The third-largest North American supermarket chain has saved millions in medical costs by practicing preventative healthcare and making employees accountable for their weight, smoking, cholesterol, and blood pressure.
President Steven Burd said he didn’t want to wait for government healthcare reform so he decided to design his own. He is now encouraging other companies and the federal government to adopt similar healthcare models.
He believes that your behavior is a form of currency and practicing better healthcare saves money. Safeway spends about $1 billion a year for 200,000 employees. But those cost levels have held steady since 2005 even while the cost of healthcare has risen.
The Safeway president concurs with experts who blame chronic disease like heart disease and cancer for most of the healthcare spending in the United States. But behavior such as smoking, lack of exercise, and bad diet are to blame for up to two-thirds of cases of cancer and heart disease.
Burd said his company has taken advantage of an esoteric fact that 70 percent of medical care costs are driven by behaviors.
