| BenefitsLink Welfare Plans Newsletter |   |
November 17, 2004
Today's sponsor: Financial Research Associates, LLC
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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)
Update and Recap on Developments in the Insurance Brokerage Controversy
Excerpt: "Those of you interested in the benefits implications of the recent insurance probes will want to read the complaint filed by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer against Universal Life Resources, Inc. ('ULR') (The press release is here and the complaint is here.)' Recent statements on the issue and hearing testimony is noted. (Attorney B. Janell Grenier via BenefitsBlog.com)
Senate Hears of Insurance Misdeeds: State Officials Outline Early Findings of Bid-Rigging Inquiries
Excerpt: "Preliminary investigations in New York, Connecticut and California suggest that insurance companies frequently pay insurance brokers and agents undisclosed compensation -- including cash, loans, stock and exotic trips -- for steering health, automobile and other retail insurance business to them, state officials told Congress yesterday. The practice may have cost insurance customers hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments in recent years and caused them to purchase ...." (The Washington Post; one-time registration required)
U.S. Congress Urged by Spitzer to Conduct Its Own Insurance Industry Inquiry Citing Oversight Lack
Excerpt: "Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, said Tuesday that his investigation into the insurance industry had revealed inadequate oversight by the states, and he urged Congress to begin its own inquiry. Speaking at a hearing of the Senate subcommittee on governmental affairs, Mr. Spitzer said his discovery of bid-rigging by insurance brokers, with the collusion of several big insurers, demonstrated the failure of the states to regulate the industry and the need for greater ...." (The New York Times; one-time registration required)
Spitzer's Insurance Investigation Leads to More Guilty Pleas -- Five Have Now Pleaded Guilty
Excerpt: "Two midlevel employees of the Zurich American Insurance Company pleaded guilty yesterday to criminal charges related to the rigging of bids that investigators say was organized by the Global Broking unit of Marsh & McLennan. Five people have now pleaded guilty in a expanding investigation of the insurance industry. The two Zurich employees ... faced felony charges for violating the state's antitrust law, called the Donnelly Act, but a New York State judge permitted them to enter ...." (The New York Times; one-time registration required)
HHS Seeking Input on Developing a National Health Information Network
Excerpt from HIPAAdvisory.com: 'The Office of the National Coordinator Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) today issued a Request for Information (RFI) in the Federal Register that seeks public comment regarding how widespread interoperability of health IT and health information exchange can be achieved through a National Health Information Network (NHIN). Through the RFI, ONCHIT seeks input from health IT organizations, healthcare providers, industry associations and others ...." (Department of Health and Human Services)
IBM Computer Project to Find Clues to Diseases Will Require Contribution of Idle Computer Time
Excerpt: "IBM on Tuesday plans to announce a project that would combine the resources of millions of unused personal computers with research to learn more about illnesses such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, malaria and cancer, the New York Times reports. The World Community Grid project, which aims to 'accelerate the pace of scientific discovery,' was developed by the NIH, the World Health Organization, the United Nations and other organizations." (California Healthcare Foundation)
PinnacleHealth Sued Over Medical Ad: Woman Contends Photograph Revealed Personal Information
Excerpt: "A Cumberland County woman is battling a major midstate health care provider, claiming it publicly broadcast her personal and patient information in an advertisement for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. PinnacleHealth System ran the contested ad two years ago in The Patriot-News, the Carlisle Sentinel and Harrisburg magazine. The problem, Donna Vozenilek claims, is that a medical file the doctor holds in the ad is a real one -- hers." (The Patriot-News; one-time registration required)
As Skilled Workforce Becoming More Diverse; Manufacturers Adding More Training, Flexibility
Excerpt: "An aging population and other demographic facts-of-life ... will alter both the availability of skilled labor for manufacturers and the relationships between manufacturing employers and employees in the near future. Benefits will be affected -- and to a greater degree than is generally recognized. As large, global manufacturers demand more flexibility in capacity and outsourcing decisions, workers want more benefits that will improve their current and future quality of life: ...." (IndustryWeek.com)
Text of IRS Rev. Proc. 2004-64 Providing 2005 Standard Mileage Rates (PDF)
Excerpt: "Business ... 40.5 cents per mile" (Internal Revenue Service)
Kaiser to Extend California Hotel Workers' Health Coverage Two Months During Lock Out and Strike
Excerpt: "Health care provider Kaiser Permanente stepped into San Francisco's hotel labor dispute Tuesday by agreeing to provide two months of medical coverage to 3,500 locked-out workers and their families who were at risk of losing their benefits. The Oakland-based health plan's decision allows the hotel workers, whose employer-sponsored health insurance with Kaiser is due to expire Dec. 1, to stay on picket lines while their union holds out for its contract demands, ...." (AP via The New York Times; one-time registration required)
American Medical Association Likely to Take on American Hospital Assoc. in Specialty Hospital War
Excerpt: "The American Medical Association is expected to lend its political clout to specialty hospitals, adopting a policy that 'supports competition between and among healthcare facilities because it promotes the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective healthcare.' AMA delegates will consider the issue during their annual midyear meeting in early December." (Modern Healthcare; one-time registration required)
Health Insurers Reject 'Near Elderly' for Coverage
Excerpt: "Though health insurance is an issue that affects young and old alike, it is a particularly tough problem for people aged 50 to 64 who are too young for Medicare, the government's health program that covers those aged 65 and over. As a group, they are often vulnerable to layoffs or pushed into early retirement at a point in their careers when it is difficult to get another job with benefits. Those who retire early thinking they are covered may see their benefits scaled back, ...." (Wall Street Journal via SFGate.com)
Western Maryland Doctors Prepare Lobbying Efforts to Fight Rising Medical Malpractice Insurance Cost
Excerpt: "Doctors in Western Maryland kicked off a weeklong push yesterday to focus attention on skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance premiums, which they say are hounding them out of critical practice areas and threatening to lower the quality of health care. .... The action is organized by the Save Our Doctors, Protect Our Patients Coalition, a group of doctors and other Maryland health care professionals that's pushing for tort reform." (The Baltimore Sun; one-time registration required)
Bush Seeks Limit on Malpractice Jury Awards
Excerpt: "Limiting jury awards in medical malpractice lawsuits is President Bush ...'s health care priority in his second term agenda, but there is strong disagreement over whether such caps would help contain rising costs. .... The drive to cap malpractice verdicts -- beyond actual economic damages such as the cost of long-term medical care or inability to work -- was a staple of Bush's campaign appearances." (AP via Yahoo! News)
Health Care Choice Act Would Allow Us to Purchase Health Insurance Online
Excerpt: "Americans purchased about $95 billion in goods and services over the Internet in 2003. This dynamism added significantly to entrepreneurship and our economy's overall health and vitality. One important sector that could use a healthy dose of nationwide competition is health insurance. We can buy just about everything else online, and maybe it's time that health coverage be added to the list. You might say that such a concept would probably take an act of Congress ....' (The Hill)
Survey Results: Employer Health Care Costs Expected to Rise 8% in 2005
Excerpt: "Annual cost increases for employer-sponsored health programs show signs of easing slightly, thanks in part to some success with care management and other broad initiatives to control costs, but companies are in no position to heave a collective sigh of relief. The burden of providing health care coverage for employees and retirees is bigger than ever .... According to the 2005 Towers Perrin Health Care Cost Survey, employers can expect, on average, an 8% increase in health care ...." (Towers Perrin)
Medicare Seeks to Lure Private HMOs Back
Excerpt: "Medicare is working to entice insurers back into the fold after years in which private plans fled from the federal health insurance program for the elderly, complaining of poor payment rates, a top agency official said .... The Bush Administration needs the health maintenance organizations ... and other private plans [to come] back to Medicare .... Republicans say the private managed health care plans will cut costs over the long haul and are key to the $500 billion overhaul ...." (Reuters via Medscape)
Links to Items on Executive Comp, Benefits in General
Overview: Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans' Proposals Become Law (PDF)
4 pages. Excerpt: "WHO'S AFFECTED This new law affects nonqualified deferred compensation plans. It does not apply to qualified plans (such as 401(k) plans), 403(b) plans and programs, section 457(b) plans, Simplified Employee Plans (SEPs), or SIMPLE plans. .... The new law defines a 'nonqualified deferred compensation plan' as any plan that provides for the deferral of compensation. This definition includes both plans to which employees make elective contributions, and nonelective plans ...." (Prudential Retirement)
Overview: For Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans, It's Back to the Drawing Board
Excerpt: "The restrictions, which are contained in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, amount to a broad overhaul of the deferred compensation rules that companies follow in their reward programs for senior executives and other employees, outside directors and independent contractors. If the new requirements are not satisfied, plan participants are subject to accelerated tax on deferred amounts as well as an additional 20% tax and interest on the taxes that would have been paid ...." (Towers Perrin)
Overview: First Proposed Regulations Implementing USERRA
Excerpt: "The proposed regulations discuss rules regarding anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation, eligibility and procedures to assure reemployment and several other protections in USERRA. To a great extent, they simply mirror the law itself. This Compliance Alert highlights the key provisions in the proposed regulations that would add some detail to the rules for employee benefit plans, including some issues of special interest to sponsors of multiemployer plans." (The Segal Company)
State of the Third Party Administrator Industry + Forecast for 2004
Excerpt: "Many envisioned Y2K (or, more precisely 2001) as the start of a new millennium raising the curtain on so much different from the past. I always thought that was just convenient calendaring. Instead, I predict that in our world of employee benefits and health care, 2004/2005 will be the start of probably the biggest change since Medicare in 1965 or Social Security in 1935. It will be a change in the playing field." (Society of Professional Benefit Administrators)
Multinationals Rely More on Corporate HQ and Finance in Managing Global Benefit Programs
Excerpt: "Rising costs and heightened financial uncertainties associated with pensions and other employee benefit programs are leading multinational companies to give greater control of their benefit plans to corporate headquarters while stepping up the involvement of the finance department. These are among the key findings of a ... survey of global benefit management practices at large employers. The survey, which updates a similar study conducted in 2001, drew responses from 134 ...." (Towers Perrin)
Newly Posted Events
A Roadmap to Fiduciary Survival - Managing Fiduciary Liability for Today's DB & DC Plan Sponsor
in Connecticut on November 30, 2004
presented by PLANSPONSOR
DOL and IRS Audits and Initiatives
in Illinois on December 2, 2004
presented by ASPPA Benefits Council of Chicago
ERISA Litigation
in Arizona on February 24, 2005
presented by ALI-ABA (American Law Institute-American Bar Association)
Representing Professional and Closely Held Businesses - Qualified Plans, Welfare Benefits, and Tax Planning
in Arizona on February 17, 2005
presented by ALI-ABA (American Law Institute-American Bar Association)
Newly Posted Press Releases
2005 Standard Mileage Rates Set
(Internal Revenue Service (IRS))
CalPERS Adopts Plan to Tackle Abusive Executive Compensation; System to Target Focused List of Directors, Corporations and Compensation Consulting Industry
(CalPERS (California Public Employees' Retirement System))
Final Settlement Restores $79 Million For Global Crossing Retirement Plans
(U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.)
New Industry Index: “The Retirement Index™”
(Foundation for Fiduciary Studies)
Newly Posted or Renewed Job Openings
Tax Staff
for Deloitte
in NC
Tax Senior or light Manager
for Deloitte
in GA, NC
Sales Executive- Group Life and Health
for ULLICO Inc.
in CA
Pension Consultant/Enrolled Actuary
for Chambers Benefit Group, APC
in NM
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