Someone suggested that I call my Congressman to pass a law against Interactive Health, but I think the Justice Department is the more appropriate route. No, not because they’re harming employees — there is no law against employers harming employees in the name of wellness. Quite the contrary, the most recent Koop Award went to a vendor, Wellsteps, which did exactly that.

Rather, I would propose an antitrust action, because Interactive Health is attempting to create a monopoly on stupidity.

Yes, it seems like hardly a day goes by without the irresistible force of Interactive Health’s corporate IQ colliding with the immovable object of reality.  The thing is, their moles pop up faster than I can whack them on Linkedin, so here is a tasting menu of their greatest hits. You can’t find most of these observations on Linkedin for the simple reason that they delete them.

This was originally going to be a comprehensive retrospective of all their nonsense (Exhibit A for the Grand Jury to review), but in the two weeks since I started writing it, yet another mole popped up. This one could top the list if not for their “smoking recession program.”

• An analysis of 2017 member data revealed that those clients who test all employees for Hemoglobin A1c identified up to 3 times more individuals at risk for pre-diabetes versus other testing. As a result, inclusion of Hemoglobin A1c testing for all employees is often a strategic recommendation for our clients. 

Since pre-diabetes is a risk factor for diabetes (and only a fraction of pre-diabetics become diabetic, after 5 to 10 years), they are hunting for employees who are “at risk for being at risk.” Who amongst us is not at risk being at risk for something? But that doesn’t mean they’ll end up with diabetes, any more than every kid who steals a cookie from a cookie jar becomes a bank robber — even if every bank robber did in fact at some point in their childhood steal a cookie from a cookie jar.

Using testing guidelines so contrary to the US Preventive Services Task Force that a beam of light leaving USPSTF guidelines wouldn’t reach them for several seconds, Interactive Health takes great pride in “identifying 3 times more individuals” than companies that test employees according to guidelines. Cue Inspector Louis Renault: “Owing to the seriousness of this crime, we are rounding up twice the number of usual suspects.”

One might be excused for assuming that the point of screening would be to “round up” the most appropriate employees, rather than the largest number of employees. One might also be excused for thinking Interactive Health is simply stupid, when in reality they are fully aware they violate guidelines, recognizing that their typical customer doesn’t realize this and is willing to, in the immortal words of that great philosopher the Queen of Hearts, believe six impossible things before breakfast.

in case anyone else is interested — we know Interactive Health isn’t — the USPSTF recommends screening only overweight/obese 40-to-70-year-olds for HbA1c. That’s to prevent exactly the kind of hyperdiagnostic employee harassment that comprises Interactive Health’s signature strategy: more tests = more revenues. They make Wellsteps look like an honest, intelligent vendor, which is no easy feat.

We also thought of contacting the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO), to let them know there was a vendor making the industry look bad (or look even worse), but it turns out that for HERO, cluelessness is a feature, not a bug.  Specifically, HERO has highlighted a case study by Interactive Health, which would be like Bernie Madoff highlighting his investment in Enron.

Update. Alas, I’m afraid there won’t be an investigation into their stupidity. At this point, they are so far ahead in the race to the bottom that it would be impossible to empanel a jury of their peers.