Employer Strategies

Employee Benefit News is soliciting short articles from benefits professionals on best practices related to open enrollment and voluntary benefits. Articles selected by the editors will appear in EBN’s June 1 issue or on the Web site.

Aflac Dental policyholders have a reason to smile. The carrier’s new voluntary dental insurance plan now offers multiple levels of coverage and more generous benefits that include higher annual maximums and better orthodontic coverage.

Younger generations aren’t very familiar with critical illness insurance, but challenging times appear to be spiking their interest in other workplace benefits, according to two sets of jointly conducted surveys.

After seeing enrollment in its medical plans gradually dwindle to less than 2% of total group membership, the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America will shutter this product line and instead focus on dental, disability, life, critical illness and disability offerings.

Critics of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) once warned that the law would decimate mini-med plans – that is, until the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) issued regulatory guidance.

On Feb. 8, the National Labor Relations Board announced that it had settled a complaint against American Medical Response of Connecticut for discharging an employee who made negative comments on her Facebook page about a supervisor.

The Obama administration is expected to propose a way for states to raise more money in payroll taxes to pay for the cost of unemployment insurance.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently issued new standards for its Patient-Centered Medical Home program. More than 7,700 clinicians at 1,500 sites use existing standards from Washington-based NCQA in their medical home initiatives.

As employers start to conduct cost-benefit analysis on providing health insurance under the health law, they should also study some proposals by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRR).

Employers are expected to invest more money to protect personal information in response to increased government regulation and enforcement and to stem the rising tide of risk, according to a new report released by Ernst & Young.