Employers are being faced with a rapidly changing economic environment, the possibility of a forced shut-down, and a workforce who are concerned about income and the need to care for dependents. The purpose of this email is to provide information surrounding a number...
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Concerns Rise Over Letting Employers Fund HRAs for Individual Health Plans
Employers, health insurers, regulators and hospitals are all raising concerns about the Trump administration’s rules issued last year that allow employers to fund health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) that their workers can use to purchase health plans on the open...
Employer Guide for Dealing with the Coronavirus
As the outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus gains momentum and potentially begins to spread in North America, employers will have to start considering what steps they can take to protect their workers while fulfilling their legal obligations. Employers are in a...
Creative Dining Shares Success Story at NextGen Healthcare Summit
Jim Eickhoff and Mike Hill talk about how Creative Dining was able to take control of their healthcare supply chain and stop year over year jumps of nearly 20% on premiums from commercial carriers.
Reference Pricing Can Reduce Medical Outlays, Costs
In an effort to coax health plan participants to use price-shopping behavior when deciding on where to have a procedure, more insurers are starting to roll out a system known as “reference pricing.” With reference pricing, the health insurer imposes a limit on the...
Trends Shaping Health Insurance and Health Care in 2020
As a new decade begins, the health insurance industry is on the cusp of making a leap towards improved, higher-tech management of health plan participants. A recent paper by Capgemini, an insurance technology and consulting firm, predicts the following trends that...
Congress Eliminates the ‘Cadillac’ and Other ACA Taxes
Congress before the new year passed legislation repealing the so-called “Cadillac tax” on generous group health plans, as well as two other taxes, finally putting to bed an issue that has plagued the Affordable Care Act since its inception. Although it had not yet...
High-Deductible Plans Saddling Workers with Bigger Drug Outlays
A new study has found that high-deductible plans and increased use of coinsurance are exposing health plan enrollees to higher and higher pharmaceutical costs. One of the big problems for many enrollees in high-deductible plans is that their outlays for drugs may not...
Average Family Plan Cost Hits $20,000 for First Time; What Can You Do to Cut Costs?
A new study has found that the average annual premium for a group family health plan has exceeded $20,000 for the first time in 2019, up 5% from 2018. The average premium for single coverage plans in 2019 is $7,188, up 4% from the year prior, according to the Kaiser...
Telemedicine Taking Off, Reducing Health Costs
One of the fastest growing parts of the health care system, and which touches significantly on group health plans, is telemedicine. From 2016 to 2017, insurance claims for services rendered via telehealth ― as a percentage of all medical claim lines ― grew 53%...