Healthcare

Cathy Meyers had already fought cancer twice, once in 1992, again in 2003, before she was diagnosed for a third time with neuroendocrine cancer in the pancreas in 2009. She thought her time was up. How could fate hand someone a proverbial death sentence three times in a row, with the third being the same cancer that sent Steve Jobs to his deathbed?

Something is costing your health plan a whole lot of money, and it's largely due to uninformed choice. No, it's not lax benefit selections, but rather early induced deliveries.

Cost increases for health care are perhaps slowing down somewhat, with employer health benefit expenditures not expected to increase in 2012 at the same explosive growth rate of recent years. Costs for all types of medical plans are expected to increase by 9.9% for 2012, according to a survey by Buck Consultants. It's the first time since 2001 that Buck's survey has projected cost increases less than 10% for any type of plan. The firm has been conducting its survey since 1999.

Delivering quality health care benefits to an employee population has only become more complicated due to legislative policy and escalating claims costs - making consumer education and empowerment all the more important in containing cost increases.

Although the tax implications of total compensation may sound as dry as the Sahara, Ernst & Young principal Sean Watts says that knowing the potential pitfalls before developing or changing your total comp strategy could help you avoid a compliance sandstorm and be the oasis your bottom line needs.

Aon Hewitt isn't letting health care reform dictate its business model. If anything, it's the other way around. In addition to publishing an influential report on the implications of health reform for large employers, CEO Kristi Savacool has been to the White House several times in recent months to discuss the company's retiree health care exchange and upcoming active employee exchange model. "We have been on the front line," says Savacool, "really influencing the development of health care reform, influencing our clients with respect to how they put their own health care strategies together."

A dear friend, who is a veteran nurse, recently told me about her husband's post-operative experience. The surgery itself went well; immediately after his return to the nursing unit, he was appropriately asked by his nurse, "How is your pain?" Using the almost-universal pain scale, she asked him to rate his pain from zero (being no pain at all) to 10 (being the worst pain you've ever experienced).

As Americans live more of their lives online, perhaps it only makes sense that online recognition has taken off in the corporate context.

Throughout his 35-year career in the employee benefit business Larry Brodsky has come across few opportunities to introduce a product to an employer that is both new and almost universally appreciated. The president of Lawrence S. Brodsky Agency in Palatine, Ill., found such a product about two years ago after a Web search for pet insurance introduced him to Pet Assure. Not an insurance program - but a discount plan for pet owners.

How well is your agency managed? Is it being managed to generate maximum top-line revenue and maximum bottom-line profit?