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A study was conducted to examine new influences on cigarette demand using recent state-level data from the United States. The study focuses on the effects of unemployment and health insurance coverage on smoking. Findings indicate that higher cigarette prices, a lack of health insurance, and restrictions on smoking at home, lead to reduced smoking.

Background: Consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) are an important option. However, little is known about their impact in changing health care behavior and controlling expenditures. Objective: To examine the impact of [...]

The purpose of this study was to analyze utilization and costs of employer-sponsored health insurance in select businesses in a rural community in South Carolina. The study was conducted under [...]

This study seeks to identify the impact of information on employees' health plan selection decision-making. Surveys were administered to 1,722 Federal employees working in the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) enrolled in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). This study focuses on the enrollees' access to and use of three types of health plan information: print information issued by the Federal government (in particular, The Guide to Federal Employees Health Benefit Plans), print information issued by the health plans, and web-based information. Literature from health plans was utilized to a greater degree than The Guide. Web-based information was the least accessed and used. Major positive predictors of the use of health plan information from any source were: race, time in Federal employment, whether the employee was considering a plan change, employees with less time in current plan, employees who search for information to make decisions, and spouses' health status. Younger and more-educated employees were more likely to access web-based information. Implications for management, policy, and future research are discussed. KEYWORDS. Health insurance, information use, plan selection

A recent Senate vote on two versions of a medical malpractice reform bill put the kibosh on one approach to stabilizing doctors' liability insurance premiums. Both bills attempted to cap [...]

What is private medical insurance? Private medical insurance (PMI) covers customers for the cost of acute treatment for short-term curable illnesses, and often costs for hospital treatment, outpatient and consultant [...]

Effectively communicating the value of health benefits can do more to retain top-performing employees than the richness of those benefits alone, according to a new analysis by the consulting firm [...]

Charity care and bad debt cases have increased among Wisconsin-based hospitals in 2008. Patients' loss of health insurance is seen as the reason for the increase. Many hospitals have exceeded their budgets due to charity care.

Although premium increases for employer-sponsored health insurance tapered off slightly in 2007, they still outpaced workers' wage increases and the overall inflation rate, according to a major survey of U.S. [...]

The number of patients covered by Medicaid and Quest using acute-care hospital and emergency room service all over Hawaii has increased by 30% since 1996. Hawaii's hospitals' profits are being hurt because public health insurance does not reimburse them fully for patient care costs. Employers and individuals covered by private insurance end up paying up for the effects of crowd out by means of increased co-payments or premiums.

Many insurance companies provide the employers with the number of employees suffering from chronic illnesses like diabetes in the disease-management programs to control the real cost of treating such patients and reducing the instances of chronic illnesses amongst the employees. The employers and insurers use the data to encourage employees to participate in cost-effective treatment programs.

What will be the impact of health care reform on grandfathered employer plans? * Awful. Now people won't be able to keep their plans. * Plans can keep their grandfather [...]

CARDIOVASCULAR EVENTS, most notably heart attacks, are one of the main causes of critical illness insurance claims. To deal effectively with this risk, CI underwriters inevitably take a conservative approach [...]

Millions of parents get up every morning go to work, pay their taxes and play by the rules, but are unable to provide their children with health care coverage. There [...]

ACCORDING TO CAREFIRST BlueCross BlueShield, American physicians write nearly 4.5 billion prescriptions on paper each year, but if a doctor's writing is illegible, errors are a possibility. In fact, medication [...]

Study Links Chiropractic Health-Plan Benefits To Corporate Savings: A health plan-sponsored study comparing four years of retrospective claims of 700,000 health-plan members with chiropractic benefits with 1 million members of [...]

When you or a family member is sick, the last thing you want to do is fight with a health insurance company. Each year, however, thousands of New Yorkers find [...]