Medical Benefits articles from August 2006

Medical Benefits archives from August 2006

Milliman Medical Index 2006.(HEALTH CARE COSTS)
August 30, 2006... Milliman, Inc., June 29, 2006 "The average annual medical cost for a family of four in 2006 is $13,382, [an increase of] 9.6% from 2005 to 2006 (Figure 1). The annualized rate of increase for the four-year period 2002 to 2006 was 9.7%...

How much more cost sharing will health savings accounts bring?(HEALTH CARE COSTS)
August 30, 2006... "Americans who select a high-deductible health insurance plan may establish, make contributions to, and make payments from a tax-free health savings account (HSA). The plan must include a yearly deductible of $1,000 to $5,000 for an...

Savings needed to fund health insurance and health care expenses in retirement.(HEALTH CARE COSTS)
August 30, 2006... "Research has consistently found that fewer employers are offering retiree health benefits than in the past, and that when retiree health benefits are offered, retirees are experiencing various combinations of rising premiums, higher...

What accounts for differences in the use of hospital emergency departments across US communities?(HEALTH CARE POLICY)
August 30, 2006... Peter J. Cunningham, Health Affairs Web Exclusives, July 18, 2006 "Increases in the use of hospital emergency departments (EDs) might contribute to crowding at some EDs, higher health care costs, and lower-quality primary care. [Our]...

Unintended consequences of caps on Medicare drug benefits.(HEALTH CARE POLICY)
August 30, 2006... "Many employers and Medicare+Choice health plans have implemented caps on annual prescription-drug benefits or have eliminated benefits altogether. Drug-benefit caps require patients to pay the full price of drugs consumed after their...

Trends in state mandated benefits, 2006.(HEALTH CARE POLICY)
August 30, 2006... "A mandated benefit is a law that requires a health insurance policy or health plan to cover (or offer to cover) specific providers, procedures, benefits or people. The vast majority of mandates come from state legislatures, though the...

MB inflation monitor.
August 30, 2006... Consumer Price Index CPI, SECOND QUARTER 2006 Inflation Rate for Medical Care Item Second Past 12 quarter * months ** ALL ITEMS ...

2006 Medicare trustees report.(HEALTH CARE POLICY)
August 30, 2006... "In 2005, Medicare provided coverage to 42.5 million people, spending $330 billion on benefits. These benefit payments are funded from two trust funds--the hospital insurance (HI) trust fund and the supplementary medical insurance (SMI) trust...

The Pension Protection Act of 2006: health and welfare plan provisions.(LEGAL PULSE)
August 30, 2006... The Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA) has several provisions relating to health and welfare plans. Here is a brief overview from the benefits experts at Spencer's Benefits Reports. Generally, pension assets must be kept in the pension...

The state of the workplace for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, 2005-2006.(WORKPLACE HEALTH & BENEFITS)
August 30, 2006... "Benefits for domestic partners achieved a historic first in 2006. For the first time, a majority of the nation's largest corporations provided health insurance for domestic partners of employees (Figure 4). Today, 253 of the Fortune 500...

Employers managing health and productivity: a research update.(WORKPLACE HEALTH & BENEFITS)
August 30, 2006... "Employers are placing more emphasis on the productivity effects of health-related interventions as they move toward a health and productivity management (HPM) strategy. This comes as they take additional steps to manage benefits across...

Healthcare coverage and employment status in Florida: a report.(WORKPLACE HEALTH & BENEFITS)
August 30, 2006... "Ensuring health care to all citizens of the country, or of the state of Florida, is becoming an increasingly urgent problem: 18.5% of Florida's population is uninsured, totaling over 3 million people. Populations with high rates of...

Hospital quality for acute myocardial infarction.(HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY)
August 30, 2006... "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) measure and report quality process measures for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), but little is known about how...

America's best hospitals honor roll.(MB STAT)
August 30, 2006... Out of 5,189 hospitals, only 3%, 176 in all, are ranked in one or more of the 16 specialties in this year's "America's Best Hospitals." And of those, just 14 qualified for the Honor Roll by ranking at or near the top in at least six...

Alaska requires insurers to provide coverage for colorectal screenings.(LEGAL PULSE)
August 30, 2006... Effective January 1, 2007, group insurers in Alaska will be required to provide coverage for the costs of colorectal cancer screening examinations and lab tests. Employers that provide a health care insurance plan must notify each covered...

The changing horizon of retiree medical benefits.(WORKPLACE HEALTH & BENEFITS)
August 15, 2006... "Recent legislative and cost changes in the health care arena have compelled employers to reconsider their retiree medical benefit plans and strategies. Although it's been more than two years since the enactment of Medicare reform, an...

S&P 500 2005: pensions and other post employment benefits.(WORKPLACE HEALTH & BENEFITS)
August 15, 2006... "The state of other post employment benefits (OPEB) is extremely poor. The best analogy is that the light at the end of the OPEB tunnel is another train, and it is heading straight for us. Within the S&P 500, 295 companies offer OPEB, with...

Outdoor falls among middle-aged and older adults: a neglected public health problem.(WORKPLACE HEALTH & BENEFITS)
August 15, 2006... "Falls are the leading cause of injury-related deaths and hospital admissions among older adults. Although risk factors for indoor falls among older individuals have been well studied, little is known about the etiology of outdoor falls. In...

Job insecurity and health in the United States.(WORKPLACE HEALTH & BENEFITS)
August 15, 2006... "Recent changes in the labor market have increased the perception that relationships between employers and employees are less secure than in the past. Much of the empirical evidence for an impact of job insecurity has shown its negative...

Definity consumer-driven health impact study: 2003 to 2005 results summary.(HEALTH CARE COSTS)
August 15, 2006... "Consumer directed health (CDH) plans continue to deliver positive financial results for employers, while encouraging appropriate health care utilization among consumers. Both before and after adjustments for potential influencing factors,...

Assessment of authorized generics in the US.(HEALTH CARE COSTS)
August 15, 2006... "The practice of marketing an 'authorized generic' has been growing in the pharmaceutical industry. A generic drug is simply a copy of a drug discovered by an innovator, that relies on the safety and efficacy data developed by the innovator,...

Massachusetts health spending soars to $62.1 billion in 2006.(HEALTH CARE COSTS)
August 15, 2006... "New data show that health spending per person rose far faster in Massachusetts than in the nation as a whole for each of the five years from 2000 through 2004. Spending per person reached 33.2% above the national average in 2004 (Figure 3)....

More on CDHs.(consumer directed health )(Brief article)
August 15, 2006... More on CDHs: KaiserEDU.org recently posted new resources on consumer-directed health care (CDHC), including a narrated slide tutorial, an issue module, and a public poll analysis. In the slide tutorial, Gary Claxton, vice president and...

IRS issues final comparability rules for HSA contributions.(LEGAL PULSE)
August 15, 2006... The final regulations on comparability rules, effective July 31, adopt the provisions of the proposed regulations with certain modifications. The final regulations are effective on July 31, 2006, and will apply to employer contributions to...

Access to care, health status, and health disparities in the United States and Canada: results of a cross-national population-based survey.(HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY)
August 15, 2006... "US residents were more likely to be non-white and native born than were Canadians. US residents had, on average, higher incomes than Canadians and greater relative poverty rates (the proportion of respondents with income less than 60% of the...

What we have learned in the last 50 years--and aren't using.(HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY)
August 15, 2006... "Lifestyle-based analytics combines the worlds of clinical medicine with statistics and actuarial science to develop measurable health risk parameters tied to lifestyle-based traits. Examples of lifestyle-based data elements include food...

Seven out of 10 doctors concerned about safety of prescription medicines.(HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY)
August 15, 2006... "Seven out of 10 physicians (70%) surveyed said they were more concerned about the safety of the drugs they prescribe due to recent issues affecting several prescription drugs on the market; and 27% indicated they were significantly more...

Hospitals' responses to nurse staffing shortages.(HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY)
August 15, 2006... "Although recent growth in both registered nurse (RN) employment and nursing school enrollment suggests potential easing of hospital nurse shortages, nurse staffing will likely remain an important issue for health care providers. ...

The health consequences of involuntary exposure to tobacco smoke.(HEALTH CARE POLICY: A Report of the Surgeon General)
August 15, 2006... "Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke, is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of tobacco products (sidestream smoke) and the mainstream smoke exhaled by smokers. People are exposed to secondhand smoke at...

MB stat.(medical benefits)(Brief article)
August 15, 2006... Top 10 trends affecting the American workplace 1. Rising health care costs 2. Increased use of outsourcing/offshoring of jobs to other countries 3. Threat of increased health care/medical costs on the economic competitiveness of...

Go there!(health care standards landscape- web site)(Brief article)
August 15, 2006... Web site worth visiting: http://hcsl.sdct.nist. gov:8080/hcsl/index.html The Health Care Standards Landscape (HCSL) is a site for information on healthcare standards and on organizations developing, promoting, or using these standards....

Evolution of state health information exchange: a study of vision, strategy, and progress.(REFERENCE DESK)
August 15, 2006... The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) commissioned Avalere Health to prepare this report to capture and characterize the broad landscape of state health information exchange (HIE) activities with an emphasis on identifying...

Monitoring the effectiveness of America's worksite wellness programs: containing healthcare costs through the most effective programs, and how you can get there, second edition.(REFERENCE DESK)
August 15, 2006... Health Resources Publishing's second industry study zeroes in on the need to prove the return-on-investment of health management programs. The study research provides a narrow focus: analyzing the performance of wellness programs in the...