Health and wellness

The world is getting smaller and smaller by the day. And as a result, brokers’ potential to work with clients from other towns, other states and maybe even other countries is getting bigger and bigger.

A survey found U.S. employers are increasingly looking at this option, following the lead of companies like Walgreen Co. seeking to reduce costs..

The president of the NBGH, who is retiring this spring, shares her thoughts about health reform and the future of employer-sponsored health coverage.

If the last few years were an age of reform, then we’ve definitely entered a new era — a time of compliance.

Contrary to expectations, the latest findings from healthcare researcher Decision Resources Group reveal that several of the state-based health insurance exchanges that were expected to perform the best are performing quite poorly, while some of the exchanges in Republican-dominated states openly hostile to the Affordable Care Act have fared surprisingly well to date.

Limitations with how the federally-run health insurance exchanges present information misleads consumers and induces them to spend many thousands of dollars a year more than necessary on health coverage, according to Consumers’ Checkbook, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization and web site.

The dissatisfaction, disappointment and frustration with launch of the federal health insurance exchange could be expected, especially with the constantly elevating level of consumer expectations for e-commerce and other online systems. Meanwhile, the number of private exchanges continues to grow and are in a very good position to succeed.

For millions of low-income Americans, the road to health care reform in 2014 could prove to be a jagged line as they bounce between public exchanges and Medicaid as their income fluctuates over the year.

In a sign of just how difficult it is to rein in out-of-pocket costs, 35% of 2014 bronze-level plans in the Small Business Health Options Program exchange had deductibles that exceeded suggested annual caps under the Affordable Care Act.

Copayments and co-insurance fees have increased on average 34% compared with those of the pre-Affordable Care Act individual insurance market, according to the results of a new HealthPocket study released Thursday.

From ignoring chronic disease to failing to align vendor and employer goals, defined-contribution health strategies through private exchanges are not right for every employer.

This is spurring a new push into communities to sell the state’s program face-to-face.

With the issuance of the final employer mandate regulations, employers mandate can now make employee coverage decisions and prepare for enforcement beginning as early as Jan. 1, 2015.

This week started out with the much anticipated employer responsibility ruling and first shocked us with the additional employer mandate delay. But there’s much more to the ruling that advisers and plan sponsors need to be aware of in the coming months.

Fewer people are getting their primary health insurance coverage through their employers, according to a Gallup Poll released Wednesday, which also reported the number of uninsured Americans has reached a five-year low.

Welltok Inc., vendor of a Web-based health wellness platform called CafeWell that providers and payers can offer to consumers, is the latest organization to collaborate with IBM Corp. to enhance the health care cognitive computer capabilities of the Watson supercomputer.

The day after Addie Wilson was quoted in a newspaper article complaining about her experience with President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, her mobile phone rang while she was in the bathroom.

Obamacare health plans enrolled 3.3 million people through January, with young adult participants increasing 65% from a month earlier, the U.S. government said.

Wellness can specifically increase job satisfaction among current and prospective employees. However, employers can’t expect these results to occur overnight. While many launch wellness programs, they often fall short of expectations. Perhaps the biggest reason this happens is inadequate communications to employees.

Health insurers told to pay $150 billion in taxes over a decade to help fund Obamacare are now shifting at least part of that cost back to taxpayers.