Health and wellness

After speaking with the leader of Towers Watson's Exchange Solutions segment and Liazon’s CEO to understand how small and larger employers should strategically approach the private exchanges, here are the key thoughts employers of any size should consider when deciding whether to shift to a defined contribution approach to health care benefits.

The health care website’s improved performance has both U.S. political parties shifting strategies, with President Barack Obama’s team preparing a January advertising blitz and a wave of celebrity promotions to boost enrollment, allies said.

With the ACA requiring even more communications to employees, many employers might consider shifting to electronic means for all disclosure notices, but there are many rules here and employers and their advisers should be careful.

More people signed up for Obamacare health plans in the first two days of December than in all of October after the U.S. government rehabilitated its error-prone insurance-exchange website.

The federal agency in charge of exchanges is communicating with brokers about technology improvements, but brokers say they haven’t heard much of anything, yet.

President Barack Obama plans to highlight the 2010 health care law’s benefits at a White House event Tuesday that kicks off a three-week campaign to regain support for a program marred by a troubled implementation.

The Obama administration says much of the site is fixed but it’s not clear still how much of that is true.

President Barack Obama raised the stakes on his three-year-old health care overhaul Sunday, declaring that fixes to his administration’s troubled insurance exchange website make it ready to sign up 800,000 people a day.

Leaders overseeing the launch of the federal health care exchange understood the importance of technology. But they did not understand how to build technology. And that lack of intuitive understanding and respect for the nature of how technology is built led to decisions that doomed the project's launch.

Towers Watson acquired Liazon Corporation, a leader in developing and delivering private benefit exchanges for active employees, last week. Representatives of the consultancy believe that this acquisition, which follows the purchase of Extend Health in June 2012, has solidified their position as the leading player in the private exchange market through its OneExchange solution.

Republican senators introduced a bill this week that would prevent the exclusion of multi-employer health plans from a $63 reinsurance fee that the ACA imposes on each enrollee.

Kansas, North Dakota and other state insurance commissioners snubbed a meeting with President Barack Obama set up to discuss allowing some people to keep medical plans that don’t meet the requirements of the U.S. health law.

A public employer in California is building its own marketplace to mirror public exchanges under the Affordable Care Act — a potential idea for brokers for prospecting.

Used to assess and evaluate changes in employee health, biometric health screenings are a crucial component of a comprehensive worksite health program. As a result, biometric health screenings are increasing in popularity and are being implemented by more and more employers.

More than a third of the ‘back end’ infrastructure still remains to be built in the federally-run marketplace, top IT official at CMS says Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

Wellness is not just about fitness or smoking cessation anymore.

Smoking cessation programs offer insight to the real issues affecting health contingent programs.

Expenditures in the $2.7 trillion U.S. health care system have doubled since 1980, growing to 18% of gross domestic product and leading to financial success for drugmakers, hospitals and insurers.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee say it shows that public promises the project was on schedule from top administration officials were incorrect.

Exchange leaders in the Golden State, Connecticut, New York and Oregon share solid numbers on exchange-registered brokers.