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  • New terms for endearment

    "Worksite" is a geographical location. "Voluntary" is, in this context, a form of payment. Both are hot-button words guaranteed to open conversations at industry events, where they seem to take on lives of their own. Do you "do" voluntary? Are you "into" worksite? The problem is that floating these terms does not lead to - and might even distract from - discussion of whether a benefits package is well fashioned to do its job: recruiting and retaining employees.

  • Raw Bar: Don't underestimate the power of consumerism

    Make sure to check out our conversation with Robert Laszewski, he's a health policy guru extraordinaire and he runs a consulting firm inside D.C.'s infamous beltway. While it takes awhile for us to get there, eventually the point is made during our conversation with him that the average American's current gas price fixation and the speed with which it is bringing about changes in our automobile manufacturing sectors as well as other markets is a clear reminder of how potent an engaged consumer class could be in wrangling health care costs. The successful strategy for tapping that power is what remains elusive. Check out what else is fresh this week on EBA's Raw Bar…

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  • Hope is not a strategy

    That line comes from this month's installment from Mel Schlesinger, our resident sales guru. I read that line at least three times in the week leading up to the printing of this issue. Each time it managed to hit me in the face as hard as it did the first time my eyes caught it.

  • Raw Bar: NYC's rebating debate and more

    Make sure to check out our conversation with Dan Colacino, who serves as president of the New York state association of health underwriters. He and his group have just concluded a series of seminars with the state insurance agency on the issue of rebating. While sparks were expected, it seems tempers were kept in check.

  • The Friday Fray: Medical Tourism

    This week's Friday Fray discusses medical tourism, a fast-growing area of employee benefits aimed at employees who will travel overseas to receive high-quality but lower cost health care.

  • Raw Bar: Lazy brokers, easy pickings for vigilant advisers

    Make sure to check out our interview with Jim Edholm of Business Benefits Insurance. He outlines how he continues to pick off clients with his simple, back-to-basics approach to service -- he just doesn't get lazy (or at least he tries not to).

  • The Friday Fray: Pump Pain

    Millions of workers are suffering from pain at the pump. So what's an employer to do? Some say it's not an employer's responsibility, other say it is. Listen in this Friday (June 20 at 1:00 p.m. EST) as we wrestle with the issue in another installment of our occasional discussion series, "The Friday Fray."

  • Social strength

    Especially in an election year, potential improvements to our health care system often get plastered with politically charged labels. Suggest too much reliance on government and you're a bleeding-heart liberal. Put too much faith in the free market and you're a Darwinist conservative. But what might happen if we shed the loaded and most contentious aspects of such terms and create an amalgam of the underlying principles?

  • Play nice, or else

    The rebating issue is rising and prompting a lot of chatter among benefits advisers. Rebating laws have long been on the books, but they've seldom been enforced. State insurance regulators have other things to do besides penalize brokers for doing more for the money.

  • A shot at nobility

    Maybe I've been spun. That's not a good thing when you yourself are a member of the media and should know all the techniques. Nevertheless, lounging in the back of my Maybach as my driver wends our way along the Potomac, my mind drifts to the notion of a generation of noble worksite salesmen tending to an ailing America one financially imperiled worker at a time.

  • It's un-American: Advisers can help change those bad behaviors that too often define Americans.

    When did it become un-American to be healthy? I mean real health - physical, financial and psychological.

  • Where, oh where, is the Al Gore of health care?

    As a human resources professional, my view is usually from the trenches. Every day we contemplate different ways of reducing health care costs. Unfortunately, when we look beyond our corporate microcosm, it is apparent that America, as a whole, is oblivious to the health care war we are fighting. America needs greater awareness of the deteriorating state of health - and it needs a voice.

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