2009 Health & benefits perspectives

Perspective - Incentive-based design: A high-potential solution for bending health care’s cost trend
8 September 2009

Mercer’s 2009 Survey on Recession and Reform finds that health benefit costs are projected to rise 7.4 percent this year, yet employers hope to keep the increase to 5.2 percent. Achieving that rate reduction will require strong cost-management strategies, but many employers have already exhausted “tried and true” approaches, such as requiring higher cost sharing and contributions from participants. Just as past recessions gave rise to innovative, often untested solutions like point-of-service plans and managed care, the current crisis is spurring the search for novel cost-control strategies. This Perspective looks at how employers can use incentive-based health plans to promote behavioral change and improve outcomes in quality, expense and individual risks.

Perspective - US health reform: Our point of view

13 July 2009

Employers and the private sector health care industry have continuously improved quality of care and cost efficiency, facilitated healthy behaviors and reduced health risks. The time has come for a federal health care reform plan that is designed to improve health care quality and affordability, reduce the uninsured population and improve population health while maintaining the excellence and innovation of the world's best health care system. Mercer believes that these results can be achieved if our private health care industry and employer-based health care system provide the foundation for such a plan.

Perspective - Managing health benefits in challenging times: A Mercer survey on recession and reform

13 July 2009

Mercer’s annual National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans is conducted every summer. The survey is supplemented on an ad hoc basis as new issues emerge that influence employer strategies (see page 9 for findings from our June 2009 poll). The onset of the recession in September 2008, along with President Obama’s focus on health care system reform, created a need for an interim survey to find out whether these events would cause employers to adjust their health programs. We also sought their opinions on various components of health reform.

Perspective - Worksite clinics: An old concept gets a new lease in the battle to control health care cost and improve workforce productivity

24 April 2009

The term “company doc” conjures an image of a lone physician providing care to workers in industrial America. Worksite clinics were considered a necessity in factories, mines, logging camps and other locations where the risk of injury was high and, in some cases, the worksites were remote. Some clinics were expanded to provide pre-employment physicals, screenings and stop-gap treatment of routine illnesses. But, by the 1980s, the prevalence of these clinics declined rapidly due to increases in the number and availability of health care providers and hospitals, employee unease about employers having access to personal medical information, liability concerns and corporate cost-cutting efforts.

Perspective - The uninsured employee: A key issue for health reform

12 March 2009

At the heart of most health reform proposals, at both the state and federal levels, is the goal of reducing the number of uninsured by making health care more affordable and accessible. The debate often focuses on people who lack coverage because they are unemployed. In reality, there is a growing number of employees who are not covered for a wide range of reasons.

Perspective - Guidelines for cost-effective implementation of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008

On Oct. 3, 2008, the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (the “Act”) became law. The law requires group health plans that offer mental health (MH) or substance abuse (SA) benefits to provide those benefits on par with medical and surgical benefits. The Act prohibits plans from imposing financial requirements (e.g. co-pays) or treatment limits (e.g. outpatient visit limit) on MH/SA benefits that are more restrictive than the predominant financial requirements or treatment limits that apply to substantially all medical and surgical benefits, and it bars separate cost sharing and treatment limits for MH/SA benefits. The Act also makes permanent the prohibition on lower annual and lifetime dollar limits for covered MH benefits from the 1996 Mental Health Parity Act and expands this prohibition to include covered SA benefits.

2008 Health & benefits perspectives

Perspective - Making sense of the health care debate in the 2008 presidential election

23 October 2008

Although the national economic condition has topped the political agenda in weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election, health care reform remains a leading domestic policy issue for voters and both presidential candidates. With rising health care costs and potential growth in the number of uninsured Americans because of the economic downturn, consensus about the need for US health system reform is emerging. But the current fiscal crisis adds a new dimension to the challenges of passing a solution.

As the debate continues to sharpen, one thing is clear: Both candidates agree that the health care system needs major changes, although the party nominees diverge on what reforms should take place. This Perspective reviews party platforms and candidates' positions on health care reform and discusses potential implications for employers' health benefit programs.