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The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded seven grants totaling $241 million to assist "early innovator" states in building the information technology infrastructure necessary to operate state-level health information exchanges mandated under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

President Barack Obama extended an olive branch on Monday to states struggling to implement his health care law, offering support for a proposal that would give them some flexibility in carrying out its key parts.

Never have more partners than you can fit in an elevator. While that sounds like a joke, in fact it's good advice when you're starting a business. While it is important to have partners who bring skills to the table, the choices must be made carefully and with an eye toward keeping the group a manageable size.

Well, football season is over, and we are now headlong into March Madness. It's likely to be almost as frenetic as the ongoing gyrations surrounding PPACA in the political forum, the courts, and in the marketplace.

In past columns I've highlighted some of the reasons why women are so successful in the insurance industry. However, we still face certain challenges.

Health care reform has been good for business - true or false? These days, it still depends on whom you ask. Ask a producer who sells critical care insurance, though, and the answer you'll probably get is "true."

Voluntary benefits is often referred to as "worksite marketing." Many carriers, in fact, refer to their voluntary products as "worksite voluntary benefits." Recent developments in enrollment technology, however, are rapidly making the term "worksite" obsolete and no longer relevant to the voluntary benefits process. The term "worksite" derives from how these benefits have had to be enrolled. As products that are voluntarily purchased by employees, the only consistently effective means of presenting (and selling) them have been one-on-one employee meetings with licensed benefit counselors (enrollers) at the workplace during the workday.

The social business software market is evolving rapidly, and so are the language and features of the category.

To begin, we learned about the Death of worksite voluntary benefits. Well, not so much the death of them, but more of a re-working. We need to keep in touch and keep tabs on the market place. It's important to keep up with the terms being used - "core" and "voluntary" might have new meanings to your prospective clients. You've got to stay in touch with carriers offering worksite plans and be up to speed on how they integrate with the entire benefit package - or some other adviser will be telling your former clients about it!

In last month's column we detailed the three psychological states that benefits buyers find themselves in, especially the one you want to lead a buyer to - "satisfied." If you missed my last column, you may want to pick up a copy of the February issue of EBA or read the digital edition on the EBA website, eba.benefitnews.com.