Employee-Paid

Come 2018, I believe brokers will continue to shift the conversation with clients from technology to talent.

HealthCare.gov may have suffered its first year-over-year drop in activity volume during the fifth week of the open enrollment period for individual health insurance for 2018.

You wouldnt pay a mechanic for a faulty muffler or a restaurant for spoiled food. If you did, you would expect a refund. But the same arrangement between buyer and seller hasnt historically existed in medical care.

Consumers may not find a navigator at the ready when they want to enroll. In addition to the navigator cuts, the federal government also cut the advertising budget for open enrollment from $100 million to $10 million, creating additional challenges for navigator groups.

For the benefits and HR industry, more reliance on technology, equals more reliance on brokers to help employers make their way in an ever more complex world.

The flexibility of HSAs makes them appealing for a wide range of users, but that same flexibility can make explaining these accounts a challenge. No two people have identical health benefit needs, and each employee will use an HSA differently.

A growing number of Americans are incorporating strategies for affording health insurance into financial planning, adapting money and salaries to yield better choices much as people place money into 401(k) plans to save for retirement while reducing their taxes.

The U.S. government should use its heft to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, according to a group of independent experts who advise the nation on science and medicine.