Healthcare

Commentary: The deadline for discrimination testing has come and gone. If your clients are like many employers, they didn’t do so well.

Voluntary benefit sales are enjoying rapid growth as employers prepare for the impact of the Affordable Care Act by revamping their medical plan designs to include more products such as accident and critical illness benefits.

Two months before health insurers must submit rate proposals for 2015 to government regulators, WellPoint Inc. fired a surprising shot across their bow by predicting it may ask for “double-digit plus” increases.

A divided U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday debated whether companies can assert religious rights, hearing arguments in an ideological clash over the Affordable Care Act and rules that promote contraceptive coverage.

A community with high well-being is one where citizens and employees are satisfied with their lifestyle and overall health. In this year’s Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, top honors go to Provo-Orem, Utah.

Access to prescription drugs is more challenging for consumers buying insurance through the exchanges than those covered by employer-sponsored insurance plans, an analysis by Avalere Health finds.

Obamacare opponents will argue Tuesday, to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, that millions of otherwise qualified people in the 36 states that haven’t set up marketplaces are ineligible to receive the subsidies.

State-run exchange flaws have sparked talk of extending the open enrollment deadline beyond March 31 in states where residents could not complete applications through their respective online marketplaces.

With just days to go in open enrollment on the ACA’s public exchanges, brokers say the biggest problem is getting a hold of certain carriers, and one in particular rose to the top of the list of complaints.

Employers are making creative changes to employee benefit offerings to stem the tide of rising health care costs, but many are taking a wait-and-see approach to private exchanges, according to presenters at MetLife’s 10th National Benefits Symposium Monday.