Employer Strategies

The sale of asset-based long-term care insurance protection continues to grow significantly, reveals research by the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance.

Republicans on Thursday issued a politically charged report that quoted President Barack Obama's corporate advisers as predicting his 2010 health care overhaul would raise — not lower — the cost of care.

A new research report from the Commonwealth Fund offers new insights into America’s uninsured.

Employers continue to look to their adviser to guide them through health care reform uncertainty. In fact, 88% expect their adviser to educate them on health care reform and its implications, according to a recent survey.

Although most Americans still get their health coverage through their jobs, new research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that fewer workers have access to this benefit.

Liberty Mutual Insurance’s Group Benefits operation became the first to introduce a mobile application that makes it easier for employees and clients to manage their benefits.

American Airlines kicked off a week-long court hearing on its bid to abandon union contracts, telling a judge on Monday that its bankrupt parent, AMR Corp, cannot survive without major concessions from its labor force.

Employers continue to move from traditional defined benefit pension plans providing monthly payments to 401(k) plans and other defined contribution plans providing lump-sum cash distributions. As a result, increasing numbers of retirees, now including baby boomers leaving the workplace, are faced with managing a cash distribution for 20 or 30 years and possibly running out of funds. Uncertain markets have made plan participants wary of their ability to maintain their nest eggs. …

Currently, 59% of major employers have a consumer-driven health plan option in place, up from 53% a year ago, according to a survey by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health. The groups queried companies with 1,000 or more employees across a range of industries.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a proposed rule addressing the fees imposed by the Affordable Care Act on issuers of certain health insurance policies and plan sponsors of certain self-insured health plans to fund comparative effectiveness research. These fees are designed to support the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund. The Affordable Care Act includes provisions establishing the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a private, nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to “assist, through research, patients, clinicians,…