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BenefitsLink Health & Welfare Plans Newsletter
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[Guidance Overview]
New Texas Health Care Privacy Law More Stringent Than HIPAA
"Texas House Bill 300 (HB 300), recently signed into law by Governor Rick Perry, mandates new patient privacy protections and harsher penalties for privacy violations related to electronic health records (EHR)."
(Nixon Peabody LLP)
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[Guidance Overview]
New Proposed Regulations on Health Insurance Exchanges
"The primary purposes of an Exchange is to facilitate the purchase of health insurance coverage by qualified individuals through qualified health plans ('QHPs') and to assist qualified employers in enrolling their employees in QHPs."
(Verrill Dana, LLP)
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Parental Bereavement Act Introduced in Senate
"Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) has introduced a bill that would allow parents grieving the death of a child to receive up to 12 weeks of job-protected time-off under the Family Medical Leave Act."
(PLANSPONSOR.COM)
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Accountable Care Organizations May Revolutionize Health Care (PDF)
"If the private sector adopts the concept of accountable care organizations (ACOs)—where health care providers have incentives to work together to treat an individual across care settings—patient care could improve and costs could go down."
(International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans via International Society of Certified Employee Benefit Specialists)
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High Costs of Caregiving Extend Beyond Workplace
"Years ago, as the baby boomers found themselves caring for aging parents and young children, offering eldercare assistance began to look like the benefit of the future; it was something companies couldn't ignore. Now, experts agree, many companies are."
(Human Resource Executive Online)
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Will Employers Soon Use GPS to Catch FMLA Abuse?
"Clearly, FMLA abuse can literally turn a workplace on its head. I have worked with many an in-house counsel and HR professional who would do just about anything—ahem, anything—to bring these FMLA abusers to justice. But GPS? It's an interesting thought, but presently does not enjoy the support of any case law."
(Franczek Radelet P.C.)
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No Time Like Present for Employers to Start Thinking About Whether to Offer Health Insurance After 2014
"That year, under a provision known colloquially as pay or play, employers must decide whether to offer health insurance to their workers or pay a penalty that, for most, will be $2,000 per full-time employee and equivalent, over and above 30 full-timers. If the wrong decision were made, it could outweigh the combined costs of all the other factors associated with reform, health-care experts say."
(CFO Publishing LLC)
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Health Care Law Could Leave Families with High Insurance Costs
"At issue is a so-called 'firewall' in the law that denies subsidies to workers whose employers offer quality, affordable coverage. The firewall applies to plans with premiums that cost less than 9.5 percent of a worker's income. If a worker has to dole out more than that amount to buy coverage, the employer coverage is considered unaffordable and the worker is eligible for subsidies to buy coverage on the new exchanges."
(Capitol Hill Publishing Corp.)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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Press Releases
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