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Republicans in Congress are getting ready to answer an election-year question that has dogged the party's campaign for months: How would it replace President Barack Obama's health care law if the measure is overturned or repealed?

Currently, 59% of major employers have a consumer-driven health plan option in place, up from 53% a year ago, according to a survey by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health. The groups queried companies with 1,000 or more employees across a range of industries.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a proposed rule addressing the fees imposed by the Affordable Care Act on issuers of certain health insurance policies and plan sponsors of certain self-insured health plans to fund comparative effectiveness research. These fees are designed to support the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund. The Affordable Care Act includes provisions establishing the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a private, nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to “assist, through research, patients, clinicians,…

Over time, Chrysler LLC delivered a 2.6 to 1 return on investment for its wellness programs by engaging employees, revealing company resources to those with high risk factors and rewarding healthy behaviors with premium incentives. Notably, the programs are completely voluntary.

There is always much noise and excitement about starting an employee wellness program, but the room goes silent when talk turns to return on investment. It’s well past time for ROI vagueness to stop being tolerated. A wellness program without clear goals and methods for measurement is meaningless.

Although the focus of discussion among health plan thought leaders who convened in Florida last month at The Managed Care Executive Group ran the gamut from care management to meaningful use, to medical informatics, payment reforms, HSAs and more, technology’s role in the industry’s success was evident.

Usually, when people talk about someone "going through a stage" they are talking about a toddler or a teen. But there's another age at which people go through a key transitional period, also marked by angst and rebellion: Call it pre-retirement.

A new study comparing utilization rates of patients filling 90-day prescription medications using community and mail order pharmacies found that when copays are similar, patients preferred the community pharmacy channel by a ratio of four to one.

Recently, Benz Communications announced the launch of its Inside Benefits Communication Survey, the first survey of benefits and HR managers created specifically to learn how companies are strategizing and implementing benefits communication. Respondents to the 10-minute survey will get inside knowledge of what effective companies are doing, where they need help and what their plans are. Learn how to participate.

Despite recent tax reform proposals, experts testified at a House committee hearing Tuesday that cutting incentives for retirement plans would be detrimental to savings.