Health and wellness

With health care appeals, a plan administrator can simply grant the appeal .

As more companies embrace consumer-driven health care models and prepare for the full implementation of health care reform, employees need voluntary benefits more than ever. This chart pack includes the latest data on voluntary benefits from the Aflac WorkForces Report and UBA’s Ancillary Products Survey.

Using health care analytics — sometimes called business intelligence — researchers and consultants are mining clinical and claims data to discover gold standards and establish best practices for prevention, treatment and self care and, ideally, help reduce waste, abuse and fraud. The goals are simple but have remained elusive.

Should patients undergoing broad DNA testing for a specific ailment be told of unexpected findings that signal risk of cancer or other serious diseases, even if they don’t request the information?

How three employers are making employee health a priority and seeing the results in their bottom line.

Children of such women were more likely to have scores in the lowest quartile for verbal ability, reading accuracy and reading comprehension than those whose mothers had sufficient iodine levels, according to the study published today.

Two businesses, a construction firm from southwestern Illinois and an auto-parts maker in southeastern Indiana, are scheduled today to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago for an order barring enforcement.

Jeffrey Endick, principal at Slevin & Hart, P.C., warned employers at the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans on Tuesday in Washington about how they should prepare for exchanges as an alternative to the current system.

The U.S. health care law’s projected tax bite on businesses with more generous health benefits is dropping as medical spending slows and employers look to rein in the cost of coverage.

Yesterday Groom Law Group’s Mark Nielsen addressed the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ Washington legislative update, saying health reform watchers are still hoping for “more and better guidance” on ACA rules and standards.

As the U.S. Senate works to rewrite immigration policy, the House of Representatives is spending floor time on legislation that won’t become law, voting today to repeal President Barack Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act.

In a second round of funding under the ACA, CMS opens a big opportunity for researchers.

Sixty-nine percent of employers tells the IFEBP that they definitely plan to provide employer-sponsored health care when exchanges begin in 2014; in 2012, only 46% of companies were willing to commit to that.

Lowering sodium intake, a drumbeat of doctors’ efforts to improve patient health, may have the opposite effect if taken to the extreme, scientists said.

The health agency said last week that Sebelius had been calling advocacy groups, doctors, churches and “companies not regulated by HHS” since March, asking for contributions to an independent nonprofit group promoting the health law.

“We may be jumping the gun,” says one expert. “While there is cognitive decline with normal aging, if we pull out people with brain disease, there’s not enough of a decline for us to worry about older peoples’ ability to make financial decisions.”

Wanting to leverage the new fitness facility to better help employees manage their work balance, Brocade launched a WellFit council made up of a cross-functional group of about 10 people.

Forty-one percent of those surveyed said they have held off on hiring new employees as a result of the ACA. “One of the most concerning unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act is that we see employers looking to stay under the 50-employee threshold, if at all possible,” says one expert.

Being present and competent is the order of the day once the ACA becomes a reality, says blogger and UBA CEO Thom Mangan. Brokers need to act as a conduit, or contract with a conduit, to help employees navigate through. A lot of these issues fall on the shoulders of the human resources department, but a broker or adviser needs to offer comprehensive care.

Merck & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Roche Holding AG have opened a new front against cancer with the next generation of experimental drugs that use the human immune system to seek and destroy tumor cells.