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The Spencer’s Consumer-Driven Health Report is a summary of the week's news items posted in the WHAT'S NEW pages of Spencer’s Consumer-Driven Health Report Online. For questions regarding this email service, contact Customer Service at (800)449-9525.
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The number of Americans enrolled in health savings account (HSA)-compatible high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) rose to 6.1 million as of January 2008, according to America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). The report, January 2008 Census Shows 6.1 Million People Covered by HSA/High-Deductible Health Plans, indicated that this is a 35% increase from last year, when AHIP reported that 4.5 million were enrolled in such plans. However, AHIP has data from only 800,000 actual HSAs, which means that of the 6.1 million enrolled in an HDHP, not all of them are enrolled in the HSA component of the plan...
In a recent report to Congress on health savings account (HSA) participation rates, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) stated that tax returns indicate HSA account holders reported higher incomes than other tax filers...
On May 1, by a vote of 414-1, the House passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA, H.R. 493), which the Senate approved on April 24 (see News, May 5, 2008, Genetic Nondiscrimination Bill Passes Senate, Heads To House)...
Americans with employer-provided health insurance have seen their premiums increase ten times faster than their income in the past few years, according to a study released on April 29 by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data from 2001 to 2005, conducted by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota, showed that an increasing proportion of workers’ incomes is going to pay for the rising cost of health care. The report was released during the annual national Cover the Uninsured Week (April 27 through May 3), a nonpartisan campaign that the Foundation organized to advocate for health care coverage for all Americans...
Implementation of the four cornerstones for health care reform instigated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) two years ago is continuing, but there still is a long way to go, reported HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt at the Midwest Business Group on Health’s (MBGH) annual conference in Chicago on May 1...
Benefits costs rose by 0.6% and compensation increased 0.8% for the period from December 2007 to March 2008, according to the most recent Employment Cost Index from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In the last quarter’s BLS statistics, benefits costs rose at a slightly quicker pace than salaries (see News, February 11, 2008, Benefits Cost Rise Slightly Higher Than Wages In Fourth Quarter)...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued proposed regulations that would revise the Medicare hospital inpatient prospective payment systems (PPS) for operating and capital-related costs for discharges occurring in fiscal year 2009. The regulations, which appeared in the April 30 Federal Register, implement changes arising from the CMS’s continuing experience with those systems, and also would implement certain provisions made by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act included in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, and the TMA, Abstinence Education, and QI Programs Extension Act of 2007...
Prevention and wellness are among the key benefits priorities, along with reducing the cost of benefits and value-based benefits design, for employers responding to the Midwest Business Group on Health’s (MBGH) 2008 Readiness to Change Survey. The survey, distributed in March and April through more than 60 business coalitions, received responses from 114 employers across varied industries, nearly three-fourths (72%) of which had more than 1,000 employees. One-third of the responding employers were in manufacturing and most were based in the East and Midwest regions...
In interim final regulations published in the May 6 Federal Register, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provided implementation guidelines for provisions of the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007 relating to Medicare payment for long term care hospitals. These provisions include a three-year delay in the application of certain payment adjustments for short-stay outliers and revisions to the reporting year 2008 standard federal rate...
The Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) is the first-place winner of the General Services Administration’s annual citizen service award in recognition of the agency’s exceptional customer service to the American public. The award was announced recently during the Interagency Resources Management Conference...
CCH® is the leading provider of information covering Human Resources, Employment and Labor Benefits, Pensions, Payroll, Safety, and Workers Compensation. For more information about our products and services, go to http://hr.cch.com/ or call 800-449-9525. This newsletter is copyrighted by CCH® and may be redistributed only for non-commercial purposes and only in its entirety, specifically including the CCH® headers, this paragraph and the CCH® copyright line. No other redistribution or re-purposing, including but not limited to use on a web site, intranet or extranet, is permitted without prior written permission of CCH®.
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