Monday, October 23, 2006

Moderating Healthcare Premium Rate Increases Shown In Three Studies, Federal Employee Schedule For 2007 Three studies by Hewitt, Towers Perrin, and Information Strategies Inc. indicate that healthcare premium cost increases may be moderating for employers. 5:52:18 PM    comment []

New HSA Resource Package Helps Employers Explain Plans and Drive Enrollment Great-West Healthcare, a national employee benefits provider, today released its employer health savings account (HSA) resource package. Intended to improve employees' understanding and drive enrollment, the package includes an employee readiness survey and an HSA employer resource guide CD. The resource package is useful to employers of all sizes, but is ideal for smaller employers who have limited time and resources to develop their own education and enrollment campaigns. 5:50:59 PM    comment []

Hispanics Make Excellent Targets For HSAs As New Study Surfaces Interesting Usage Patterns What appears to be the first comprehensive syndicated research report to examine the perceptions, expectations and behaviors of the U.S. Hispanic community in the areas of nutrition, lifestyle and healthcare has been released by MarketTools.  The provider of on-demand market research, has released results of its Hispanic Reach™ Health and Wellness Study and the results indicate that Hispanics would be an excellent target for Health Savings Accounts. 5:50:19 PM    comment []

Catastrophic Healthcare Policies Growing As Attractive HSA Option An emerging trend amongst Health Savings Account users is purchasing catastrophic insurance with a high deductible. At the same time, several insurance companies have added catastrophic policies to their HSA offerings. 5:49:09 PM    comment []

Aetna Study Confirms Trend By CDH Users To Use Less Resources, Switch To Generic Drugs Confirming data first reported by Information Strategies, Inc., Aetna says a survey of consumer directed healthcare users shows they consistently have lower medical costs, maintained levels of chronic and preventive care and increased usage of generic medications and consumer tools and information. 5:48:21 PM    comment []

MetLife Offers Rules of Thumb for Selecting Benefits At a time when competitive pressures have forced companies to shift the financial burden for healthcare and other employee benefits from "employer" to "employee," MetLife's 2006 Study of Open Enrollment Benefits Trends shows that a majority of workers look forward to their company's Fall benefits open enrollment period. 5:47:26 PM    comment []

U.S. Healthcare Companies Need to Drastically Improve Leadership Leading global employee research and consulting firm ISR has announced the findings of an employee opinion study revealing that U.S. healthcare companies are facing the need to drastically improve leadership and employee supervision. 5:46:33 PM    comment []

HSAs and Retiree Health Care Health savings accounts (HSAs), often thought to be for the young and healthy, can also be a tax-efficient way to save for the worrisome cost of retiree health care.  HSAs enable consumers to invest pretax dollars in high-earning years and withdraw that money in retirement for out-of-pocket medical costs. Those costs can be steep for the growing number of retirees without corporate-sponsored retirement health insurance: Fidelity Investments estimates that a 65-year-old couple retiring in 2006 without employer-provided health benefits would need an average of $200,000 for out-of-pocket health care expenses because Medicare does not cover all costs. 5:46:04 PM    comment []

Open Enrollment Offers Opportunity to Save It's that time of year again.  The annual open-enrollment exercise that will start soon at companies across America provides an opportunity to tweak your workplace health and retirement benefits to stretch your dollars further. 5:45:12 PM    comment []

New E-Learning Program on HSA Fundamentals Available WorldatWork and National Business Group on Health have teamed to create an e-learning program entitled "HSA Fundamentals - Key Components and Operational Requirements of Health Savings Accounts."  The e-learning course was developed to meet the needs of benefits professionals, HR generalists, and management seeking a better understanding of the trend towards more consumer-directed health care, with HSAs as a potential plan design component. 5:44:40 PM    comment []

Free Guide Aimed At Helping Employees Choose The Best Healthcare Plan Is Published Ridgefield, NJ—October 24, 2006: Based on more than 10,000 interviews with employees and employers, Information Strategies, Inc. has published “An Employee's Guide To The Open Enrollment Process.” The free guide is appearing at a time when millions of Americans are going through the annual ritual of choosing their 2007 healthcare coverage.  It is also available during a period when many companies are asking employees to pay a higher percentage of their healthcare costs and/or changing healthcare benefits. 5:43:26 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Information Strategies, Inc.. Last update: 11/9/2006; 1:21:34 PM.