Tag Archives: HRA

Five things every employer should know about HRAs and HSAs

You may or may not be familiar with health savings accounts (HSAs) and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). And although they sound similar and both allow for tax-free reimbursement of qualified medical expenses, they are very different when you look at them closely. Here are the differences between and HSA and HRA. Does the account need […]
Read More »

The health savings and spending consumer journey

Health care is one of life’s basic necessities, but it’s not the easiest to budget or understand. Ongoing changes in the industry however, have led a growing number of consumers to take greater control of their health care dollars, often through options such as health savings accounts (HSAs), health reimbursement accounts (HRAs) or flexible spending […]
Read More »

Research shows health care costs are slowing. Will the trend continue?

There’s good news on the health insurance cost front: According to a recently released employer health benefits survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, health costs for employers increased only 3 percent last year. And it’s the second straight year the growth rate has slowed, according to Kaiser. Get the full story in this article that […]
Read More »

Identifying population risk in new members requires aggregated health status data

As new enrollees enter the market from public exchanges and expanded Medicaid programs, health plans must determine how to appropriately assess member health in order to align interventions and better predict costs. Doing so effectively, however, requires having access to as much information as possible. A combination of multiple data sets — including claims-based data […]
Read More »

Paying and saving for health care: How many steps are there?

If you had to guess, how many stages do you think your employees go through when paying and saving for their health care? Here’s a clue: The process is more complicated than simply “paying” and “saving.” According to Optum research of more than one million consumers and in-depth analysis of our account holder experience, your […]
Read More »