Liazon is reinventing the employee benefits model in the US. The Company has saved employers millions of dollars while expanding employee choice and coverage through its Bright Choice Exchange, where employees buy benefits online that fit their individual needs using money allocated by their employer.

Employees get access to an array of benefit choices that is superior to what even Fortune-500 companies offer, including a variety of health care plans, dental, vision, critical illness, and even pet insurance. The Bright Choices Exchange educates employees about coverage options, guides them to make the right decisions, and helps them buy and manage all of their benefits using friendly technology and individualized support.

The Johns Creek Chamber of Commerce is pleased to introduce Bright Choices^®, a program that is changing the way its member businesses shop for employee health benefits.

Doug Russ, President of the chamber, sees this as the wave of the future and a glimpse of what insurance exchanges may look like when they begin operating in 2014.  He expects the Bright Choices program to spread locally.  "We feel we are ahead of the curve," he said.  "I think you will see other chambers and organizations doing this."

"The Johns Creek Chamber, with over 400 members is offering Bright Choices from Liazon as a members only benefit" said Susie Duke, Membership Director.  "The response has been phenomenal."

"It really is a whole new benefits strategy," she said.  "You have to put aside your old concepts of how buying health insurance is supposed to work."

Similar to the historical challenges and costs of company sponsored Pension Plans, current employer administered health benefit plans are sucking every dollar of profit out of many companies due to escalating premiums.

Bright Choices uses a "defined contribution" approach.  Rather than selecting a health plan for employees and then paying a portion of premiums, employers now budget how much they can spend each year and give it to the employees.  The employee then takes that money and goes shopping in a well stocked on-line benefits store.  Unique to the industry, the Bright Choices store offers employees up to 6 medical plans and 3 dental plans to choose from, and dozens of group rated voluntary and supplemental plan options as well.

"It gets employers out of the administrative hassles and minutiae of health insurance and lets them focus on important stuff like running their business," Doug said.

"This is not the time for business as usual," according to Ashok Subramanian, CEO and Co-Founder at Liazon.  "The Johns Creek Chamber recognizes the strategic need to offer a better way to buy benefits, and our Bright Choices program makes that possible."

Many chambers in the Northeast have adopted the Bright Choices program for their members.  One chamber alone saved members over $1Million dollars using the program.  "We're very excited to bring this program to chambers in Georgia," said Ashok.  "We know the Johns Creek community will be very pleased."

About Johns Creek Chamber of Commerce
The Johns Creek Chamber of Commerce was founded just over 4 years ago, in concert with the formation of the City of Johns Creek.  Already the 10th largest city in Georgia, 4th largest economically and #1 in net worth, Johns Creek also boasts a wealth of talented and active business owners, leaders and executives.  The JCCC is representative of this dedicated and determined community, and has grown explosively the last 2 years, from 180 members in 2009 to over 400 today.  The Chamber is committed to helping its members and area businesses and civic leaders Connect, Grow and Thrive together, in order to create and maintain a healthy community in which to live, work and play.  The JCCC has a very active and talented Board of 20 directors, hosts a variety of activities and events, and is launching its own economic development initiative to spur healthy business growth in this part of N. Fulton County. (www.johnscreekchamber.com).    

About Liazon
Liazon Corporation was founded in 2007 to address the myriad problems inherent in employee benefits by creating an entirely new consumer-centric model.  Liazon has pioneered the private online benefits store where employees find, learn about, and purchase healthcare, other insurance products, and a wide range of services.  Liazon has demonstrated success in taming benefits costs for its thousands of customers across the U.S. and in helping their employees save money and choose an optimal set of benefits for themselves and their families.  Central to Liazon's success is its service delivery model through its Consumer Advocacy Center and its Client Liazon programs which off-load employers' benefits administration burden.  Liazon's corporate offices are in New York City and Buffalo, New York and with partners in Atlanta, GA. (www.liazon.com).   

Buffalo, NY – Liazon Corporation announced that it has secured a $12.6 million round of funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Ingleside Investors, Rand Capital, SBIC, and other investors.  The company, with over 2,000 customers across 23 states, revolutionizes how employers manage their employee benefits programs. 

“This investment further validates Liazon’s revolutionary model for employee health and wealth protection,” said Ashok Subramanian, Liazon’s CEO and Co-Founder.  “There is a new future upon us where people, not companies, are making decisions on how best to protect themselves and their families.  This capital infusion will allow us to dramatically expand our national sales and marketing footprint and continue to innovate on our Bright Choices^® technology platform.” 

Through Liazon’s award-winning Bright Choices^® online store, employers define their long-term benefits contribution and employees select individually tailored benefits portfolios from over 1 billion combinations of insurance, healthcare, and financial products.  Employers save money and employees are more satisfied with their benefits.

“Liazon takes a very challenging situation – spiraling healthcare costs– and transforms it into a strategic asset for small and mid-sized businesses,” said Jeff Crisan, Managing Director, Bain Capital Ventures.  “Liazon’s cutting-edge software, product suite, and scalable service model completely change the game in benefits and finally enable employers, employees, and insurance carriers to win together.”

Since its founding in 2007, Liazon has grown rapidly and now serves companies ranging in size from sole proprietors to 3,500 employees. The company also manages insurance programs for Chambers of Commerce, business associations, and other channel partners.  Its Bright Choices^® technology has won Best Website awards from Consumer Health World and Web Health Awards and has been featured on CNNMoney.com as a "New Vision for Fixing Healthcare".

About Liazon
Liazon Corporation was founded in 2007 to address the myriad problems inherent in employee benefits by creating an entirely new retail model. Liazon has pioneered the private online benefits store where employees find, learn about, and purchase healthcare, other insurance products, and a wide range of services. Liazon has demonstrated success in taming benefits costs for its thousands of customers across the U.S. and in helping their employees save money and choose an optimal set of benefits for themselves and their families.  Central to Liazon’s success is its service delivery model through its Consumer Advocacy Center and its Client Liazon programs which off-load employers’ benefits administration burden.  Liazon’s solution scales easily for companies of all sizes.  Liazon’s corporate offices are in New York City and Buffalo, New York (www.liazon.com).

About Bain Capital Ventures
Bain Capital Ventures is the venture and growth affiliate of Bain Capital, headquartered in Boston.  Bain Capital Ventures has approximately $1.5 billion under management and invests in healthcare, business services, internet, consumer and retail, mobile and software companies across all stages of a company’s development.  Bain Capital Ventures leverages the consulting and operating backgrounds of its professionals, broad firm resources, and a 27-year heritage of successful investing to partner with entrepreneurs and management teams to build large, profitable businesses that are leaders in their space.  Bain Capital’s history of investing in venture and growth-stage companies dates back to 1984.  Since then, the firm has made over 125 venture and growth-stage investments in companies such as Archer Technologies, DoubleClick, Gartner Group, iPay Technologies, Liberty Dialysis, LinkedIn, MinuteClinic, ProfitLogic, Staples, SolarWinds and Taleo (www.baincapitalventures.com).

About Ingleside Investors, LLC
Ingleside Investors(also known as A.C. Israel Enterprises, Inc.) is an integrated investment firm that primarily represents the interests of the New York based Israel family.  For over 50 years, the firm has successfully invested in growing companies, such as Jenny Craig, Qdoba Mexican Grill and Sundance Catalog.  Ingleside Investors is headquartered in New York, NY (www.inglesidellc.com).

About Rand Capital, SBIC
Rand Capital, SBICis a publicly held Business Development Company (BDC), and its wholly owned subsidiary is licensed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) as a Small Business Investment Company (SBIC). Rand and its subsidiary provide capital and managerial expertise to small and medium sized private companies primarily located in the Northeast U.S. Rand is traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol "RAND". Rand is headquartered in Buffalo, NY. (www.randcapital.com).    
 
Contact
Curtiss Butler, Chief Marketing Officer
Liazon Corporation
curtiss.butler@liazon.com
518-672-5051

Liazon’s Bright Choices Benefits Exchange™, the online benefits store, has been honored with a Merit Award from the Health Information Resource Center (HIRC) as part of their Web Health Awards competition. In its 12th year, the goal of the Web Health Awards is to recognize high-quality information in the fast-growing electronic health field.

"We are honored and pleased to receive this award" said Ashok Subramanian, CEO, President & co-Founder of Liazon Corporation. "What Liazon does has been called revolutionary and it is good validation for us to be recognized with a prestigious award like this.”

A new kind of benefits retailer, Liazon has pioneered the development of the Benefits Exchange™, the private online benefits store where people can shop for their benefits from a range of choices across health, money, and protection products. Liazon’s Bright Choices® Benefits Exchange™ is a robust software platform through which employees can learn about, receive personalized recommendations on, and purchase their benefits.

With the Benefits Exchange, Liazon has demonstrated success in taming benefits costs for thousands of small and mid-sized business across the U.S. and in helping their employees save money and get better benefits.

The Web Health Awards is organized by the Health Information Resource Center™, a national clearinghouse for professionals who work in consumer health fields. The Web Health Awards is an extension of the HIRC’s 17-year old National Health Information Awards?, the largest program of its kind in the United States.

Strip away all the emotions tied up in employee benefits, all the partisan griping and name calling about healthcare reform, wipe away the employees’ sense of entitlement, get rid of the talk about Obamacare and what it all boils to down to is . . . insurance. In this country, we have gotten so wrapped up in the corporate “welfare system” called employee benefits that we believe every runny nose should be covered by company-paid medical plans. We take it as a given that our employee benefits will insulate us from the costs of every small health issue we have. We pay a high price for this entitlement, but because we don’t actually see the cost, or see it indirectly as a payroll deduction out of each paycheck, we don’t actually know what we’re buying.

But the fact is, benefits are just insurance. And the definition of insurance is “a promise of compensation for specific potential future losses in exchange for a periodic payment. Insurance is designed to protect the financial well-being of an individual . . . in the case of significant and unexpected loss.” Notice something here? Nowhere does this definition mention coverage levels or treatments. It is silent on the subject of co-pays, out-of-pocket maximums, and prescription formularies. Insurance, and by extension benefits, is all about money, full stop. The purpose in buying any insurance is to protect your income and your savings should something major and unforeseen come up.

Think about your car insurance. You’re not insuring your tires, or your oil, or your headlights. You expect to buy new tires periodically, and honestly a set of tires today can cost about as much as the MRI your doctor wants you to have. So, why don’t we put in a claim against our automobile policy to cover our tires? Or, how about an oil change at Jiffy Lube? It costs about as much as a visit to the doctor’s office, but we don’t expect our car insurance to pay for it. Even when we have a minor accident and knock out a headlight, most people will opt to not involve the insurance company and will pay for it out of their own pocket. But on that dark night when the deer leaps out of the ditch and into our headlight, when we can’t swerve around her, when we do major damage to our car, we expect the insurance to cover the repairs . . . after the deductible, of course. And why do we make these decisions? Because we know what car insurance is for . . . the unexpected and expensive.  We want to control the cost of that insurance; we’re spending our own money for it and we don’t want our rates to go up.

In employee benefits, until now, it has worked completely differently. Because we aren’t laying out our own money for treatments, we accept doctors’ recommendations without questioning them and with no concern for cost. We avoid the stress of having to pay attention to the dollars, shop for the best deals and make decisions. This system leads us to over-consume health care services and make extravagant use of services that have high costs and low benefits.  If we had individual insurance, instead of group insurance through our company, and we had to pay the full costs of treatments, we would think we were buying a Maserati . . . the sticker shock would send us reeling.  Until now, employers have been funding this high performance sport car called group insurance and they are feeling the pinch.

The problem is that it is not sustainable. It is inefficient.

The solution is two-fold: cost transparency so that employees, as benefits consumers, know what they’re actually paying for the insurance and treatments; and benefits plans that act like insurance –  not entitlement programs. When they know what things actually costs and they are covering it with their own money, employees make better decisions about how their healthcare dollars are spent and their actions will drive costs out of the system. When they understand the role of health insurance to cover them for significant, unexpected medical situation, they will use the insurance to protect their income and their savings. A Consumer Driven Healthcare Plan is just that kind of insurance. These plans have lower premiums at various price points balanced against higher deductibles so that, like car insurance, employees can decide how much of their own money is “in play” before the insurance kicks in.

The Bright Choices® Benefits Exchange™ available through the Buffalo Niagara Partnership is based on these basic ideas. Full cost transparency . . . the cost of the insurance is published to each participant. A selection of Consumer Driven Healthcare Plans . . . participants can find the right mix of premium and deductible. Income protection . . . the Benefits Exchange helps employees select plans that protect their financial well-being and cover them against significant loss, at a price they can afford. All employee benefits are about money. After all, it’s insurance.

It’s upon us, we’re head into the “season”—and I’m not talking about the holidays. This is the time of year when insurance renewals come due, and on the heels of that, we slide right into open enrollment for benefits. It is axiomatic that there are two letters employers dread to receive: anything from the IRS and their renewal letter from their insurance company. You know the medical plan rates are going up. That’s a given. Try to think of a year when they haven’t. And then comes open enrollment, or what should be known as your employees’ annual “pay cut”, as they absorb a greater share of the rate increase each year. So, here are some questions you might want to ask yourself this year.

1. Why do they call it a “renewal”, anyway, when there’s nothing new about it? The word suggests that you come out better off, more refresh and energized, than when you went in. You are renewed by a vacation, a brisk workout, even a hot shower. People renew their wedding vows. Calling it benefits renewal doesn’t make the pain go away.

2. Are things getting better or worse for you? Inevitably with benefits renewal you end up in a worse position with higher rates and less satisfied employees. That’s because the employee benefits system has gone too far down the wrong path and fosters the wrong kinds of conversations. If you are talking to a broker, or perhaps directly to an insurance company, those are the very folks who benefits most from the status quo. Remember, when your insurance rates go up, commissions on those rates go up, too.

3. Has the system been bad so long you’ve just gotten used to it? Some employers have even said that they no longer believe that the system can be fixed, and they are skeptical of anyone who says they can fix it. They have just resigned themselves to live with things they way they are.

4. Is the status quo sustainable for you? If your rates continue to go up, they could put you out of business. At the current rate of inflation of benefits costs, there comes a point in the next five years, or son, when the benefits for an employee making $40,000 will be more expensive than the employee’s salary.

5. When was the last time either of the familiar players – a broker or a carrier – brought you a truly new idea? Sure, they offer stop-gap measures and ways to adjust your rates or share more costs with your employees, but in the last year, have you heard a really new idea that actually saves you money? It is not in their interests to think of new ways to make employee benefits work, because they’re working just fine for these folks.

As we head into the benefits season this year, isn’t it time for you to stop having a broker conversation about your benefits and start having a business conversation. Ask the hard questions and get the right answers. Make your benefits as predictable as every other line item in your company’s budget. Offer a program that addresses your employees’ real needs and makes them more satisfied with their benefits. Take a hard look at your benefits and to explore a solution that is working for hundreds of your counterparts here in Western New York.

This will be the third season that the more than 800 Buffalo Niagara Partnership members who participate in the Bright Choices® employee benefits program will know what it feels like to avoid all these headaches – for their companies and themselves as benefits consumers. They have experienced first-hand the cost savings and choice that are the central features of this retail approach to employee benefits. They are using the Bright Choices Benefits Exchange™ - an online benefits store where people shop for benefits – to buy the benefits that are right for them. And they have reduced their administrative burden.

Retail Employee Benefits:

A Completely Different Benefits Experience

                Wouldn’t it be nice if you could say that employee benefits are working just fine, that the costs are in line and under control, that each of your employees has the benefits he or she actually wants and needs, and that benefits administration is a piece of cake? The fact is, there are hundreds business owners of who can say just that. Instead of the old way of doing benefits, they’re sending their employees to a benefits webstore (think Amazon for benefits) where they can buy the insurance and other protections they need.

                Employee benefits have been broken for so long and in so many ways, it may be difficult to believe that there could actually be a solution. Smart, usually well-meaning traditional insurance brokers have tried to address the problems only to end up with band-aid answers that involve temporary stop-gap cost shifting and coverage reductions. As one CFO put it, “the double-digit premium increases are killing me. Unpredictable benefits costs make it tough to run the business.” This is the big problem, but it is exacerbated by the fact that benefits administration is expensive and time-consuming and is usually not a core competency of most owners of small and midsized businesses. One said it this way, “I have no interest in this HR stuff. I hate it, but I have to do it.”

                Over the last couple of years, you have probably heard yourself saying something quite similar. Nearly every business owner, finance manager, and HR person is either beating his or her head against these problems or has given up trying. This was succinctly summarized a short time ago when a Senior Vice President of HR talking about the problems with the current system said, “I’m confused – I don’t know what’s going on – I can’t get a straight answer.”

                But now there’s a totally new idea – retail employee benefits – that strips away the confusion, helps employers get the system under control and saves money on your employee benefits. Sometimes call consumer-centric benefits, it is an approach to benefits that actually lets you fix your benefits costs at a level that you can afford and manage and reduce or even eliminate benefits administration costs.

It’s a simple idea: the free choice of consumers to purchase goods and services should dictate economic structure. Consumerism is fundamental to our way of life. Our society is based on this premise, and every experiment in planned economies that stifle consumerism has failed – including the current structure of company-paid employee benefits.  It is now possible to apply this principle to create a system in which people, not companies, buy benefits (a topic which we have discussed before).

Imagine a benefits webstore where your people go to buy their benefits, where they find a huge variety of products to satisfy their insurance, health care and financial needs. And not just one or two products but multiple selections in almost every benefits category.  It is an empowering, personal benefits shopping experience that gives your people insights into their actual needs, clarity about the true costs of benefits, recommendations on the most cost-efficient way to protect their families, and most of all the purchasing power to get more with the money they have. They buy their own benefits from the “brimming shelves and wide aisles” in the webstore.

Think of it as a powerful e-commerce platform – like many of the best online shopping experiences – that gives your employee more of what they want: vast selection, low-price options, and convenience. It is private benefits exchange that offers a superior alternative to typical employee benefits and health insurance practices.  Of course, to make it work, this webstore requires a merchandiser who maintains strong relationships with the leading suppliers in every product category to ensure that the shelves are stocked with the best products at different price points, so that benefits consumers can find and buy what they need.

By opening a webstore, you can actually fix your benefits cost, set a 3- to 5-year benefits budget, and most important, give your people control over their own benefits dollars. You simply allocate a specific amount to each person to be used for benefits. And this is where the power of the consumer helps to drive costs out of the system. Your employees use the money you’ve allocated to them in the webstore to buy what they need from the vast array of benefits. The price each person is willing to pay for benefits varies widely, but surveys show that when consumers have control over their benefits dollars, they routinely choose lower cost options. 

The retail employee benefits and webstore described here are available to you today in the Bright Choices® program from the Buffalo Niagara Partnership.

June 1, 2010 - When was the last time you heard of an employer buying homeowner’s insurance for employees, or sweating over each employee’s annual car insurance renewal, or picking up the tab for their personal liability insurance. The idea is ludicrous. And yet, each year nearly every employer in this country goes through the annual ritual of picking health coverage, maybe dental insurance, a life insurance policy, disability and so on for all their employees. And most years, this is a terribly frustrating activity, because the system as it stands is broken in nearly every respect.

The options are just not all that good. Trying to find a single plan that covers the diverse needs of disparate employees is an exercise in futility. Shooting for the middle and finding exactly the right balance simply means that half of your employees are under-insured and half are over-insured. How can that be considered a successful business decision? And everyone who has to make it knows that this result of hours and days of investigation is inherently wrong.

Plus, you have to pay more and more each year for the privilege of putting yourself through this exercise in futility. Call it rate increase, the annual “trend”, premium inflation, whatever the term, paying more money for benefits has become the name of the game. Some unfortunate employers are facing increases of 70% or more.

This situation raises two very important points:

1. Most people in business today did not set out to become benefits experts. You see yourself as an entrepreneur, owner, manager, the “finance guy”. And even those who are pursuing an HR career didn’t set out to deal with the pain of employee benefits. You want to deal with more strategic issue like staffing, compensation and the like.
2. The vast majority of employers have given up on finding a solution to this problem. They are no longer confronting it and trying to solve it, but instead are looking for a “work-around”. They may shift costs to employees, cut back on benefits altogether, even lay people off to reduce expenses, but these tactics only address the pain, but not the underlying problem, and in most cases they create more pain.

But there is a real solution to this situation ... defined contribution. Imagine, you can set a long-term benefits budget and determine what you’re going to spend on benefits – an amount that your business can afford. You treat benefits the same way you handle every other business expense. And then, you allocate a certain amount for each employee to spend on their benefits. It really has nothing to do with benefits anymore, it’s a compensation decision. You’ve defined what you’re going to contribute for benefits each year and gotten yourself out of the spiraling cost increases. As with any budget item, you can build in a reasonable inflation rate of your choosing, perhaps 5 percent a year.

But what about your employees? How are they going to use the allocation you’ve given them to buy the insurance they actually need? The answer is simple, you give them access to a marketplace of benefits – a Benefits Exchange – where they have a range of options for different insurance products and they can buy the benefits that are right for them. This is more than the healthcare insurance exchange that is part of the new reforms, because it deals with far more than just medical insurance. There might be 8 medical plans on the Exchange, or 18, or 28. And then there are also all the other benefits an employee might actually want – dental, vision, life, disability, long-term care, accident, critical illness and so on. Each employee decides what he or she needs. They insure themselves, just as they insure their car and house.

This defined contribution approach to benefits is a real solution, not a work-around. It doesn’t just change the way you pay, it relieves your frustration. And it makes your employees happier. Survey after survey shows that when they are empowered in this way and can buy the benefits they actually need, employees are more aware of and satisfied with their benefits and happier in their jobs.

And speaking of reform, many of the experts have suggested the new law will encourage a defined contribution approach to benefits that separates financing from plan design and administration. Benefits become more logically a compensation decision, and employees, not companies, buy benefits.

“Is it time to rethink the role of your organization in providing healthcare to employees?”
Allen T. Steinberg, noted ERISA attorney, April 15, 2010.

May 21, 2010 - The new healthcare reform laws – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Healthcare and Education Reconciliation Act – contain many provisions, mandates and promises of new regulation that will take effect over the next 4 to 8 years. It is easy to get caught up in the cost of compliance, the risks of cost increases, the timetable of provisions, the penalties and the new administrative burdens. But this may be a good time for you to step back and take a different, more strategic view of the implications of these reforms. Perhaps, it is time for you to delink employment and healthcare and seriously consider separating the financing of health insurance from design and administrative considerations. Your businesses might want to change what healthcare represents as part of your total remuneration package.

Over time, the law will commoditize health insurance – making it more broadly available, defining an “essential health benefits package”, mandating coverage and establishing financial incentives and penalties, and creating government-defined “typical” plans on state-run health insurance exchanges. Taken together, these provisions will make it more difficult for you, as an employer, to differentiate your health insurance coverage from your competitors – either across your industry or those drawing from the same labor pool in your locations – and your health benefits will be less of an inducement to attract and retain employees. In effect, health insurance will become more standardized and more “portable” and may no longer keep people in their current jobs because of their health benefits.

One significant result of these changes will be that you could choose to stop spending those hours and days laboring over health insurance designs trying to find that right mix of coverages and costs, looking for the right balance of cost sharing, and worrying that you are under-insuring or over-insuring your employees. Likewise, more standardized plans and a health insurance exchange could reduce your administrative headache, though the new law does require some additional reporting. And this raises the key question posed by Allen T. Steinberg, “What is the role of your organization in sponsoring healthcare insurance, supporting its acquisition and delivering it?”

The answer is that you will be able to uncouple costs from design and administration and yours could be much more of a defined contribution approach to health insurance, similar to the employer’s role in a 401(k) retirement plan. You will simply define your benefits contribution by electing a specific dollar amount to allocate to each employee. Health insurance benefits will become much more of a compensation consideration, than an independent program with increasing costs and huge time obligation for your organization. Defined contribution funding for your healthcare benefits program will actually lower your costs and put you in charge of what you will spend. You will determine an acceptable annual rate of increase and establish a predictable, manageable long-term budget.

Having reduced your cost burden, your next consideration will be to re-examine your entire benefits package. Where the new law addresses only healthcare insurance (and some long-term care features), you have to look at all of the benefits you offer – dental, life, disability, accident/critical illness, wellness, and the like. This will be an excellent opportunity to broaden the scope of the initiative and “reform” your entire benefits package. In fact, the ultimate result of the Act may be to encourage a defined contribution approach to all benefits – a single dollar amount allocation that employees can use to purchase the insurance they need.

This, however, points up one of the limitations of the new law. Its exclusive focus on health insurance may have the effect of uncoupling medical coverage from other benefits, forcing employees to go to different places for their benefits. A better solution will be for you to offer your employees a private exchange that encompasses all benefits – medical coverage that is compliant with the new law along with all the other types of insurance coverages that your employees actually need. This type of benefits exchange will actually release you from the administrative burden you now face. And it will foster a new level of benefits consumerism among employees.

In these ways, the new law will reform not just health insurance but rather the overall picture of benefits – encouraging a defined contribution approach that separates financing from design and administration, makes benefits a compensation consideration, and puts purchasing responsibility in the hands of the benefits user.

April 15, 2010 - Liazon hosted a webinar with Guest Speaker Allen T. Steinberg about the many, many pieces of the new Health Insurance law, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Mr. Steinberg, a noted ERISA attorney for Hewitt Associates (a Fortune 500-focused benefit consulting firm), discussed a full analysis of the new legislation, in terms of what the legislation actually means for small and mid-sized businesses. In this well-attended webinar he outlined what employers need to do to comply and what they may want to do in response to the legislation. He focused on the key aspects of the law and helped to achieve some perspective for businesses. He also answered questions from small business owners about the law in an interactive Q&A session.

Click below to watch the webinar, The Healthcare Reform YOYO (Your Obligations - Your Opportunities):
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/740912194