More and more of our clients are either offering or introducing voluntary group plans as a part of their overall benefits package.  Why now?

Rewind a few years.  Most of you are aware of the company with “The Duck” that introduced supplemental insurance.  Many employers offered the plans but Human Resource staffs and consultants had a tough time understanding the need.  “Why do I need to supplement my medical plan? Our medical plan is excellent” was a common retort heard from employers. Companies reluctantly offered the plans because their employees ”asked for it at work,” only to deal with the hassles involving overbearing agents and constant administrative headaches.

Now fast forward back to 2011.  The benefits landscape is quite different.

I am always surprised by HR professionals who gamble with their organization’s financial and human capital assets by ignoring sound risk management principles. At a time when legal, regulatory, and operating issues dominate employer focus and constrain budgets, the HR function often plays a passive role in providing strong risk management for the organization through best practices leadership.  So, how can you correct this inertia and better leverage your organization’s HR knowledge? You will want to employ these five risk management practices that every organization should demand from their HR function.

In today’s day and age very few of us in North Carolina live in either a rural setting where we can grow and raise our own food or in an urban setting where we are within walking distance of different stores that would allow us to buy the different types of food we want and need.

Nope, we live in the suburban sprawl of large developments of houses/townhouses and strip malls.  We live a lifestyle of juggling multiple activities...

As an avid equestrian since the age of four I relate many things in my life to my love of and experience with horses. My greatest memories of my childhood surround my love for horses.  As an adult I reflect often on those wonderful times and recently realized that they had taught me some pretty valuable lessons I use in my professional life as well.

You see it’s easy to ride a dumb horse...

If you are younger than 45 years old you probably don’t know what a Comprehensive Major Medical insurance plan is. You probably have grown up believing that the cost of a doctor’s office visit is only a $20 co-pay or the cost of a name brand prescription is only a $35 co-pay.  The older Comp Major Medical plans had no co-pays, required you to file your own claims every time you received service from a provider and before you received any payment from the insurance carrier you were responsible for some amount of money (usually around $250) in the form of a deductible. You then shared in the remaining costs (usually around $250) through co-insurance capped at a specified dollar maximum.  So, your total out of pocket costs were

According to a survey recently released by Towers Watson and National Business Group, health care costs are projected to increase by 7 percent in 2011. Annual costs on a national average per employee are expected to reach $11,176 (up 7.6 percent from 2010). North Carolina health care premiums are expected to increase by an average of...

The percentage of total healthcare expenses that are attributable to pharmacy continues to rise rapidly, as does the focus on these costs.  A few years ago only 10-12% of healthcare expenses were from pharmacy while today that number is often north of 20%.  So how do we explain this trend? 

The ongoing introduction of many specialty pharmacy drugs will continue to increase unit costs and now that nearly all drug companies spend more money on...

Our first blog entry comes from an article we wrote for the Triangle Business Journal's special edition Outlook 2011, A Leader's Perspective.  Here is our outlook for 2011 in the healthcare industry:

Health Care Reform has irreversibly changed the landscape of the American health care system and while coverage will be extended to roughly 30 million people, little has been done to address the mind-boggling costs.  Let’s review the facts: health care costs are already increasing at 12% annually, meaning that insurance premiums will double in ...