Social Security Reform Revisited

This past week, President Bush resurrected the issue of Social Security Reform. As part of this political season, it seems he wants to flex some presidential muscle by attempting to re-establish his core initiatives which have stalled in congress over the past 6 years. Clearly, the war on terror has made a robust domestic agenda difficult.

On the topic of Social Security Reform, much has been written - particularly on privatization. I wrote something in a comment on SystematicHR back in April before becoming a regular contributor. The general SystematicHR readership has grown since then. For some, posting it here again will be a repeat, but many of the readers of this blog get only the daily subscription and do not visit the site to read the comments, so for them this will be new.

So in recognition of the resurrection of Social Security Reform I give you:

Social Security - Private Ownership, Government Control

Hewitt’s Lessons Learned

From time to time companies exhibit moments of organizational maturity not often enough seen in the market. This week’s moment comes to us courtesy of Hewitt Associates’ Mike Wright, global HRO sales co-leader, during his presentation last month at the Conference Board’s 2006 Human Resource Outsourcing Conference in Chicago.

Thank you (again) to Jessica Marquez at Workforce.com for bringing this to our attention with her fine and timely reporting in a piece entitled Hewitt Shifts Course After Recent Missteps. I write about it today not merely as a follow up to my previous articles here and here, but rather because Mike Wright’s comments are shocking in their clarity and instructive anyone looking at the HRO business today.

100% Claims Audits Revisited

Nearly one year ago, Double Dubs graciously asked me to be a regular contributor on this most amazing blog of his. I think all of us can agree that what he has built here is impressive. He has created a reference tool for HR professionals (both in and out of the technology space) to come research and learn. He provides links and footnotes for us to delve as deeply as we care to delve into his posting of the day.

A Technological Approach to Claims Audit

The last two weeks I wrote about the ineffectiveness of traditional claims audit and the inherent conflict of interest some companies face when they perform such audits. This week I’d like to introduce a company that brings a different approach to the industry: HR Best Practices.

HR Best Practices was founded by Howard Gerver five or six years ago. I first met Howie 3 years ago at the 2003 HRO World Conference. From the beginning, I could tell he was one of those people who just plain “get it”. Since then I’ve found out more about his company and approach to health care claims audit. I believe it’s unique. If anyone reading this knows of other companies taking a similar approach, I’d love to know about them.