For many employers, the message is clear: health care reform is going to cost money. Removing lifetime limits, adding more dependents to your plan, … Read more
Mercer Survey: Employers Pushing to Keep 2011 Benefits Increase Under 6%
How much of an increase in benefit costs are employers willing to absorb next year? Would you believe it’s now up to 5.9 percent? A new survey … Read more
Survey: Family Health Premiums up 3%, but Workers’ Share Jumps 14%
The annual Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Benefits Survey is out, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, it shows that health care costs and coverage … Read more
When Wellness Sucks, We All Lose
As a crazy cynic (yet grudgingly a realist at times), there is a certain disdain I have for wellness programs. Could it be that “Big Brother” … Read more
What’s Hard About Making Benefits Communications Easy to Understand?
A couple of months ago I was, just like many of your employees, trying to make sense of a benefits annual enrollment guide. This one was from my husband’s … Read more
Medical Tourism: It Can Cut Costs, But is it Right for Your Employees?
We’ve heard of quite a few schemes to cut health care costs. Certainly cutting coverage and switching insurance companies to save a buck are the less … Read more
Do Your Employees Really Want to Get Their Benefits Info via Social Media?
Last month I shared my befuddlement about the National Business Group on Health’s findings that employees don’t want information about their benefits via … Read more
How to Translate the DOL Health Care Reform Notices Into English
This week I spoke about communicating health care reform at the IFEBP Benefit Communication and Technology Institute in Boston. I talked to a number of … Read more
What do Your Employees Really Know About Their Benefits?
In all too many companies, Kimmie the junior HR associate leads a conference room full of half-asleep employees through a positively delightful Power Point … Read more
Employee Wellness vs. Office Lifestyle: Why We Need to Get Up and Move
New research published recently shows that sitting for prolonged periods of time can’t be undone by an active lifestyle and exercise. In fact, “women and … Read more