| BenefitsLink Welfare Plans Newsletter |   |
November 2, 2004
Today's sponsor: Financial Research Associates, LLC
(Click on company name or banner to learn more.)
Made in America Taft Hartley Benefits Summit Financial Research Associates presents: The 2nd Annual Made in America Taft Hartley Benefits Summit February 6-9, 2005 in Palm Springs To Register call 800-280-8440 or visit www.frallc.com The summit will consist of concurrent tracks, one covering topical issues regarding DC/DB plans and the other covering current for health & welfare topics. Don't miss out, register today! All Administrators and Trustees save $1,000!
(Please visit our sponsors. We try to make sure their products and services will be of interest to you. Thanks! --Editor)
Some Quick Questions and Answers About the Alphabet Soup of Medical Accounts
Excerpt: "Health savings accounts, which Congress authorized in 2003, are the newest addition to the alphabet soup of health insurance available to American workers. Now workers and employers must sort through HSAs, health reimbursement accounts (HRAS), and flexible spending accounts (FSAS). Each has its own rules about how money is spent, how it can be saved, and how it is taxed." (BusinessWeek Online)
Osram Sylvania Tackles Absence Costs by Integrating Occupational and Non-Occupational Absences
Excerpt: "In one year's time, the company shrank $5 million in annual short-term disability costs to $4.2 million for its 9,000 U.S. employees. The program has saved 25 percent in direct costs in the first year and is projected to cut costs by up to half in its first three years. 'In the first year, the average time off went from 48 days to 38,' Chambers says. 'We estimate that for our company, for every day we can reduce duration, it's $100,000 in savings.'" (Workforce Management)
Going to Work with Mom & Dad: Company Makes Room for Child Care
Excerpt: "Finding adequate, affordable childcare can be a time-consuming source of stress for working mothers and fathers. To eliminate that predicament, Computer Associates has provided on-site child development centers since 1992. 'Now it's just ingrained in the culture of the company,' notes Lisa Mars, vice president of finance and administration. .... The company operates six child development centers at its offices in Australia, England and the United States." (Employee Benefit News)
Telecounseling Added to Employee Assistance Programs: Telephone Not Just Referral Tool
Excerpt: "Some companies are advancing the telephone from a referral tool to a way to deliver therapy. Proponents say it's an efficient, effective way to deal with all but the most serious mental-health issues, but critics say it's untested and is offered only to curb costs." (Workforce Management)
Company Offers Workers Free Lunch at 'Vegeteria'
Excerpt: "For telephone company CEO Norm Mason, a vegan and lifelong animal lover, there was never any doubt what he'd offer at his company cafeteria. Soy steaks and soy sloppy joes, veggie burgers, nachos and other meatless, eggless, butter-free delicacies are cooked with texturized vegetable protein. If that doesn't sound so great, consider this: It's all free. Mason says he created the 'Vegeteria' out of concern for the well-being of his 200 employees of Cat Communications International." (Chicago Tribune via Mercer Human Resource Consulting)
New Strategy Manages Retiree Benefit Costs
Excerpt: "For years, insurance benefit brokers and consultants have encouraged decision-makers to keep retiree medical benefits combined with active employee populations in corporations' self-funded plans. When retirees comprised a much smaller portion of the overall employee benefit pie and lived only a few years past 65, combining populations and self-insuring made good economic sense." ( Pfingsten Publishing, LLC via Life Insurance Selling)
Addressing Tobacco in Managed Care: Results of the 2002 Survey
Excerpt: "When Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota received The ... Public Health Leadership Award from America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) ... for its efforts to help smokers quit and prevent tobacco use, the honor highlighted a key AHIP and Foundation initiative: Encouraging managed care plans to institute policies to help their members quit smoking. In the five years since the inception of its program, Blue Cross, for instance, saw a 15 percent reduction in the plan's adult smokers." (The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
Public's Expectations of Health Insurance and Attitudes Towards Potential New Insurance Options
16 pages. Excerpt: "[The Sept/Oct 2004] Kaiser Health Poll Report featured topic uses data from the 2003 Kaiser Health Insurance Survey to examine people's level of satisfaction with their current coverage, the level of protection they expect from ... insurance, the role of costs and other factors in health insurance decision-making, and attitudes toward employer-sponsored coverage. It also explores people's opinions about several alternative health insurance plans ... under consideration ...." (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Health Savings Accounts Give Employees More Choices and Greater Share of Costs
Excerpt: "In the 1980s, employers embraced health maintenance organizations (HMOs) as the solution to runaway medical costs. But the ensuing backlash in the 1990s forced companies to ease HMO restrictions or replace them with looser PPOs that do little to limit care. When medical inflation returned to nosebleed levels, desperate employers began searching for yet another solution. The latest answer: HSAs and their cousin, the health reimbursement account (HRA)." (BusinessWeek Online)
Pres.cription Drug Import Battle Intensifies with New Fronts Opening Almost Daily
Excerpt: "At press time, Vermont had sued the Food and Drug Administration in U.S. District Court in Burlington over the agency's refusal to authorize a state drug importation plan. 'Vermont will not sit back and watch as the cost of health insurance and pres.cription drugs continues to rise. Nor are we content to simply ignore the law,' Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas says. 'Reforming the American pharmaceutical marketplace must be our top priority. ....'" (Employee Benefit News)
An Overview of the Uninsured Problem
Excerpt: "In some respects the healthcare chapters of the 2004 presidential race mirror the bitter, partisan tone of this campaign as a whole, rooted as they are in their respective party ideologies. The only thing that Republicans and Democrats can seem to agree on is that the plight of the uninsured is a huge problem. The agreement ends there. .... Opposing ideologies extend to the candidates' respective plans to reduce the growing number of Americans without health insurance." (HealthLeaders News)
Full Text of the HSA Insider November 8, 2004, Edition on Industry News in Health Savings Accounts (PDF)
10 pages. Feature articles are 'Interview with U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Kay Coles James: 'I intend to sign up for an HSA.'' and 'Market Intel: How Not to Set Up an HSA for Your Employees." (The HSA Insider)
Patient Safety Proves Elusive Five Years After Publication of IOM's "To Err Is Human"
Excerpt: "The IOM committee called for an evaluation after five years to assess progress in making the nation's healthcare facilities safer. Several committee members were among those asked by Modern Healthcare how near U.S. healthcare organizations have come to the level of patient-safety improvement envisioned in 1999. 'Nowhere close,' says Brent James, IOM committee member .... 'You can see it clearly in a few institutions, but it's not widespread. ....'" (Modern Healthcare)
Cost Profiles of Doctors Appeal Powerfully to MedPac as Method to Moderate Premium Increases
Excerpt: "Arnold Milstein, a leading expert on health care purchasing, says few other options in health care have as much power as 'provider profiling' to moderate health insurance premium increases. In a point of view echoed by other commissioners at a meeting of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission on Thursday, Milstein said the technique--which compares individual doctors on how many tests and other procedures they order for a particular type of care--should be a central part of Medicare." (CQ HealthBeat via The Commonwealth Fund)
Opinion: Single-Payer Health Insurance: Good for Business
Excerpt: "Business leaders complain endlessly that the current system of private healthcare insurance based on employment provides fewer ... people with less ... quality care at higher and higher cost. Yet Corporate America turns its back on a publicly financed system, which, by all indicators, the taxpayers would willingly support. Publicly financed but privately run healthcare for all--including free choice of physicians--would cost employers far less in taxes than their costs for insurance." (The Nation via Physicians for a National Health Program)
Full Text of Book Titled: Quality Through Collaboration: the Future of Rural Health Care
Excerpt: "The Open Book page image presentation framework is not designed to replace printed books. Rather, it is a free, browsable, nonproprietary, fully and deeply searchable version of the publication which we can inexpensively and quickly produce to make the material available worldwide." (National Academy of Sciences)
Opinion: Pres.cription Drug Cost Solutions Exist Here at Home Not in Can.ada
Excerpt: "Anyone grappling for answers [to the cost of drugs] would do well to begin by reading Malcolm Gladwell's recent article in The New Yorker magazine on drug pricing. He notes that although pres.cription-drug spending rose 9.1 percent last year, only about 3 percent was due to price increases, which was similar to inflation in other areas of the economy. Most of the hike resulted from more people taking more pres.criptions, an aging Baby Boomer population in need of more medical attention." (IndyStar.com)
When Employers Bid Out Health Insurance There Are Many Factors to Consider
Excerpt: "The health-care cost crisis has prompted many plan sponsors to open up their insurance coverage to bidding. PLANSPONSOR recently asked a group of underwriters and consulting actuaries to offer their advice on how employers can get the most out of the bidding process. '[Going through the process can help sponsors] understand where the market is and give employers some comfort,' .... 'It often results in sponsors not changing insurers. It gives them a market perspective, ....'" (PLANSPONSOR.com; one-time registration required)
Medicare Takes Steps Broadening Coverage of Cancer Care by Paying for Some Unproven Treatments
Excerpt: "The agency that runs the Medicare program said ... that it was creating a demonstration project in which cancer doctors will be paid to measure how their patients feel during chemotherapy. In ... a series of ... small steps involving cancer treatment, the agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, proposed paying for a variety of colon cancer drugs when those medications are used in any of nine clinical trials that will test their effectiveness against other cancers." (The New York Times; one-time registration required)
Guidance for HIPAA Security Policies and Procedures -- a Sample Policy
Excerpt: "This policy is reprinted, with permission, from HIPAA Security Policies and Procedures, a CD-ROM developed by Strategic Management Systems, Inc. (SMS) of Alexandria, Va." (REPORT ON MEDICARE COMPLIANCE via AISHealth.com)
Links to Items on Executive Comp, Benefits in General
Companies Hurry to Comply With Internal Controls Rule Mandated Under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Excerpt: "Thousands of public companies and their auditors are racing to meet year-end deadlines that require them for the first time to certify the strength of their financial checks and balances, an intense and costly effort that regulators call the most important reform to spring from the recent wave of accounting scandals. Scores of companies are struggling to finish the process on time, and a significant minority lags in the work, according to industry experts." (The Washington Post; one-time registration required)
Overview: Tax Law Requires Changes to Most Employers' Non-Qualified Deferred Compensation Plans (PDF)
6 pages. Excerpt: "The new requirements are generally effective for amounts which are either deferred, or become vested, on or after January 1, 2005. Prior law (including constructive receipt concepts) remains in effect for deferred compensation that is both earned and vested prior to 2005, unless the non-qualified deferred compensation plan is materially modified after October 3, 2004. The Treasury Department is expected to issue guidance in the near future regarding transition issues." (Ballard Spahr)
Perspective: Director Compensation 2004: Time to Reexamine Pay Philosophy
Excerpt: "This Perspective summarizes recent data from our annual study of 350 of the largest publicly traded companies in the US (the 'Mercer 350') and provides a framework for structuring director pay going forward." (Mercer Human Resource Consulting; one-time registration required)
Full Text: PricewaterhouseCoopers Analyzes American Jobs Creation Act (PDF)
60 pages. Excerpt: "The Act is the first major corporate tax act in a number of years, with the most sweeping business tax changes since the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The American Jobs Creation Act will affect most U.S. companies, and is estimated to provide nearly $137 billion in tax relief over the next 10 years." (PricewaterhouseCoopers via Financial Executives International)
Newly Posted Events
Domestic Partner Benefits and Benefits Issues Around Same-Gender Marriage
in Ohio on November 18, 2004
presented by WEB (Worldwide Employee Benefits Network) Cleveland Chapter
Form 1099-R - Not As Simple As It Looks
Nationwide on December 14, 2004
presented by SunGard Corbel
Legislative Overview and Update
in District of Columbia on November 18, 2004
presented by International Society of CEBS - Capital Chapter
Newly Posted Press Releases
TRI-AD’s Survey Reveals Opposition to Employers Switching to Health Savings Accounts Increases Among Flexible Spending Account Participants
(TRI-AD)
DailyAccess Awarded AITA Technology Company of the Year 2004
(DailyAccess Corporation)
Newly Posted or Renewed Job Openings
Pension Administrator
for Berlin, Ramos & Co.
in DC, MD, VA
Health Policy Consulting Manager
for A major international professional services firm
in CA
H&W Benefits Operation Manager
for Hewitt Associates
in IL
Benefits Project Manager
for Hewitt Associates
in IL
ESC Production QC Specialist
for Providian
in CA
Director, Product Development
for BISYS Retirement Services
in PA
Manager, Client Services
for BISYS Retirement Services
in PA
Plan Administrator
for Third Party Administrator
in PA
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