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.

A potential plan to pool the health care purchasing power of Detroit’s Big Three automakers in the form of a CO-OP or similar entity sounds intriguing to industry insiders, but they also caution that it wouldn’t be an easy road.

Greg Giangrande, executive vice president, chief human resources officer for Time Inc., is the recipient of EBN’s 2015 Benefits Leadership in Health Care Award.

Employers looking to attract top talent are using social media to make the employer brand the focus of their recruiting efforts.

Covered California recently announced $10 million in new grants for the upcoming exchange open-enrollment season awarded to 68 “navigator” groups, including about 12,000 certified insurance agents who played a pivotal part in enrolling 43% of state residents for 2015.

Proposed rate increases for 2016 health insurance coverage that a dozen carriers will sell on Covered California’s state-run exchange will be just 4% compared to the 4.2% rise approved for 2015.

Public exchange plan participants spent less money on medications in the first quarter of 2015 than the first quarter of 2014 amid changes in the demographic mix of enrollees, according to newly released data from Express Scripts Holding Company.

Connecticut’s AccessHealthCT is poised to become the nation’s first state-run marketplace that will be financially self-sustaining in 2016 when federal grants end for these online marketplaces as stipulated under the Affordable Care Act.

While Montana has one of the nation’s lowest head counts, it ranked a close second behind New Hampshire in terms of the highest rate of 2015 public exchange re-enrollment among 34 states that direct their residents to Healthcare.gov.

Next-generation total compensation statements meet employees’ demands for real-time benefits information and can offer employers a powerful recruiting tool.

As pressure mounts on state-run public health insurance exchanges to be financially self-sufficient in time for 2016, consumer operated and oriented plans created under the Affordable Care Act face the same challenge. And with two recent troubling developments in the CO-OP space, there are renewed questions about the long-term viability of these nonprofit entities.