Employee benefits

Although most Americans still get their health coverage through their jobs, new research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that fewer workers have access to this benefit.

Liberty Mutual Insurance’s Group Benefits operation became the first to introduce a mobile application that makes it easier for employees and clients to manage their benefits.

American Airlines kicked off a week-long court hearing on its bid to abandon union contracts, telling a judge on Monday that its bankrupt parent, AMR Corp, cannot survive without major concessions from its labor force.

Employers continue to move from traditional defined benefit pension plans providing monthly payments to 401(k) plans and other defined contribution plans providing lump-sum cash distributions. As a result, increasing numbers of retirees, now including baby boomers leaving the workplace, are faced with managing a cash distribution for 20 or 30 years and possibly running out of funds. Uncertain markets have made plan participants wary of their ability to maintain their nest eggs. …

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.

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.

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.

Annabel Adams has seen a lot in her life: 9/11, the dot-com bust, the housing collapse, the financial crisis, the Great Recession.

Forty-two percent of respondents have used social media to access consumer reviews of treatments or physicians, 30% have supported a health cause, 25% have posted content about their own health experiences and 20% have joined a health forum or community, according to the Health Research Institute of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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

Baby boomers wired to their iPads and smart phones are giving U.S. health experts some new ideas about ways to cut the soaring costs of medical care in graying America.

After a long, winding legal road, involving no fewer than six federal court decisions, Ameriprise Financial finally won a suit alleging that it had charged excessively high adviser fees.

U.S. officials on Monday cited two health insurers for excessive premium increases, under consumer protection rules of President Barack Obama's health care reform law that could soon be nullified by the Supreme Court.

In a new report titled Opportunities in Reaching the Middle Market with Life Insurance: New Pathways to Growth, Conning estimates the middle- market life insurance protection gap to be $10.2 trillion - a 56% increase when compared to the firm's last study of the middle market in 2006. The total protection gap across all income brackets has more than doubled.

Not only is it painful for an employee to hear the news that their loved one has suffered a heart attack, but the unforeseen costs of health care will soon take a physical, emotional and financial toll if they are not prepared.

This article is the first in a two-part series examining the challenges in achieving true parity for mental health benefits. This article explores the history of mental health parity legislation, while the second installment - scheduled for EBN June 1 - will address barriers to care due to lack of access and provider shortages.

The American Medical Association estimates that every year, $73 billion is lost in unnecessary health care expenditures due to poor "health literacy," the inability of consumers and employees to obtain and understand health care education.

Lyndsey Allen used to work across the street from Zappos' main office in Henderson, Nev. She'd sit in her cube, watching Zappos staffers stage impromptu parades around the parking lot in themed garb. She was perfectly content at her current job, but wanted something different. For six months, she prowled the Zappos job site and when a recruiter position opened, she pounced. A year-and-a-half later, she conducts phone interviews at a desk in the middle of the Zappos office, where those spontaneous parades now play an important part in her daily work.

Employees who feel valued at work are more likely to report better physical and mental health, as well as higher levels of engagement, satisfaction and motivation, according to a survey by the American Psychological Association.

Brokers play a key role in helping plan sponsors establish a healthier workplace, but one main problem still affects employers today — dealing with the lack of resources that are available to improve employee health and productivity at the workplace, according to a white paper from The Standard.