Healthcare benefits

The year in business: benefit firms shift their focus as employees bear more health care costs.

Reducing health care costs is still the No. 1 reason U.S. employers implement wellness programs.

Three legal organizations allege in a new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge against Walmart that the retail giant did not go far enough to offer reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers with temporary disabilities. The National Women’s Law Center, A Better Balance and Mehri & Skalet, PLLC highlight in a Dec. 17 statement that the charge is on behalf of Candis Riggins, a former Walmart employee, whose job tasks caused her to become ill when she was…

The obituary for traditional wellness programs has been widely published, though perhaps not universally acknowledged. What, indeed, went wrong?

How one brokerage’s dedication to community service strengthens its business and ties to its clients, changes lives, and honors the legacy of its people-focused founder

Employers are shifting toward one platform to manage their benefits and HR, but communicating plans to employees is more difficult due to the ACA.

Employers are becoming more familiar with the players in the private exchange marketplace but still feel they lack sufficient information about fees and how the exchanges are paid.

For much of the country, Monday was the last day to enroll in health insurance coverage through the federal Health Insurance Marketplace, Healthcare.gov, to have a Jan. 1, 2015 effective date. Overall enrollment ends Feb. 15, 2015. Unlike last year’s open enrollment, the system has hit few, if any, snags and is on track to hit or exceed its enrollment estimates.

The year in wellness: Wearable devices, outcomes-based incentives and social media have helped shape wellness in the workplace in 2014.

Take a look around the benefits discussion table at many employers these days and you’ll see a wide variety of faces. With clients increasingly tying their benefits strategy to the other departments at their businesses, it’s no surprise that top brokers in the U.S. are taking a closer look at their own company structures in the process.

How can employers get more out of their wellness programs without also growing their budgets?

When evaluating the merits of a private exchange, one industry insider suggests pursuing an overall financial strategy built around achieving “true savings” rather than simply shifting costs onto employees – a warning that has been sounded for years in the traditional marketplace.

Employers considering private health care exchanges should leave themselves plenty of time to make the switch, say two employers who’ve made the move in recent years.

Wellness programs are gaining popularity and the Cadillac tax is still a mystery for many employers, but no major changes to benefits are expected next year, study says.

Biometric screening offers value in identifying employees at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and other costly and debilitating chronic conditions. However, employers will probably not see a return on their investment if their employees don’t act on the results.

Sam’s Club, the big-box members-only warehouse, decided to offer health insurance to its customers through a private health care exchange because those small business owner-members were asking for it. In October, the retail chain said it was partnering with Aetna to offer health insurance to members through a private exchange to small businesses.

With the help of predicative analytics, employers, and more importantly their HR and benefit departments, are now able to better administer health and benefit plans to their employee populations.

Does the rising use of HSAs pose a threat to the 401(k) as the deferral vehicle of choice? The two products can work hand-in-hand to position employees for a better future, if implemented effectively.

As the Affordable Care Act moves forward, benefits enrollment and management will increasingly be done online. While there hasn't been a major breach in the benefits world yet, the risk is very real.

Comparing prescription drug benefits offered on the Covered California state-run exchange is expected to be easier during the 2015 open enrollment.