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Insurers Pitch Benefits To Mothers The proliferation of working mothers is causing some insurance companies to offer work and family benefits that address the many needs of this group. National [...]

Child Care Ins. Available, Affordable: Labor WASHINGTON - Liability insurance for employer-provided, on-site and near-site child care centers is both available and affordable, a Labor Department task force has concluded [...]

Although rising healthcare costs is the top benefits priority for employers, rank-and-file workers are more concerned with retirement issues, a recent survey has found. 'Healthcare has been a sleeping giant, [...]

Nineteen percent of 382 employers currently offer benefits for one or more kinds of alternative medicine--such acupuncture, massage therapy and nutrition counseling--other than chiropractic core, according to recently published results [...]

CIGNA Group Insurance VP Margaret Spyers revealed the results of a CIGNA survey of 300 employees on their health benefits at the Risk and Insurance Management Society Conference. Spyers, who is vice president of marketing for CIGNA's managed disability operation, said that 64% of the surveyed employees are worried about the replaceability of their health insurance coverage should they retire or become unemployed. Fifty-four percent are worried about the freedom to chose their own physician in employee health plans., SAN FRANCISCO - At least six of the top 10 concerns employees have about benefits relate directly to health care, according to a CIGNA Group Insurance survey. Further, among the [...]

How are group employee benefits brokers reacting to the strong, and often conflicting, pressures on them in their huge market? Actually, they're doing pretty well, handling challenges in stride and [...]

A Foster Higgins survey of 743 employers on their 401(k) and savings plan investments programs revealed that the number of investment options for employees has more than doubled since 1990 to 7.7 on average in 1996. Meanwhile, the number of employees enrolled in the plans remains about the same at 76%. Survey results also show that employees have complete control of their investment choices in 84% of the cases and that since 1990, there has been an increase in the use of equity options., Most employers now give their employees full control over their 401(k) and savings plan investments and offer, on average, twice as many investment options as they did in 1990, according [...]

A Johnson and Higgins Employee Benefits Services' survey of 1,299 mid-sized employers found that the number offering traditional health benefit indemnity plans has dropped from 46% to 38% between 1994 and 1995. Employee enrollment in such plans dropped from 42% to 33% during the period. Meanwhile, the percentage of preferred provider programs offered rose, and the number of employees enrolled in the programs rose to 33% from 27%., Traditional health benefit indemnity plans are becoming less popular among mid-sized employers in the United States, while managed care is gaining momentum and enrollees, a report by Johnson & Higgins [...]

William M. Mercer Inc's Mercer Work/Life and Diversity Benchmarking Initiatives Survey 1996 found that 64% of the 800 employers surveyed find that such programs help improve employee attitudes. About half of the surveyed feel that such programs produce less employee absenteeism and 47% said that they can be used to boost productivity. Of the surveyed, 38% have flex time clauses, 79% have clauses that support part-time employment, and 26% offer job-sponsor programs., Once something of a novelty, employer-sponsored work/life and diversity programs are now 'firmly established in corporate America,' a recent survey of more than 800 employers, with a combined workforce of [...]

A survey conducted by the Alexander Consulting Group suggests that retirement planning and investment education programs that are offered by employers are having little effect on employees' planning strategies. The survey showed that 37% of respondents offer retirement planning programs, and 51% offer investment education. However, the basic element of how much to save seems to be missing from most of the programs, according Andrea T. Sellars of Alexander Consulting Group., A 'tremendous gap in knowledge' is to blame for employees' inability to plan properly for retirement, according to a consulting executive from a leading brokerage firm who told the National [...]

A survey of 881 employers querying them about their company-sponsored employee retirement savings plans conducted by Foster Higgins, an employee benefits consulting firm, reveals that 51% of the respondents changed their plans within the last two years. Seventy-two percent of the respondents that reported changing their plans added investment options to the plans, while 25% increased the frequency that valuations of employee accounts were made. The survey reveals that 33% of respondents now permit their employees to make daily transfers in their retirement savings plans., Fifty-one percent of employers responding to a recent survey changed the design of their company-sponsored retirement savings plans in the past two years. And 72 percent of those making the [...]

A survey of 401 risk managers conducted by Lou Harris and Association for AIG Managed Care Inc reveals that two thirds of respondents oppose the integration of workers' compensation with group health benefits. Risk managers were opposed to the integration of workers' comp with group health benefits because the aims of the two programs are very different. The survey also reveals that 54% of the risk managers believe that managed care did not offer the right type of treatment for occupational injuries., A recent survey sponsored by AIG's new managed care company has found risk managers opposed to the merger of workers' compensation and group health benefits and skeptical about the aggressiveness [...]

A poll of 2,400 businesses that employ a maximum of 25 workers conducted by the University of Michigan's School of Public Health reveals that small businesses are reluctant to offer their employees health insurance coverage. The poll reveals that small businesses simply are not interested in providing employee health coverage: 61% of respondents felt that their employees were more interested in higher wages rather than health insurance and believed that their employees can get coverage from outside of the business., A new survey says it is not the high cost alone which deters many small businesses from providing health insurance to their workers but an underlying attitude among small employers [...]

Risk managers expressed 48% support for changing their workers' compensation programs to a 24-hour coverage plan but showed mixed feelings about other employee benefit programs in a 'National Underwriter' survey held at the Public Risk Management Assn's Anaheim, CA, conference. Approval was expressed by 27 of the 57 managers surveyed, with 19 negating change, 11 undecided and 2 not answering. Eight of the 18 risk and employee benefit managers would like 24-hour coverage consolidation of both types of insurance. Present health insurance plans were preferred by 56 managers, 29 favored the Canadian plan, 18 a play-or-pay plan, 11 endorsed Pres Bush's plan and 20 disliked all those listed., Forty-eight percent of the risk managers responding to a recent National Underwriter survey taken at the Public Risk Management Association conference say they would consider changing from their present systems [...]

A Towers Perrin survey found that 63% of the 716 employers contacted would like having a 24-hour combined coverage program to cut workers' compensation and other employee benefit costs but only 34% expect that such a program will materialize soon. Only 26% of these employers use managed care provider networks to handle their workers' compensation claims and 22% are planning to use them. The survey disclosed that 72% of the corporate risk managers view variances in state workers' compensation laws as a detriment to 24-hour coverage but only 58% of the human resource managers believe change in state laws are needed., While the majority of employers think some form of 24-hour coverage would lower workers' compensation costs, only a third believe implementation of such programs will happen any time soon, according [...]

Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums rose 11.5 percent between the spring of 1990 and 1991, the smallest increase in three years, according to a recent survey of the health benefits provided [...]

Top Execs Get Best Benefits: Mercer Top corporate executives often receive benefits that are unavailable to less senior employees, according to a study of 254 large organizations by William M. [...]

DOL Survey Finds Benefits Lagging In Small Businesses WASHINGTON - In its first survey of employee benefits in small private-industry establishments, the Department of Labor has found that such businesses [...]

Benefits Managers Believe Case Mgt. Cuts Costs: Study ATLANTA - Employee benefits managers at mid-sized U.S. companies believe soaring employee health care costs can be controlled with effective case management [...]

HMOs: Profit But No Joy In Mudville The health maintenance organization industry is finding itself in a defensive mode these days. State legislatures have raised HMO solvency requirements on the [...]

U.S. Health Hikes Trail, Study Finds Although it has been widely reported that the United States spends more money on health care than any other industrialized country, a new report [...]

Tuition Benefits Thrive: Study But Tax Status Of Reimbursements Remains Uncertain Despite uncertainty over whether the nontaxable status of certain tuition reimbursement benefits will continue, many employers offer employees reimbursement [...]

Pre-Retirement Planning Grows Many employers are now offering pre-retirement planning programs to their older employees and spouses on an ongoing basis. Others are initiating a pre-retirement planning program or are [...]

Elder Care Solution Proposed WASHINGTON -- Employment-based long term care insurance provides the best hope for expansion of the private market for such coverage, according to a new report by [...]

The smaller an organization, the more likely it is for the risk manager to be called upon to both place and administer the firm's employee benefit plan, a risk management [...]

Mandates Spurring Self-Insurance Growth Self-Insurers Exempt From 700 Mandated Benefit Laws State mandated benefits and self-insurance are two American practices that work at cross-purposes. It is the genius of American [...]

Nearly 66 percent of employees say voluntary benefits are a good idea, citing value and convenience as the primary reasons, a recently released survey conducted for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company [...]

Just over half of the employers participating in a survey by the Alexander Consulting Group said they take the traditional approach of allocating fixed holidays and do not allow workers other paid-time-off days of their own choosing. Companies offering paid-time-off (PTO) programs usually grant vacation, sick and personal days as unallocated PTO. Nearly 24% of those surveyed use a managed disability approach, but few expressed interest in 24-hour disability management or total absence management programs., More than half of the employers responding to a recent survey by the Alexander Consulting Group follow the traditional approach of allocating paid time off rather than allowing workers to [...]

US employers' total spending on healthcare benefits increased 2.1% in 1995, according to a Foster Higgins survey. Higher costs for traditional indemnity insurance accounted for most of that increase. The number of employees participating in traditional indemnity plans declined from 37% to 29%, but the per-employee cost of traditional indemnity coverage increased 4.4%, to $3,650., Following a dip of more than 1 percent in 1994, total spending for health benefits provided by the nation's employers rose 2.1 percent in 1995, a new survey reveals. The [...]

A survey of Chicago, IL-area employee health care plans conducted by Hewitt Associates for the Chicago Business Group under the aegis of the Chicago Health Plan Value Project reveals high employee satisfaction with managed health care providers. The study showed that health maintenance organization patients had an 86% satisfaction rate, while patients of preferred provider organizations and point-of-service plans had satisfaction rates of 82% and 80%, respectively., CHICAGO--Employers were surprised at the high level of satisfaction expressed by their employees who took part in a study of managed care plans in the Chicago area, according to the [...]

Mental Benefit Curbs Rising: Survey A growing number of employers are imposing stricter limits on inpatient mental health and substance abuse benefits, according to a recently released survey. Eighty-seven percent [...]

Flex Offered By 41 Percent Of Employers, Study Shows Forty-one percent of 387 U.S. organizations responding to a recent survey offer flexible benefits plans to their employees. Thirty-four percent are [...]

Study Discloses 401(k) Surge From 1984 to 1988, 401(k) matched savings plans experienced dramatic growth among large employers, jumping from 56 percent of employers in 1984 to 82 percent in [...]

Employers Shift Costs, Study Says U.S. employers are increasingly asking workers to take more financial responsibility for health-care benefits by imposing cost-sharing and cost management, according to a recent study. [...]

AIDS Won't Hike Rates Much: Study WASHINGTON--The AIDS epidemic will have a relatively small impact on health insurance premiums, according to a new survey of insurance and employee benefit executives. [...]

Health Care Benefit Faces IRS Restriction Employers May Abandon Flexible Spending Accounts A proposed Internal Revenue Service regulation could discourage employers from offering flexible spending accounts for health care and [...]

Employers Look To Cut Health Costs Most employer-sponsored medical plans are designed to make employees more conscientious consumers of health care services, according to a recent Hewitt Associates survey of [...]

Survey Sees Family-Cover Cuts Nine out of 10 employers are planning to limit health-care coverage for families of employees during the next decade in an effort to control rising costs, [...]

Elder-Care Benefit Needs Cited As America's population continues to grow older, the U.S. government predicts that the next great employee benefits crisis will be caring for the growing ranks of [...]

SMALL-BUSINESSES SURVEY IMPACT OF MANDATED BENEFITS Half of the nation's small-business owners said they will either lay off workers, reduce their hours or close their doors permanently if forced to [...]