Employer Strategies

Employers like to look over one another's shoulder when it comes to benefits programs, and benchmarking data provides this opportunity.

Health care reform has been good for business - true or false? These days, it still depends on whom you ask. Ask a producer who sells critical care insurance, though, and the answer you'll probably get is "true."

Voluntary benefits is often referred to as "worksite marketing." Many carriers, in fact, refer to their voluntary products as "worksite voluntary benefits." Recent developments in enrollment technology, however, are rapidly making the term "worksite" obsolete and no longer relevant to the voluntary benefits process. The term "worksite" derives from how these benefits have had to be enrolled. As products that are voluntarily purchased by employees, the only consistently effective means of presenting (and selling) them have been one-on-one employee meetings with licensed benefit counselors (enrollers) at the workplace during the workday.

The notion that you can do well by doing good is alive and well in the 401(k) and qualified plan marketplace. Advisers, however, are walking a tightrope. With a big push by the government for more disclosure and stricter fiduciary standards, broker-dealers are struggling to allow their advisers to act as fiduciaries without opening themselves to unwanted liability. Meanwhile, plan sponsors are looking for advisers who can help their participants be more successful in retirement yet limit their costs, liability and work.

As the economy starts to stabilize, retirement plan experts say plan sponsors need to emphasize certain elements of their retirement education and advice programs to get workers back on track and saving for retirement.

Advisers looking for innovative ways to help their clients attack health care costs now have a new arrow in their quiver: the nascent field of surgery benefit management. SBM combines the use of medical centers of excellence and medical tourism with data mining, predictive modeling, health coaching and case management.

Senators Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., have introduced a bill that would require the Internal Revenue Service to collect unpaid federal income taxes from civilian federal employees.

Employers in the private sector are just as confident in the U.S. economy as they were prior to the recession, according to PwC U.S.’s Private Company Trendsetter Barometer survey.

Racial and economic disparities in the U.S. health care system may come down to access to medical care, hints a new report on appendicitis.

Most Americans oppose laws that would take away the collective bargaining power of public employee unions, as has been proposed in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Wednesday.