Perhaps the strategy of the leaders of the wellness ignorati (who constitute the Koop Committee) is to overwhelm us with so many lies that we don’t have time to expose every one and still get home in time for dinner.

No sooner have we finished pointing out the numerous (and unrebutted) implausibilities and internal inconsistencies in Ron Goetzel’s posting on the value of workplace wellness, than the Koop Committee (Mr. Goetzel and his cabal) feeds us even more red meat:  They gave the 2014 Koop Award to British Petroleum.  However, apparently only British Petroleum wants to tell the world about it. The Koop Committee hasn’t even updated its own website to list 2014 award winners.

Recall that we’ve spent months excoriating Goetzel and his sidekicks (Wellsteps’ Steve Aldana, Milliman’s Bruce Pyenson, Mercer’s Dan Gold and the rest of them) for doing three things in the Nebraska award, for a program that prima facie seems to be in violation of Nebraska’s state contractor anti-fraud regulations:

(1)   Gave it to a program where the numbers were obviously fabricated and later admitted to be

(2)   Gave it to a program whose vendor sponsors the Committee

(3)   Forgot to disclose in the announcement that the vendor sponsors the Committee

Perhaps what you are about to read isn’t their fault.  Perhaps their mothers simply failed to play enough Mozart while the Committee members were in their respective wombs, but here’s how they applied the learning from the Nebraska embarrassment to their decision to award British Petroleum.  This time they:

(1)   Gave it to a program where the numbers had already been shown to be fabricated

(2)   Gave it to a program whose vendor sponsors the Committee

(3)   Forgot to disclose in the announcement that the vendor (Staywell) sponsors the Committee

(4)   Forgot to disclose in the announcement that the vendor sits on the Committee

(5)   Forgot to disclose in the announcement that the consulting firm (Mercer) sponsors the Committee

(6)   Forgot to disclose in the announcement that the consulting firm sits on the Committee

I suspect we will be writing a similar analysis again next year, when once again, the Committee will attempt to demonstrate the value of sponsoring a C. Everett Koop Award.