Jim Hamilton, an employee-benefits lawyer at Bose McKinney & Evans in Indianapolis, discussed the likelihood of a Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives changing or even outright repealing the health care reform law, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
After losing a key grant, Indianapolis Urban League laid off employees and failed to make three months' worth of retirement payments into one former worker's account—something that was remedied after the worker complained to the Labor Department.
Indiana University will no longer ask employees to fill out an online health risk assessment after more than 550 people—many anonymous—attached names to an online petition that said the plan would cause “widespread anger and disillusionment.”
A new estimate has lowered the expected cost of the federal health care overhaul to Indiana’s state government to perhaps $2.6 billion over the next decade.
In this new age of health care, ushered in by President Obama’s signing in March of a sweeping health care reform law, health care players are encouraged to remove the gloves if they want to reap the benefits of reform.
Health clinics based in employers’ offices are showing signs of breaking out of their niche among blue collar and government employers—factories, warehouses and school corporations—and could pop up in Class A office buildings filled with white collar workers.
Nearly four months after President Barack Obama signed a health reform bill into law, businesses are still grappling with its
impact on the health benefits they offer their employees.
FedEx Corp. won partial dismissal of a class-action lawsuit brought by contract drivers who contend they are entitled to full
benefits because the company treats them as employees.
Joe Guzman is a co-founder of Indianapolis-based Ascend USA, the new trade adopted after Guzman merged his
benefits brokerage, Benefits Strategies Inc., with benefits business Steven Goodin. The eight-person firm expects to hire
as many 15 new employees in the next year. Those workers will help Ascend diversify from health benefits into brokering commercial
insurance products.
The Indianapolis-based health insurer has more individual and small-business customers than its major competitors, increasing
the impact of health reform.
Drugmakers and insurers could gain millions of customers under the legislation, but the industry also will pay new fees and
face stricter rules that may shrink profit and fuel mergers.
Insurers WellPoint Inc. and others would get a delay in taxes on premiums and high-cost medical benefits, along with additional
funding for expanding Medicaid, under a White House proposal
Obama, seeking to break an impasse over health-care legislation, proposes a plan that includes the first Medicare tax on unearned
income such as capital gains and higher fees on drugmakers.
Coping with wintery blasts is made easier by advancements in work-from-home technology. But different kinds of companies have
different policies when it comes to giving employees the option to telecommute or blow off the workday altogether.
Legislation set to come out of Washington will not change the most fundamental problems of the health
care system, leaving it up to states, cities and companies to figure out what to do about it.
The acquisition of DeTrude & Co. by Shepherd Insurance marks the 13th purchase of an Indianapolis-area benefits brokerage since mid-2007.
Employers are seeing their health care costs rise even though inflation is at a virtual standstill.
As corporations continue to dig out from the worst recession in decades, tuition-reimbursement programs are a common
casualty. A survey estimates that 63 percent of companies will
offer undergraduate educational assistance this year compared to 67 percent in 2005.
In a victory for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed landmark health care legislation
Saturday night to expand coverage to tens of millions who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry. The 220-215 vote cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate
on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.
At this point in the health reform debate, you have to take numbers from any side with a grain of salt. That said, Indianapolis-based
WellPoint Inc. has done perhaps the only local analysis of how proposed reforms would affect the cost of health insurance
for employers.
