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HSA Enrollment Rises Even as Full-Replacement Strategies Decline
"Even as some employers backed away from full-replacement strategies, enrollment in high-deductible account-based plans rose from 33% of all covered employees last year to 36% in 2019. These plans are offered by 71% of large and midsize employers, up from 68% in 2018, and by 37% of small employers."
Mercer
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High-Deductible Health Plans Spur Maternity Out-of-Pocket Spending
"Between 90 and 100 percent of women with employer sponsored maternity care reported some kind of out-of-pocket healthcare spending for maternity care throughout this study. Over time, that number rose by 4.5 percent.... [T] he cost of maternity care was stable. It hovered between $29,100 and $29,700 from 2008 to 2015. Instead, women were taking on a greater share of the cost, leading to higher out-of-pocket spending."
HealthPayer Intelligence
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Health Care Paperwork Cost $812 Billion in 2017
"[H]ealth care bureaucracy cost Americans $812 billion in 2017. This represented more than one-third (34.2%) of total expenditures for doctor visits, hospitals, long-term care and health insurance. The study estimated that cutting U.S. administrative costs to Canadian levels would have saved more than $600 billion in 2017."
InsuranceNewsNet.com
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Cancer Death Rate Is in Steady Decline Among Americans
"The cancer death rate in the United States has dropped 29 percent since 1991, the American Cancer Society reported ... The decline translates to approximately 2.9 million fewer cancer deaths than would have occurred if the mortality rate had remained constant.... [R]educed smoking rates and to advances in lung cancer treatment ... together spurred an accelerated drop in the cancer death rate of 2.2 percent from 2016 to 2017 -- the largest single-year decline in cancer mortality ever reported."
The New York Times; subscription may be required
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States Ring in New Year with Ambitious New Health Laws
"A new law in Colorado protects patients from out-of-network bills, establishing a cap on what out-of-network providers can charge as well as an arbitration process to address payment disputes.... Maryland approved a first-of-its-kind prescription drug affordability board ... California enacted legislation to ban pharmaceutical companies from engaging in practices that seek to block competition by generic manufacturers ... [L]aws effective Jan. 1 in Georgia, Illinois, and Minnesota ... attack [drug prices] from a variety of angles, including forcing PBMs to be more transparent about their operations and pricing strategies and restricting them from preventing pharmacists from disclosing to patients cheaper alternatives."
Arnold Ventures
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2019: The Year We Learned to Love Instability
"Here's a look at the major trends ... tracked over the past twelve months in Mercer's Center for Health Innovation, with some thoughts on how they will continue to evolve.... New entrants and partnerships are shaking up healthcare ... Patient or consumer? Healthcare attempts to strike a better balance ... Medicine advances, population health declines -- and both add to cost."
Mercer
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Benefits in General
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Selected Discussions on the BenefitsLink Message Boards
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'Opt Out' Benefits for a Small (Non-ALE) Employer
"Say you have an employer with less than 50 employees. They have no intention of ever having 50 employees. Their cafeteria plan offers an opt-out benefit for those who don't elect the employer's group health coverage. As I understand it, there can be three types of opt-out arrangements: unconditional, conditional, or an 'eligible opt-out arrangement' -- which is a conditional arrangement that also meets specific additional criteria. If the employer is a non-ALE, what is the downside, if any, to having an 'unconditional' opt-out arrangement, other than possibly affecting the affordability calculation for purposes of whether an individual is eligible for a subsidy for policies purchased on an exchange? Seems like a conditional opt-out arrangement, for a small employer, may unnecessarily restrict the employee from choosing to buy individual
coverage?"
BenefitsLink Message Boards
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Most Popular Items in the Previous Issue
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