Healthy Habits and Health Coverage Go Hand in Hand

Insured Americans are also healthier Americans, a new poll finds.

• The Gallup polling company’s Healthy Behaviors Index – a component of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index — shows that those with health coverage have healthier habits than do those without insurance.
• The survey focuses on adults between 18 and 64 years old.
• Healthy lifestyles and having health coverage combine to benefit Americans with longer, healthier lives.

The Gallup-Healthways Index tracks how the insured consistently practice healthier living.

• More than age, sex, education, employment, income or ethnicity, being insured correlates more closely with specific healthy conduct.
• This survey asks if respondents smoke, exercise regularly and eat healthy foods.
• Working-age adult Americans, 80 percent of whom report having health coverage, develop healthy habits.
• Those with insurance smoke at dramatically lower rates than do the uninsured — 20 percent versus 36 percent, respectively.
• The insured eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables four or more days in a week.  Fifty-six percent reports doing so, compared with half of the uninsured.
• Fifty-three percent of the insured exercise for half an hour or longer at least three days a week.  Fifty-one percent of the uninsured exercise that regularly.

This survey doesn’t claim that insurance status causes healthy behavior.  It examines how the two factors relate to each other.

• Insured Americans consider their overall health as better than the uninsured rate their own overall health.
• It’s clear there’s room for job-based wellness to further the level of healthy living.  Only 8 percent of American workers believe strongly that their workplace takes steps to boost their physical health.
• In the next few years, employers will gain greater incentives for adopting workplace wellness programs.

There’s no denying that health insurance coverage and healthier behavior are related.  Health leaders believe that wellness initiatives can enhance healthy habits.  As such programs expand in the workplace, more Americans will likely adopt better habits.  And the fact that most Americans with private health coverage obtain it through a job bodes well for long-term health and wellness.