By Kylie Blanchard, Clearwater Communications
The Affordable Care Act passed by Congress has prompted state governments to choose between creating their own health care exchange or allowing the federal government to establish and run an exchange in their state. In recent months, the Interim Health Care Committee studied and planned how best to implement a state-run exchange in North Dakota and presented its proposal to the State Legislature during November’s Special Session.
The proposal was defeated by the House, ending the state’s current chances to establish its own health care exchange and …

According to BCBSND, there are many factors affecting insurance premium costs for businesses. These include the health, age, and frequency at which members of the insurance group use the healthcare system.
The health and lifestyle choices of employees also play a key role in the use of the healthcare system and, in 2009, as a nation, more than 75 percent of healthcare spending was on people with chronic conditions.
In the recently released Thomson Reuters Workforce Wellness Index, six behavioral risk factors were determined to track the collective health of working Americans …

Atlanta-based Cumulus Media, one of America’s largest operators of radio stations and parent company of five local Cumulus stations, is using technology to trim millions of dollars from its employees’ health benefits tab, thanks to interactive healthcare applications developed by Bethesda, Md.-based WellNet Healthcare.
By using dashboards, workflows, predictive analytics, simulations, and member marketing campaigns all integrated through a secure, collaborative social network environment, WellNet’s software allows businesses to control and consolidate healthcare management on a single system, resulting in 10 percent to 25 percent healthcare cost reduction.
Cumulus, a publicly-traded radio …

By Katie Moore Aitchison
Over the past few weeks, the Senate Finance Committee released a health care bill. Now the many bills are being debated into one which will eventually make it to the floor for a vote. It appears a floor vote could come soon. However, it seems that the major issues of this discussion will come after the markup and will probably be addressed on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
As the health care reform debate continues, the Chamber continues to track its progress. We want to ensure our …

National health care is a hot topic and the Bismarck-Mandan Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) is taking steps to understand local business perspectives. The Chamber recently conducted a survey of its membership to measure their response to the major themes of proposed health care policies.
Administered online, 193 people responded to the Health Care Survey between Aug. 17 and 25. The survey split respondents into three groups – those that employ 10 or more (large businesses), those that employ less than 10 (small businesses) and employees themselves.
Seventy-nine percent of respondents indicated that …