Health and wellness

With mental illness and substance abuse costing employers an estimated $100 billion annually in indirect costs alone, benefit decision-makers are seeing value in promoting employee assistance programs as a means to improve their workforce’s mental well-being.

Towers Watson has spent nearly a billion dollars of its own capital to build out its private exchange offering, OneExchange, through acquisitions. Jim Foreman, Towers Watson’s director of exchange solutions, shares how voluntary continues to grow in a private HIX marketplace and why more and more employers are expressing interest in the offerings.

A randomized controlled trial found that users of the SmartQuit program, created by Seattle-based 2Morrow, Inc., were 2.5 to three times more likely to quit smoking than those who tried to quit on their own. The program will be offered through employers, health plans and states.

HHS is proposing to make some significant changes to the rules governing the Affordable Care Act, including a shortened time period for open enrollment and training requirements for brokers and agents.

Prenatal and postpartum care programs are not only a benefit for employees who are expecting, they can also help employers avoid unnecessary costs related to preterm births.

Americans’ approval of the Affordable Care Act is at a record low yet those uninsured who purchased coverage through the exchange are overall pleased with the quality of coverage they obtained.

U.S. House Republicans made good on a vote to sue the Obama administration over implementation of the 2010 health-care law with a lawsuit naming the Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury as defendants in what they claim to be a case of constitutional overreach.

The IRS plans to close a major loophole in the ACA by banning employers who offer ‘skinny’ medical plans without hospitalization coverage from qualifying as minimum value plans under the health reform law.

The Obama administration said it erroneously calculated the number of people with health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, incorrectly adding 380,000 dental subscribers to raise the total above 7 million.

A majority of employers – regardless of workforce size – are planning to keep their health plan coverage going into next year as the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate takes effect.

Health insurance industry has lowest satisfaction rating in nearly a decade, report says.

Commentary: Private exchanges are not the one-size-fits-all solution some in the benefit industry think they are, says broker Judy Miller. The veteran adviser shares her opinion about the promises and pitfalls of the private exchange solution.

Benefit advisers are prepared to make significant investments in internal systems in 2015 to better manage their workload, improve existing relationships with employers and better market themselves to prospects.

Blue Cross Blue Shield is requiring all agents in the individual market in one state be certified to sell in the state’s federally facilitated marketplace — even those who only sell outside of the exchange.

The HIX marketplace may offer Americans more choice when it comes to health insurance, particularly as public exchange options expand, but it continues to complicate life for HR professionals.

A majority of brokers have seen some of their employer clients drop group coverage altogether in reaction to the ACA and double-digit rate increases. That trend, they say, will rise and advisers need to adjust the way they do business if they hope to survive.

Commentary: Are private exchanges just a flex benefits reboot? Lockton’s Mike Smith shares what he thinks will affect their success and adoption.

With an expected 5.5% rise in health care costs in 2015 – the same year the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate takes effect – employers have high hopes that spending can be reined through increased employee consumerism.

On Saturday, the first day of enrollment for 2015 Obamacare plans, the federal insurance website was working well enough that 100,000 people submitted applications, U.S. health secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell reported.

As an effort to comply with the ACA, some employers have been considering offering employees a lump sum of cash to purchase health care coverage on the exchanges, but the DOL now says such an arrangement isn't going to cut it.