Employer Strategies

Walgreen Co. become the latest large employer to make significant changes to its employee health plan when it announced that it will move approximately 160,000 of its employees onto a private health insurance exchange, starting in 2014. The strategy is starting to look like a trend: Over the last several months, IBM, Time Warner, Sears Holdings and Darden Restaurants have all made similar announcements.

For HR professionals, mid-year nondiscrimination testing needs to be at the top of that list. Waiting to test until the completion of the year can have severe negative consequences.

Passive approach to retirement investing still indicated.

Several answers might apply, but a good goal is to avoid regulatory difficulties.

We’re living in the age of big data, so why has so little changed in how we make our health insurance decisions, asks Liazon co-founder Alan Cohen. The private exchange entrepreneur makes the case why benefits should meet technology.

President Barack Obama said he’s sorry that thousands of Americans are losing their medical insurance as a result of his health care law, as his administration works to contain the political damage from the troubled roll-out of his signature domestic achievement.

The new rules, which come five years after the Mental Health Parity act was passed, mean insurers won’t be able to charge higher co-payments or deductibles for mental illness or limit the duration of care.

Even if their employees don't use the exchanges, their functioning depends pretty heavily on some critical interactions among exchanges, employers, and their employees.

These two new reporting requirements are in addition to the current requirement to report the cost of coverage on Form W-2.

Employee benefits attorneys share how employers facing Affordable Care Act reforms can think outside the box for health plan changes in 2014.