Healthcare plans

Despite the regulatory uncertainty about how the Affordable Care Act’s excise tax will apply to employer-sponsored care offered through onsite clinics, employers appear committed to the concept.

About 9.9 million people got health insurance coverage through the marketplaces set up by the ACA as of June 30, a decline from earlier in the year though still higher than the White House administration’s target.

Greg Giangrande, executive vice president, chief human resources officer for Time Inc., is the recipient of EBN’s 2015 Benefits Leadership in Health Care Award.

With the increase to the individual mandate penalty slated for 2016, will more people seek coverage through their employers or the public exchanges?

As the health care landscape continues to evolve, the expanding menu of options has made navigating benefits a tricky endeavor for employees and employers alike. But one new partnership aims to help curb the confusion.

Generation Y employees want more customization and education about their benefits — and employers need to provide a broad range of offerings while taking a holistic view to contain rising health care costs.

The number of employers who could be subject to the ACA’s Cadillac tax is predicted to rise if employers remain stagnant on health care plan changes, underscoring a need to make plan adjustments sooner rather than later.

The economic burden of illness is highest for hypertension – $392 per eligible employee – compared to nine other conditions, including heart disease, depression and mental illness, and arthritis, according to some research.

Commentary: Good faith effort, transition relief, 30-day extension and other safety nets for 6055 and 6066 tax filing.

Despite the wide range of cannabis program laws, consistent themes have begun to emerge.

Some have compared the changes in health care to the changes that occurred in the retirement industry 30 years ago when companies switched from pension plans to 401(k) plans and put the responsibility on consumers to pick investments. But George Tzinas, chief experience officer at BenefitAlign, says it is not the same.

Separating fact from fiction when it comes to the Affordable Care Act is no easy task. Here are 13 common misconceptions about the law.

Commentary: Specific innovations in benefits administration software are paving the way and supplying the technological framework to a future primarily based in cyberspace rather than buildings filled with people.

Yelp, the online service which provides customer reviews of local businesses, has teamed with the ProPublica news organization to incorporate health care statistics and consumer opinion survey data onto Yelp’s business pages for more than 25,000 medical treatment facilities.

Trying to institute a wellness initiative in a poor corporate culture is like making dinner with rotten ingredients.

Despite some progress in making employees smarter consumers of health care, pockets of resistance remain, sometimes in surprising places.

Public exchange plan participants spent less money on medications in the first quarter of 2015 than the first quarter of 2014 amid changes in the demographic mix of enrollees, according to newly released data from Express Scripts Holding Company.

Large employers are playing a waiting game in the coming year on health care cost saving strategies as many wait and see how Washington politics play out.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has awarded consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton a $202 million contract to be the marketplace system integrator, or general contractor, which includes the federally-facilitated health insurance marketplace, parts of the state-run marketplaces and more.

Brokers continue to be a vital resource for individuals enrolling in health care coverage on the marketplaces setup under the ACA, with some brokers saying in 2015 they helped more than 100 individuals enroll in health care coverage on the marketplaces.