Wellness

A new Illinois law requires insurance companies to offer coverage for services meant to get smokers to kick the habit.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers ages 55 years and older make up 23.9 percent of the U.S. work force, and that number is likely to grow as more aging workers are delaying retirement, which is a challenge for employers.

The studies seem to grow more than the waistlines of the subjects themselves.

According to a recent ORC International survey on the United Kingdom work force, 42 percent of regular smokers believe they are either healthy or very healthy, with only 17 percent seeing themselves as unhealthy or very unhealthy.

Steve Jobs, the mind behind the iPhone, iPad and other devices that turned Apple Inc. into one of the world's most powerful companies, resigned as the company's CEO Wednesday, saying he can no longer handle the job.

Health care reform is changing many things about the insurance industry, and in some cases those changes are not in the broker's favor. But at least one area of the market is seeing a boon thanks to the Affordable Care Act wellness plans.