Employer Strategies

Health care exchanges and other issues related to the Affordable Care Act have garnered a great deal of attention. However, additional and less well-known ACA regulations went into effect on January 1. One of these impacts wellness programs, including the myriad initiatives employers have put in place to encourage employees to exercise, lose weight and otherwise improve their health to prevent illness, disability and its costs.

Target Corp. said it will end health insurance for part-time employees, joining Trader Joe’s Co., Home Depot Inc. and other retailers that have scaled back benefits in response to changes from Obamacare.

The hotly contested issue of workplace flexibility and its inherent benefits have swayed a new group of managers, according to the National Workplace Flexibility Study.

Employers and human resource professionals looking to get ahead of the benefits and health care reform game should take a note of a new free survey in the works by McGraw Wentworth.

The plaintiffs who lost a recent lawsuit trying to prevent the federal government from providing tax credits to purchase health insurance on federal exchanges have filed for an expedited appeal in the case.

Outcomes tracking and easy access are contributing to the rise of the employee assistance program. But your clients need you to spread the word.

With Obamacare bearing down on them, a doctors’ group said emergency rooms are less able to provide quality care, and more resources will be needed to handle an expected surge of patients from the new law.

Enrollment in Obamacare health plans for small businesses is off to a slow start, leaving in doubt whether the U.S. program can attract enough customers to satisfy insurers.

Despite assurances from the Department of Health and Human Services that Healthcare.gov is secure, Committee on Oversight & Government Reform Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calf.) said Thursday that we “must assume that website is still vulnerable and Americans may have [personally identifiable information] hacked and taken.”

The back-end payment system of Healthcare.gov is still being built, a senior Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services official said Thursday in testimony on Capitol Hill.