Author: Avery Johnson

If a Mercer webcast today is any sign, employers (over 5,000 of them who logged in) are scratching their heads to figure out what they need to do to comply with the new health bill.

Mercer consultants said their offices are flooded with questions. How will the bill affect health costs, a chief concern of businesses that have seen their bills for insuring their workers rise at a steady clip in recent years? Other themes seemed to be how much flexibility benefit managers would have in the future to design plans and what would administrative staffs need to do to make sure plans followed the new rules.

The message from Mercer: Hang tight, wait for regulations and communicate to employees. Longer term, administrative challenges start to rear their ugly heads: In 2011, for instance, employers will have to start including the aggregate cost of health benefits on an employee’s W2 form, and health savings accounts won’t be able to reimburse for over-the-counter medications. In 2014, of course, new standards for plans will go into effect and there will be a ban on annual limits for coverage — keeping corporate benefit managers plenty busy.

Meanwhile, employer groups were fighting a requirement that they provide health coverage to their employees to the bitter end. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to Senators yesterday to support an amendment in the Senate that would strike the employer mandate from the reconciliation bill. (And for more on what specifically small businesses are thinking, read today’s WSJ.)

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Five CEOs from the health-insurance big dogs (UnitedHealth, WellPoint, etc.) are at the White House this morning to discuss — or more accurately, take flack — over the health overhaul’s issue de jour: rising insurance premiums.

The leadup to the meeting has been disorganized and it’s hard to figure out what’s going on or who is really going to take the CEOs to task. HHS pushed out a press release on Feb. 24 saying the meeting would be yesterday at the department’s HQ.

Then the meeting got moved up to today and relocated to the White House. Rumors are swirling that President Obama himself might sit down with the CEOs for a friendly chat.

The insurance honchos, including WellPoint’s Angela Braly, UnitedHealth’s Stephen Hemsley, Cigna’s David Cordani, Health Care Service Corp.’s Patricia Hemingway Hall and Aetna’s Ron Williams, are expected to keep pressing the point that rising premiums are due to underlying medical costs that are rising at an alarming clip. Execs and their trade group have said hospitals are asking them for 40% reimbursement increases and to pay for high-end biotech drugs that are running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What’s likely to come out of the confab? It’s an opportunity for the White House to push the health overhaul by continuing to stoke what it has seized on as a signature issue –- the 39% rate increase that WellPoint asked for in California’s individual market. But like last week’s bipartisan health summit, it’s likely to end up being little more than an exchange of talking points.

Update: Maybe this wasn’t a routine exchange of talking points, after all. The Health Blog talked to four of the five big dogs in attendance in the Roosevelt Room this morning and they all reported that the tone shifted from the politically charged rhetoric of recent weeks to something more constructive. Obama did make a cameo, to read a letter from a health-plan member in Ohio with a 40% premium increase, which sparked some constructive discussion. Wonders never cease.

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