Welcome to the second edition of the Global Health & Benefits Perspective. This publication contains articles of interest to multinational clients and prospects written by Mercer's thought leaders around the world.

We have archived our past articles in the new Archives section, where you can search by region or topic.

You can subscribe to Global Health & Benefit Perspective and will receive the next editions via email.

In this issue

Click on the headlines below to read the individual articles in this issue of the newsletter

Managing health care benefit expense in today’s unprecedented economic times - This article focuses on the health care challenges the economy is putting on employers and employees in the U.S. The impact of the financial crisis on human capital, benefits and investments in other geographies can be found at www.mercer.com/unprecedentedtimes.

 Linda Havlin

Flexible benefits: increasing the perceived value of the total benefit - What’s driving this strategy in Latin America and many emerging economies are some of the same issues that drove flex in the US – demographic change, untenable cost inflation and shifting values. This article defines flexible benefits, explains their resurgence, compares them to a total rewards structure and describes how Latin American countries are using flex and why it is popular in emerging economies.

 Fátima Ramirez
 Linda Havlin

Is spending on health & Benefits a good investement? - Mercer’s 2008 Pan-European health and benefits survey provides unique insights into the challenges employers are facing and what they believe to be their priorities across countries with a diverse spread of economic, social and historical backgrounds.

  Steve Clements

Healthcare planning for an ageing world - Excerpted from Mercer’s Perspective related to the recent World Economic Forum report (visit our site  www.mercer.com/wef ), this article tracks the possible impacts of the macro forces identified in the report and outlines some initial stakeholder responses.   

 Christine Owen 

Upcoming articles in Mercer's Global Health & Benefits Perspective

The third edition of Global Health & Benefits will be published at the end of the first quarter, 2009. 

Possible topics include: