Benefits Think

Along with tying your shoes and naming your colors, you learned to count in preschool. So, how hard can it be to count things in health data? It’s not hard, but your preschool strategies won’t give you the right answer.

Benefits broker and advisory firm Prescott Pailet sees the delay as an opportunity to give many of its clients room to breathe – especially those in the restaurant and hospitality industries, who would be most impacted by potential penalties.

With health care upheaval, this industry is in a wild state of flux making it difficult for many brokers to predict their future, so what can and should they do?

Guest blogger Linda K. Riddell reviews Cracking Health Costs by Tom Emerick and Al Lewis.

Without taking a more aggressive approach to improving patient safety, any reform efforts, including the initiatives generated by the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act and multiple private sector projects, will be severely compromised.

Until now, sponsors of 403(b) plans had no cost-effective IRS program to help them review their plan document and ensure that it met all the necessary requirements, says the Principal Financial Group's Aaron Friedman. So what has the IRS done to overcome that?

According to a recent study from the University of London’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies, children whose mothers work during their early years do as well at school as those with stay-at-home moms.

There's a convergence of events and trends that will make or break the success of many employers’ benefit plans this year, suggests guest blogger Dani McCauley. However, a spot-on communications plan will smooth the road ahead, and can even turn risks into opportunities.

Historically, voluntary benefits have been dismissed by busy agents as more trouble than they are worth, but with the Affordable Care Act moving closer to full implementation, agents looking to keep existing clients and gain new business should give them a closer look. Still not convinced? Following are five reasons for incorporating voluntary benefits into client proposals: …

There is a movement afoot to put state governments in the business of offering retirement plans to private citizens, which would ultimately eliminate opportunities and siphon business away from financial professionals. Lawmakers in several states have proposed that states create government-run plans for private sector workers. While the details differ from state to state, every proposal this year would require employers who do not currently offer a plan to adopt a state-run plan, either in…