Healthcare plans

A focus on retirement has been key recently, with a push for younger generations to begin investing into 401(k)s, along with recent calls to Congress to empower savings among employees. Employee Benefit News has remained on top of the coverage and has packaged it for you here.

A new self-service tool for employers and brokers aims to make the RFP process for pharmacy benefit plans a little easier.

As more and more companies are flooded with administrative duties due to the Affordable Care Act, cloud-based HR and benefits systems such as Zenefits are starting to gain a substantial hold in the employer market.

Premiums for health plans purchased on the Affordable Care Act’s Small Business Health Options Program exchanges were slightly cheaper than plans only offered elsewhere, a recent study found, but advisers say the study misses the big picture.

The Employer Measures of Productivity, Absence and Quality program, originally launched in 2001, is getting a new life after a two-year pause thanks to the National Business Group on Health’s partnership with Truven Health Analytics.

The American Benefits Council has introduced its strategic plans for health and retirement policy, providing 46 specific regulatory recommendations for Congress to consider in easing the burdens on employees, employers and government agencies.

Commentary: Despite perceived cost savings, most narrow networks have actually missed the opportunity to improve value — and their lack of transparency threatens to unleash a ferocious consumer backlash, says Dartmouth's Scott Wallace.

Many employers are "taking necessary steps to rein in costs," the National Business Group on Health says, but a new Mercer survey shows plenty remain on auto-pilot.

Employers are making changes to reshape their health benefit plans between now and 2017 in order to reduce costs, according to Towers Watson’s 2014 Health Care Changes Ahead Survey. In particular, employers pointed to three specific factors that will help frame employer-sponsored benefits.

  Walgreen Co.’s director of health, benefits and wellbeing knew his company, like most in the U.S., was on an unsustainable path of increasing health care costs combined with employees who didn’t focus on their wellbeing. But when the company’s senior directors started thinking about moving employee health care offerings to a private exchange, he was adamantly against it. …

Benefit advisers can demonstrate value to current and potential employer clients with strategies to identify high-cost cases and decrease the burden of their medical costs

Adviser help is needed to encourage employers to adopt the FSA rollover allowance, which has demonstrated growth results for employee contributions and enrollment numbers.

Last week Apple unveiled its Apple Watch and Apple HealthKit app to much fanfare. But how these new technologies will fit into or transform the health care landscape remains to be seen. Catch up on EBA’s coverage and analysis of the event to see how these new technologies could impact the benefits business.

Commentary: Evolving technologies are creating a major shift in the enrollment landscape. Brokers and benefit advisers hoping to offer clients customized solutions need to stay in the know.

Predictions for 2014 open enrollment include more than 3 million employees being covered under private exchanges. Is this the new trend in employer-sponsored health care coverage?

A panel of U.S. companies representing more than 1 million active employees and another 50 million retirees across the globe convened Tuesday in Washington, D.C. to unveil a campaign aimed at reducing the nation’s health care costs.

Commentary: Consider that employers nationwide spend billions of dollars to give their employees access to medical care and other important insurance coverage. While most businesses offer health and welfare benefits to remain competitive for talent, they end up creating a valuable by-product in the process.

A majority of employers, large and small, are embracing wellness programs as a means to improve employee health and, hopefully, cut rising health care costs.

New research points to low-cost consumer-directed plans as being a key strategy in thwarting rising health benefit costs.

myEdGPS helps working parents of special needs children map out an education plan for their child and offers guidance on how to access certain services through school systems, leading to tangible savings on health care costs for employers and health plans.