Healthcare

Technical glitches and data-management challenges have dominated HIX headlines at both the state and federal level, with the latest news showing how even the most widely regarded and most vilified state-run operations now share this common thread.

As employers try to figure out how best to prepare their workforces for retirement, experts in the benefits and investment industries recommend that an individual retirement account – either the traditional or Roth version – can be a good complement or standalone option for an employee’s retirement path.

Benefit advisers hoping to stay ahead of the trend of employers transferring some of the burden of increased health care costs to their employees, should be prepared to discuss a variety of new and old cost-sharing strategies, as well as additional cost-saving tools.

Private exchanges are a complex tool in a complex market, but they continue to evolve as employers switch to them, and brokers learn to work with them. Panelists discussed where they will go next during at opening keynote Tuesday at EBA’s Workplace Benefits Mania.

Minimum-wage activists seized on a decision against McDonald’s by the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel Tuesday, saying the move may make it easier to unionize workers and ultimately raise wages.

As the part-time workforce in America expands, a growing number of employers are considering voluntary benefit packages as a recruitment and retention tool not only for full-time staff, but their variable hour employees, as well.

Accountable care organizations promise better alignment of health care provider incentives and patient outcomes. Can ACOs revolutionize employer-sponsored health care?

A new national bipartisan legislative effort is using an incentivized approach to push more employers to offer paid family and medical leave to their employees.

Making the choice between TPAs serving as 3(16) fiduciaries or going with retirement planning advice in a 3(21) or 3(38) can help make financial management of a 401(k) plan go more smoothly.

Commentary: Benefit advisers and their employer clients continue to have questions about private exchanges. Blogger Dan Garlitz shares some recent FAQs fielded by exchange administrator bswift.