Brian M. Kalish

Private exchanges are giving brokers and benefit advisers a new venue to increase voluntary benefit sales.

Aetna’s planned acquisition of private exchange operator bswift may signal the start of more insurers acquiring private exchanges, experts in the industry say.

Aetna announced Monday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire private health insurance exchange operator bswift for $400 million.

As active employees move into a retiree population, health care decision-making also changes. Some companies provide a subsidy to the retiree population for purchasing health care on their own, but the tracking of that subsidy and the associated premiums create stress on an already overworked HR department.

In a new series, EBA goes one-on-one with the heads of private exchanges. What makes one exchange different from the rest, and how do brokers fit in the mix? First up: Don Garlitz, bswift's executive director of exchange solutions.

After multiple delays, early access to the federally-facilitated Small Business Health Options Program launched Monday in five states.

Although open enrollment for 2015 Obamacare plans opens in just over three weeks, the uninsured remain unclear about the dates and possible financial assistance available.

CMS promises better, but brokers expect more disconnected phone calls, incorrect information and a difficult time processing applications for enrollment on Healthcare.gov.

The new CEO of the federal health insurance marketplace, Kevin Counihan, knows there is room for improvement, but says new processes have Healthcare.gov ready for 2015 open enrollment.

A fix is in the works to ensure agents and brokers can identify themselves and therefore receive commissions for their work on the federally-facilitated marketplace, an agency official at The Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight said Tuesday.

Initial numbers for 2015 open enrollment put participation in Mercer’s Marketplace exchange at nearly five times the size of 2014 rates. The consulting firm also added 40 additional clients to the exchange who were not previously with Mercer.

A new broker-friendly private exchange is launching that will allow employees at companies with less than 50 lives to buy health insurance using pre-tax dollars.

Aon Hewitt expects more than 1.2 million employees, retirees and their families to choose health benefits through the company’s exchanges — revising their earlier estimates upward.

Private health care exchanges bring with them major implications for employer-sponsored benefits, including a shift to defined contribution health care and increased access to data.

Complicated and tedious ACA reporting requirements are forcing benefit advisers who want to stay relevant to adapt to a more automated way of doing business.

  Walgreen Co.’s director of health, benefits and wellbeing knew his company, like most in the U.S., was on an unsustainable path of increasing health care costs combined with employees who didn’t focus on their wellbeing. But when the company’s senior directors started thinking about moving employee health care offerings to a private exchange, he was adamantly against it. …

Employers who moved to Aon Hewitt’s multi-carrier fully-insured private health care exchange experienced overall health care cost savings for the 2014 plan year — providing some of the first data on the impact of post-Affordable Care Act private exchanges.

Increased and unnecessary risks to Healthcare.gov security remain, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services has failed to implement and address security issues, the GAO says.

New analysis finds there are four types of private exchanges – what are they and how do employers pick which is right for them?

About 115,000 people who signed up for Obamacare and may not be legal residents of the U.S. will lose their insurance coverage at the end of the month, the government said Monday.