Wellness

Last week, Meritain Health, a provider of self-funded health and wellness plans, found that 89% of participants had improved blood pressure and 77% had reduced LDL cholesterol.

The excise tax remains employers’ No. 1 concern with the health care reform law, with 45% of employers surveyed recently by Mercer citing it as a significant concern.

More than half of the average company’s employees do not engage in wellness programs because they don’t think the programs are relevant to them. Thus, changing their minds also requires a change in how the programs are rolled out.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc will no longer offer health insurance to new part-time U.S. employees who work fewer than 24 hours a week and will charge workers who use tobacco more for coverage as health care costs rise, the company said on Friday.

Full-time U.S. workers who have chronic health troubles or are overweight cost more than $153 billion in lost productivity each year from absenteeism, according to a Gallup-Healthways study released on Monday.

The Obama administration is pulling the plug on a long-term, home-care program included in the 2010 health care reform law that Republicans have derided as a budget trick.

What good are company wellness programs if employees don't know about them and the services offered? Just like other employee benefits, wellness programs can be under-appreciated and under-used if they're not properly communicated.

It’s getting close to Halloween, which has many of us thinking about ghosts, witches, vampires and zombies. Apparently, the Obama administration is even getting into the spirit of the season, with a zombie of its own. Perhaps, though, you know it better as the CLASS Act. CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports) is the famous/infamous portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that would allow voluntary enrollees to participate in a public long-term care…

An advisory group urged U.S. officials to formulate a set of essential health benefits under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul that is in line with cost of insurance in a typical small employer plan.

President Obama's sweeping health care overhaul will top the agenda in the new Supreme Court term that opened on Monday and could be the most momentous in decades.