Healthcare benefits

How high-cost specialty drugs are altering the duties of the benefit adviser and pharmacy benefit manager

Having a goal, understanding the workforce and communicating in a variety of ways helps increase participation.

Another bullish forecast about private HIX growth estimates that the roughly 2.5 million current enrollees (excluding retirees) could triple in the coming year.

Commentary: Collective information is the new frontier when it comes to big data in the health care realm, says Lockton’s Kayla O’Neal

Democrats Thursday reintroduced legislation that would allow employees to earn paid sick leave, a benefit 43 million employees don’t currently have access to.

Smartphone-based activity and fitness apps are just as accurate as those found on dedicated wearable devices, and may be a more economical alternative for most people.

With the news of the breach of security at Anthem health plans, many employers have been wondering whether their employees are affected and how they should respond.

The cyber attack might affect group health plans, and plan sponsors need to identify if and/or how they are affected and what they need to do in response.

Eight years after drugstore chain giant CVS bought PBM Caremark, Rite Aid followed suit yesterday in announcing plans to acquire EnvisionRx, a 14-year-old PBM with estimated 2015 revenue of $5 billion, and 21 million covered lives.

Would saving an extra $200 billion in health care costs a year sound nice? No, it’s not another ploy to get rid of the ACA … for once. Annually, between $100 billion and $289 billion is spent on hospital visits due to patients failing to adhere to their prescription medicines

Commentary: Americans must take the responsible course when it comes to health insurance coverage, says adviser David C. Smith.

While Anthem’s recent data breach raised concerns on the security of personal data, an employee’s ability to actually understand and interpret personal health information is also an issue.

In the next five years, when it comes to managing costs, wellness offerings and family coverage, C-level executives and benefit managers both cite four changes expected in the next five years, but executives and managers each weigh in differently on their importance.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners will investigate the security posture of health insurer Anthem following its huge hacking breach.

Employers opting to drop or forgo health care coverage for employees are still eager for ways to help their staff manage health care needs. Benefit firm FirstPerson has unveiled a unique solution to do just that.

Consumers cite complex language, lack of time as roadblocks to making a purchase, study finds.

Corporate spending on wellness programs is surging, but motivating employees to use them continues to be a rather expensive struggle. There are lots of reasons for this, but a really unfortunate one is bad timing.

Not all corporate data breaches are of the spectacular variety that health insurer Anthem recently announced, involving 80 million members. But any company that offers a wellness program needs to take special precautions to ensure employee health information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

For some employers the move to a private exchange is as much about the role of benefits as an attraction and retention strategy as it is about saving money over the long term.

Broker information was not compromised as part of a cyber-attack on Anthem’s IT system and the carrier says it is working with brokers to assist and inform their clients about the breach.