Healthcare plans

By the time Astra Augustus left Virtua Memorial Hospital in New Jersey after the last of four surgeries, she’d run up about $255,000 in bills.

Life Technologies, a California-based medical research and life sciences company with more than 10,000 employees, shifted its workforce to a CDHP in 2010. Benefits leader Carole Mendoza says the education and communication effort for the change ran the gamut from bathroom newsletters (the old “porcelain press”) to blogs, webinars and social networks.

LIMRA reports that 47% of employers with 2-99 employees offer benefits, the lowest level in 20 years.

Some 29 states have so-called lifestyle laws that protect smokers’ rights.

A recent study finds wide variety between the lowest and highest charges for 10 common conditions, highlighting the unpredictability of health care costs.

Only 6% of those surveyed by Aon Hewitt plan to exit employer-sponsored health care entirely, but around 28% are eyeing the next three to five years for a move to a private health care exchange.

Buck Consultants announced this week that it would be starting a private health care exchange while Liazon unveiled a new web partnership to support its own.

The answer to that question is still fuzzy. That’s because while the Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed to Employee Benefit News that health reimbursement arrangements and health savings accounts will be offered on the public exchanges, the organization still hasn’t released the details and regulations surrounding these accounts.

UnitedHealth Group Inc., the biggest U.S. medical insurer, is set to face claims that it failed to properly oversee a Las Vegas doctor who gave colonoscopy patients hepatitis C by mishandling the anesthetic Propofol.

Americans say they’re filling up less on fast food and pizza, according to a U.S. survey.

“We are making progress, we are on track and we will be ready,” Gary Cohen, director of the Department of Health and Human Services consumer information division, told the Senate Finance Committee at a hearing in Washington.

The federal government has given approval to launch nonprofit, member-run co-ops in 24 states. The CEO of one of these co-ops offered insight into what such organizations will need to survive.

In a Midwest Business Group on Health webinar, representatives from three private health insurance exchanges offered insight into what employers, employees and the overall market can gain from the emerging model.

A new study indicates there could be treatment differences when a patient is seen in person versus an e-visit. While follow-up rates were comparable, physicians in e-visits did order different care.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is preparing to retire, extended benefits such as child care, commissary privileges and transportation to military bases to same-sex partners of service members.

Lawmakers from Michigan and Wisconsin were among those who called PPACA a good “first step” toward health care coverage for all Americans at a Families USA conference in Washington.

The Family Medical Leave Act was signed into law 20 years ago today, offering an opportunity to dissect its successes and stumbles in offering workers expanded access to protected leave.

The government said the rules announced last week would broaden the types of organizations eligible for an exemption from the birth-control mandate and make it easier for them to escape it.

A study released Monday morning from the ADP Research Institute indicates that while 77% of eligible full-time workers select health coverage, only 15% of eligible part-time workers do the same.

The cost of prescription medication used to treat aging-related conditions has been steadily increasing over the past five years and could soon overtake spending on chronic conditions.