Employer Strategies

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments are all the rage lately for consumers, and many carriers are catching on to the trend by offering discounts on or coverage of certain benefits.

The shift to health consumerism hasn't escaped dental benefits. And if health care costs continue to squeeze benefit budgets, then more employers might start turning to voluntary dental plans.

Employers have taken on new aggression toward cutting prescription benefit costs while enhancing quality of coverage. Even in a dark economy and among confounding health care reform legislation, prescription benefit managers are having success with new benefit tactics and evidence-based value design.

If you issue employee communications only through e-mail or company bulletin board postings, I have news for you: Most employees are not listening.

Though primary care physicians and nurse practitioners are intended to be patients' first point of entry into the health care system, approximately seven out of 10 people in U.S. commercial health plans (and 95% of the elderly) see one or more specialists a year.

Self-funding used to be exclusively for big companies that had a solid cushion of assets, plenty of cash flow and a large employee population across which to spread risk.

U.S. workers can expect median base salary increases of 2.8% in 2011, compared to 2.4% in 2010, while executives and skilled trades workers can anticipate a 2.7% increase, according to the Salary Budgets Survey by the Hay Group.

A Senate panel in December deepened a probe of copay-based mini-med plans that raised pointed questions about the plans' value and transparency for workers, even when employers are unable to sponsor more comprehensive coverage.

Special-interests groups among employees are not only making a comeback in corporate America, but the groups are also receiving significant financial support from employers, finds a new study by Mercer.

The nation’s the largest health care and voluntary benefits software provider recently teamed up with NASCO to burnish a technology investment made by Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans and improve CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield’s billing system efficiency.