Employee benefits

A NAHU representative testified Thursday on Capitol Hill about the positives and negatives of self-funding before a committee interested in touting it to small business owners.

An agent explains the difficult steps that would need to be taken to renew canceled plans, while a health insurance trade group says the president’s announcement Thursday could “destabilize the market.”

America’s Health Insurance Plans issues a statement about President Obama's remarks today on the Affordable Care Act.

With the decision, state governors and insurance commissioners would have the authority to keep would-be canceled plans active until the end of 2014.

The decision, which helps live up to a promise Obama made when pushing for passage of health reform, is couched as an administrative fix that says following ACA will not require insurance companies to upgrade their plan for individuals who have been in these existing plans so far.

Brokers operating in the federally run exchange states remain frustrated with broker functions on the website, as the government announces lop-sided enrollment numbers for the state versus federal exchanges.

The lopsided enrollment between Medicaid, which is paid for with taxpayer money, and the private plans may boost criticism of the rising costs of the $1.4 trillion health law. High participation in the exchanges is critical to keeping the costs of medical coverage down.

The number of people who died in hospitals as a result of medical mistakes is approaching half a million, according to Patient Safety America. Medical mistakes not only cost lives and misery but billions of dollars in extra costs, most of which is paid by employers.

Twenty-nine of the nation’s 100 largest have revised estimates in past year.

Statins will be recommended for almost 33 million Americans, about twice the number under previous guidelines. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer worldwide, accounting for 1 in 4 U.S. deaths.

One retirement expert says ACA is destined to fail and the answer lies in what the 401(k) industry has been preaching for years.

Despite a recent show of political opposition, the U.S. Department of Labor seems poised to press ahead with a proposal to broaden the definition of fiduciary to cover advisers working in the retirement plan segment, a leading opponent of the measure warned on Monday.

How to advise retirement plan participants in response to shifts out of bonds.

As few as 20 or 30 enrollments per state per day are greeting the Obamacare marketplaces. With more congressional hearings on the rollout of the Affordable Care Act set to start tomorrow in the House, will lawmakers get some answers?

Walgreen Co. become the latest large employer to make significant changes to its employee health plan when it announced that it will move approximately 160,000 of its employees onto a private health insurance exchange, starting in 2014. The strategy is starting to look like a trend: Over the last several months, IBM, Time Warner, Sears Holdings and Darden Restaurants have all made similar announcements.

For HR professionals, mid-year nondiscrimination testing needs to be at the top of that list. Waiting to test until the completion of the year can have severe negative consequences.

Passive approach to retirement investing still indicated.

Several answers might apply, but a good goal is to avoid regulatory difficulties.

We’re living in the age of big data, so why has so little changed in how we make our health insurance decisions, asks Liazon co-founder Alan Cohen. The private exchange entrepreneur makes the case why benefits should meet technology.

President Barack Obama said he’s sorry that thousands of Americans are losing their medical insurance as a result of his health care law, as his administration works to contain the political damage from the troubled roll-out of his signature domestic achievement.