Healthcare

In an era when health care consumerism is being touted as a game-changer for employer-sponsored benefits, offering employees a variety of choices when it comes to how and where they fill their drug prescriptions is an important satisfaction driver.

Although the scars are still visible since the economy’s near-collapse, investors today are more optimistic than they have been since 2007.

As more and more companies are flooded with administrative duties due to the Affordable Care Act, cloud-based HR and benefits systems such as Zenefits are starting to gain a substantial hold in the employer market.

Those who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s state and federal exchanges will have more choices for coverage beginning in 2015, according to a Department of Health and Human Services report released Tuesday.

Despite this past summer’s Supreme Court decision in Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer, which found that fiduciaries of employee stock ownership plans are subject to the same duty of prudence that applies to ERISA fiduciaries in general, companies with ESOPs and stock purchase plans are seeing an increase in plan assets and are using the plans as a retention tool.

Premiums for health plans purchased on the Affordable Care Act’s Small Business Health Options Program exchanges were slightly cheaper than plans only offered elsewhere, a recent study found, but advisers say the study misses the big picture.

The Employer Measures of Productivity, Absence and Quality program, originally launched in 2001, is getting a new life after a two-year pause thanks to the National Business Group on Health’s partnership with Truven Health Analytics.

The American Benefits Council has introduced its strategic plans for health and retirement policy, providing 46 specific regulatory recommendations for Congress to consider in easing the burdens on employees, employers and government agencies.

Commentary: Despite perceived cost savings, most narrow networks have actually missed the opportunity to improve value — and their lack of transparency threatens to unleash a ferocious consumer backlash, says Dartmouth's Scott Wallace.

Many employers are "taking necessary steps to rein in costs," the National Business Group on Health says, but a new Mercer survey shows plenty remain on auto-pilot.