Saying more than half of Americans are unaware of key preventive-care benefits,Bloomfield health insurer Cigna has launched a new ad campaign called, “America Says Ahh.” The immediate goal of the campaign is to reinforce Cigna’s wellness partnership with its customers.
Cigna cites a recent Centers for Disease Control study that shows Americans use preventive services at only about half the recommended rate. It’s going to push its clients to get annual physicals.
“Our goal is to encourage checkups to help save 100,000 lives a year, the number the CDC estimates would be saved if everyone received the recommended preventive care,” explained Stephen Cassell, Cigna’s global branding officer. “We’re starting right here at Cigna. We are challenging all Cigna employees to complete their free annual checkup.” Cigna has 37,200 employees.
However, there is some pushback against annual physicals. Dr. Pieter Cohen, an internist with the Cambridge Health Alliance and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a New York Times interview that the problem with physicals is they are designed to meet the needs of insurance companies and not patients. “This idea of what we call the routine physical is a completely arbitrary construct based on billing,” Cohen said in the article.
The ad campaign also encourages consumers to know four key numbers: body mass index (BMI), cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar. An announcement from the insurer says they are the main drivers of managing and reducing healthcare costs, as illustrated by recent Cigna health studies.
