Five Benefits Administrator Priorities for Open Enrollment

  • September 21, 2018
  • Blog

This column originally appeared on HR Dive. Autumn is upon us. The air is cooler. The leaves are changing colors. Pumpkin versions of all of your favorite foods are in supermarkets. And for thousands of benefits administrators, it’s open enrollment season — the annual workplace ritual in which millions of employees select their 2018 health … Continue Reading

Rethinking the Employer/Payer Relationship

  • August 27, 2018
  • Blog

This column originally appeared on HR Dive. In his New York Times column on the roots of employer-based health insurance in the United States (a quick, essential read), researcher and pediatrician Aaron E. Carroll notes how competition for workers during WWII was the impetus for the modern-day employer-based system. Fearing a wage battle in a very tight … Continue Reading

HR Dive: Healthcare world watches as Amazon makes moves

The rapidity with which Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase have entered the healthcare industry is in part a response to frustrations — held by both employers and the general public — about inefficiencies in the U.S. healthcare system, sources previously told HR Dive. “Affordability is the issue,” Shandon Fowler, an analyst and principal of … Continue Reading

The Case for ‘Private Exchange 2.0’

This article was originally published with co-author George Kalogeropoulos, CEO of HealthSherpa, on LinkedIn. You’ll be hard-pressed to find somebody with ties to employer-based benefits who doesn’t have a visceral reaction to the term “private exchange.” Sadly, this reaction was largely earned over almost a decade of huge expectations but sometimes under-delivered or ahead-of-their-time options … Continue Reading

HR Dive: Does Amazon alliance signal employers will finally get serious about healthcare costs?

But Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan have name recognition, most notably Amazon for its reputation as a disruptor, Fowler said. To most observers, it’s no surprise that big-name employers are now loudly demanding a space at the healthcare negotiation table. “For the past couple of decades, employers haven’t really used their leverage or they used … Continue Reading

ATTN: Employees! Should you get (and use) telemedicine?

  • November 21, 2017
  • Blog

Confession: I fired my primary care provider a few years ago. She was really nice and seemed to be a great doctor. In fact, she had been named to multiple lists of the best doctors in the city. But I never got out of her office without spending 45 minutes or more in the waiting … Continue Reading

HR Dive: Are employers dropping the ball on benefits communication?

Shandon Fowler, senior director of product strategy at Benefitfocus, a technology platform for employers and insurers, says he avoids using the term employee “education” when communicating benefits information. Employees don’t want to learn about benefits; they just want to be assured that they are getting the information they need, says Fowler. He adds that by using technology to … Continue Reading