Falling U.S. cancer rate saves 650,000 lives: report

Good news is that more people survive cancer than 15 years ago. They credited better surgical techniques and new drugs, both traditional chemotherapy drugs and new biological agents such as monoclonal antibodies. With that in mind, how does the financial stress of paying for these treatments effect the patient and their family? Did you know a critical illness plan can provide you and your family with the cash needed to fight cancer as well as other critical illnesses such as, heart attack and stroke? For more information on critical illness plans please contact Ray Ward at RayWard@YourLegacyBenefits.com

Reuters.com By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A steady 15-year decline in the U.S. death rate from cancer translates to about 650,000 lives over that time, the American Cancer Society said on Wednesday.

But cancer will kill 1,500 Americans every day on average -- with 1.47 million cases diagnosed and 562,000 deaths in 2009, the group said in its annual report on cancer statistics.

Cancer, which causes one in four deaths in the United States, is the No. 2 killer after heart disease.

"A drop of one or two percent per year in the cancer mortality rate may sound small, but as this report shows, that adds up to 650,000 cancer deaths avoided over 15 years," John Seffrin, the group's chief executive officer, said in a statement.

"And because the rate continues to drop, it means that in recent years, about 100,000 people each year who would have died if cancer death rates had not declined are living to celebrate another birthday."

For men, the cancer death rate fell by 19 percent between 1990 and 2005, mostly because of fewer cases of lung, prostate, and colon cancer, the group said. Cancer deaths fell by 11 percent among women because of decreases in breast and colon cancer.

The rate did not fall more for women primarily because of smoking-related cancers. As men began to smoke less in the 1960s and 1970s, women started smoking more and their rate of kicking the habit lagged men's by about 20 years. "Lung cancer is expected to account for 26 percent of all female cancer deaths in 2009," the report said.

Lung cancer is the biggest cancer killer by far, and the American Cancer Society projects that 219,440 people will get a lung cancer diagnosis in 2009 and 159,390 will die from it.

Colon cancer is the second biggest cancer killer in the United States -- with 49,920 deaths projected and more than 106,000 cases.

Breast cancer will be diagnosed in 194,280 women and men and will kill 40,610 -- including 44 men, the group projects. Prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 192,280 men and will kill 27,360. "Prostate cancer alone accounts for 25 percent of incident cases in men," the report said.

But it said 91 percent of these prostate cancer cases will be diagnosed early, giving men a 100 percent chance of surviving at least five years.

The group, which projects its statistics based on a variety of sources, said overall rates of cancer fell by 1.8 percent per year from 2001 to 2005 among men and 0.6 percent per year from 1998 to 2005 among women.

Separately, a team at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center found that 30 percent of people with colon cancer that had spread now survive their disease for at least five years, compared to just 8 percent of such patients in 2004.

They credited better surgical techniques and new drugs, both traditional chemotherapy drugs and new biological agents such as monoclonal antibodies.

Senate Finance Committee Discusses Funding for Health Reform in Final 'Walk Through' Meeting

The Hill (a congressional newspaper) reports key items on proposed Healthcare reform:

· How to finance health care tax sugary drinks and alcohol.

· Put a cap on employer tax exemption, thereby encouraging employers to offer health plans with less benefits.

· Decrease Medicare benefits including home care, durable medical equipment, medical imaging, and prescriptions.

· Force not-for-profit hospitals to provide more no-cost care and serve more low-income patients.

It seems to me that Federal are again wanting to discourage employers to offer healthcare, get people to have to get the government plan, cut services that we expect for our provider, and help reduce cost by forcing hospital to provide no cost service. How are these facilities suppose to pay the health professionals and keep their doors open? Is this what you want?

The Senate Finance Committee met Wednesday to discuss potential funding mechanisms for health reform legislation but indicated that no concrete decisions had been reached, The Hill reports. The meeting was the third of three scheduled to "walk through" various aspects of health reform. Previous talks focused on the care delivery system and coverage. Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has said that he hopes for a bill to be approved for full Senate consideration by the end of July. He said of the talks so far, "We've got a lot of work ahead of us," adding, "Soon we have a mark up, soon we have a bill, and that realization is forcing us to make decisions." He also said, "Nothing's pushed off the table. We're looking at it all."

Funding mechanisms discussed Wednesday included taxes on sugary and alcoholic beverages, as well as a limit on the tax-exempt status of employer-provided health insurance (Young, The Hill, 5/20). One proposal would raise the federal alcohol excise tax by 145% for beer, 233% for wine and 20% for hard liquor (Hurt, New York Post, 5/21). The committee also mulled a three-cent tax per 12-ounce container of sugary drinks, which would raise an estimated $50 billion over 10 years (Alonso-Zaldivar, AP/Houston Chronicle, 5/21). Baucus said he supports placing a cap on the employer coverage tax exemption based on income or the cost of premiums, or both. Congress estimates that about $194.2 billion in revenue is passed up each year by forgoing taxes on the insurance plans.

The committee also discussed decreasing Medicare spending on home care, durable medical equipment, medical imaging and prescription drugs, as well as addressing regional disparities in health care costs (The Hill, 5/20). Members also brought up the possibility of charging higher-income seniors higher premiums for the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Wayne, CQ Today, 5/20). Members also discussed introducing new standards for not-for-profit hospitals that would require them to provide more no-cost care and serve more low-income patients in order to keep their tax-exempt status. In addition, they discussed cutting special Medicare payments to teaching hospitals, as well as requiring drugmakers to give larger discounts to state Medicaid programs (Pear, New York Times, 5/21).

Baucus noted "convergence" on some issues, such as the need to include complete funding in a reform package, as well as the need to establish insurance exchanges that would facilitate the purchase of public or private insurance (The Hill, 5/20). Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said, "There was a greater understanding of the issues we have," but there are "a lot of members who still want some more understanding." Grassley also said, "There's just a lot of questions; there are -- I wouldn't say misunderstandings, but there's got to be a lot of understanding about what you're talking about" (CQ Today, 5/20).

Chances of Bipartisan Bill
Baucus during a press conference Thursday predicted a 75% to 80% percent chance that his panel will be able to create a bipartisan bill, according to The Hill. When asked what were the chances he would succeed in winning the support of senators from both parties, Baucus responded: "Very high. Very, very high. If you want me to put a percentage on that, I'd say it's about 75, 80 percent. It's very high" (Young, The Hill, 5/21.)

A podcast and video of the press conference are available online at kff.org.

Groups Criticize Tax Proposals
Labor unions have begun speaking out against a potential tax on employer-provided health benefits, expressing concern that they would deteriorate the system through which most U.S. residents younger than 65 are covered, the New York Times reports. The National Education Association, United Food and Commercial Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees ran ads in Oregon cities this week stating that Sen. Ron Wyden's (D-Ore.) suggestion to "tax the health care benefits we get at work as if they were income ... doesn't make sense." Baucus defended the tax proposal, saying that the exemption disproportionately benefits people with higher incomes. He said, "It's too regressive" and "just skews the system."

Producers of sodas and alcoholic beverages also spoke out against the tax proposals affecting their products. The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States said the tax would put many jobs at risk, from manufacturers and wholesalers to retailers and food service workers (New York Times, 5/21).

Senate HELP Committee's Plan
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Wednesday said the overhaul bill being developed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which he is a member, resembles the "Massachusetts [plan] on steroids." The Massachusetts Health Insurance Law of 2006 requires that everyone obtain health insurance and established an exchange through which residents can select from a menu of public and private health plans, with subsidies provided to eligible individuals. He said of the HELP plan, "I think that it's driven by the White House, and if it is driven by the White House, then it's certainly not going to be very bipartisan."

House
The House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday also met to discuss health reform. Members avoided contentious issues and instead talked about physician shortages and ways to change payment systems to emphasize quality, according to CongressDaily. Although some Democrats said they would not dismiss Republicans' proposals to tax employer health benefits outright, others said they could not support such plans. Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) said, "You talk about sticker shock; that's a tax people are not accustomed to paying. It's very hard to justify the change if people are going to be hurt economically by other things, like the cap-and-trade debate."

Ways and Means Chair Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said the panel will focus on completing work on health reform legislation before moving on to climate change initiatives (Edney, CongressDaily, 5/21).

Work-life balance key for employees

A new survey states that even in today's current economic environment employees are still looking for the right work-life balance. When times are bad we ask more of our employees but be careful not to push them to the point that you your quality employees.

By Kathleen Koster - May 7, 2009
Your employees are stressed, according to a Workplace Options poll. Seven out of ten workers feel this way, many due to pressures brought on by the recession. Anxieties over job retention and time lost with loved ones will affect morale and productivity, which may in turn drag down the company’s bottom line. Consequently, companies may want to rethink scaling back on benefits that promote a work-life balance because employers will risk losing those employees who are stretched too thin.

In fact, 41% of employees are not content with their organization’s work-life benefits and nearly half (49%) would consider defecting from their current company in favor of improved work-life benefits offered elsewhere, according to the survey.

“We were surprised to see that even in these challenging economic times where many workers are lucky to have a job, nearly half of the employees polled were still willing to leave their job for another company that would offer them better work-life balance,” explains Dean Debnam, CEO for Workplace Options. “In order to retain valuable workers, businesses must be attuned to the heightened challenges employees are facing at the intersection of work and life,” he adds.

Currently, work-life balance is one of the most significant facets of the workplace, second only to compensation, according to research by the Corporate Executive Board. Further, workers who feel that they have achieved a good balance work 21% harder than those who do not, Workplace Options found.

To help alleviate tension from the workspace, employers have a gamut of offerings at their fingertips to help cultivate relaxed and efficient personnel. Examples include helping an employee find child or elder care, back-up care for unforeseen circumstances, wellness counseling and financial and legal consultation.

CalChamber posts 2009 'job killers'

Just a FYI: since we are all dealing with a tough economy I thought you might be interested in what bills the CA Chamber of Commerce thinks are "job killers".

SacBee.com May 15, 2009

The California Chamber of Commerce listed its 2009 "job killer" bills today, just in time for the end-of-May floor action in the Assembly and Senate.

Among the 27 bad-for-business measures the chamber is targeting is Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's Assembly Bill 1000, which would require employers to provide paid sick leave, and Sen. Tom Torlakson's ACA 22, which would increase tobacco taxes by $1.48 per pack of cigarettes.

The chamber has a strong record at killing the job killers, particularly in the governor's office.

Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn into office, he has nixed 47 of the Chamber's 51 "job killer" bills. In 2008, he vetoed nine of 10.

A month ago, the Chamber released a list of "job creators."

The full list of 2009 job killers, complete with the Chamber's own description of the bills, is on the jump.

Barriers to Affordable Housing

AB 212 (Saldaña; D-San Diego) Construction Costs Increase -- Substantially increases the cost of new housing by mandating on-site or near-site energy generation for all new residential buildings.

Costly Workplace Mandates

AB 664 (Skinner; D-Berkeley) Increased Workers' Compensation Costs -- Increases workers' compensation costs by creating a legal presumption that neck and back injuries, and blood-borne and specific infections suffered by hospital employees are related to employment.

AB 842 (Swanson; D-Oakland) Hurts Struggling Businesses -- Expands mandates and increases liability for employers related to the state version of the federal Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act of 1988.

AB 943 (Mendoza; D-Artesia) Hampers Employment Decisions -- Unduly restricts the ability of businesses to use all legally available information in employment decisions, including consumer credit reports.

AB 1000 (Ma; D-San Francisco) Paid Sick Days -- Unreasonably expands employers' costs and liability for a new protected and paid sick leave for employees.

AB 1421 (Swanson; D-Oakland) Pay for Commuting -- Imposes new costs on employers that provide transportation to the worksite by requiring them to pay employees for time spent commuting from the parking lot to the workstation.

SB 145 (DeSaulnier; D-Concord) Workers' Compensation Apportionment -- Erodes recent workers' compensation reforms and leads to higher premiums for California employers by undercutting fair and reasonable provisions in current law that protect an employer from paying for disability that was not caused by a workplace accident.

SB 773 (Florez; D-Shafter) Workers' Compensation Cost Increase -- Increases workers' compensation costs significantly and makes it more expensive to employ Californians by arbitrarily increasing permanent disability benefits.

SB 789 (Steinberg; D-Sacramento) Increased Agricultural Costs -- Undermines the process that now guarantees, through secret-ballot elections, a fair vote and the expression of agricultural employees' true sentiments on the selection of a collective bargaining representative. This act will hurt California's businesses by driving up costs, making employers less competitive in a global market.

SB 810 (Leno; D-San Francisco) Government-Run Health Care -- Creates a new government-run, multibillion-dollar socialized health care system based on a yet-to-be specified 'premium structure' -- in essence, a tax on all employers.

Economic Development Barriers

AB 89 (Torlakson; D-Antioch) Targeted Tax Increase/Flawed Budget Philosophy -- Exacerbates state budget problems and harms tobacco industry by unfairly targeting it for a new cigarette tax, a declining revenue source, to fund new government spending programs.

AB 231 (Huffman; D-San Rafael)/ AB 1405 (De León; D-Los Angeles) Climate Change Tax Increase -- Increases costs and discourages job growth by granting the Air Resources Board broad authority to implement unlimited fees and taxes with little or no oversight.

AB 656 (Torrico; D-Newark) Gas Price Increase -- Increases gas prices and dependence on foreign oil by targeting the oil industry for a tax on oil extracted only in California.

AB 1404 (De León; D-Los Angeles) Discourages Emission Reductions -- Significantly increases business costs and threatens state jobs and businesses by severely limiting the amount of offsets California industries can use to meet their greenhouse gas emission goals.

ACA 6 (C. Calderon; D-Montebello) Discourages Investments -- Discourages investments in jobs and operations by imposing an automatic sunset of seven years on any new or extended tax credit, exemption, or deduction.

ACA 22 (Torlakson; D-Antioch) Targeted Tax Increase/Flawed Budget Philosophy -- Exacerbates state budget problems and harms tobacco industry by unfairly targeting it for a new cigarette tax, a declining revenue source, to fund new government spending programs.

SB 96 (Ducheny; D-San Diego) Increased Tax Burden -- Imposes a new tax increase on personal income.

SB 600 (Padilla; D-Pacoima) Targeted Tax Increase/Flawed Budget Philosophy -- Exacerbates state budget problems and harms tobacco industry by unfairly targeting it for a new cigarette tax, a declining revenue source, to fund new government spending programs.

Expensive, Unnecessary, Unnecessary Regulatory Burdens

AB 283 (Chesbro; D-Arcata) Expanded Waste Bureaucracy -- Leads to increased cost for consumers and businesses by requiring producers of select products sold in California to collect their products after use by the consumer and manage the recycling and/or disposal of those products.

AB 479 (Chesbro; D-Arcata) Expanded Waste Bureaucracy -- Increases costs by giving the California Integrated Waste Management Board broad authority to impose any policy, program or incentive to reach a 75% solid waste diversion rate by 2020.

SB 601, SB 602, SB 603 (Padilla; D-Pacoima) Retail Restrictions -- Severely restricts retailers from growing their businesses in California by limiting the sale of a legal product in a legal venue.

Inflated Liability Costs

AB 2 (De La Torre; D-South Gate) Health Insurance Litigation -- Drives up the cost of health care premiums and increases the number of uninsured by establishing litigation as the only meaningful approach to resolving disputes over rescinding coverage.

AB 793 (Jones; D-Sacramento) Unreasonable New Liability for Employers -- Imposes unfair and costly litigation burden on California employers by unreasonably expanding employer liability in workplace lawsuits far beyond the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

SB 95 (Corbett; D-San Leandro) Vehicle Price Increase -- Imposes new surety costs on car dealers in an already-difficult economy by placing excessive restrictions on the sale of trade-in vehicles and eliminating a voluntary consumer mediation program.

Posted by Dan Smith

Health Tax Break Draws Fire

Here is a new spin on reducing or limiting the tax credits on employer provided health insurance. I guess that the government now wants to decide what level of coverage is the appropriate for you and your family. Please read where Sen. Max Baucus states that current tax credits “often leads people to buy more health coverage than they need”. Really, in my experience the employers who offer the richest health plans, therefore over insuring their employees, are government agencies. Why do they start by getting rid of their $5 and $10 copay plans (which our taxes pay for) and move to their employees to $30, $40 or $50 copay plans like employees of small to medium size businesses have to choose from. It sounds to me again the politicians who want to push socialized medicine are trying to discourage competition to their plans. My job is to help companies enroll their employees into their benefits; I help the employees understand the differences in plan designs so that they can make the right decision for themselves and their family. I know that some employees want the most coverage at any cost but, most of them are trying to get the plan that protects them best financially. I do not understand how Washington can believe that know appropriate for everyone.

We need to support employers who are providing benefits to their employees and not make it harder, especially in these tough economic times.

Sen. Max Baucus and several witnesses talked today about the possibility of Congress limiting the current federal income tax exclusion for group health coverage.

“I know that there is some controversy” about looking at the current tax treatment of health care, Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said today at a committee health finance hearing.

“Some do not want to modify the current unlimited exclusion for employer-provided health care,” Baucus said, according to a written version of his remarks. “And I agree that we are not going to eliminate the exclusion.”

But the current tax exclusion “is regressive,” Baucus said. “It often leads people to buy more health coverage than they need. We should look at ways to modify the current tax exclusion so that it provides the right incentives. And we should look at ways to make it fairer and more equitable for everyone.”

Congress also should take a look at “tax-preferred health accounts and the itemized deduction for health expenses,” Baucus said. We should try to make sure that those benefits are structured fairly and efficiently.”

Adopting President Obama’s proposal to limit itemized deductions, including health care deductions, is another option, Baucus said.

President Bush engaged in unsuccessful efforts throughout his presidency to limit the group health tax exclusion to pay for his administration’s health finance reform proposals.

James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, Washington, appeared at today’s hearing to defend the group health tax exclusion.

“The challenge of financing this effort should begin by reducing costs and inefficiencies in the existing system,” Klein testified, according to a written version of his remarks.

Policymakers should be conservative when estimating costs, savings and revenue, and they should recognize that all system stakeholders should share the burden of reform in an equitable fashion, Klein said.

“Lawmakers may be tempted to reconsider the existing tax treatment of employer-sponsored health benefits on the theory it will hold down health costs,” Klein said. “It is hard to imagine that employers or America’s families need any additional incentives to reduce health care costs. We doubt the nation would want to experience diminished health coverage based on such an untested theory.”

John Sheils, an actuary at the Lewin Group, Falls Church, Va., a unit of UnitedHealth Group Inc., Minnetonka, Minn., said excluding employer-sponsored insurance from individual income and payroll taxes will cost the federal government about $297 billion in tax revenue in 2010.

That estimate includes about $173 billion in personal income taxes and about $100 billion in Social Security and Medicare payroll tax payments, Sheils said.

"About 40.5% of all tax expenditures will go to families with incomes of $100,000 or more, while only about 2.3% would go to families with incomes below $20,000," Sheils said.

A copy of the written version of Baucus’s statement and the witnesses' written testimony is available here. http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/hearing051209.html

A cure worse than the disease

The healthcare proposals that you often hear about when healthcare reform is discussed is the Canadian system, this article discusses major problems with their system. What you should consider that this is the ultimate system that many of our politicians want as our only system. The reason why I say that, is because as they push for universal healthcare, they are at the same time wanting to penalize the employers who offer healthcare to their employees. Also remember, if we begin providing the same level of coverage that the Canada does, where will Canadians go when they need medical services?

The Washington Times - Friday, May 8, 2009 -COMMENTARY: Emily Morley got some very bad news in March 2006. Her cancer had spread, the doctor informed the 67-year-old Canadian. She would need to see an oncologist.

Then Ms. Morley got some really bad news: She would have to wait several months before she could get an appointment.

Only after her family raised a ruckus, calling the local paper and starting a petition to demand she get care, did the government get her a specialist. Then, it was more bad news: Ms. Morley had only three months to live.

At least she had time to put her affairs in order. "Had her family not intervened," noted provincial lawmaker Don McMorris, "it is quite likely that Emily Morley may have died before even seeing an oncologist for the first time."

But that's how a single-payer, or universal, health care system works (so to speak). Even the very ill routinely hurry up and wait.

Alarmingly, Congress is gearing up to "reform" American health care along Canadian lines - and proponents are trying to take a short-cut to get there. According to former Medicaid Director Dennis Smith, proponents of a government-run health system are hoping to enact a bill by bypassing the usual, lengthy bipartisan review process.

The goal of any reform, supposedly, would be to trigger competition between government-run health care and currently existing private health insurance plans. Yet, Mr. Smith warns, the government will inevitably tilt the playing field to favor its own plan, running private coverage out of business. At the end of the day, Americans could be left with a single, government-run health plan a la Canada's.

So let's take a look at what such a system means for our northern neighbors.

As Sally C. Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute and a former Canadian citizen, recently told Congress, today some 750,000 Canadians are on a wait-list for medical procedures. Further, 3.2 million (out of a population of 32 million) are waiting for a chance to see their primary-care physician. Once a PCP diagnoses a problem, Canadians must keep on waiting - 17.3 weeks on average - before they can see a specialist.

Why? "The Canadian government controls costs by rationing care," Ms. Pipes explained. "Canada ranks 14th out of 25 [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries in MRI machines, and 19th out of 26 countries in CT scanners." Long wait times and lack of equipment force many to seek care in the United States.

Take member of Parliament Belinda Stronach. She strongly supports Canada's health care system. But where did she go when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2007? To California, where she paid for treatment out of pocket. Then there was a mother in Calgary, Alberta, who had to be flown to Great Falls, Mont., to deliver her quadruplets. This relatively small American city had better facilities than any hospital in the wealthy province of Alberta.

Our current system is far from perfect, of course. Millions of Americans lack health insurance, prompting many to put off seeing a doctor until a small, treatable problem has become a larger, more threatening condition.

But the answer isn't to try and cover everyone through a single-payer system. We would be better off changing how the federal tax code treats health insurance (which, illogically enough in our 21st century economy, ties it to our jobs). Such a change would foster genuine competition among insurers by allowing Americans to shop for the coverage that suits them best in an open market.

Current policy provides unlimited tax breaks for health coverage provided through employers. Meanwhile, Americans who want to buy their own insurance must do so with after-tax dollars. Few can afford to do that, especially since insurers are more interested in competing for big group coverage (more lives, more money) rather than individual or family-based coverage.

Lawmakers could change this, and even provide vouchers or other forms of direct assistance to help poorer Americans buy private plans they would own and control. This would also make insurance portable when people change jobs.

Maintaining our standard of care is critical. There's a reason Canadians "fly south" for treatment: Our system, for all its flaws, provides superior quality and access to care. Let's ensure that policymakers, in their understandable zeal to reform health care, don't make changes that weaken the entire system.

Ed Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).

Bridging benefits knowledge gap produces the greatest business return

This article discusses the importance of benefit communication. I have found that many employees do not understand their benefits therefore the employer does not get the maximum return on their investment. For this reason, Legacy Benefits & Insurance Services provides benefits communication services to all of their clients.

Employee Benefit Advisor-April 14, 2009-Ninety percent of employers surveyed by Colonial Life agree it’s important to their business that employees understand and appreciate their benefits, but only 21% think their employees actually have a good understanding of them. Bridging that gap by communicating the value of an employer’s benefits program will improve corporate performance, reports the South Carolina-based firm in a new white paper.

In "Benefiting the Bottom Line: How a Strong Benefits Communication and Education Strategy Helps Drive Business," Colonial reports that employers can expect to see real corporate payoffs realized when they implement strong benefits communication and education programs.

According to the Colonial report, a well-designed benefits communication program can lead to decreased turnover, enhanced recruiting, increased enrollments, reduced benefits administration, more engaged and loyal employees and improved productivity.

“Strong communication may be the single most important investment an employer can make in a benefits program,” says Tom Gilligan, senior vice president of marketing and branding at Colonial. “Communication outweighs even the richness of the benefits package when it comes to how much employees value their benefits program,” he adds.

Other findings in the report included:

• 90% of employers said having one-to-one meetings significantly improves employees’ understanding of their benefits.

• 85% of employees feel happy about their benefits enrollment when their employer gives them all the resources needed to make informed decisions.

Employers Should Look to Voluntary Benefits as Economical, Attractive Employee Appreciation Solution

In our economic climate, employers should be considering voluntary benefits which are funded thru payroll deductions therefore not costing the employer any additional expenses and in addition may reduce some payroll tax expenses.

A new study MetLife’s 7th Annual Employee Benefits Trends Study provided finding that employers are seriously underestimating the appeal of voluntary benefits at a time when benefits appreciation is soaring to new heights.

“One of the things that was surprising to us last year was how grateful and appreciative employees were about benefits they received in the workplace, whether they paid for them themselves or not,” reports Bill Mullaney, president of MetLife’s Institutional Business.

Mullaney thinks the findings indicate that employees are appreciating a broader range of benefits. He says the economy has served as a wakeup call to employees who now appear more interested in and appreciative of both their employer-paid and voluntary benefit plans than ever before.

Of the more than 1,300 full-time employees MetLife interviewed last August and November, 40% were highly interested in a wider array of voluntary benefits. But the problem is that only 17% of more than 1,500 benefits decision-makers polled included expansion of voluntary benefits among their top strategies for 2009.

MetLife researchers suggest this perception gap “highlights missed opportunities to deliver and get the most from each benefits dollar.” As such, they recommend that employers explore voluntary benefit offerings with an emphasis on enabling product choice, as well as conduct an employee survey to understand benefit priorities, needs and potential participation levels.

For more information on setting up and successfully introducing Voluntary Benefit Plans, please contact Legacy Benefits & Insurance Services.