Cvs Caremark: Fill & Download for Free

From their site (Company History | CVS Caremark):"1963The first CVS store, selling health and beauty products, is founded in Lowell, Mass. by brothers Stanley and Sidney Goldstein and partner Ralph Hoagland. CVS stands for Consumer Value Stores."

Smoking rates have fallen sharply over the last several decades among high-income, highly educated Americans, but the quit rate hasn’t been as dramatic for less educated, low-income citizens. Consider these 2013 statistics from the Center for Disease Control and Protection:The smoking rate amongst people with a high school degree or less exceeded 20%In sharp contrast, the smoking rate among those with a graduate degree was just 5.6%The smoking rate of those living below the poverty line was 29%The smoking rate of those at or above the poverty showed a marked decrease at 16%According to a recent study conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine, companies that provide financial incentives for employees who are quitting smoking have shown promising results. Researchers randomly assigned employees of CVS Caremark to groups being offered different financial incentives to quit. Some were offered $800 bonuses, while others were asked to make $150 refundable deposits with a promise of $650 in reward payments for successfully quitting. The results were most encouraging for the bonus group:Participants who were offered the $800 bonus to quit stopped at almost three times the rate of those not offered any financial incentive.The abstinence rate amongst the bonus group was 15.7%The abstinence rate amongst the deposit group was 10.2%Participants were less willing to initially commit to making a deposit than receiving a bonus, so this participant group was much smaller.Interestingly, the study’s appendix also factored in participants’ income with their success rates: those earning above $60K quit more than participants earning a lower income. The study’s authors reasoned that lower-income smokers were less willing to participate in any incentive programs, because the deposit (and the reward) represented a higher share of their income. Companies may want to consider implementing disproportionately larger dollar bonuses to get lower earners to quit.

CVS Caremark is comprised of two separate entities: CVS (a retail chain drug store) and Caremark (a pharmacy benefit manager or PBM). A PBM is an organization that promotes managed care concepts (i.e. providing the most effective health care while maintaining low costs) and sells its pharmacy benefit services to employer groups and health plans. Personally, I think the motivation behind this move is to show potential clients on the PBM side that CVS Caremark is aligned with wellness. If they are to win new clients, CVS Caremark has plenty of programs that promote the use of their CVS pharmacies. Yes, they will be losing money up front, but I think this is more of a long term strategy to takes clients away from other PBMs (e.g. Express Scripts, Optum Rx, Catamaran, etc).