Employer Strategies

Last September, after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act gave the Department of Health and Human Services authority to review premium rates in states that didn't have strong enough review programs, the agency began handing down decrees of "unreasonable" premium rates for insurers that proposed increasing rates by an average of 10% or more - meaning HHS can publically shame an insurer.

"The whole onsite clinic thing has been a buzz the last few years," says Michael Troup, partner at Forsite Benefits.

We talk a good game in the health care system. We say we want to empower patients, but how powerful do we really want them to be? We say we want to give them enough information so they can make informed choices, but how do we deliver that information so that patients truly understand what is being said? As health care reform continues and open enrollment periods occur, encourage your employees to know that they are the key to this empowerment that everyone's talking about. Thus, it's important that they be educated about, and encouraged to exercise, their medical freedoms - specifically, the freedom to request the surgeon of your preference.

Even under the best employment conditions, hiring the wrong employee can drag down a company's bottom line and dampen workforce productivity and morale. However, the national skills gap and ongoing economic concerns make finding the right candidate crucial the first time around.

"The current generation has stumbled on an incredibly powerful and important model for changing the world and the workplace: the network."

Half of all workers who receive paid vacation time in the nation’s top 10 largest cities would be willing to sacrifice a workplace benefit in exchange for more paid time off. However, despite their desire for more free time, most employees don’t even use the vacation time they already receive.

Sedentary office workers, including busy HR practitioners, may want to stand up to absorb some provocative news published in the online medical journal BMJ Open: Most Americans could live two years longer on average if they’d spend less than three hours a day sitting.

Target-date funds pulled in $13.9 billion in the second quarter despite the nearly 3% loss on average, according to Morningstar.

The Obama administration on Friday said it is on track to set up federal health insurance exchanges by 2014 in U.S. states that fail to establish their own regulated insurance markets as required by the U.S. health care reform law.

United Continental Holdings Inc’s quarterly profit slid 37%, hit by higher fuel bills and labor costs from its messy and long merger of United and Continental airlines.