The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It

by Marty Makary

In 2018, researchers from the Illinois Workplace Wellness Study published a large randomized controlled trial of a wellness program conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The study included nearly 5,000 employees who agreed to participate; some employees were invited to receive a biometric health screening and an online health risk assessment and offered a number of wellness activities. Employees were paid for completing screenings and participating in activities. The researchers followed the employees to see how the program affected their activities, their health, their productivity, and their medical spending. In the final analysis, there was no difference between those who did the wellness program and those who didn’t. In the words of the New York Times, “The results were disappointing. There seemed to be no causal effects.”14 Most recently a JAMA study of 32,974 employees randomized to participate in a wellness program found “no significant differences in clinical markers of health; health care utilization, absenteeism, or job performance.”