Health and wellness

The percentage of Americans who have health insurance through their employer slipped to a new low of 44.5% in the third quarter, a drop of over 5 percentage points in three years, according to a poll released on Friday.

Employers and employees alike have found a more affordable health care option in health savings accounts, according to two national surveys released last week.

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide the fate of President Barack Obama's health care law, with an election-year ruling due by July on the health care system's biggest overhaul in nearly 50 years.

States and territories seeking to establish a health insurance exchange, funded under the Affordable Care Act, will be required to submit an application for approval during the fall of 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services has announced.

President Barack Obama's signature health care law got a boost on Tuesday when a U.S. appeals court agreed with a lower court that dismissed a challenge and found the law's minimum coverage requirement was constitutional.

More than two-thirds of wellness plan participants find the health care system easier to navigate with the help of an adviser, according to an OptumHealth case study.

As employee benefit budgets remain tight, employers are adopting plan design changes that reduce drug benefit coverage and improve pricing, according to the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute.

Employers implementing wellness programs not only will help lower health-related costs, but their employees will be more engaged and productive while on the clock.

Nationwide Better Health, part of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, closed its doors Sept. 1 after five years in the wellness and productivity business. The company announced on May 25 that Nationwide would sell its productivity services to Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc. and wind down disease management and wellness programs.

Good news for advisers selling disability income insurance: Sales of traditional and voluntary DI are headed upward. But even more exciting is the undercurrent of optimism and excitement among major insurers and disability management experts about the future of disability benefit programs.

This article is the latest installment in EBN's BeneFIT Success series, which chronicles employers' and employees' wellness triumphs. The entire series is available at ebn.benefitnews.com, keywords "benefit success series."

Colorado is America's healthiest state, right? Wrong, says Andrew Sykes, chairman of Health at Work Wellness Actuaries. It's a myth and was one of the biggest challenges Sykes had to overcome when he was hired by Brighton School District - a school district northeast of Denver - to help implement a wellness program at Brighton's 18 schools and other worksites.

Imagine, in the 21st century - with all of the medical, scientific and technological advances and accomplishments our country has seen - a generation of children that is at risk of not outliving their parents. Not because of a national plague or famine. Quite the contrary, the current generation is at risk of dying prematurely because so many of them are overweight or obese.

Recently, Ambrose held its first employee health and wellness fair. We're a bit different from most organizations in that we are a PEO, a professional employer organization, meaning that companies - mostly smaller ones - contract with us to outsource their HR and payroll functions, including benefits. We wanted to host a health and wellness fair for our clients' employees, but didn't want to charge them for it. So we faced the challenge of conducting a health and wellness fair at minimal-to-no cost.

Open enrollment is often one of the busiest times of the year for most benefit professionals. After finishing all of the plan updates, budgets and the communication strategy, we have the open enrollment meetings. With any luck, you won't find yourself in a crowded room of people at the height of flu season. For those of you not lucky enough to escape air travel, late nights and multiple meetings, here are some tips for staying healthy during open enrollment time.

Last week, Meritain Health, a provider of self-funded health and wellness plans, found that 89% of participants had improved blood pressure and 77% had reduced LDL cholesterol.

The excise tax remains employers’ No. 1 concern with the health care reform law, with 45% of employers surveyed recently by Mercer citing it as a significant concern.

More than half of the average company’s employees do not engage in wellness programs because they don’t think the programs are relevant to them. Thus, changing their minds also requires a change in how the programs are rolled out.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc will no longer offer health insurance to new part-time U.S. employees who work fewer than 24 hours a week and will charge workers who use tobacco more for coverage as health care costs rise, the company said on Friday.

Full-time U.S. workers who have chronic health troubles or are overweight cost more than $153 billion in lost productivity each year from absenteeism, according to a Gallup-Healthways study released on Monday.