doodledee

I came home from work the other day and found a letter from Medica, our health insurance company, waiting for me at the door. What a treat! Better than ice cream! Trembling with excitement, I slowly opened it, taking special care not to rip the cream colored envelope any more than was absolutely necessary.

Turns out it was just junk mail. Darn.

But since I had gone as far as opening it, I figured it was worth at least unfolding the letter to make sure I wouldn't be missing out on the insurance opportunity of a lifetime. You never know, right?

It was just an ad. An ad for a new program that they're starting. A new program where they'll reimburse you up to $20/month for going to a health club and working out so - presumably - you don't get out of shape and then, uhh, get sick or something? Who knows.

I looked into it a little more and to me it feels like your basic sham deal where the only goal is to drive people to use one of the local health club chains. I really want to try and use the word 'synergy' to describe this co-branded piece of marketing wizardry, but I don't think the club is owned or operated by Medica, so I'll have to restrain myself. Instead I'll go with the phrase 'seemingly obvious bedfellows'.

At first I thought the $20 might be a pretty good deal. And when I say 'good deal' I really mean 'maybe I'll actually *make* money, chumps'. Then I dug in and saw that the membership fees at the club you HAVE TO GO TO IN ORDER TO GET REIMBURSED are pretty spendy. Like $70/month spendy. Like way, way too much for me spendy.

That's seems like such a joke. What's the difference if I go work out at some 'fancy' club instead of just going to the Y? Or better yet (because I'm still too cheap for the Y), how about if I promise to go run around Lake Harriet a couple of times a week? That seems healthy, right? And what if on top of that I play a couple games of soccer or maybe some softball and maybe after softball I promise that I'll drink maybe 4 or 7 beers and maybe throw down a couple of bratwursts?

Ok, forget the beer and brat stuff, but the rest of it feels like good enough justification for them to pay me. Somehow I think they might disagree.

Verdict: stupid program.