When Employers Stop Drinking the Kool-Aid.

Mike Magee I recently sat down to lunch with a retired veteran health insurance exec and asked her, “Are there still large corporation CEO’s who want to be the providers of health insurance for their employees – and if so, why?” She replied that there were a few and the primary reason was “ego.” She […]

How The Ties Between Your Employer and Your Health Insurance Are Unraveling – and why that’s a good idea.

Mike Magee A series of highly publicized reports over the past few weeks have raised concerns that employer’s paternalistic involvement with your health and your health insurance is on a downslope. But is that really bad? Home Depot announced plans to shift 20,000 part-time (less than 30 hours a week) employees to government sponsored insurance […]

“Smokers Need Not Apply” – A Byproduct Of Employer Based Health Insurance

Mike Magee Enlightened employers around the world spend considerable time and resources assuring that the workplace in healthy and safe. They do so to maximize productivity, retention, worker satisfaction, and to limit liability and cost. Their efforts are guided and directed by informed legislation, administered with varying degrees of regulatory success. Employers in the US, […]

Employer-Based Health Coverage Slides With Economy

Mike Magee According to a report from the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), health coverage for employees is sliding down with the economy. “During a recession, some employers will drop coverage, some will increase the worker share of the premium, and some may change eligibility requirements. Structural changes in the economy during a recession, […]

Practical Advice to Employers On Managing A Health Plan

My friend Lynn Jennings suggests ways for employers to get the most out of their health plans On blogs like this, people like me write analytically about issues which are often, at best, conceptual to us. Not so to the guys in the rough and tumble world of health care finance. I remember that the […]

GM Goes Full Circle on Employer-Based Health Care

An aging corporate giant points us in a new health-care direction It’s probably fair to say that as General Motors goes, so goes employer-based health care in the United States. After all, GM’s 1950 agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW) was the first to build extensive health care and retiree benefits into its basic […]