What Will Employees Accept to Lower Their Health Care Costs?

I recently looked at a Kaiser Family Foundation Public Opinion Survey that asked a random sample of people with employer insurance a number...

Should Wal-Mart Make Smokers Pay More for Health Insurance?

A recent article about changes Wal-Mart is making in its health insurance program reports that smokers will be required to pay an extra $10...

Nanny Employer or Public Health Leader?

The Massachusetts Hospital Association announced yesterday that as of January 1, tobacco users will not be eligible for employment. The blo...

Nanny State and Nanny Employer

This election season has been saturated with backlash against "government takeover" of health care. Critique of the Patient Protec...

Michael Porter on the Employer Role in Health Care Reform

Here's what Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School strategy guru, said about employers in a New England Journal of Medicine article...

A Remarkable Health Initiative at the University of New Hampshire

Watching the federal health reform process has strengthened my conviction that the changes our health system needs will have to come from th...

Obesity, Health Insurance, and Employer Incentives

Federal health reform is the front page news, but states and businesses are the laboratories for change. Next to Governors, who have to deal...

Walmart, Caterpillar and Medical Ethics

When I think about patient-centered collaboration in medicine I picture teams of physicians, nurses and social workers or primary care physi...

IBM and UnitedHealth Experiment with Medical Homes

Lately I've been dabbling in realism in this blog. Basing our health insurance system on employers is a cockeyed idea that emerged durin...

Medical Tourism, Self-Insured Employers, and Medical Ethics

Wellpoint , which provides health insurance to 35 million, is starting to pilot medical tourism. The initial numbers are small - Serigraph ...

Medical Tourism and Medical Ethics - At Home and Abroad

I'm a clinician and an academic. For insights into medical ethics, health policy and the health system, I typically turn to case reports...

Self-Insured Employers and Health System Reform

We Americans cherish the right to carry guns. But what about the right to carry a paunch? “ Waistlines Expand into a Workplace Issue ” in ye...

Collaborating to Control Health Care Costs

In the losing battle to contain health care cost increases, employers and insurers are getting some black eyes. In previous posts I discusse...

Is Making Employees Pay for Bad Health Habits Ethical?

Employers are desperate about health care costs. Some are dropping health insurance altogether. Some are making employees put more “skin in ...