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[Guidance Overview]
DOL Final Rules Target MEWA Abuses
"The DOL rejected commenters' requests to narrow the scope of entities subject to cease and desist and seizure orders, and indicated ... that third-party administrators (TPAs) that work with MEWAs could be subject to an order."
(Practical Law Company)
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Sequester Will Cut Small Business Health Care Tax Credit
"[E]mployers qualifying for the [Small Business Health Care Tax Credit ('SBHCTC')] should expect to see an 8.7% percent reduction in the amount of reimbursement received for health premiums under the SBHCTC."
(Solutions Law Press)
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Buck Consultants Rolls Out New Private Health Exchange, with a Twist
"Buck's exchange ... will have contracts with several carriers. But within any particular geographic area, employees of client companies will choose among plans offered by a single carrier. If a company has workers in multiple geographic areas, each will use the one carrier Buck has a contract with in the area where he or she lives."
(CFO.com)
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Health Care Spending Is Transferred Out of ICU
"Health care spending last year rose at one of the lowest rates in a half-century, partly the result of cost-saving measures put in place by the [ACA] ... Total health care spending still rose 1.7 percentage points faster than inflation in 2012 because of an increased use of medical services[.]"
(USA TODAY)
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Can My Insurer Charge Me for Name-Brand Contraceptives?
"[H]ealth plans can use 'reasonable medical management techniques' to keep their costs under control. So if there is both a generic and a brand-name version of a birth-control pill available, for example, a plan could decide to cover only the generic version without cost to the patient."
(The Washington Post)
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Despite Free Treatment, Britain Lags Others on Health
"Years of universal healthcare, rising health spending, cancer screening, immunization and anti-smoking laws have failed to stop Britain falling behind its peers in reducing early death and disease[.]"
(Reuters)
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[Opinion]
Obamacare Is Trillion Dollar Tax Hike That Hurts Small Businesses
"[T]he Administration's own documents state that the compliance burden of the new tax rules it has thus far written pursuant to ObamaCare will add over 40 million hours of paperwork per year to individuals and job creators."
(U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp)
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[Opinion]
Stuck in the Obamacare Quagmire
"Obamacare actually makes self-insurance less of a gamble because you can always throw workers on public exchanges without penalty. Naturally, the administration's response is to look for ways to tighten the ratchet and make self-insurance harder. It's a typical response. The shortcomings of a wildly ambitious law only justify more regulatory strong-arming."
(Los Angeles Times)
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[Opinion]
High Risk Pools Closing -- Money Running Out
"The reason this program lasted as long as it did was that the premium charges to join these pools were so high many of the people who needed it most couldn't afford the premium."
(Cracking Health Costs)
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[Opinion]
Deloitte Health Care Reform Memo, March 4, 2013
"[T]he story is not the sequester cuts. Its impact will be felt, but not as robustly as perhaps imagined. It's about the cumulative impact of cuts by employers, households, and the government's health plans ... that impact our system. The compounded impact is profound[.]"
(Deloitte Center for Health Solutions)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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Employers and Employees Agree on Value of Voluntary Benefits
"63% of employees who say their employer offers at least one voluntary benefit agree that such benefits increase the value of their company's benefits program. And, employees who said they are interested in receiving more voluntary benefits through the workplace increased 10 percentage points; 34% from 24% a year ago."
(Prudential)
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Press Releases
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