The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is complicated, and understanding an employee’s responsibility to purchase coverage under the new law (the individual mandate), is no exception.

Employee absences are inevitable. The challenge for most employers is how to keep employees on leave engaged in the workplace while helping them return to work as quickly as possible. For employees, a disabling illness or injury not only interrupts financial plans but can take an emotional toll as well.

Most employers are, unfortunately, all-too-familar with the traditional approach to disability management: employees must prove they’re disabled. While this traditional strategy may seem effective to some, research shows that its adversarial nature actually leads to higher costs due to more medical tests needed to demonstrate disability.

Many employers are struggling and confused because they don’t have the expertise, resources or the time to keep up with the changes taking place in today’s benefit marketplace.

Making the right strategic business decisions starts with having all the facts. UBA Partners can provide you with exclusive data from the nation’s most comprehensive benchmarking survey of health plans – the UBA Health Plan Survey.

As health care exchanges go online and fewer businesses are burdened with a full health care plan, an interest in voluntary products continues to grow. United Benefit Advisors released preliminary results from its Ancillary Products Survey, which indicates vast differences in voluntary benefits offered by employer size, region and industry, highlighting the importance of using local benchmarking data in benefits planning.