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Cost of Health Benefits

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Submitted By jtlake
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Cost of Health Benefits
Human Resource Management
BMGT 6311
June 03, 2015
Jason Timberlake

Citation/Source

Christianson, Jon B.; Trude, Sally. (2003). Managing Costs, Managing Benefits: Employer Decisions in Local Health Care Markets. Health Services Research, 2003, Vol.38(1p2), pp.357-373

Major Thesis

Benefit packages and options are a hot topic for employers. One of the biggest, albeit expensive, options is healthcare benefits. This introduces us to the decision making process of health benefits, how these strategies evolve over time, and how these employer decisions impact the local health care systems. The study described in this article is a Community Tracking Study (CTS), which is a study of how healthcare changes over a given period of time and the effects of these changes the people of the surrounding community. For this particular article, the time frame was a six year period covering twelve randomly selected communities. Results from healthcare benefit surveys are normally reported by several outlets, to include popular press and academic journals. These surveys and their respective results provide important information regarding healthcare changes, the current state of state and federal health systems, and out of pocket costs associated with these changes. Over the six year period of this study, the data collected compares two roles that employers have played in the local health care system. One role is private while the other is public. The focus of the private rols is to help form decisions of each individual firm in the management of its health benefits while the public focuses on the collaborative efforts of each employer and their accomplishment of their respective objectives in the local health care system. The article then introduces the reader three perspectives on employers and the decisions they make in reference to

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