Insurance companies to promote brain wellness

Giv­en the expect­ed growth of Alzheimer’s dis­ease across the aging US pop­u­la­tion and the cost of patient care, insur­ance com­pa­nies have a strong inter­est in reduc­ing the rate of cog­ni­tive decline, delay­ing the onset of Mild Cog­ni­tive Decline and Alzheimer’s symp­toms and slow­ing the pro­gres­sion of the dis­ease once it appears.

Some insur­ance pio­neers such as Humana and MetLife are exper­i­ment­ing with offer­ing brain fit­ness pro­grams and pro­vid­ing incen­tives to their mem­bers to live health­i­er lifestyles. In 2006 and 2007, Humana rolled out a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar agree­ment with Posit Sci­ence to offer Posit’s pro­gram for free or at reduced rates to its Medicare members.

Insur­ance com­pa­nies are among the lead­ers in dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion about the ben­e­fits of healthy brain habits. In 2005, MetLife pro­duced and dis­trib­uted a brochure on Ten Tips for Main­tain­ing a Healthy Brain.

Despite the lack of prod­uct-spe­cif­ic long-term effi­ca­cy results, insur­ers see the val­ue of adding a brain com­po­nent to well­ness and pre­ven­tion ini­tia­tives from a mem­ber recruit­ment and loy­al­ty point of view.

Keep learn­ing by read­ing more arti­cles in the Resources sec­tion, and also please con­sid­er join­ing our free month­ly Brain Fit­ness eNewsletter

This new online resource is based on the con­tent from the book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (May 2009, $19.95), by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg.