Employer Strategies

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.

Three months after a leading private equity firm sought to acquire all of Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc.’s common stock for $60 per share in cash, another suitor has come calling for the provider of legal services through the worksite and individual markets to more than 1.5 million families across North America.

Although life insurance made modest gains in the third quarter of 2010 when gross written premiums were up 6% from the same period a year earlier, an Aite Group report notes that premiums fell to historic lows in 2009 when the product was considered an unnecessary discretionary purchase.

Two recent reports on disability issues conclude that fewer working Americans filed such claims during the height of the economic downturn and that there’s a serious misunderstanding about disability and the value of income-protection planning.