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November 21, 2003 - 8,712 subscribers
Today's sponsor: EBIA's Tax Savings Calculator
(Click on company name or banner to learn more.)
Announcing EBIA's Tax Savings Calculator! EBIA's new Tax Savings Calculator is a "must have" tool for every employer that sponsors a cafeteria plan or transportation plan and for anyone else that designs or administers plans. This powerful, easy-to-use tool allows employees to estimate their federal tax savings that arise from making a wide variety of pre-tax salary reductions, and it also compares DCAP vs. DCTC savings. For details, please click above!
(Please visit our sponsors. We try to make sure their products and services will be of interest to you. Thanks! --Editor)
Medicare Bill Moves To Senate, House
Excerpt: "House and Senate negotiators finalized the landmark Medicare prescription-drug bill yesterday, setting up a struggle in both chambers over the next few days that Republican leaders say they will win. The House is expected to consider the legislation today ..." (Washington Times)
AARP Accused of Conflict of Interest Over Health Insurance Provisions In Medicare Bill
Excerpt: "The organization receives millions of dollars a year in royalties for insurance marketed under its name. It stands to reap a windfall from the plan, which would pump $400 billion into a new drug benefit and open Medicare to private insurance competition." (USA Today)
Medicare Plan Would Ban Canadian Drugs
Excerpt: "The Republican-brokered Medicare prescription drug plan currently before Congress is angering many senior citizens. The plan will not allow Americans to import drugs from Canada, unless the Food and Drug Administration approves such sales. Such approval is unlikely: The FDA has been campaigning against 're-importation' from Canada for months now. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports. (Nov. 20, 2003)" (National Public Radio)
Summary of Health Savings Account Provisions in Medicare Conference Agreement (PDF)
2 pages. (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means)
Text of Medicare Conference Agreement (PDF)
678 pages; dated 11/20/03. (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means)
Many Say Medicare Bill Falls Short
Excerpt: "At root, the question is how well the cost-saving measures Republicans are touting will work. Those backing the legislation say the bill marks an historic change in Medicare, which already has a $13.3 trillion unfunded liability over the next 75 years." (Washington Times)
Opinion: Conservatives Should Accept the Medicare Deal, Move On
Excerpt: "With so many conservatives on the fence, it seems important to ask: If this bill were to fail, where would we be? Worse off, I fear.... My own analysis of a dozen key elements came down to seven plusses and five minuses, albeit not all of equal weight." (The Galen Institute)
Opinion: a 'Senior Moment' In Congress
Excerpt: "[P]arts of the legislation read like they were written by the heavy hand of the pharmaceutical industry. One glaring and indefensible example is the language in the bill that would prohibit the government from creating a Medicare-wide drug-purchasing group to negotiate lower drug prices. Big Pharma is afraid to go toe-to-toe with a buying group that represents 40 million Medicare beneficiaries." (The Oregonian)
Consumers Union: Drug Benefit Price Is Too High
Excerpt: "Best features of the agreement: ... Worst features of the agreement: ... Because the Conferees failed to adopt a plan that curbs prescription drug expenditures, and instead developed a model that relies on an insurance industry eager to see Medicare privatized while collecting more government subsidies, Consumers Union reluctantly concludes that, on balance, Medicare beneficiaries will be severely harmed by this proposal." (Consumers Union via Physicians for a National Health Plan)
Opinion: Medicare Bill Is Prescription for Bankruptcy
Excerpt: "When it was established, Medicare was projected to cost $7 billion a year by 1985. But when 1985 rolled around, the actual amount was $48 billion, or nearly 7 times more than planned. By then, of course, it was too late to do much about it." (Steve Chapman in the Washington Times)
Federal Retirees Won't Support Current Medicare Bill
Excerpt: "The National Association of Retired Federal Employees, a 400,000-member group, cannot endorse legislation to revamp Medicare because some provisions could undermine the health care program, the association's president said yesterday." (Washington Post)
Washington Post Editorial: On Balance, We Say 'No' to Medicare Proposal
Excerpt: "[S]ome of what the critics call 'privatization' is a legitimate attempt to experiment with the ways in which Medicare is administered, in order to give seniors a more rational form of benefits ... It is not responsible, however, to add a popular new entitlement without taking any of the obviously needed but unpopular steps to control the cost of the Medicare program." (Washington Post)
Healthcare Compliance Officers Tackle Identity Theft; Privacy, Patient Relations Issues Raised
Excerpt: "A range of employees and contractors, including billers, obviously have access to sensitive patient information, and some are unsupervised, such as home health aides who work at patients' homes and freelance medical record transcriptionists who work out of their own homes." (Report on Medicare Compliance via AISHealth.org)
Panel Recommends Electronic Health Records
Excerpt: "Computerized health records could significantly cut dangerous medical mistakes, but government-created standards are needed to spur a seamless network accessible nationwide, a scientific group that advises the government said Thursday." (AP via Yahoo! News)
Employer's Severance Payments to Terminated Employees Subject to FICA
Excerpt: "An employer's severance payments under a continuation plan paid to terminated employees did not constitute a nonqualified deferred compensation plan and, as a result, were not subject to the special timing rules of Code Sec. 3121(v)(2)(A) in determining when the payments were recognized for employment tax purposes." (CCH Tax News - http://tax.cchgroup.com/news/default)
ERISA Did Not Authorize Health Care Plan's Action To Enforce Subrogation Provision
ERISA did not authorize a health care plan to pursue a lawsuit seeking to enforce the plan's subrogation provision to recover medical expenses paid on behalf of a plan participant. This was the ruling of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Community Health Plan of Ohio v. Mosser (No. 01-4095). (Spencer Benefits Reports)
California Foundation Sponsoring Healthcare Cost Containment Contest
Excerpt: "The foundation plans to present the top 100 ideas to Gov. Schwarzenegger and the California legislature and bring the person whose idea has the most cost-saving potential to Sacramento to meet with policymakers." (The Press-Enterprise via the Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights)
Can We Satisfy HIPAA Privacy Notice Obligation by Placing the Privacy Notice in Health Plan's SPD?
Excerpt: "ANSWER: Yes, although including the privacy notice in the SPD raises some practical timing and delivery issues that need to be considered." (EBIA Weekly (Question of the Week))
Tiered-Provider Networks: Patients Face Cost-Choice Trade-Offs
Excerpt: "[H]ealth plans are experimenting with tiered-network designs, but most have experienced significant operational difficulties and resistance from hospitals and physicians. While employers are interested in the concept, uptake has been modest so far." (Center for Studying Health System Change)
The Trade Act of 2002: a Basis for Future Health Coverage of Unemployed Workers? (PDF)
4 pages; December 2003. Excerpt: "States had to develop new arrangements with insurers, which have been asked to serve a new group (those with tax credits) without knowing the group's claims history. Finally, the IRS has been required to develop an unprecedented advance payment mechanism that makes prompt, monthly disbursements to health plans across the country." (Alliance for Health Reform)
Links to Items on Executive Comp, Benefits in General
Will Small Business Pay Disproportionate Price of Stock Option Accounting Reform?
Excerpt: "[P]roposed accounting standards would force all businesses to expense stock options provided to employees. The rule change comes in the wake of the big corporate scandals last year. Yet small businesses may end up paying the price for this controversial 'reform' enacted to clean up the actions of a few bad players." (Money Center via bizjournals.com; one-time registration required)
Text of DOL's Reporting and Disclosure Guide for Employee Benefit Plans (PDF)
19 pages. Excerpt: "It is intended to be used as a quick reference tool for certain basic reporting and disclosure requirements under [ERISA]. Not all ERISA reporting and disclosure requirements are reflected in this guide. For example, the guide, as a general matter, does not focus on disclosures required by the Internal Revenue Code or the provisions of ERISA for which the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service have regulatory and interpretive authority." (U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration)
IRS Targeting S Corporations Paying Distributions in Lieu of Wages
Excerpt: "S corporation shareholders might naturally prefer to receive cash from their corporations as distributions instead of wages, so as to avoid employment taxes such as FICA and FUTA. The IRS has long maintained its ability to recharacterize distribution payments as the payment of wages, thereby subjecting that payment to associated employment taxes." (The CPA Journal)
Hey, What's Up with the G*y and H*mose*ual Asterisks?
Several readers asked why the BenefitsLink Newsletter contains asterisks in the middle of certain words, such as yesterday's issue that contained links to articles about the Massachusetts decision on the legality of g*y marriages. We do this only because email "filters" set up by many corporations where our readers work otherwise would "bounce" the email newsletters back to us undelivered ... the filters scan emails for certain words that they believe indicate the message is from a "spammer." (BenefitsLink.com)
Newly Posted or Renewed Job Openings
Group Health Underwriter/Benefits Specialist
for Hufnell, Inc , recruiters in Benefits Outsourcing and Employee Benefits
in PA
Pension Administrator
for Small TPA Firm
in GA
Pension Consultants/Administrators
for Northern New Jersey Mid-Size Pension Consulting Firm
in NJ
Qualified Plan Administrator
for Pension Advisory Group, Ltd.
in IL
Newly Posted Events
2nd Annual Disease Management Summit for Employers, Providers, and Health Plans
in District of Columbia on April 22, 2004
presented by CBI
3rd Annual Employer Summit on Healthcare Costs and Quality
in New York on May 17, 2004
presented by CBI
World Health Care Congress's U.S. Leadership Forum to Transform Health Care Costs and Quality
in District of Columbia on January 26, 2004
presented by World Congress
Newly Posted Press Releases
(Post Yours!)
Labor Department Issues Reporting And Disclosure Guide for Employee Benefit Plans
(U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration)
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