Health and wellness

The National Association of Health Underwriters commends the June 30 decision of a National Association of Insurance Commissioners broker task force to endorse a bill in Congress that would provide state insurance regulators more freedom when it comes to the medical loss ratio implementation.

Are you a PPACA prodigy? Or, do you need health care reform remediation? Take EBN's PPACA Challenge to find out!

One thing young employees can expect as they enter the workforce is that their employers almost certainly will place a greater employer focus on their health and well-being. This focus is not only for lowering claims costs, but aimed at improving absenteeism and quality of life.

Fifth in EBN's year-long BeneFIT Success series When the waistlines of both your employee population and your corporate medical costs are shrinking, people tend to take notice. And many eyes have been watching such a slimming down effect taking shape at the Principal Financial Group year after year.

In May, the Midwest Business Group on Health and health care consultancy The La Penna Group partnered to form the National Worksite Health Center Association.

By incorporating employee health clinics into the business structure of their clients, Matt McQuide and Rick Gantt are able to bring down health care costs while changing the way employers think about health care delivery. Not to mention keep themselves firmly entrenched as the BOR in the process.

Forgetting the golden rule and rewarding wrong people are among the top four reasons Sykes lists for why employee wellness incentives fail.

To significantly lower health care costs, we need to keep people out of the health care system in the first place. We need to keep them healthy. How do we accomplish that seemingly simple concept? In a word, prevention.

The authors of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would be quick to point out that our plan is not required to cover dependent children — but we do have to cover the 26-year-olds if we want to cover the newborns and preschoolers. Some choice.

Will the new health plan law make health coverage more expensive for your firm or staff? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a report this week saying that for companies with fewer than 50 workers, costs should drop.

As controversy continues to brew over the validity of a McKinsey survey finding 30% of respondents would likely drop employee health care coverage in the years following the implementation of health reform’s state exchanges, a survey on the same topic from Lockton reveals a more conservative estimate: nearly one in five employers (18%) say they will consider terminating group coverage.

Fewer Americans are getting medical coverage through their jobs than a decade ago but the 2010 U.S. health care law should help stabilize employer-sponsored insurance, two studies released on Tuesday showed.

The Health and Human Services Department stopped accepting ERRP applications on May 6, and announced nearly half of the $5 billion earmarked for the program had been approved for payout to employers. However, Senators John Kerry, Debbie Stabenow, Richard Blumenthal and Ben Cardin recently introduced a new measure that would infuse another the $5 billion into ERRP.

For too many employers, poor health and well-being comes at a hefty price in terms of increased health care costs and decreased productivity. But for one California-based company, the path to a more healthy, happy workforce has come at hardly any cost at all.

Since the passage of health care reform, benefit managers must redefine the employment contract as it pertains to reining in rising health care costs. That means enhancing conventional employee wellness programs so that they evolve into high-value workforce well-being initiatives.

I've never met Danna Korn, but after spending just 25 minutes speaking with her, I believe her company - wellness program vendor Sonic Boom, in Carlsbad, Calif. - is aptly named. Recalling from middle school science that a sonic boom is the thunderous sound created from shock waves when an object is moving faster than the speed of sound, Korn's approach to wellness and her views on traditional programs likely will send shock waves through the industry.

Although for the most part still in their infancy, global wellness programs are beginning to catch on. Unlike U.S. wellness initiatives that are driven largely by fighting rising health care costs, in Asia, the motive is a need to compete for top talent, and European multinationals are focused on reducing absenteeism and improving employees' health and safety, according to Towers Watson. Whatever the reason, formulating a global health strategy means balancing a universal mission with local realities.

President Obama signed legislation in April repealing the expanded 1099 reporting requirements in the health care reform law and Small Business Jobs Act.

The Employers Council on Flexible Compensation is fighting to repeal parts of the health care reform law that establish annual caps for flexible spending accounts and require a prescription for over-the-counter medications to be reimbursed under FSAs. It also is pushing for a change to allow for a cash out at the end of the year in place of the use-it-or-lose-it system that dates back to the 1980s.

Last week's survey results from McKinsey, which found 30% of employers plan to drop health benefits after PPACA-mandated exchanges open in 2014, may be the product of flawed methodology, according to news reports.