| BenefitsLink Welfare Plans Newsletter |   |
January 3, 2007
Sponsored by: Health Benefits Conference & Expo (HBCE)
(Click on company name or banner to learn more.)
| 16th Annual National Health Benefits Conference & Expo (HBCE) |
| 16th Annual Nat'l Health Benefits Conference & Expo - Jan. 25-26, Tampa
Title: The biggest cost problem facing American employers. Leading Employers & Best Practices from: Bank of America – IBM – State of MN – AOL – IAP World Services – Schneider Transportation - Univ. of Pittsburgh – MO State Univ – Perkins’ Restaurants – San Mateo Co. – HEB Retail – Martin Co. Schools - and many more. Actionable Advice: info@HBCE.com • 941-484-1430 • www.HBCE.com |
Wall Street Journal Examines HIPAA Loopholes
Excerpt: "'[I]ncreasingly complex confidentiality issues' in federal medical privacy rules 'are affecting patients and their insurance coverage,' the Wall Street Journal reports. According to the Journal, complaints of privacy violations 'have been piling up.'" (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Health Insurers Have Begun to Combine Aspects of Consumer-Driven Care and Restricted Access
Excerpt: "Beyond satisfying a demand for lower premiums, health insurance companies will benefit from the new arrangement. Since high-deductible plans pay for most of the cost of health care after the deductible is met, health plans that can pay doctors less will save money and pass those savings on to employers in the form of lower premiums." (Workforce Management; free registration required)
Municipality's Health Plan Provides Free Diabetes Medicines; Savings of $2,000 Per Patient Per Year
Excerpt: "[Asheville, North Carolina] has given free diabetes medicines and supplies to municipal workers who have the disease if they agree to monthly counseling from specially trained pharmacists. The results, city officials say, have been dramatic: Within months of enrolling in the program, almost twice as many have their blood sugar levels under control. In addition, the city's health plan has saved more than $2,000 in medical costs per patient each year." (The New York Times; free registration required)
The Problem with Disease Management -- Secondary Issues
Excerpt: "[T]here are lots of secondary issues which can prevent an employer from realizing the potential value of a disease management program: [one can be clinical measures of improvement]." (The PRECEPT Employee Benefits Blog)
Overview of HSA Changes Signed into Law
Excerpt: "The act allows a one-time cash transfer from each health flexible spending account (FSA) or health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) into an HSA. Employees may transfer up to the lesser of the account balance on September 21, 2006, or the account balance on the date of the transfer." (Watson Wyatt Worldwide)
Many Workers Can Look Forward to Getting a Few Extra Days Off in 2007
Excerpt: "Next year, [many] workers may not have to scramble for [holiday] time off. A growing number of employers plan to provide extra holiday days off in 2007, according to a new survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. In many cases, the calendar is helping to provide the extra time." (The Baltimore Sun; free registration required)
Life-Stage Benefits: Wooing the MTV and Internet Generations
Excerpt: "While the logic of 'life-stages' benefits is indisputable, the challenge is to get workers born after 1965 to become more engaged in their benefit offerings, especially retirement and life insurance. Benefits experts believe that trends such as consumer-driven health plans will create a greater awareness of benefit choices." (Employee Benefit News)
Employers and Health Care Providers Urged to Delve Deeper Into Mood Disorders
Excerpt: "Much attention has been focused recently on the prevalence and economic impact of depression in the workplace. Experts say the disorder affects 8% to 10% of adults at some point in their lives and costs employers $31 billion to $43 billion per year in lost productivity in addition to medical costs." (Employee Benefit News)
Commentary: The Best and Worst in Health Care, 2006
Excerpt: "[2006] saw real promise toward two longstanding goals: covering all Americans with health insurance and getting hospitals and doctors to take simple and proven steps to reduce the number of preventable deaths." (Leif Wellington Haase via The Century Foundation)
Court Permits Antitrust and RICO Claims To Go Forward Based Upon UCR Database Allegations
Excerpt: "The calculation of reimbursement rates under a 'usual, customary and reasonable' standard lies at the center of a significant case on the docket in the United States District Court, Southern District." (Health Plan Law blog by Attorney Roy F. Harmon III)
'Consumer Control' and the Electronic Medical Record
Excerpt: "It is timely to apply a 'consumer perspective' to two products currently most representative of the theory: consumer-driven health insurance (CDHI) and the electronic medical record (EMR). The consumer's perspective on the EMR . . . might be summarized in two alternative approaches: consumer control or consumer compliance. Consumer control implies that the consumer of health services controls the information available to the providers that the consumer is now paying for." (Managed Care Magazine)
A Conversation with Michael L. Millenson: Health Care Reform Movement Has Only Scratched Surface
Excerpt: "Michael L. Millenson is frustrated at the pace of change in reducing medical errors and adopting evidence-based care. Ten years after writing the ground-breaking book, Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age, and six years after discussing it in his first Managed Care interview in 1999, Millenson says that progress has been slow and piecemeal." (Managed Care Magazine)
Health Care Snapshot: Health Care Spending in the United States and OECD Countries, January 2007
Excerpt: "This paper uses information from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)1 to compare the level and growth rate of health care spending in the United States with other OECD countries." (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Commentary: Does Publicly Funded National Health Insurance Give Can.ada a Business Advantage?
Excerpt: "If there are lessons to be learned from Can.ada's success as a manufacturing nation, the most important of them may well derive not from the factory floor but from the doctor's waiting room. And that is something to consider seriously the next time the subject of universal health insurance comes up for debate in that other country in North America -- the one found on Can.ada's southern border." (Mark Gottlieb, Manufacturing.net, via Physicians for a National Health Program)
Minor Ailments Can Thwart Applicants for Individual Health Insurance Policies -- Comments
Excerpt: "In the debates on health care reform, those supporting private insurance solutions are frequently confronted with the problem of those denied coverage due to medical underwriting. Their glib answer usually cites the various state high-risk insurance pools that, though not perfect, take care of that problem. Most audiences accept that response and move on. But should we?" (Los Angeles Times vis Physicians for a National Health Program)
Health Insurance Bridges Gap for Poor Families
Excerpt: "[Al] Rohling, who directed Alabama's housing authority at the time, reached a startling conclusion: If children could drive parents into hardship when they became ill, could medical insurance help parents rediscover financial health? ``Health care for children really is a bridge to get out of poverty,'' said Rohling." (Reuters via The New York Times; free registration required)
How the U.S. Is Dealing with Rising Number of Uninsureds
Excerpt: "Nationally, companies providing insurance remit $31 billion a year to insure the employees of other companies, while states are paying $8 billion to insure low-wage workers." (InsuranceNewsNet.com)
Cancer's Unrecognized Toll: Time Lost
Excerpt: "The hours spent sitting in doctors' waiting rooms, in line for the CT scan, watching chemotherapy drip into veins: Battling cancer steals a lot of time -- at least $2.3 billion worth for patients in the first year of treatment alone." (Sun-Sentinel.com)
Overview: 2007 Minimums and Maximums for High-Deductible Health Plans, HSAs and Archer MSAs
Excerpt: "Update: Provisions in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 (Public Law 109-432), which Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in late December 2006, enhance Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), including effectively increasing the contribution maximum. The second table in this Capital Checkup has been updated to reflect this change." (The Segal Group, Inc.)
Employers Turn to Mini-Med Plans As Stopgaps
Excerpt: "A growing number of employers are offering limited medical, or 'mini-med,' plans so that employees can have access to basic medical benefits while waiting to become eligible for a major medical program. [A short list of selected Limited Benefit Providers is at the end of the article.]" (Employee Benefit News)
Links to Items on Executive Comp, Benefits in General
New York City Employees' Retirement System Pension Funds Seek Vote on Executive Pay
Excerpt: "New York's pension funds asked Home Depot Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and Par Pharma.ceutical Cos. to let shareholders vote on whether they approved of top executives' pay packages." (Bloomberg News via Los Angeles Times; free registration required)
Overview of Revised Executive Compensation Disclosure for Stock and Option Awards (PDF)
3 pages. Excerpt: "Disclosures about executive officers' and directors' stock and option awards will be more closely aligned to the amounts reported in the financial statements, reflecting earned compensation for the service period as reported in the financial statements, rather than the aggregate grant-date fair value of the awards, under newly adopted amendments to Item 402 of Regulation S-K." (KPMG LLP via Financial Executives International)
109th Congress Wraps Up -- Important Changes Ahead for 110th
Excerpt: "After the long and difficult pension reform debate, Congress is mostly done with pension legislation for now, except for a few outstanding issues. For example, the business community and Capitol Hill staff are compiling lists of technical corrections to the PPA. These corrections could move through Congress in 2007, although technical corrections sometimes take several years to pass." (Watson Wyatt Worldwide)
Employees in China Are Very Dissatisfied with Their Compensation and Benefits, According to Survey
Excerpt: "Only 28 percent of workers are satisfied with their compensation and benefits favorable ratings in Mainland China. Only 33 percent are satisfied with their pay, compared with 38 percent in Asia-Pacific as a whole and 47 percent in the United States." (Watson Wyatt Worldwide)
Newly Posted Events
2007 Web/Telephone Seminars: SEP Plans
Nationwide on February 27, 2007
presented by BISYS Retirement Services
HSA Legislative Update Webinar
Nationwide on January 11, 2007
presented by Convergent Retirement Plan Solutions, LLC
Journey deep into the world of IRAs
in Illinois on January 23, 2007
presented by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
Journey deep into the world of IRAs
in Pennsylvania on January 23, 2007
presented by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
Journey deep into the world of IRAs
in West Virginia on January 23, 2007
presented by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
Journey deep into the world of IRAs
in Pennsylvania on January 24, 2007
presented by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
Journey deep into the world of IRAs
in California on January 24, 2007
presented by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
Journey deep into the world of IRAs
in Ohio on January 24, 2007
presented by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
Journey deep into the world of IRAs
in Ohio on January 25, 2007
presented by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
Journey deep into the world of IRAs
in Indiana on January 25, 2007
presented by Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
The Basics of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)
Nationwide on January 16, 2007
presented by Convergent Retirement Plan Solutions, LLC
Newly Posted or Renewed Job Openings
Plan Administrator
for Independent Pension Consultants, Ltd.
in MN
Retirement Services Account Manager 2
for SunTrust Banks, Inc.
in VA
Senior Counsel I - Employee Benefits
for Northrop Grumman Corporation
in CA
Sales Consultant, Group Health Insurance
for ABG-MA (Alliance Benefit Group- Mid-Atlantic), a Benefitstreet co.
in MD
Health & Welfare Consultant
for Charles W. Cammack Associates
in NY
Plan Administration Specialist
for Boston Financial Data Services
in MA
Retirement Services Consultant
for Administaff
in TX
401(k) Administrator
for Growing Benefits Consulting / TPA Firm in NW Suburb of Chicago
in IL
Pension Administrator
for Pension Administrator
in NJ
Employee Benefits Attorney With ESOP Experience
for Chang, Ruthenberg & Long PC
in CA
Employee Benefits Attorney With at Least 5 Years Experience
for Chang, Ruthenberg & Long PC
in CA
Marketing Manager
for AXA Equitable
in NY
Handy Links:
- View Today's Active Message Threads
- Using the Web for Employee Benefits Research (hypertext article)
- Employee Benefits Library
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