Core and Group Health

The role of health insurance agents and brokers over the next few years will be even more important as middle-market decision makers navigate choices in a post-health care reform era.

Efforts by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make the new health insurance exchange program as flexible as possible for the states could hurt health insurers.

Chicago-based Hub International Limited announced it will purchase Strategic Employee Benefits Services of Louisiana, a Metairie, La.-based benefit consulting and service firm.

The National Conference of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL) is backing an effort by health insurance agents to get Congress to exempt producer compensation from health insurance medical loss ratio (MLR) calculations.

With a default deadline drawing ominously near, House Republican leaders are giving the tea party what amounts to a symbolic floor vote on a "cut, cap and balance" debt-limit plan while behind the scenes work continues on a fallback measure that could become the framework for a compromise.

Mirroring the broader economy, the strength of the national health care labor market remained mostly stagnant in the second quarter of 2011, as measured by the Health Workplace Solutions Labor Market Pulse Index.