Most employers say they are taking a hard look at their health care strategy following the passage of President Obama's reform legislation.

How companies would react to President Obama’s reform plan has been a big question mark in considering how the health care landscape will shape up in the coming years. Perhaps the biggest reason employers have been slow to reveal their strategies is that they don’t necessarily have one—there’s so much to digest in the White House health care bill that it could take quite some time for most employers to turn it all into something resembling a policy.

A new study from Fidelity Investments reveals that most of them are trying to do exactly that. Over the month of June, the employer-benefits provider surveyed 459 U.S. companies, and found that 84 percent of them are either already rethinking their health care benefits, or plan to do so this year.

That’s potentially unnerving news for the 160 million Americans who get their coverage through work. However, a solid majority of the companies polled, 64 percent, said they were not seriously considering eliminating health coverage. About 20 percent said are considering dropping coverage, most of these respondents being small businesses. Overall, 85 percent of employers said health care coverage would continue to be as important or more important in recruiting and retaining employees in the future.

That doesn’t mean, however, that big changes aren’t on the way. From the report:

When asked about the health plan design that would be most attractive to their organization going forward, more than half (55%) of the larger employers chose a high deductible health plan (HDHP), followed by a preferred provider organization (PPO) (45%) and a health maintenance organization (HMO) (18%).  If the respondent’s organization was already using an HDHP as one of their health care options, they were
more likely to consider this plan type to be the more likely option for the future, with 60 percent of this group choosing HDHP as making the most sense for their organization.

The weirdest thing is that these results match up very well with a story Time Magazine did last month on employer mandates in the health care legislation—especially the 64 percent stat for employers who are powering through the new rules. Though opponents have called the legislation a “job-killing employer mandate,” Time’s Kate Pickert says it may not turn out to be such bad news for U.S. companies:

But at least in San Francisco, where an employer mandate was instituted in 2008, most business owners are embracing the new rule and reporting it’s had little impact on their operations. A new analysis of the city’s mandate, written by three economists, reports that although three-quarters of employers were forced to bump up their health-insurance spending, 64% still support the law. “Employers have found that it’s actually become easier to pay for it than they thought,” says Arindrajit Dube, one of the authors and a labor economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Massachusetts and Hawaii, the article points out, also have employer mandates for health care, and they are the top two states in the country for providing universal coverage (Massachusetts has a 95 percent coverage rate; Hawaii, 92 percent).

Whether it can work on a national scale remains to be seen. In the meantime, both employers and employees trying to get a handle on what the health care legislation will mean in their workplace should check out PayScale’s summary of the biggest changes over the next two years.

Are four-day work weeks hurting or helping productivity?

To say that it was big news when Utah adopted a four-day work week two years ago would be a massive understatement. In many minds, this was set to be a turning point for the American workforce. On both the pro and con side of the four-day-work-week issue, prognosticators were predicting it would spread through the public sector and overtake the private sector, as well. Even a year later, Time was predicting that a shake-up was just around the corner:

In an era when most of us seem to be working more hours than ever (provided we’re still lucky enough to have jobs), 17,000 people in Utah have embarked on an unusual experiment. A year ago, the Beehive State became the first in the U.S. to mandate a four-day workweek for most state employees, closing offices on Fridays in an effort to reduce energy costs. The move is different from a furlough in that salaries were not cut; nor was the total amount of time employees work. They pack in 40 hours by starting earlier and staying later four days a week. But on that fifth (glorious) day, they don’t have to commute, and their offices don’t need to be heated, cooled or lit. After 12 months, Utah’s experiment has been deemed so successful that a new acronym could catch on: TGIT (thank God it’s Thursday).

The article went on to list those successes—most of them financial—and all but declare that the four-day workweek had arrived. “There is a sense that this is ready to take off,” one head of a university symposium on the issue was quoted as saying.

A year later, the future doesn’t seem quite so bright for the four-day workweek. Utah is still the only state with the policy. And last week, a brutal legislative audit of Utah’s effort was released, which said that state officials had grossly overestimated the amount saved by the program. The four-day policy had had been touted as saving the state as much as $3 million, but the audit revealed the actual savings had been about $502,000. The new schedule didn’t help reduce overtime as much state officials had expected, the audit said, simply because most overtime was paid out to deal with immediate issues like emergency repairs and snow removal that didn’t change when the schedule did.

There was even more bad news for proponents of the plan:

While one of the goals of the four-day workweek was to improve employee productivity, the audit says there is little evidence to indicate that occurred. Some managers and employees can provide anecdotes that productivity has improved, but there’s not enough data available to verify it, the audit says. The audit also warns that a 1 percent decline in worker productivity would cost the state nearly $15 million — far more than the recognized savings.

In effect, the four-day workweek may very well be costing Utah money. Meanwhile, the private sector hasn’t exactly been rushing to make the switch. Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist, who has criticized the idea before, clearly wasn’t surprised that the idea hasn’t caught on. I think Dunn’s rants on the subject are a little extreme, but they do acknowledge (when many people don’t seem to want to) that a four-day work week isn’t necessarily the panacea everyone suggests:

There are serious drawbacks to the 4 day thing.  Packing 40 hours into four days isn’t necessarily the most productive way to work. Many people find that eight hours in a day is enough, and requiring them to do two extra hours a day can cause morale issues in other ways.  Folks with kids can be disadvantaged due to child care considerations, etc. And then there’s this little consideration in the category I call…. RESULTS.

Dunn’s alternative solution is to stop counting hours and focus on results:

Loosen your iron grip on face time…Allow people to telecommute some.  Offer flexible hours as long as the customer gets served.  Measure how people are doing every couple of months.  Manage by results, manage by objectives, manage by output.Whatever you want to call it.  Just don’t manage by hour count.  Unless you’re on the factory floor, it’s a surefire way to ensure you get less of lots of things - engagement, passion, innovation, etc.

I don’t agree that the very concept of four-day workweek causes people to watch the clock more or to do less; most people I know who are on such a schedule end up working at least a little bit on their supposed “day off” as well. But I do agree that both employers and employees turned a blind eye to the downsides of the four-day workweek when it hit the height of its hype. Now, more people seem to be taking a wait-and-see attitude, though there are plenty of workplaces where a four-day schedule is working great for some employees.

Is a four-day workweek right for you, or your company? Peter Vanden Bos at inc.com has a good rundown of issues to consider, and I like his guidelines:

Before you decide to implement one, make sure you’ve thought through the benefits and drawbacks. Have in mind a clear goal of what you want to accomplish by switching the days and hours your employees work. Do you want to save money on energy costs? Increase productivity? Make your employees happier? “It can work for certain companies, and certain employees, but there are a lot of risks involved, which are under-emphasized,” Bird says.

Mercer's comparison of non-cash rewards in their new study compared to 18 months ago.

The last year and a half have seen some creative juggling on the part of employers to retain their top talent. With budgets tight, but the threat of the much-hyped “talent shortage” looming, managers began offering non-monetary rewards: flexible scheduling, extra time off, career opportunities within the country, etc.

That seemed to work for a while, especially since many employees felt lucky to still have a job, and in some cases were even willing to take pay cuts or make other sacrifices to help a company get through the hard times.

But times are changing. A new study by Mercer suggests cash-only is making a comeback in the workplace:

Despite past emphasis on non-cash rewards, for 2010 and beyond organizations plan to focus on money as well as career development to retain and engage the right talent. Leading reward elements perceived to have the strongest impact on employee retention and engagement for 2010 are base salary increases (41%), short- and long-term variable pay (36%), and training and career development (35%).

Interestingly, approximately one-quarter of organizations report that programs such as work-life initiatives, employee communication campaigns and time-off plans – elements of importance during the past year and a half – will have less impact on employee retention and engagement going forward.

“Non-cash programs like career pathing, increased communication to employees and work-life initiatives are important in fostering employee retention and engagement regardless of the economic environment,” said Loree Griffith, a principal with Mercer’s rewards consulting business. “However, as recovery occurs, employers want to revisit pay as a means to staying competitive and retaining top-performing employees.”

The question of “employee engagement” has been a big one since the concept became an HR fixture. But are employees really only in it for the money, or does this new spectrum of “creative engagement” still have a place?

Ann Bares at Compensation Force has some good insight into this latest shift. It doesn’t necessarily mean that pay is the only way, she argues:

Somebody made the point that cash compensation tends to act as a hygiene factor (ala Herzberg’s motivation theory), meaning that it does not necessarily motivate employees if it is increased, but it can be a huge dissatisfier when it is perceived as lacking. So, following this logic, cash rewards may not cause motivation, but they act as a precondition for motivation. 

This being the case, it is difficult to make headway along the engagement/retention pathway with non-cash and psychic rewards if, in fact, employees believe that the foundational financial contract is not a fair one. I wonder if the results of this Mercer study are really making just this point.  It may be that the employers, despite their interest and belief in the power of non-cash rewards, realize that they must first attend to the foundation of the employment relationship by addressing any shortfalls in cash compensation that exist following the cost-cutting moves of the recession.

With that in mind, there are plenty of great examples out there of detailed strategies for employee engagement and retention. But sometimes the best thing to do is break it down to something simple. I like this list of nine basic rules, and I think the suggestion that there is no magical one-size-fits-all solution is important. JoAnna Brandi’s challenge to employers is this: “Reward and recognize employees in ways that are meaningful to them—that’s why getting to know your employees is so important.”

The first salary forecast for 2011 suggests next year's college graduates might have a somewhat better outlook for wages.

Philadelphia-based consulting firm the Hay Group has just released its report on salary planning for 2010. Why is that a big deal? Because it could offer hints as to how much of a raise U.S. employees in several different fields can expect to see in 2011.

Their forecast is based on a survey of more than 300 companies from March through June, and they’ll provide a more comprehensive review of the result at the end of July. But this is the first look we’ve gotten at how the compensation picture will look in 2011, and it also suggests, on a bigger scale, the answer to a question on everyone’s mind: how optimistic are employers feeling about the economic outlook for next year?

Unfortunately, the answer appears to be “not very.” That’s not to say that the results are a disaster — the expectation of even a modest salary gain is a positive sign. And modest would be the right word, since Hay found U.S. companies plan to bump salaries about 3 percent in 2011.

Across several industries, from retail to industrial to health care to energy to financial services, the numbers seem to be slightly better than those for 2009, which averaged about 2 percent. This year, across all sectors the numbers top off at around 4 percent, but most companies surveyed appear to be planning some increase.

Mike Armstrong of the Philadelphia Inquirer provides some useful perspective on the numbers:

[The planned salary increase] pales next to the 4.5 percent to 5.0 percent increases in base salaries that were common during the early 2000s, according to Hay’s research. If you assume inflation is running at about 2 percent, a 3 percent salary bump results in a real gain of only 1 percent. Still, something is better than nothing, and no increase is exactly what many people got in 2008 in the teeth of the recession…Besides salary freezes, many employers who’d switched into survival mode in the recession suspended matching payments to 401(k) plans, and bonus plans didn’t pay out very well, if at all, because of poor financial performance.

Maybe this new info will mean better things for 2011’s college graduates, since 2010 graduates receiving their diplomas last month didn’t find the best salary news awaiting them:

Starting salary offers to Class of 2010 new college graduates are down, compared to those offered a year ago,  according to a new study published by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). The Winter 2010 issue of NACE’s Salary Survey shows the overall average offer to a bachelor’s degree graduate is $48,351, down 2 percent from the average offer of $49,353 made to Class of 2009 bachelor’s degree graduates.

However, we all know how quickly things can shift in this recession. In fact, Hay itself had to downscale its forecast for 2010 last December, after predicting a 3 percent salary increase in the summer:

The revised number was 2.5 percent, the lowest-planned increase in the last 10 years. (After the consumer price index growth forecast of 1.8 percent was factored in, it looked even worse with a net gain of only .7 percent.) We’ll have to wait to see whether the forecast for 2011 has a similar fate.

Do wellness benefits inspire workers to get fit?

“Wellness benefits” certainly sound like a great thing—meant to inspire better health habits, they represent the “preventative health care” many have been clamoring for. But do they work? Not always, and it’s starting to give employers a headache.

First, it helps to understand what exactly wellness benefits are, and why employers have increasingly hopped on board with them:

It’s a growing trend for health insurance companies to have wellness benefits of some kind. These could include providing informational materials to subscribers on subjects like healthy diet, cardiovascular health, or quitting tobacco use. Some insurance companies will pay for employees to participate in programs designed to increase health like tobacco subsistence programs, and others merely offer information and advice, that if subscribers follow, is likely to assist in healthier living. Sometimes encouraging employees to get regular scans or physical exams at certain ages is thought of as part of wellness benefits, since this gives doctors the opportunity to help patients that have any markers or risks for diseases…For insurers, they may reduce total cost of claims paid, which maximizes profits. This assists employers too, because a healthier workforce translates to less expensive premiums. Additionally, employees may be served by these programs because by following the advice given by insurance companies on how to lead more healthful lives, they may truly improve health.

Good idea, but the problem is, too often these benefits haven’t been showing results. A recent study by the National Business Group on Health and Towers Watson found that:

While employers remain committed to offering health and productivity programs, they are frustrated by the inability of many workers to change their health habits. In an effort to encourage healthy behaviors, a growing number of employers are tightening their requirements for workers to receive financial incentives.

More than half of large employers now offer these kinds of incentives to workers who are willing to enroll in programs designed to improve their health, the study found. But more than a third of them now reward only those who “pass” or complete the program, in the company’s eyes. Twenty percent only reward employees who participate in more than one such program.

“Employers are frustrated by their employees’ low use of expensive health improvement programs,” said Ted Nussbaum, senior consultant at Towers Watson. “As employers continue to empower workers to be more health focused, they are beginning to target and reward those workers who demonstrate a real commitment to making positive lifestyle changes.”

Some employers are stepping up their efforts. As Stephen Miller of the Society for Human Resource Management writes:

While U.S. companies continue to use financial incentives as a way to increase employee participation in health and wellness programs, a new survey by consultancy Hewitt Associates shows that employers’ appetite for penalizing workers for unhealthy behaviors is also on the rise.

This shift in strategy suggests that companies increasingly are challenging employees and their dependents to be accountable for the decisions they make regarding their health…Hewitt’s annual health care trends survey of nearly 600 large U.S. employers—representing more than 10 million employees—shows that nearly one-half (47 percent) use or plan to use financial penalties over the next three to five years for workers who do not participate in certain health improvement programs.

Eighty-one percent of companies who plan to penalize unhealthy behavior say they’ll consider higher health insurance premiums. Most of the rest plan to increase deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses. These companies could be looking at a “smoker surcharge” (64 percent), mandatory disease or behavior management programs (50 percent), mandatory biometric screenings (45 percent), health coaches (25 percent) or mandatory biometric improvements such as lowered blood pressure (17 percent).

Almost all the employers who had wellness benefits, the NGBH study found, planned to keep them, and many were adding new ones. So despite the complications, no one seems to be giving up on wellness benefits just yet.

Is HR a culture of secrecy?

A new article up at SmartMoney.com is called “10 Things Human Resources Won’t Say.” It’s interesting because it seems that more and more when people are talking about HR, they cast it in a sinister light. According to these articles, the human resources department is like some kind of secret society that is not about to let any mere employee know what’s going on. There’s a paranoid tinge to these stories—two of the items in this particular article are “You’re Not Paranoid, We Are Watching You” and “We Know More About You Than You Think”:

Many companies employ software that sifts through e-mail looking for curse words or sexually explicit language. IT monitors Web usage and can see every site an employee visits. In fact, anything you do via the company’s server—most activity on an office computer, including personal e-mail — is subject to review by your boss. Firings over these issues are on the rise, says Flynn. In 2009, 26 percent of companies reported terminating employees for violations of e-mail policy, up from 14 percent in 2001. “Employees should act as if the boss was looking over their shoulder,” says California employment mediator Michelle Reinglass.

That idea that HR is somehow involved in a sordid conspiracy with the powers that be comes up a few times, as under the heading “We’re Not Always Your Advocate,” which cites the example of Ronica Tabor, who alleges she was discriminated against by manufacturer Hilti North America because of her gender, and that HR did nothing to correct it.

Employees should realize that HR answers to the company, says Lewis Maltby, director of the National Workrights Institute, an employee-rights organization. “HR is a spear carrier for the boss,” he says.

Wait, doesn’t everyone in a company work for the boss? And yet in many discussions of human resources, there seems to be an undercurrent of anger, as if by being answerable to their employer’s policies, HR staff have in some way betrayed other employees.

Another recent “Human Resources secrets” article has dire predictions for anyone who fumbles their experience with a company’s HR staff:

Job hunters who have committed either of these errors can expect human resources to keep their resumes or applications—for all the wrong reasons. Job seekers who later apply for another job within that organization will often find that this previous misstep will color the outcome of the new job application. If this is the case, don’t expect an organization’s hiring manager to make the same mistake twice.

Yikes! Human resources employees sure do sound scary! This has been going on for quite some time, as the book from a few years ago, “Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You To Know,” proves. In those pages, HR is a tangle of blacklists, double-crosses and endless spin.

Holy cow. There are plenty of horror stories out there, yes, but can we have a reality check for a minute? This article highlighting seven reasons HR is misunderstood is a must-read. All of the reasons are worth highlighting, but I think the conclusion is important both as a bottom line—HR was never some kind of employee wish factory—and its suggestion for how to improve HR relations:

An unresponsive, unhelpful HR office that avoids helping employees with their problems is not always the case. (Though I know from my readers that such organizations do exist, let’s hope they’re rare.) There are legitimate reasons why HR cannot fulfill every employee’s wishes. If the HR staff listens, communicates actively, and informs the employee why a decision is made or an action not taken, employees are much less likely to write asking how to solve their HR horror stories.

Finally a bright spot: more employers are trying to ease the uncertainty of downsizing.

The current recession has led to a slew of layoffs, so it’s not hard to understand why many people consider this the worst period in their lifetime to be part of the workforce.

But if there’s anything positive to take away from the downturn, it may be the increased interest in and awareness of the importance of offboarding employees the right way.

As Jen Carpenter writes:

The economic downturn …gave rise to an increasing number of companies taking an interest in outplacement. Outplacement has become a sure-fire way (no pun intended) for employers and employees alike to have the best possible experience during the downsizing process. It not only helps displaced employees amp up their skills and find their next job, but it also helps employers maintain a good image of their company and its practices.

More employers were already beginning to realize that last year, according to a separation practices study that found:

More employers have adopted outplacement as a solution to preserve their employer brand and reputation. In 2001: 53% of companies offered outplacement services to all officers and all senior executives compared to 67% in 2008—an increase of 26%; 50% of companies offered outplacement services to all executives compared to 65% in 2008—an increase of 30%; 39% of companies offered outplacement services to all exempt employees compared to 55% in 2008—an increase of 41%.

In the U.K., The Guardian reports this month that public-sector layoffs are likely to create a similar demand for outplacement services, even as they’re cutting operating costs:

So why would central HR departments bother with outplacement services when budgets are so tight? To some extent this would depend on the resources they have. Outplacement specialists – well some of the larger ones – will be able to handle the fall out from redundancy and restructuring programmes, from dealing with the legal aspects of redundancy, to helping those who lose their jobs find other options, to refocusing and re-energising those employees who stay on.

If this trend continues, we may at least look back on this recession as a turning point for how employers deal with cuts in the workforce.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the country will be getting unemployment checks in their mailbox again.

After a long, strange trip through Congress, President Obama last week signed legislation that will pump $18 billion into unemployment payouts, putting checks back in the hands of jobless Americans who had exhausted their state benefits.

Under the new law, the long-term unemployed can receive benefits retroactively for the time they weren’t covered while the bill was hung up in Congress. Senate Republicans who had voted for the extension last month revolted this week, saying the legislation would add to the $12.8 trillion national debt. But Republican Senator George Voinovich gave Democrats the 60th vote they needed to push it through.

The legislation promises up to 99 weeks of unemployment checks for those whose 26 weeks of state benefits had run out. It’s a temporary measure that only runs through June 2—by which time Congress is expected to have hammered out another extension—and provides an average of $335 per week. When the federal funding for benefits expired last week, more than 200,000 people stopped getting those checks.

With jobseekers finding, in many cases, the toughest market of their lives, and in some cases in the hunt for a year or more, one provision of the bill may prove to be especially important: it extends a subsidy on the cost of health insurance under COBRA, paying up to 65 percent. When the jobless package expired last week, newly laid off workers couldn’t file for the subsidy, but they will now be eligible again.

There’s been a lot of confusion about what the new legislation will and won’t do, creating a serious headache for already frustrated jobseekers. With more than six million Americans out of work for more than 27 weeks, many might have set unrealistic hopes for the new federal money. Over at the Washington Independent, Mike Lillis lays it out this way:

Many long-term unemployed folks are hoping that Congress will create additional tiers of benefits. Sorry in advance for being the bearer of bad news, but the proposals floating around Capitol Hill wouldn’t do it…The confusion stems largely from the bewildering framework of the UI system itself. Very generally, states offer 26 weeks of benefits to qualified unemployed workers before four tiers (maximum) of federal benefits — dubbed Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) – kick in. Tier I (20 weeks) and Tier II (13 weeks) were created by last year’s $787 billion stimulus bill. And last fall, lawmakers stepped in again to (1) add an extra week to Tier 2, making it 14 weeks instead of 13 weeks, (2) create Tier III (13 weeks) for states with unemployment rates higher than 6 percent, and (3) create Tier IV (6 weeks) for states with unemployment rates topping 8.5 percent.

Perhaps that’s why we’re seeing more and more calls for real reform, not just extensions, in the jobless-benefits system. This month, Warren Yoder, executive director of the Public Policy Center of Mississippi, made an impassioned plea for reform in that state’s laws:

Just when we need it the most, thousands of Mississippi workers are being denied unemployment benefits because of a broken, outdated system. When the national unemployment system was created in 1935, the work force was made up predominately of full-time, male workers. Today, that work force includes more part-time and female workers. Although America’s economy has changed, our state unemployment insurance system has not. This spring, fewer than four of 10 Mississippi workers qualified for unemployment benefits.

Change has been slow, though, and varies from state to state. Earlier this year, an attempt to restructure the benefits agency in South Carolina, after it ran out of money and was forced to borrow $700 million from the federal government, was shot down.

Meanwhile, at a federal level, the battle over benefits is only getting more bitter. We’ll have to see if this kind of atmosphere can produce any real change for jobseekers, who are as anxious as ever about their futures.

President Barack Obama speaks about health care last year at the White House.

Is it possible that the health care reform legislation recently signed into law will actually make it harder for employees to get coverage from their workplace? That’s what some businesses are claiming, as CNN reports:

Critics say removing the subsidy will deter employers from providing full health care benefits, which would force more workers to rely on Medicare and end up shifting the cost to the public sector. “The government will soon find out that by raising the cost for these companies they’re incenting employers to drop these plans and send their employees into the Medicare program,” said [U.S. Chamber of Commerce] spokeswoman Blair Latoff.

The issue is centered around tax deductions for Medicare prescription drug subsidies. The new law eliminates these deductions, though it retains the subsidies that employers have been writing off. The White House says this simply eliminates a loophole that was allowing companies to “double dip”—that is, take one deduction for their Medicare contribution, and a second one for the subsidy.

The Chamber, in a letter sent to Congress, said the fallout could hinder economic recovery, causing employers to stall hiring plans and cut benefits.

Whatever happens with the subsidy, employers are bracing for big changes with the new legislation. Just understanding the basics of a law that encourages employers to provide health care without actually mandating it is hard enough, though the Employment Law Post has a good summation:

Although the health care reform package doesn’t require employers to provide insurance coverage to their employees, it will penalize employers that don’t offer coverage or don’t offer coverage that is considered good enough. For example, employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees that don’t offer coverage will have to pay an assessment ($2,000 for each full-time employee) to help offset the cost of health insurance if their employees are receiving help from the federal government to purchase insurance. Employers that offer coverage may also face penalties if their employees are receiving federal subsidies.

Beyond that, there are several reforms that will go into effect in different years: the elimination of the Medicare subsidy, for instance, won’t happen until 2013; the prohibition on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions goes into effect in 2014, along with a ban on annual limits for coverage.

The biggest question of all for health insurance in the workplace after these reforms is: will it go away completely? Over at CNBC, John Harwood writes that the new legislation could completely change the insurance market, since it requires private citizens to make sure they are covered, the same way they would with auto insurance.

The market for employer-provided health insurance flourished after federal policy made benefits tax free during World War II. Mr. Obama’s proposal, to minimize disruption and political resistance, was designed to leave that system mostly in place. But over time, growth in the individual marketplace could reduce the role of employer provided health insurance, which has weighed down corporate bottom lines as health costs exploded in recent decades.

In the meantime, if you’re feeling overwhelmed trying to understand the implications of the health care legislation for yourself or your business, this USA Today article shows you’re not alone.