Klepper Q&A in Business Insurance

Joanne Wojcik, a senior editor for Business Insurance, recently spoke with NBCH CEO Brian Klepper about mechanisms underlying America’s health care cost crisis and what employers can do to address them.

Here's a link to the Q&A article.

Benefits Manager of the Year Nomination Deadline Extended to Thursday

Business Insurance has extended the deadline for nominations for the 2013 Benefit Manager of the Year® to Thursday, April 25. This award recognizes excellence and innovation in employee benefit management and is a great opportunity for coalitions to spotlight one of their members. The winner is featured on the magazine's cover.

Click here to access the nomination form.

If you have any questions about filling out this form, please do not hesitate to call Business Insurance Editor Gavin Souter at 312-649-5482 or email gsouter@BusinessInsurance.com.

Poor health costs employers $576 billion

Publications including The Washington Post, Forbes and Business Insurance recently reported on the estimate calculated by the Integrated Benefits Institute finding that poor health and its impact on productivity costs the U.S. economy $576 billion per year.

In addition to showing the entire financial burden of poor health, IBI researchers found that 39 percent—or $227 billion—is due to lost productivity associated with poor health. Lost productivity results when employees are absent due to illness or when they are underperforming due to poor health (“presenteeism”—when employees are at work but not performing at their peak).

“There’s a reason that everyone in the U.S. is worried about the economy and health care,” said Thomas Parry, PhD, IBI president. “These are two fundamental issues that are tightly coupled through health’s impact on productivity, and shape our standards of living. Since this election is weighing heavily on how the candidates tackle these issues, it’s important that we recognize how they are connected. Illness costs this country hundreds of billions of dollars, and this should serve as a wake-up call for both candidates and employers to invest in the health of workers, for the sake of the people and the benefit of U.S. business."

The estimate for total U.S. health costs is calculated using the IBI Full Cost Estimator (FCE), a proprietary tool that calculates the full costs of health and productivity based on five large databases. The tool can be used to show the full health and productivity costs for a specific industry, or even an individual company. In this case, the FCE was used to calculate the costs to the entire U.S. economy.

Participation Requested: National Employer Survey on ACA

We would like to invite you to include your views in a national survey intended to collect and report on how employers are responding to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health reform law.

By completing this survey, you will receive a copy of the results in the form of valuable benchmarking information on how other employers of your size and industry are designing their health benefit strategies and programs. It will also provide business advocates with information on how to best represent employer interests and concerns about the law.

To start the survey, click on the following link: Health Reform's Impact on Employer Health Benefits.

The survey is sponsored by the the Midwest Business Group on Health, National Business Coalition on Health, Business Insurance, Workforce Management, Aon Hewitt and Buck Consultants

Employers can help employees be more responsible for their health: Analysis

The Midwest Business Group on Health has released a series of recommendations to better structure the design, communication and delivery of benefits, wellness incentives and health management activities.

The recommendations are included in a white paper based on the findings of a five-year research project focused on understanding employer and employee perspectives on health care and health benefits. Read the full article...