Healthcare plans

Your participants want to sue you! Yep, that's right. Apparently there is a whole cottage industry springing up relating to participants suing for hidden fees.

Eastbridge’s annual U.S. Worksite Sales Report found that voluntary sales in 2010 were $5.243 billion, down about 3% compared to 2009. Although the number dipped slightly not all companies saw a decrease. The consulting firm recognizes Wellpoint and CIGNA as leading the industry in voluntary sales growth.

Self-insuring is an attractive concept because of the flexibility it offers an employer to design a health plan that falls within its budget and meets the unique needs of its employees. The potential for cost savings is greater when an employer pays claims directly instead of paying premiums to an insurer, as in a fully insured plan.

Plan sponsors can raise the level of participation in voluntary benefits by providing live assistance to explain options to their employees, according to a recent survey.

President Barack Obama and U.S. congressional leaders hope to reach a budget deal in the coming weeks that would narrow stubborn budget deficits and extend the country's borrowing authority.

Many Americans age 50 and older worry about funding their long-term care, don’t feel financially prepared, and would strongly prefer to receive long-term care at home rather than in a nursing home, according to a recently released survey.

The New Jersey Assembly on June 23 approved a bill that will require 750,000 government employees and retirees to contribute substantially more for their health insurance and pensions.

Rep. Mike Rogers told the House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee last week that health insurance agents and brokers are in a "desperate situation," due to medical loss ratio determinations.

Advisers should work closely with health insurers to improve service fundamentals that drive employer satisfaction and commitment to benefit sponsorship, suggests new research that also identifies the best-performing vendors.

Improving health plan services that constrain costs and ease administrative hassles could go a long way toward keeping employers in the game as health care reform unfolds in 2014.

As controversy continues to brew over the validity of a McKinsey survey finding 30% of respondents would likely drop employee health care coverage in the years following the implementation of health reform’s state exchanges, a survey on the same topic from Lockton reveals a more conservative estimate: nearly one in five employers (18%) say they will consider terminating group coverage.

Fewer Americans are getting medical coverage through their jobs than a decade ago but the 2010 U.S. health care law should help stabilize employer-sponsored insurance, two studies released on Tuesday showed.

America’s long-term care facilities are subject to rising liability costs, a new study from Aon Corp. and the American Health Care Association finds.

Combination life insurance products, which combine a pool of benefit dollars for covered long-term care expenses, a death benefit for beneficiaries, or both, showed tremendous growth in 2010, with new premium sales soaring 62% to $1.2 billion, according to LIMRA research released June 17.

Several major commercial insurers are paying claims faster, but their claims processing error rates are increasing, according to an annual report of insurer performance.

Plan sponsors who forget to actually do discrimination testing run into all sorts of problems, including the possibility that their plan can be disqualified. To pass the Section 105(h) nondiscrimination rules an employer must meet two separate tests.

Enrollment in health savings accounts jumped to more than 11.4 million as of Jan. 1, 2011, according to an annual census released June 14.

Almost 80 percent of employers anticipate that there will be an increased demand for access to savings and investment advice about their 401(k) plans, according to a new survey.

Thomson Reuters, a major vendor of business intelligence services and technology spanning multiple industries, intends to divest its health care operations.

Two out of three workers would purchase additional health insurance benefits to make sure they are protected, according to a report from Aflac. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they would acquire voluntary insurance.