Healthcare plans

Cost increases for health care are perhaps finally slowing down, with employer health benefit expenditures not expected to increase in 2012 at the same explosive growth in recent years. Costs for all types of medical plans are expected to increase by 9.9% for 2012, according to a survey by Buck Consultants, the first time since 2001 that Buck's survey has projected cost increases less than 10% for any type of plan. The firm has been conducting its survey since 1999.

Americans may be overly optimistic when it comes to thinking they won't ever be diagnosed with a serious illness or experience an accident, according to a recent survey.

There has been a lot of information in the news about health care reform and how it affects small businesses. Yet, I still find many business owners scratching their heads trying to understand what it all means for their businesses. To simplify matters, here are five things small employers must know about employee health benefits—especially in a post-health care reform environment:

What better way to take lessons of branding a wellness program than from one of the top-branded companies in the world, Procter and Gamble? The producers of timeless product lines like Old Spice and Tide recently introduced Vibrant Living, P&G’s in-house line of benefits specially designed to help employees live healthier.

Smaller employers have historically been hesitant to self-fund their health plans because they commonly perceive it as suitable only for large companies. Done right, self-funding an employee health benefit plan can be a smart long-term strategy.

There are questions about the future of the group long-term care market, as two insurers have stopped offering the product in the past 17 months.

Enrollment in health savings accounts and health reimbursement arrangements continues to grow, but contribution patterns to these account-based health plans are changing, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Information commonly exits in silos: Pharmacy benefit managers, health plans, and absence management, disability and enrollment vendors generally all operate independently and invisibly to other health care entities that are caring for the same population of patients.

In the information age, perhaps the only system left that hasn't gone completely digital or to the cloud is health care. Even insurance companies, who warehouse massive amounts of data, rarely share it with other insurance companies when an employee moves from one job to the next. And for patients to gain access to their own heath records, which largely are maintained on paper, they have to go through a lengthy process - on paper.

Employers across America face unprecedented challenges in providing competitive employee benefits while still controlling costs. Public-sector employers face additional obstacles from revenue shortfalls and increased public scrutiny of government spending. Yet employers, both public and private, have access to many proven solutions that can help them control and even reduce costs while continuing to offer a strong benefits package. …

More than half of U.S. employers say they are expanding the use of technology to manage costs associated with employee benefits programs. This is according to new research from Prudential Financial.

Most advisers and their clients don’t see eye to eye on measuring portfolio performance, according to global asset manager Russell Investments’ latest quarterly survey of U.S. financial advisers.

As more employers introduce employees to consumer-driven health plans with a health savings account, utilization grows of those HSAs. Last week, UMB Healthcare Services announced a growth of 36% of HSA account balances, surpassing $400 million dollars following 2011 open enrollment. The number of HSAs stood at nearly 220,000 at year-end.

In a new report, titled “Opportunities in Reaching the Middle Market with Life Insurance,” Conning estimates the middle market life insurance protection gap to be $10.2 trillion — a 56% increase when compared to the firm’s last study of the middle market in 2006. The total protection gap across all income brackets has more than doubled.

About 44% of employers believe they will provide employee health benefits through a corporate exchange in the next three to five years, according to a new study.

It’s an appealing proposition, to set a certain price to what you’ll spend on employee’s health care costs. Long gone may be the days of having to wait an entire year to know what your numbers are for this year and basing future strategy on numbers you don’t have. It’s the appeal of an exchange, where employers could release their employees to the winds to choose what kind of coverage they want.

The Obama administration on Monday released broad new operating rules for state-run health insurance exchanges, which form a key part of the 2010 federal health care reform law that will face landmark Supreme Court hearings in just two weeks.

House Republican leaders are looking for a way to reshape the debate over the administration's new rule on birth control insurance coverage before moving ahead with a bid to nullify the requirement.

Although the rate of health care cost increases is expected to remain stable in 2012, employers are taking more aggressive steps to manage their rising costs and improve employee health, according to findings from the 2012 Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health Employer Survey on Purchasing Value in Health Care. The survey was completed by 512 employers who work at companies with at least 1,000 employees and collectively employ 9.1 million full-time employees, and represent more than $87 billion in annual health care spending.

Fortune Magazine’s list of the 50 Most Admired Companies only includes one insurer, Berkshire Hathaway, at No. 7. However, the news outlet ranked insurers separately in their own categories: “Property and Casualty,” “Life and Health” and “Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care.”