health insurance

Study: What motivates people to exercise? Money

A new study out of Stanford University and the University of Michigan suggests that some people appear more motivated by money than their own health.

Researchers followed a group of people insured by Blue Care Network, which -- rather controversially -- developed an incentives program that allowed its obese members to choose between paying as much as 20 percent more for health insurance or exercising. In real dollars, that added up to as much as $2,000 extra a year. (Those unable to walk due to medical reasons were exempt with a doc's note.)

Those who wanted to pay … Read more

Simplee simplifies managing health care costs (podcast)

Even if you have insurance to cover the cost of your health care, understanding and managing it can still be a nightmare. You go the the doctor or get a procedure or lab test and typically have no idea what it will cost. A bill arrives, but you still don't often know how much you owe and how much the insurance company will pay. Eventually the insurance company mails you an "explanation of benefits," but even that can sometimes be indecipherable.

Enter Simplee, a free online personal health care expense management system. Like a Mint.com for … Read more

Open-source projects to provide corporate benefits?

I spent some time talking with an Accenture veteran this morning, and came away with an intriguing idea: enable open-source projects to provide corporate benefits like health insurance to their developers so that they can ditch their day jobs to focus on their open-source passion.

If you've ever started a small business, you know that getting "enterprise-grade" benefits like health insurance is very difficult. At Alfresco, for example, we ultimately joined a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) called Trinet [PDF], which aggregates many smaller companies to negotiate insurance plans with companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield that would … Read more