Healthcare

Private exchanges are a complex tool in a complex market, but they continue to evolve as employers switch to them, and brokers learn to work with them. Panelists discussed where they will go next during at opening keynote Tuesday at EBA’s Workplace Benefits Mania.

Minimum-wage activists seized on a decision against McDonald’s by the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel Tuesday, saying the move may make it easier to unionize workers and ultimately raise wages.

As the part-time workforce in America expands, a growing number of employers are considering voluntary benefit packages as a recruitment and retention tool not only for full-time staff, but their variable hour employees, as well.

Accountable care organizations promise better alignment of health care provider incentives and patient outcomes. Can ACOs revolutionize employer-sponsored health care?

A new national bipartisan legislative effort is using an incentivized approach to push more employers to offer paid family and medical leave to their employees.

Making the choice between TPAs serving as 3(16) fiduciaries or going with retirement planning advice in a 3(21) or 3(38) can help make financial management of a 401(k) plan go more smoothly.

Commentary: Benefit advisers and their employer clients continue to have questions about private exchanges. Blogger Dan Garlitz shares some recent FAQs fielded by exchange administrator bswift.

Commentary: Meditation is not just some quirky, hippy philosophy; it is actually grounded in physiology. Some companies have taken these benefits so seriously that they have dedicated quiet rooms within the office so employees can meditate.

Many companies have frozen their defined benefit plans to new hires. Others have abandoned their pensions in favor of a 401(k) or other defined contribution plan. But not everyone is happy with DC plans because they often leave participants to fend for themselves when most have never had to make investment decisions.

The Affordable Care Act’s medical loss ratio rule continues to force health insurers to pay refunds to consumers enrolled in individual and employer-sponsored health care coverage.