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April 8, 2009 |
| Here are the Web's best new links about compliance and cost aspects of plan operation, design and policy. |
International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (Advert.)
What you need to know about the Economic Stimulus Bill’s impact on COBRA and HIPAA The signing of the economic stimulus bill has broad implication not only for the nation, but also for employers and their benefit plans. Find out what you as an employer —and your staff-- are now responsible for. Recently recorded 90-minute webcasts are available on CD or instantly online with an on-demand webcast. Updates available on CD or On-Demand Webcast. To order, visit the Foundation’s Bookstore at www.ifebp.org/cobraondemand or www.ifebp.org/hipaaondemand. |
[Official Guidance]
Now Online: Second DOL COBRA Subsidy Compliance Assistance Webcast
Event Date: 04/06/2009 03:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. Excerpt: "In [this] webcast, the Department of Labor [was] joined by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service to discuss the new COBRA provisions and the latest guidance, including information on the model notices and tax credit. If you are an employer who is trying to comply with Federal COBRA, or if you are a third party administrator or a carrier with questions about the new law and latest guidance, this is your chance to hear from the federal regulators . . . ." (U.S. Employee Benefits Security Administration)
[Guidance Overview]
IRS and DOL Guidance on the COBRA Premium Subsidy (PDF)
Excerpt: "This bulletin provides a summary of recent guidance from the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor regarding the application and interpretation of the COBRA premium subsidy provisions enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009." (Thompson Hine LLP)
[Guidance Overview]
CHIP Act Brings Special Enrollment Rights and Disclosure Obligations for Group Health Plans
Excerpt: "Action Item: Employers have until the first plan year after the model notice is issued to comply with the notice and disclosure requirements. DOL and HHS plan to issue the notices by February, 2010, so calendar year plans will likely have until at least January 1, 2011 to comply." (Poyner Spruill LLP)
Kaiser Health News/Washington Post Examines Delays in Receiving Stimulus's COBRA Subsidies
Excerpt: "Under the stimulus package, workers involuntarily terminated between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009, whose annual incomes do not exceed $125,000 for individuals or $250,000 for families qualify for subsidies to cover 65% of the cost of premiums under COBRA for as long as nine months . . . . Kaiser Health News/Post reports that in some cases those subsidies might 'not fully kick in until this summer, and even then they may not be steep enough to make insurance affordable for many' unemployed workers." (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Avoiding Health Plan Side Effects During an Economic Recession (PDF)
4 pages. Excerpt: "A seemingly logical assumption is that use of health care services, like other services, declines dramatically in a recession as consumers cut back on their spending. However, experience has shown that might not be the case. In fact, health expenditures remain significantly higher than increases in the consumer price index, even during recessions. This Public Sector Letter discusses strategies for mitigating increased health care utilization in tough times. It also touches on an additional concern in the current, severely distressed and rapidly changing financial services environment: the stability of insurers." (The Segal Group, Inc.)
111-Page Report by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: New Directions to a Healthier America (PDF)
111 pages. Excerpt: "We found the strongest evidence for interventions that can have a lasting effect on the quality of health and life in programs that promote early childhood development and that support children and families. Therefore, many of our recommendations aim to ensure that our children have the best start in life and health. Along with social advantage and disadvantage, health is often passed across generations. Strategies for giving children a healthy start will help ensure future generations of healthy adults. This is indeed a wise long-term investment of scarce resources." (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
Georgetown University Project Analyzes Legal Issues Relating to Health Reform
Excerpt: "Supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University has published a number of issue briefs that analyze legal issues relating to health reform, and outline potential solutions to some of the most significant legal problems in the health reform debate. The Institute's Legal Solutions in Health Reform project covers topics ranging from the constitutionality of a federal insurance mandate and the role of health insurance exchanges to privacy issues associated with health information technology and the purchase of insurance across state lines. [The project can be accessed at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/oneillinstitute/projects/reform/index.html.]" (The ERISA Industry Committee)
Experts at Senate Roundtable Address Insurance Market Reform in Health Care Reform Efforts
Excerpt: "In her testimony at the hearing, Katherine Baicker, professor of health economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, differentiated between health care and health insurance. 'Insurance works by pooling risks; it provides security against the uncertainty of unknown health expenses.'" (Wolters Kluwer)
Consolidation of Health Insurers a Concern for Medical Providers
Excerpt: "Talk of potential mergers in the medical insurance industry has doctors and hospitals worried about health plans having too much clout over consumer choices and prices. Speculation has run rampant that some of the nation's biggest health plans may be looking to consolidate, including a possible takeover of Humana Inc. by Aetna Inc., as well as UnitedHealth Group's interest in Coventry Health Care Inc. Already, one in six metropolitan areas in a 2008 study of more than 300 U.S. markets is dominated by a single health insurer that controls at least 70 percent of enrollees in health maintenance organizations or preferred provider organizations, according to the American Medical Association." (Chicago Tribune)
Massachusetts Health Insurance Mandate Not Driving Health Coverage Costs, Report Says
Excerpt: "On the third anniversary of Massachusetts' landmark health insurance overhaul, a new report shows that employers, consumers, and state government paid the same, proportionately, for health coverage after 2006 as they did the year before the initiative started. The study, released yesterday from the Center for Health Law and Economics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, found that employers contributed about half (48 percent) of the overall spending on coverage in Massachusetts in 2007. Individuals accounted for about a quarter of the total, and government - divided between the state and federal level - contributed about 27 percent." (The Boston Globe)
Health Insurance Gender Bias Efforts Stall In Connecticut State Legislature
Excerpt: "Gender-based pricing for health insurance isn't going away soon in Connecticut, as efforts by activists who oppose it have stalled in the legislature and at Aetna. Aetna Inc. has quashed a shareholder proposal that questioned gender-based premiums. NorthStar Asset Management Inc., a Boston-based firm that does socially responsible investing, had wanted Aetna to publish a report addressing public concerns about the rating practice, which many consider discriminatory. Hartford-based Aetna and other insurers base rates for individual health insurance policies partly on gender, which results in significantly higher premiums for women of child-bearing age compared with men." (The Hartford Courant)
Universal Health Coverage in Spotlight at Los Angeles Forum
Excerpt: "The forum, the fifth in a series the White House organized around the country over the last month, comes as senior Democrats on Capitol Hill move ahead on drafting legislation to be introduced later this spring to overhaul the nation's healthcare system. . . . The White House billed the five forums as a way to get public input. But the invitation-only event in Los Angeles was clearly programmed to showcase the broad goals Obama has said he wants included in the legislation, including an emphasis on prevention, as well as secure and affordable coverage for everyone, regardless of age or preexisting conditions." (Los Angeles Times)
Push for Digital Health Records Sparks Debate
Excerpt: "[T]he government has set a goal for every American to have an electronic health record by 2014. Kathleen Sebelius, the White House nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, calls the move to computerization 'one of the linchpins' of overhauling the nation's health care system. Obama casts it as a factor in the nation's economic recovery, saying going paperless would 'save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.' Naysayers suggest health information technology (IT), the overall move to computerization, is full of false promise. Digital records can lead to better care and fewer medical mistakes, they say, but the costly transformation could waste money if the doctors and hospitals buy systems that can't be connected to share information." (USA Today)
[Opinion]
Public Health Has Less to Do with Health Insurance Than One Might Think
Excerpt: "The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America has just released a new report: Beyond Health Care. . . . 'Beyond Health Care' does a masterful job of pointing out that the conventional wisdom about what we need to do to improve the health of our population is blinkered. Many pundits assume that providing access to medical care will solve our problems. Others insist that lecturing Americans on 'personal responsibility' will do the trick. The report makes it clear that the received wisdom is wrong on both counts." (The Century Foundation)
[Opinion]
Group Letter Opposing Emergency Retiree Health Benefits Protection Act, H.R. 1322 (PDF)
Excerpt: "The undersigned organizations are writing to express concern over the re-introduction of H.R. 1322, the 'Emergency Retiree Health Benefits Protection Act of 2009.' As we expressed previously, our organizations share your interest in quality medical coverage for seniors but believe that mandating retiree health benefits will lead only to increased costs and fewer benefits. Moreover, the bill overrides one of the most important principles of ERISA and the employer-based system - the voluntary nature of employee benefits." (American Benefits Council)
[Opinion]
Out-of-Network Payment Practices
Excerpt: "There has been a justifiable cloud in recent years over the way the insurance industry decides how much to pay for the services of doctors who are outside a company's network. The procedures are rendered suspect by conflicts of interest and look as if they have been manipulated to shortchange patients by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade." (The New York Times; free registration required)
EmployeeBenefitsJobs.com (Advert.)
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Links to Items on Executive Comp, Benefits in General
Employer Could Not Offset Deferred Comp Payments by Unpaid Personal Loans to Execs; A Lesson in Plan DraftingExcerpt: "Another recent court decision highlighting imperfections in plan drafting just came across my desk, albeit, from October 2008. In Maynard v. Merrill Lynch & Co., 44 EBC 1133 (M.D. FL 2008), a federal district court held that Merrill Lynch could not offset two former executive's benefits under its non-qualified pension plan by amounts the executives owed from personal loans they had taken from the company. Even if this decision is overturned on appeal, it teaches two very important lessons in plan drafting . . . ." (Michael S. Melbinger via Winston & Strawn LLP)
Vermont Is Fourth State to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage
Excerpt: "The Associated Press reports that the state legislature voted Tuesday to override Governor James Douglas' veto of a bill allowing g.ays and les.bians to marry. The vote was 23-5 to override in the state Senate and 100-49 to override in the House." (PLANSPONSOR.com; free registration required)
White Paper Touts Advantages of Improved Benefits Communication
Excerpt: "A new white paper released by Colonial Life suggests a strong benefits communication plan can lead to greater employee satisfaction and a stronger bottom line for businesses. Colonial Life contends that employers who discount the value of communication risk wasting their company's considerable human capital investment. According to a press release, the report shows that employers can expect to realize key business and competitive advantages when they implement a strong benefits communication and education program, including decreased turnover, enhanced recruiting, increased enrollments, reduced benefits administration, more engaged and loyal employees, and improved productivity." (PLANSPONSOR.com; free registration required)
Webcasts and Conferences
(Click to post your webcast or conference)2009 SPARK National Conference
in District of Columbia on June 14, 2009
presented by SPARK -- Society of Professional Asset-Managers and Record Keepers
Implementing the New COBRA Premium Subsidy Rules: Delving Into the Details
in Illinois on April 14, 2009
presented by Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP
Long-Term Incentive Plan Update in an Economic Downturn Webcast
Nationwide on April 23, 2009
presented by International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans
Managing an ESOP Company in Challenging Economic Times: Workout Situations and Bankruptcy: Things You Need to Know to Survive Recorded Webcast
Nationwide on April 9, 2009
presented by Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP
NIPA Business Management Education Webcast: Cash Balance Plans as a Business Alternative
Nationwide on May 12, 2009
presented by National Institute of Pension Administrators
Southern Employee Benefits Conference 40th Anniversary Annual Educational Conference
in North Carolina on May 13, 2009
presented by Southern Employee Benefits Conference
The Proxy Season: What We've Seen and Learned
Nationwide on April 22, 2009
presented by Buck Consultants, an ACS Company
What You Need to Know About Fee Disclosures (60-Minute Power Series) Webcast
Nationwide on April 21, 2009
presented by International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans
Press Releases
(Click to post your press release)U.S. Labor Department Recovers Funds for Company 401(k) Plan from Fairfield, Connecticut, Employer
U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA)
Unum Maintains Market Leadership in Group Long Term Care
Unum
Lincoln Financial Group Announces Family Care Reimbursement Benefit Rider on LTD Policies
Lincoln Financial Group
401kDIRECT Announces New EFT Program
401kDIRECT
Where's SEC and Congress?
ReviewMy401k.com
Short-Term Medical Insurance Offers COBRA Alternative
Health Plan Administrators
Employee Benefits Jobs
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EmployeeBenefitsJobs.com (Sponsor)
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