In 2015 I offered a million-dollar reward to show wellness works. Or, more accurately, to show that it isn’t a complete failure. I got no takers.  I guess when you snooker employers as successfully as they do, a million dollars is pocket change. Not worth their attention, like a penny on the sidewalk.

So now it’s a $2-million reward.  The rules are posted at Insurance Thought Leadership.  And, yes, the rules are legally binding. All you have to do is prove wellness isn’t an epic fail. Not Kate Baicker’s THC-infused 3.27-to-1 ROI.  Not even a standard 2-to-1 ROI. Just that it breaks even. How hard is that?  Name any other industry that doesn’t break even.  And that it doesn’t harm employees. How how is it to show that an industry devoted to employee health doesn’t harm them?

Oh, yeah, one rule is that you have to pass a lie detector test (as do I). This is a risk on my end: few people can lie well enough to beat a polygraph, but then again few people have as much lying experience as these self-anointed wellness industry leaders do.

When I was in high school a teacher had a vat of concentrated hydrochloric acid with a pH of 4, and a silver dollar. (Smaller coins were mostly copper, of course.) He asked if the acid would dissolve the silver dollar when he dropped it in, or if not, why not?  Other kids were peeling through their notes.

I raised my hand and said: “It won’t dissolve, because if it would, you wouldn’t drop it in,” which of course was the correct answer. (A pH of 4 is not much different from acid rain.)

So don’t expect to see me living under a bridge eating squirrel anytime soon. (They say it tastes like chicken.)