Bruce Shutan

Employee education is critical to health care cost management, says United Benefit Advisors’ Les McPhearson, who addresses rising plan costs in the company’s annual health plan survey.

While advances in medicine are helping more patients survive critical illnesses, nearly half of U.S. households have insufficient savings to cover a major medical condition.

Employers can play an influential role in shaping their benefit design so that it encourages employees to look at high-value providers and use tools that help make the health care decision-making process more transparent.

As public health insurance exchanges run by states or in partnership with the federal government edge toward financial self-sufficiency in 2016 as stipulated under the Affordable Care Act, adjustments are being made to achieve greater operational efficiencies for their third annual open-enrollment season and beyond.

A technical glitch with Vermont Health Connect dating back two years was finally corrected in a recent software upgrade, but it proved to be both time-consuming and costly for the state-based health insurance exchange described as “once-beleaguered.”

With nearly two dozen CO-OPs created under the Affordable Care Act continuing their financial struggles, attention is turning toward why they’re experiencing such difficulties.

Flexible spending accounts have long been a favorite tool among working Americans to help budget for out-of-pocket costs but they could be an unintended casualty of health care reform.

Hospital consolidation is driving up public exchange bills in mostly urban areas and could jeopardize quality of care.

Health insurance carriers have not poached healthier customers from the exchanges for plans sold outside the exchanges, which some feared would lead to adverse selection in the public exchange market, concludes a recent issue brief.

New workplace programs are helping companies reduce the stigma associated with mental health.