways of limiting their expenses on the screening programs. There is need for a law guarantying tougher ramifications for those insurers and employers who default the directives of the requirement. This information is based on Reed Abelson’s article, “Learning to Be Lean” published on January 16, 2012 on the New York Times.
References:
Abelson, Reed, 2012, Learning to be Lean, Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/health/learning-to-be-lean.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
