Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Cindy Webb

Abstract

The University of Northern Iowa (UNI) paid total annual employer medical premiums of $17,967,000 for 2008, an increase of 7.37% from 2007. If medical premiums continue to increase at this rate, UNI will pay $29,556,720 in annual medical premiums in 2015. UNI is not alone in facing rising healthcare costs. Healthcare costs were identified as the "most serious challenge to their bottom line" by 41. 7 percent of the employers in a survey by the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (Kumar 2009). The Business Roundtable Fourth Quarter 2007 CEO Economic Outlook Survey confirms these results with CEO's ranking the cost of health care as "the single biggest threat to company profits" (Adams 2008). To combat these costs, businesses have cut benefits, shifted costs to employees, and fired unhealthy workers (Armour 2005). Employee wellness programs are surpassing these responses in popularity, however, and are gaining the reputation as an effective response to the threat of healthcare costs (Goetzel 2008).

Year of Submission

2010

Department

Department of Management

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

5-2010

Object Description

1 PDF file (51 pages)

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