Healthcare reform

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

Increased and unnecessary risks to Healthcare.gov security remain, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services has failed to implement and address security issues, the GAO says.

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?

About 115,000 people who signed up for Obamacare and may not be legal residents of the U.S. will lose their insurance coverage at the end of the month, the government said Monday.

Two major trends in employer-sponsored health care continue: a slower rate of premium increases and greater use of high-deductible health plans, especially among small employers, Kaiser study finds.

As private exchange providers introduce voluntary benefit offerings, how will broker commissions be affected?

CMS says small employers and their benefit advisers in select states will have early access to the ACA’s Small Business Health Options Program to test-drive the system, but not all are interested.

Ever since final rules under the Affordable Care Act dictated that outcomes-based wellness programs must offer reasonable alternatives to employees unable to achieve the program’s health benchmarks, employers have continued to worry over the effectiveness of their health improvement efforts.

Commentary: Under the ACA, clinical trials offer an expanding frontier for plan sponsors and insurers, says Symetra’s Marien Diaz.

The IRS has released long-awaited draft instructions for the forms employers will use to comply with the ACA’s employer mandate, giving benefit advisers and their clients a glimpse of the work ahead for 2015 and how to begin preparing now.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington will rehear a recent court decision that found the ACA's premium subsidies invalid in more than two dozen states due to the law’s specific language. A rehearing may reduce the chances of a new Supreme Court showdown over a central element of the health reform law.

Fed up over unpaid enrollment commissions, benefit advisers are suing the Nevada state exchange and its website contractor Xerox.

The Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday that Kevin Counihan, the head of Connecticut’s state-run exchange will join the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as CEO of the Marketplace, also known as the federal government’s health care exchange.

The Obama administration has announced a government workaround to allow employees of religious nonprofits access to birth-control coverage even if their employer has opted not to pay for such medicines.

In anticipation of the Affordable Care Act’s excise tax, U.S. employers are planning to take more aggressive approaches to projected single-digit increases in health care costs by revisiting the viability of consumer-driven health plans and spousal and dependent coverage.

Benefit advisers and employers say a host of challenges is not only to blame for stagnant SHOP enrollment, but must be overcome if SHOP is to enjoy any success.

Although open enrollment for ACA plans is not set to begin until November 15, a new report estimates that nearly 7 million adults may be able to enroll through special enrollment periods.

Enrollment on the SHOP exchanges remains stagnant, a concern benefit advisers attribute to inadequate marketing practices. Brokers also remain concerned about the poor quality of training for those assisting employers with enrollment.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a new one-page publication with information about exemptions to the health coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act.

Employers are seeking help from benefit brokers and advisers as health care costs have them searching for alternatives to the current system of health care delivery.