Healthcare plans

Democratic senators on Tuesday expressed concern that companies hired to help pay and oversee medical claims under the Medicare health insurance program may have costly conflicts of interest.

Last month, the Center for Health Value Innovation released its 2010 Value-Based Design Report - a study of more than 170 companies, representing more than 4 million covered lives, produced in partnership with Buck Consultants - which takes the national temperature on how value-based benefits designs are progressing in U.S. workplaces.

Some of you may remember exercise instructors such as Jane Fonda or the late Jack LaLanne. When I was a kid, my mom had Jack LaLanne exercise books.

For once, we weren't trying to innovate, iterate or invest in something new. We simply wanted to successfully launch a consumer-driven health plan. We thought it would be easy, since many employers had already delved into these issues before us.

For many of us who travel by plane, post-9/11 security restrictions have changed the way we prepare. Our packing has changed, our attire has changed and we now enter the airport hoping to make it through the screening, scanning and patting down with our humor intact.

The ink is barely dry on our 2011 calendars, and here in Palm Beach County we're already finding ourselves in the thick of a request for proposal for our self-insured health plan for 2012.

Advisers looking for innovative ways to help their clients attack health care costs now have a new arrow in their quiver: the nascent field of surgery benefit management. SBM combines the use of medical centers of excellence and medical tourism with data mining, predictive modeling, health coaching and case management.

Racial and economic disparities in the U.S. health care system may come down to access to medical care, hints a new report on appendicitis.

The good news for health insurers is that they’re improving their reputation, but they still aren’t receiving high service marks from customers.

The Department of Health and Human Services has launched a Web portal as part of an initiative to make its repositories of health data more accessible.

Americans are more optimistic about their ability to pay for health care services in the coming months, particularly for elective surgeries, according to a survey issued on Thursday.

Casa Grande Regional Medical Center is offering its 3,000 employees and dependents online consultations with emergency physicians to address common, minor medical conditions.

Women are not only saving less for retirement than men, but are also putting fewer dollars into their health savings accounts and health reimbursement arrangements as well, according to the most recent research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The Internal Revenue Service has done a turnaround on the deductibility of breast pumps as medical expenses.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently issued new standards for its Patient-Centered Medical Home program. More than 7,700 clinicians at 1,500 sites use existing standards from Washington-based NCQA in their medical home initiatives.

If you're a dessert lover like me, you may have celebrated at the news that Mark Haub, a Kansas State University nutrition professor, lost 27 pounds and lowered his cholesterol levels by eating a 10-week diet of mostly Twinkies and Doritos and adding no extra exercise.

Have you ever tried to speak with your teenagers about saving money?

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments are all the rage lately for consumers, and many carriers are catching on to the trend by offering discounts on or coverage of certain benefits.

Though primary care physicians and nurse practitioners are intended to be patients' first point of entry into the health care system, approximately seven out of 10 people in U.S. commercial health plans (and 95% of the elderly) see one or more specialists a year.

Self-funding used to be exclusively for big companies that had a solid cushion of assets, plenty of cash flow and a large employee population across which to spread risk.