Employee benefits

In the latest ACA delay announced Wednesday, HHS touts brokers as an alternative for small businesses to enroll

Sebelius cautioned that the “on” switch has not magically been flipped on, though “…the experience is vastly improved each and every day.”

The promise of 50,000 people being able to simultaneously use the site by Saturday – twice the capacity of last week – will be tested by congressional Republicans.

Towers Watson acquired Liazon Corporation, a leader in developing and delivering private benefit exchanges for active employees, last week. Representatives of the consultancy believe that this acquisition, which follows the purchase of Extend Health in June 2012, has solidified their position as the leading player in the private exchange market through its OneExchange solution.

The decision by CMS leaves just eight days for insurers to send bills to those signing up on the last day of the enrollment period.

Quandary emerges for brokers who trained on the systems but might not want the business.

Consulting firm Towers Watson announced today it has bought private health care exchange provider Liazon, which operates the Bright Choices exchange, for $215 million. The deal further validates the private exchange market, says one of Liazon's competitors.

The cost of employer-sponsored health insurance grew at only 2.1% in 2013, Mercer says, but companies expect levels to jump next year, back to around 5.2%

Kansas, North Dakota and other state insurance commissioners snubbed a meeting with President Barack Obama set up to discuss allowing some people to keep medical plans that don’t meet the requirements of the U.S. health law.

Social networks kept the 41,000 participants in the Sprint Get Fit Challenge engaged and motivated throughout the 12-week challenge. Collectively, participants (who made up 35% of the telecom company’s population) lost more than 41,000 pounds, took almost 4.8 billion steps, and logged nearly 22 million exercise minutes. By building excitement and supportive competition through social media, Sprint’s wellness leaders engaged participants over the long-term.

A public employer in California is building its own marketplace to mirror public exchanges under the Affordable Care Act — a potential idea for brokers for prospecting.

Learning to cope with treatment – or even the time or alternative work arrangements required for an employee helping a loved one dealing with cancer – can be a challenge for any HR professional, but a new guide hopes to provide better understanding.

Used to assess and evaluate changes in employee health, biometric health screenings are a crucial component of a comprehensive worksite health program. As a result, biometric health screenings are increasing in popularity and are being implemented by more and more employers.

A massive defined contribution storm is about to crash onto the employee benefits landscape. You can choose to ride it out to continued - or even greater - profitability, or you and your firm can get swept away. I've written that employer interest in the defined contribution model will explode in the next 12 months.

Half of employees age 50 and up say they would make major sacrifices that could affect their own retirement to help family members, finds a recent survey.

Projects from a border surveillance program to an FBI case-filing system also have failed because of late changes, a lack of oversight, cost overruns and an emphasis on deadlines rather than the flexibility to let big, complex projects evolve, experts say.

Consider these for you next employee education session.

Quarterly indexed sales set new record at $10 billion.

More than a third of the ‘back end’ infrastructure still remains to be built in the federally-run marketplace, top IT official at CMS says Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

Consultants hired by the Obama administration told top officials at the White House and U.S. health department as early as March that construction of the government’s insurance website was at risk of failure, according to a document released by congressional Republicans.