Employee benefits

Last month, the Center for Health Value Innovation released its 2010 Value-Based Design Report - a study of more than 170 companies, representing more than 4 million covered lives, produced in partnership with Buck Consultants - which takes the national temperature on how value-based benefits designs are progressing in U.S. workplaces.

Some of you may remember exercise instructors such as Jane Fonda or the late Jack LaLanne. When I was a kid, my mom had Jack LaLanne exercise books.

For once, we weren't trying to innovate, iterate or invest in something new. We simply wanted to successfully launch a consumer-driven health plan. We thought it would be easy, since many employers had already delved into these issues before us.

For many of us who travel by plane, post-9/11 security restrictions have changed the way we prepare. Our packing has changed, our attire has changed and we now enter the airport hoping to make it through the screening, scanning and patting down with our humor intact.

The ink is barely dry on our 2011 calendars, and here in Palm Beach County we're already finding ourselves in the thick of a request for proposal for our self-insured health plan for 2012.

Employers like to look over one another's shoulder when it comes to benefits programs, and benchmarking data provides this opportunity.

Health care reform has been good for business - true or false? These days, it still depends on whom you ask. Ask a producer who sells critical care insurance, though, and the answer you'll probably get is "true."

Voluntary benefits is often referred to as "worksite marketing." Many carriers, in fact, refer to their voluntary products as "worksite voluntary benefits." Recent developments in enrollment technology, however, are rapidly making the term "worksite" obsolete and no longer relevant to the voluntary benefits process. The term "worksite" derives from how these benefits have had to be enrolled. As products that are voluntarily purchased by employees, the only consistently effective means of presenting (and selling) them have been one-on-one employee meetings with licensed benefit counselors (enrollers) at the workplace during the workday.

The notion that you can do well by doing good is alive and well in the 401(k) and qualified plan marketplace. Advisers, however, are walking a tightrope. With a big push by the government for more disclosure and stricter fiduciary standards, broker-dealers are struggling to allow their advisers to act as fiduciaries without opening themselves to unwanted liability. Meanwhile, plan sponsors are looking for advisers who can help their participants be more successful in retirement yet limit their costs, liability and work.

As the economy starts to stabilize, retirement plan experts say plan sponsors need to emphasize certain elements of their retirement education and advice programs to get workers back on track and saving for retirement.

Advisers looking for innovative ways to help their clients attack health care costs now have a new arrow in their quiver: the nascent field of surgery benefit management. SBM combines the use of medical centers of excellence and medical tourism with data mining, predictive modeling, health coaching and case management.

Racial and economic disparities in the U.S. health care system may come down to access to medical care, hints a new report on appendicitis.

The United States is decades behind the rest of the world in parental leave policy, a Human Rights Watch report said on Wednesday.

I'm totally swamped today, so I'm saved by former EBN Managing Editor Leah Shepherd, who writes on the newest stats surrounding telework.

The good news for health insurers is that they’re improving their reputation, but they still aren’t receiving high service marks from customers.

With less guaranteed income when they retire, a larger number of older workers remained in the workforce in 2010, according to research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Despite efforts to defund PPACA in the Republican-controlled House, and prospects of a Supreme Court test for the federal health reform law, employers are forging ahead as best they can with short-term compliance issues and long-term strategic decisions.

Sales of annuities through banks ended the year with a promising lift, specifically for variable business.

The Department of Health and Human Services has launched a Web portal as part of an initiative to make its repositories of health data more accessible.

Americans are more optimistic about their ability to pay for health care services in the coming months, particularly for elective surgeries, according to a survey issued on Thursday.