Core and Group Health

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.

Now that the PPACA is on the books, it's up to those who sell health insurance to figure out how they will survive decreasing commissions and a reduced number of products in the market place as a result of the new law.

I know we're a society obsessed with having our cake, eating it and wondering why we didn't get ice cream, too. We're entitled. We've got it so good; we think we deserve it. In fact, we deserve some of that over there, too.

47 percent of executives say the PPACA may have a financial impact on their business. Most of them - 70 percent - have begun reviewing their health care benefit plans.

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.

Data released last week by Standard & Poor's indicates the average per capita cost of health care services covered by private insurance and Medicare programs rose 7.32 percent over 12 months ending in August.

In the second quarter of 2010, individual and family health savings account programs grew by a larger number than in the first quarter of 2010, finds the the Consumer Driven Healthcare Institute.