With healthcare on the rise, is there really a chance that your provider will also cover the costs of a life coach? In a recent report, CareSource, a nonprofit insurance company that operates in Indiana, Ohio, and other states is doing just that and here is why: because they see how the improvement in your life has a direct correlation to your health.
Lets face it, people are stressed out and unhappy mostly because they are financially burdened and lack clarity on how to lead a successful life and this is where having a coach can have a tremendous impact. When people become overwhelmed and anxious in their life, this can create a domino effect of other poor choices that can lead to other chronic diseases that cause insurers even more money.
MaryBeth Musumeci, who studies Medicaid programs for the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, D.C also stated that “There’s an incentive on the individual enrollee level to make sure that people are as healthy as possible and are using preventative care. This can save insurers from paying for more expensive treatments for chronic disease or visits to the emergency departments.”
For years now customers have been pleading with their insurance providers to start covering general wellness items such as massages, acupuncture, and other alternative therapies. While some healthcare providers have slowly begun to support these types of claims, it seems like it may be quite some time until the major companies start to see services such as life coaching in the same way they do counseling mostly because life coaching is not regulated by the state.
In an article Chron it stated that “There are no formal education requirements needed to become a life coach, either. In fact, essentially any person who wants to be a life coach can become a life coach, regardless of age or educational background. It is an industry that has little regulation, despite its pace of growth.”
Because of this, it will be challenging for the major healthcare providers to get fully behind it since they would be covering the costs of a service that has no formal over-site. Yet with coaching revenue topping over $1B, sooner or later these companies will need to acknowledge its need in the community and ability to positively impact people’s health in a positive way saving them millions of dollars.