The News Review:
- Employer-based health insurance plans no longer work
- Why Tie Health Insurance to a Job?
- AIG Names Peter Eastwood President and Chief Executive Officer of …
- American Reserve Life buys Albanian insurance firm
Employer-based health insurance plans no longer work
Los Angeles Times CA
President-elect Barack Obama wants it. Even the insurance industry says the time is ripe to do things differently.
Why Tie Health Insurance to a Job?
Wall Street Journal
Why then do millions of Americans get their health care through an employer-based system from the 1940s?Employers didn’t start offering health benefits roughly 60 years ago because they were experts in medical decisions. It was a way of circumventing the World War II wage and price controls. Barred from offering higher salaries to attract workers employers offered health insurance instead. Aided by an IRS ruling that said workers who received health benefits did not have to pay income taxes on them and by the fact that employers could write off the cost of the health benefits as a business related expense this accidental arrangement became the primary way most Americans access health care. The system worked at first but a lot has changed in 60 years. Back then the average soldier returning from World War II took a job with a local company where he would work for decades until he got a gold watch at a big retirement party. Today lifetime employment is dead.
AIG Names Peter Eastwood President and Chief Executive Officer of …
MarketWatch
Kelley who has left the company. Eastwood will report to John Q. Doyle President and Chief Executive Officer of AIG Commercial Insurance. AIG Property Casualty Group President and Chief Executive Officer Kristian P. Moor said “Peter Eastwood’s experience with AIG and Lexington make him ideally suited to lead Lexington. With almost 20 years of experience in high-profile underwriting positions I am confident he will maintain Lexington’s industry leadership.
Related from Managementmonster: Gentiva Health Services Confirms Management Succession
American Reserve Life buys Albanian insurance firm
The Associated Press
The Dallas-based company won an international tender against nine other bidders and is in the last technical negotiations with Albanian authorities to take over the company. Insig became Albania’s state-owned insurance company in 1991 and now ranks second and third in the country’s life and non-life insurance markets. In 2003 the International Financial Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development each took on 19. 5 percent stakes in Insig.