Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

With just three major insurance companies, brokers must distinguish themselves from carriers, create additional approaches to serve clients and develop alternative risk approaches to health benefits, industry experts say.

After more than 50 votes in Congress and two attempts before the U.S. Supreme Court to mothball the ACA and public exchange marketplace, some Republicans now see the budget reconciliation process as yet another avenue for achieving this long-time goal.

Anthem Inc. struck a deal to buy rival Cigna Corp. for $48.4 billion, wrapping up almost a year of contentious negotiations and potentially creating the largest health insurer in the U.S.

Worksite voluntary benefits are gaining in popularity on standard ancillary benefit offerings, but the adviser’s sales approach to each needs to be varied.

As a value-added reseller, Apprize Technology sells and services to brokers three different benefit administration platforms, what many call a private exchange— bswift, benefitsCONNECT and Infiniti HR. Gary Wert, Apprize’s president, discusses why Apprize and other resellers may have to turn away business in the fourth quarter and why some brokers aren’t building their own exchange, but rather using a reseller.

Two Urban Institute reports funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that 9.4 million fewer families struggled to pay medical bills in early 2015 than just before the rollout of public exchanges and Medicaid expansion in 2013.

As they struggle to become financially stable, state-based health insurance marketplaces are lagging behind the federally-facilitated marketplace and are likely to continue to do so in the near future.

Commentary: While in most cases, employees can be terminated at any time and for any reason, in almost all cases there is a reason — and if that reason doesn’t violate a law, isn’t in response to some type of legally protectable complaint or doesn’t violate someone’s contract rights — then it doesn’t really matter if the reason is a good one or not. The question becomes whether a lawsuit ensues to further test exceptions to at-will employment.

With 24 Republican senators up for reelection in November 2016, not to mention the presidential election, there is so much set to change for both public and private exchanges.

Marilyn Tavenner, who steered the U.S. Medicare and Medicaid agency through the rollout of Obamacare’s federal insurance markets, was named to lead the health-insurance industry’s lobbying group.