Promising strategies help employers integrate pharmacy and medical programs--and reap cost, quality advantages

Providing quality pharmacy benefits while managing costs is an escalating challenge for employers. Easy solutions such as higher copays and standard three-tier systems will not provide effective, long-lasting results that include improved clinical outcomes. Employers must concentrate on educating employees on the real cost and value of their pharmacy benefits and they must also take an integrated view of medical and pharmacy benefits.     

Health care trends in today's marketplace

As the year 2000 approaches, it is apparent that employer-sponsored health plans will again begin to experience high rate increases. Employers will need to utilize an up-to-date benefits philosophy and health plan purchasing strategy coupled with monitoring tools and vendor performance guarantees to deal with the situation. While many of the cost drivers are beyond an employer's control, taking a preemptive strike at health care inflation through design, cost sharing and other focused initiatives will minimize its impact.     

Same-sex spousal benefits: a Canadian perspective

Employers considering same-sex spousal benefits for employees based in Canada must deal with a number of unanswered questions. Some plan sponsors may make benefits coverage decisions based on personal or corporate beliefs or in response to employee demands.     

Social Security Benefits and Employer Behavior: Evaluating Social Security Early Retirement Benefits As a Form of Unemployment Insurance

Employers often shed older workers by encouraging them to "take" early retirement. An implicit contract model suggests that this behavior will be influenced by the social security early retirement program. When demand is weak and layoffs are necessary, social security benefits can act like a form of unemployment insurance, effectively subsidizing workforce reductions by lowering the cost to the firm of shedding older workers. Since social security benefits are not subject to experience rating, the result is an inefficiently high level of early retirements. This paper concludes with a discussion of policies for restoring early retirements to efficient levels.     

Options available for retirees if benefits are not offered

Employers are increasingly concerned about the costs of providing retiree health care benefits. While they await the details of health care reform legislation, alternatives to plan sponsorship are available.     

Occupation pension for public employees in the People's Republic of China: A new approach with defined benefit underpin pension plan

The State Council of the People's Republic of China announced a reformed pension plan for public employees with the occupation pension plan in January 2015, officially disclosing that the social pension systems for private and public employees will be unified. Our proposed occupation pension plan for public employees is one of the important components in transiting from a dual‐track pension system to a sustainable and unified system. We aim at providing a pension design, that is, the defined benefit (DB ) underpin pension with estimates of the costs and benefits. We have used a financial engineering approach to calculate the hedge contribution for a DB underpin hybrid pension plan benefit. We also treat pension benefit and salaries in aggregate. Therefore, we propose a stochastic and exogenous salary model. Employees’ total benefits can be determined by multiple factors, such as inflation, economic environment, and employer's preference. However, the expectation of employees’ total benefits should not be affected by the change of salary and pension benefits. Our results could facilitate the ongoing pension reform in the People's Republic of China, providing a rigorous benchmark with public policy implications as to plan design, cost estimation, as well as risk management approach.     

Group disability income: new policies emphasize employee appeal

Group disability insurance is a voluntary benefit that offers advantages to both employers and employees. Employees who want this kind of coverage realize that their employers have done much of the homework for them in terms of comparing benefits, rates and contract provisions. Employers recognize an opportunity to add a benefit that may help attract and retain valuable employees with little additional cost or administrative burden.     

Taxation of Non-Cash Fringe Benefits

This article examines the introduction of a fringe benefits tax (FBT) as part of a revenue-neutral package with personal income tax cuts. With an effective tax-wage bargain in force, such an FBT package will not increase labour costs overall. It will, however, increase the labour costs of employers who, prior to the tax reform, were paying above average shares of their employees' remuneration in non-cash benefits. Employers whose pre-reform labour costs contained relatively low shares of non-cash payments will experience falls in labour costs.     

Economic Benefits of Management Reform in the Gulf of Mexico Grouper Fishery: A Semi-parametric Analysis

This paper uses a semi-parametric empirical model to estimate the economic benefits of adopting a property rights-based management program in the Gulf of Mexico grouper fishery. The analysis predicts that a rights-based fleet will be comprised of fewer, more cost efficient boats than under the current controlled access management program. Results indicate that in the year of our data, 1993, the smaller, more productive fleet could harvest the allowable reef fish catch at a cost saving of $2.92–$7.07  million, 12–30% less than under controlled access management. Recent tightening of controlled access regulations suggest that the benefits from management reform could be even larger in the current day fishery.      

THE GENDER PAY GAP UNDER DUOPSONY: JOAN ROBINSON MEETS HAROLD HOTELLING

This paper presents an alternative explanation of the gender pay gap resting on a simple Hotelling-style duopsony model of the labour market. Since there are only two employers, equally productive women and men have to commute and face travel cost to do so. We assume that some women have higher travel cost, e.g., due to more domestic responsibilities. Employers exploit that women on average are less inclined to commute and offer lower wages to all women. Since women's firm-level labour supply is for this reason less wage-elastic, this model is in line with Robinson's explanation of wage discrimination.     

A Bayesian Bioeconometric Model of Invasive Species Control: The Case of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

In this article we evaluate a US Forest Service plan to mitigate damages from an invasive insect on public, forested land. We develop a dynamic model of infestation and control to explicitly account for biological interactions, baseline conditions, and uncertainty, thus creating a more complete picture of policy impacts than a static cost benefit analysis could provide. We combine the results of the dynamic model with an empirical study of nonmarket forest benefits to create a bioeconomic model of ecosystem management. Estimating the empirical model in a Bayesian framework allows us to treat the economic coefficients of the dynamic model as random variables. We specify distributions for the biological parameters and examine the effects of both biological and economic uncertainty on the predictive distribution of net benefits. We find that the net benefits of the program are positive, and that uncertainty in the biological model contributes substantially more to the variance of our estimate than does uncertainty over the valuation of the resource.     

What should be done now with retiree health benefit prefunding?

At least in its early stages, health care reform is not likely to signal the end of concerns about retiree health benefits. Employers may want to explore prefunding as a practical approach to the problem.     

煤炭企业外延成本的管理与控制

根据煤矿生产及成本构成的特点,将对煤炭成本影响较大,而且在生产过程中难以管理与控制的成本称之为＂外延成本＂。研究表明：矿井规划设计与建设、煤矿技术改造、煤矿服务体系和管理体系对成本影响较大,应该加强煤矿技术改造,完善煤矿的服务体系和管理体系,合理规划和建设矿井等。     

资产专用性与交易成本节约——论企业是信用的载体

企业的功能不仅在于节约要素(中间品)交易成本,是要素的"间接定价装置",还在于节约最终产品交易成本.信息不对称的产品市场上,企业在交易中"制造"了一个重复博弈机制,这使其更关心长远利益.它用自身专用性资产--从价值和数量两个维度--来作为其产品是合格品的担保.专用性资产单位价值越大,数量越多,企业越有谋求长远利益、放弃短期机会主义行为的激励.市场上理性的买方考虑到这一点,总是认为效益越好、规模越大的企业越有可能提供合格品.企业是信用的载体,它一定程度上避免了产品市场由于信息不对称所引致的逆向选择,从而节约最终产品交易成本.我们的分析补充和完善了企业的交易成本理论.     

How to inject consumerism into your existing health plans

Consumerism seeks to create a behavior change on the part of consumers so that they become accountable, knowledgeable and actively engaged in managing their health. It can be used in any existing health plan through targeted plan design changes and consumer education efforts. Employers have many options in addition to consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs).     

员工离职成本测评模型——Cascio模型的修正

在严酷的竞争环境下,人力资源管理愈来愈受到学者们和管理者的关注,但是却少有人研究从成本/收益角度研究人力资源活动和员工的组织行为。Cascio建立的员工离职成本模型奠定了当代学者开展此方面研究的基础。在综合考虑了员工离职对企业的不利影响后,文章对Cascio模型进行了修正,建立了更为系统全面的员工离职成本模型。     

How competitiveness may cause a gender wage gap: Experimental evidence

We show that choices in competitive behavior may entail a gender wage gap. In our experiments, employees first choose a remuneration scheme (competitive tournament vs. piece rate) and then conduct a real-effort task. Employers know the pie size the employee has generated, the remuneration scheme chosen, and the employee׳s gender. Employers then decide how the pie will be split, as in a dictator game. Whereas employers do not discriminate by gender when tournaments are chosen, they take substantially and significantly more from female employees who choose piece-rate remuneration. A discriminatory wage gap occurs which cannot be attributed to employees׳ performance.     

Multiple HMO/indemnity plan supplement design: a managed care strategy for employers with high HMO enrollment

This article outlines a health care benefits strategy that combines features of the multiple HMO choice approach and the point-of-service approach. Although this plan design may not be appropriate for all employers, it may provide the greatest long-term cost savings for employers with high HMO enrollment, according to the author.     

An examination of financial impacts of SFAS No. 106

Conclusion SFAS No. 106 requires companies to accrue the expected cost of OPEB during the years employees provide services to the company. The Statement is based on the assumption that OPEB are a form of deferred compensation and the resulting obligation should be recognized when services are rendered. This article examined some provisions of the Statement and the possible impact on financial statements of affected companies as well as management efforts to control OPEB costs. The results indicate that adoption of SFAS No. 106 has caused companies to report OPEB transition obligations on their balance sheets and to show higher OPEB annual expenses on their income statements. These perceived negative financial impacts of adopting SFAS No. 106 do not appear to have encouraged management to take immediate actions to curtail the promised OPEB. However, in many cases, management is considering implementing changes in plan design such as increasing or imposing retiree contribution levels or retiree deductibles and higher coinsurance levels, reducing benefits and coverage, and changing coordination of benefits with Medicare in attempt to mitigate the possible negative financial impacts of adopting SFAS No. 106.