Benefits Think

With retirement savings accounts taking as much as a 50% hit due to the financial market collapse and ensuing recession, everyone is looking for a way to recoup those losses.

Looks like Congress is trying to make Santa’s “nice” list. The Senate, in particular, was quite busy over the weekend, not only clearing one of the last procedural hurdles in the way of a final vote on health care reform legislation, but also voting 88-10 on Saturday to extend the COBRA subsidy originally implemented in the stimulus package earlier this year.

Panicking about the impact of health care reform legislation? Chances are, your benefit consulting firm has already developed a proprietary tool for this very occasion.

With compromise in the air on Capitol Hill during the holiday season, the stage is set for health care reform legislation passing the House and Senate before boardrooms across Corporate America wrestle with any unintended consequences.

I admit, I’m just not going to read the more than 2,000 pages that are the House and Senate health care reform bills. Maybe it’s the environmentalist in me, or maybe it’s the knowledge that much of what I read would make me mad.

Maybe it’s because I have miles to go until I can actually collect Social Security – not to mention the fact that I’m not wholly convinced it will be available to me even when I’m eligible – but I tend to gloss over the annual SSA statements that tell me how much of a benefit I could collect once my working days are at last behind me.

I’ve long maintained that President Obama’s statement on health care reform that “If you like your coverage and your doctor, you can keep it,” was naïve at best and an outright lie at worst.

Pennsylvania has been held up as a model for health care reform at the national level with regard to collecting and reporting quality and cost data, with employers in the Keystone State steering care to the best-performing hospitals.

Tucked inside one of the massive health care reform bills in the U.S. Senate is a provision that would raise financial incentives in corporate wellness programs based on health factors from 20% to 50% of the combined annual health insurance premium paid by the employer and employee.

We know that for all the cutbacks you’ve had to make this year, one thing has not lessened: employee stress levels. In addition to other survey findings earlier this year on burgeoning employee burnout, new numbers from Watson Wyatt indicate stress levels still are heightened even as the economy shows some renewed signs of life.