I had just begun eating a small bag of potato chips that was serving as lunch when Michael Critelli called me back. It's bad form to make crunching noises into the phone while interviewing someone, even if you rotate the mouthpiece so it points at the back of your head. But to get caught eating potato chips by Critelli is particularly embarrassing.

Critelli is chairman and CEO of Pitney Bowes, the guys who make postage meters, and he wants to radically change the way healthcare is discussed in the United States. On May 14, he will step down from his position to become executive chairman of the $5.7-billion company, in part to devote more time to this quest.

"We have to treat medical conditions as conditions that people can prevent or make less serious by modifying their behavior," he said. "Sickness is not something randomly visited on people contrary to the prevailing view. Our primary focus has to be on getting appropriate, affordable access to healthcare. It's about access and cost, not investment."

In 2000, Pitney Bowes faced a surge in costs in its healthcare program. When its analysts looked at why, they found that the idea of pushing more of the cost of healthcare onto employees had come back to bite them. By raising co-pays for things like cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, Pitney Bowes had inadvertently reduced their employees' compliance with disease-management plans.

"If you raise that price and the employee stops taking the medication, there's a high probability that in some future year they will be hospitalized,' he said. 'That will wipe out any benefit of what you transfer to them and will probably end up costing you a lot more over the long run."

The problem, Critelli says, is our whole approach. He said between 40 and 70 percent of our healthcare costs stem from behavioral problems that are effectively preventable. "We are experiencing an epidemic of growth in this country of chronic diseases like diabetes, asthma and hypertension," he said. "Many of these conditions are a direct result of inadequate fitness, nutrition and lifestyle."

I wondered if he could hear the sound of fresh trans fats in my mouth.

Critelli asked me to use my imagination. What if the US approached product liability the same way we approach healthcare? If there were a massive failure of brakes in American automobiles, politicians would talk about the need for more brake repair shops, better access to brake repair shops and a single-payer system for brake repairs.

And that would be silly. "You'd laugh at it," Critelli said. "You'd say, 'Doesn't anybody want to know why the brakes are failing?'"

Today, Pitney Bowes, which is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, places special emphasis on prevention of asthma, cardiovascular disease and diabetes in its workforce. It also provides access to free medical clinics, fitness centers and a cafeteria designed to make it easier for people to eat healthy food: it's subsidized and placed near the checkout. Less healthy food is available but sold at market prices and tucked away in corners.

The approach has worked. Pitney Bowes, which spends about $150 million on employee healthcare each year, has experienced about half the rate of annual increases seen by its peers. Critelli said it would have been even better except his workforce is aging and half work at customer sites where they don?t have access to the company's clinics.

"I don't believe in humiliating people and using the stick. I do believe the carrot is very effective."

When our call ended, I said to myself, "He's right about carrots. I have to start eating more carrots."