Brian M. Kalish

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.

A new analysis estimates even more employers will move active employees to private exchanges in part because brokers are taking on a bigger role in pushing them as a solution to rising health care costs.

As private exchange providers introduce voluntary benefit offerings, how will broker commissions be affected?

Employers continue to express interest in private exchanges, but most are hesitant to be the first to make the jump. What they will do once others switch, however, may surprise you.

The Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday that Kevin Counihan, the head of Connecticut’s state-run exchange will join the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as CEO of the Marketplace, also known as the federal government’s health care exchange.

Although open enrollment for ACA plans is not set to begin until November 15, a new report estimates that nearly 7 million adults may be able to enroll through special enrollment periods.

Brokers and assisters will need to work closer together to help consumers during the 2015 ACA open enrollment, but most agree that will involve overcoming some underlying issues.

While the logistics of health care growing increasingly complex, benefit advisers could and should play a crucial role in helping employers and employees understand the new health care delivery system.

Private exchanges are a complex tool in a complex market, but they continue to evolve as employers switch to them, and brokers learn to work with them. Panelists discussed where they will go next during at opening keynote Tuesday at EBA’s Workplace Benefits Mania.

A boom in private exchanges and a changing distribution system for health care will create a new landscape for benefits managers and advisers, with more emphasis on consumer-directed health care.

A new HHS report finds most inconsistencies on the federally run state exchanges went unresolved due to inoperative systems.