| The BenefitsLink Newsletter - Welfare Plans Edition |  |
July 9, 2001
Today's sponsor: SalaryExpert.com (click)
SalaryExpert.com is the most comprehensive salary site on the Internet, providing free competitive wage and salary data for 30,000+ jobs in 45,000 U.S./Canadian areas and 207 other countries. SalaryExpert.com's realistically conservative data features licensed benefits advice, U.S. salary source data defensible in court, research from professionals (not dot-com promoters), and buying power comparisons. SalaryExpert.com also offers downloadable handheld device versions of its database. For more information, visit www.SalaryExpert.com.
DOL Extends Compliance Date for Claims Procedure Changes for Health Plans, Not Other Plans
Press release. Excerpt: DOL has announced "an extension for the date on which group health plans are to comply with the new claims procedure rules. The notice extends ... the applicability date of the regulation for group health plans ... to the first day of the first plan year beginning on or after July 1, 2002, but not later than Jan. 1, 2003. The notice does not change the compliance date for pension plans, disability plans and other types of welfare benefit plans." (U.S. Department of Labor, Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration)
HHS Issues First Guidance on HIPAA Privacy
Excerpt: "The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today issued the first in a series of guidance materials on new federal privacy protections for medical records and other personal health information. Today's guidance explains and clarifies key provisions of the medical privacy regulation, which was published last December. Providing this guidance is part of an ongoing process to help health care providers and health plans come into compliance with the regulation by April 14, 2003." (HIPAAdvisory.com)
Text of DOL Extension of Compliance Date for Claims Procedure Changes for Health Plans
Excerpt: "[T]he Department is persuaded that plans, service providers, and state regulators would benefit from additional guidance from the Department concerning the application of the claims procedure rules to group health plans [and] that the magnitude of the procedural, systems, and other changes required by the regulation, in conjunction with the need to obtain state-level approvals with respect to such changes, may necessitate more time than was originally thought necessary ..." (U.S. Department of Labor, Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration)
Backers of Patients' Bill Predict House Passage
Excerpt: "Key supporters of a far-reaching patients' bill of rights said on Friday they have the votes to pass the measure in the Republican-led House, stepping up pressure on President Bush to drop his veto threat one week after it won Senate approval." (Reuters via Yahoo! News)
Illinois Mandates Improved Breast Cancer Coverage
Excerpt: "The efforts of Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood, a breast cancer survivor and longtime advocate for better health coverage for women, have been rewarded with two new laws in her state. The two laws ... expand the state's Medicaid coverage to include treatment for breast and cervical cancer for low-income women and require that Illinois health insurance companies and self-insured group health plans provide coverage for breast reconstruction in connection with a mastectomy." (insure.com)
Roukema Expects Patients Rights Law Feels Bush Will Withdraw Veto Threat
Excerpt: "A Republican member of New Jersey's House delegation predicted that President Bush will be forced to rescind his veto threat on patients rights legislation.... Rep. Marge S. Roukema, R-Ridgewood, called prospects for passage of a similar bill in the House 'excellent.' Roukema is one of the House's most vocal proponents of expanding what health maintenance organizations must cover and permitting patients to sue in state or federal courts if they are denied needed care." (The [Bergen County, N.J.] Record)
Patients Have New Rights under New Washington State Law
Excerpt: "[On July 1, 2001, Washington state's] Patient Bill of Rights goes into effect, giving patients here a few more tools for prying apart insurance companies' decisions about their health-care coverage. However, unlike a federal bill ... Washington's law doesn't protect patients employed by businesses that are self-insured. The most significant change for consumers ... will be that patients are now guaranteed an independent review of their insurance company's decisions." (Knight Ridder/Tribune)
AAA Curbs Health Care For Retirees
Excerpt: "Faced with soaring medical and prescription drug costs, AAA Michigan will limit the amount it pays for health care insurance premiums when active employees retire. Instead, employees will get a lump-sum credit equal to $2,000 per year of service to use toward insurance premiums." (The Detroit News)
Press Rips Tough Sanctions Under HIPAA Privacy Rules
Excerpt: "Sick of HIPAA? You've got company, and from an unlikely source: the news media. A coalition of 46 news organizations is taking a stand against the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act because of its stringent rules restricting the release of medical records to the public. The press groups -- dubbing HIPAA an 'official secrets act for health care' --object to the privacy regulations that took effect earlier this spring." (Hospitals & Health Networks)
Opinion: Uninsured Are Left Out of This Year's Health Care Debate in Congress
Excerpt: "Proponents of the patients' bill of rights, which the House will take up this month, have touted it as a far-reaching proposal that will empower patients and boost the quality of health care. But the rhetoric over managed-care reform seems overheated -- and the solution skeletal -- when compared to the debate that raged in Washington eight years ago over universal health care." (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Managed Care Declining, Report Suggests
Excerpt: "Evidence for the demise of managed care appears to be building. In a recent instance, a newly released report finds that enrollment in U.S. health maintenance organizations dropped by 700,000 participants, or 0.9 percent, between July 1, 1999 and July 1,2000." (CFO.com)
Pharmacy Benefits Companies Hone Strategies to Contain Costs
Excerpt: "Once functioning solely as claims adjudicators and eligibility managers, PBMs have moved into the role of case managers, whose objectives are to cut costs and improve quality." (Medscape; free registration required)
Trends in Managed Care Pharmacy
Excerpt: "As managed care has grown in the past decade, employers, health care providers, and patients have demanded more autonomy, choice, and flexibility. Along with choice, however, comes the potential for increasing costs and a need to determine the bearer of those costs... These trends suggest the need for a reassessment of the direction managed care organizations must take to both succeed in business and focus on patient needs." (Medscape; free registration required)
Opinion: Finding Fault With AFL-CIO's Numbers on CEO Pay
Excerpt: "The AFL-CIO runs a Web site, Paywatch.org, that sheds light on the huge and growing gap between the pay of chief executives and the pay of workers. Would that the well-meaning site were totally accurate." (Graef Crystal, on Bloomberg.com)
Newly Posted or Renewed Job Openings (Post Yours!)
| 401K Plan Benefits Analyst (multiple positions available) | for AECOM Technology Corporation in CA |
| Benefits Marketing Specialist | for premier claims adminstrator in FL |
Newly Posted Webcasts (Post Yours!)
| New Comparability Webcast | on August 1, 2001 presented by ASPA |
| Making a Federal Case Out of Health Care: Five Years of HIPAA | on July 31, 2001 presented by Cato Institute |
| Implementing Binding Arbitration for Employment Law Claims | on July 26, 2001 presented by Human Resource Consultants |
Newly Posted Conferences (Post Yours!)
| Global Equity Forum | in MA on October 29, 2001 presented by NCEO, WaW, GEO |
| Global Equity Forum | in CA on November 5, 2001 presented by NCEO, WaW, GEO |
Newly Posted Press Releases
| LIFE GROUP ADMINISTRATORS MERGES INTO CNA TRUST (CNA Trust) |
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