Health care affordability is placing an escalating strain on employees and dwindling satisfaction with their health plans, especially as costs are growing faster than inflation and income increases, finds a Towers Watson survey.

Employers are discovering how a wellness initiative is launched and supported over time is equally important as the available programs.

In a recent survey, employers say they are not likely to drop health care once state-run insurance exchanges take effect in 2014, finds consulting firm Mercer.

According to a new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 3 million Californians are enrolled in high-deductible health plans.

The Department of Health and Human Services is offering grants to ambitious states that can be the first to produce consumer-friendly technology for health care exchanges.

Milliman, Seattle, recently completed its 2010 Group Health Insurance Survey, which projects an average 10.2 percent premium rate increase for January 2011 renewals for health maintenance organizations.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Washington, D.C., recently approved a medical loss ratio reporting blank that contains broker commission costs into the administrative expense total - and brokers are reacting.

Fewer unemployed Americans than expected were aided by the federal subsidy that helps pay for COBRA health care coverage, partly because COBRA premiums were still unaffordable, cites a new article by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute.