Americans who get employer-based health insurance for their families saw their premiums increase 10 times faster than their income from 2001 to 2005, according to a analysis of government data by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota.
Employers and health insurers would be prohibited from discriminating against individuals on the basis of their genetic information, under landmark legislation recently approved by Congress.
New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo says that he is conducting an industry-wide investigation into how health insurers compute reimbursement rates for out-of-network medical expenses.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., reported recently that the percentage of its employees who say they have no healthcare coverage declined from 9.6 percent to 7.3 percent in the last year.
Most health savings account (HSA) plans cover recommended preventive benefits on a first-dollar basis (that is, without regard to whether the deductible is met), according to a new survey released today by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
Full-time workers who participate in a healthcare plan and earn less than $15 per hour are more likely to be required to make a contribution for coverage than their counterparts who have higher wages, according to a report by Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to a recent survey, more than a fifth of small employers that provide coverage do not subsidize family coverage at all. And while a significant majority of large employers remain committed to offering employee coverage to their full-time employees and their families, providing health care for part-time employees has proven to be a greater challenge.
Health coverage prevalence among employers with fewer than 200 employees fell from 66 percent five years ago to 61 percent in 2007, according to a survey by Mercer. From 2006 to 2007 alone, the prevalence of health coverage among these employers dropped from 63 percent to 61 percent.
Despite recent talk in media circuits--and on the presidential campaign trail--about federal government-sponsored health care, it will be a quite a while before it ever becomes a reality. At least that's the thinking of human resource professionals, according to a recent Compensation.BLR.com poll.
Rising healthcare costs are increasingly changing the way Americans use the healthcare system, creating both positive and potentially negative effects, according to a survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
