How Health Insurance could profit from vitamin D

Proposal: Have a health insurance company send free vitamin D to a subset of their customers (as a trial)
Expectation

• Within 3 months the company will experience a decrease in medical expenses (and substantial decrease in less than 5 years)
• The company will experience the economic benefits, expand the trial to more customers, or, other insurance companies or HMO will also do a similar trial

Options

1. Provide the vitamin D as an opt-out, that is send it and let the customers reject it if they wish.
      The first 30 days of vitamin D is sent to the set of customers, and customer opts-in for free annual refills
      Just $8 for 5,000 IU of vitamin D daily for a person for a year.
2. Customers can request free blood testing several times per year
3. Give a discount to those customers who have >30 ng/ml (This encourages customers to take the vitamin D supplement)
4. Trial might focus on a high-risk group which should quickly show success, such as those customers far from equator (Alaska), dark skinned, etc.

This proposal is based on a previously successful trial by an insurace company

The brain fitness company Posit Science had Allstate Automobile Insurance provide free brain fitness software to everyone of their 50+ automobile drivers in a single state (Penn) in 2009.
That trial was so successful (i.e. Allstate made money due to fewer automobile accidents) that in 2010 Allstate is expanding the trial to offer the software at significant discount to their all their drivers in all 50 states. CLICK FOR REFERENCE.
Allstate is also considering offering a discount on insurance for drivers who have used the software CLICK FOR REFERENCE

Many employers have found that they save money by paying their employees to be healthier

• Companies and individuals will benefit from more vitamin D