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Do This Morning's Oral Arguments Bring a Lift for the Mandate?
"The Supreme Court spent 91 minutes Wednesday operating on the assumption that it would strike down the key feature of the new health care law, but may have convinced itself in the end not to do that because of just how hard it would be to decide what to do after that.... [T]he Justices themselves did not want the onerous task of going through the remainder of the entire 2,700 pages of the law and deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and most seemed to think that should be left to Congress. They could not come together, however, on just what task they would send across the street for the lawmakers to perform. The net effect may well have shored up support for the individual insurance mandate itself."
(SCOTUSBlog / Bloomberg Law)
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Health Law Seen in Jeopardy After Justices' Questions on Tuesday Mar. 27
"Justice Anthony Kennedy said the measure is unlike others the court upheld previously because it tells individuals they 'must act.' Kennedy, who most often occupies the court's ideological middle ground, said, 'That changes the relationship of the government to the individual in the very fundamental way.'"
(Bloomberg News)
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Transcript of Highlights of the Lively Arguments at the Supreme Court, Day 2
"[F]or more than 40 mil.lion Americans who do not have access to health insurance either through their employer or through government programs such as Medicare or Medicaid, the system does not work. Those individuals must resort to the individual market, and that market does not provide affordable health insurance. It does not do so because ... the multibillion dollar subsidies that are available for ... the employer market are not available in the individual market."
(Kaiser Health News)
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Administration's Attorney Argues Individual Mandate is Constitutional on Several Grounds
"[The Solicitor General of the United States] argued that Congress holds the power to enact this 'individual mandate' under three different clauses of the Constitution — the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Taxing Clause. Focusing on the Commerce Clause, he emphasized 'the unique nature of this market, because this is a market in which ... most of the population is in the market most of the time — 83 percent visit a physician every year; 96 percent over a five-year period.'"
(Faegre Baker Daniels)
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Supreme Court Justices Chomp at the Bit
"[M]ost observers on Monday's arguments came away with the view that the Court is ready to rule now (one way or the other) on the constitutionality of the health care reform legislation. While the questions and comments of the justices on Monday offered little, if any, insight on how they might rule on the larger constitutional questions, they certainly suggested that were not happy with the option to defer a decision on the merits."
(Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP)
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Summary of Developments on Day 1 and Day 2 of Oral Arguments in the Supreme Court
"It appears that the Court's view of the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause will almost certainly determine the constitutionality of the mandate. There was general skepticism among the justices that the individual mandate constitutes a 'tax' that would be authorized under Congress's General Welfare Clause power."
(Highroads)
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Day 1 of Supreme Court Arguments on Affordable Care Act Focuses on Anti-Injunction Act
"None of the parties wants the Anti-Injunction Act to bar the Court's consideration of the constitutional challenges until 2014. The challengers want the constitutional question decided now, before everyone is required to buy insurance. The government also wants the issue decided now, before it and the states spend more time and money implementing a statute that may be struck down."
(Faegre Baker Daniels LLP)
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If Mandate Is Overturned, Obama Could Need Help to Salvage the Health Law
"There are ways that Obama — if he's re-elected — might be able to salvage the law even if the court strikes down the individual mandate but leaves the rest intact, health policy experts say. These fixes would create financial incentives for people to not delay enrolling in insurance."
(Kaiser Health News)
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How Public Sector Employers Can Provide Excellent Benefits While Controlling Costs
"This white paper draws on several studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of multiple strategies for public employers to save money while preserving the value of their benefits packages. These include greater participation in pretax benefits and Section 125 programs, wellness initiatives, partnering for improved benefits communication and education, adding voluntary benefits, and implementing a dependent verification process."
(Colonial Life)
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Trends in Health Coverage for Part-Time Workers (PDF)
"[Because] provisions of the PPACA ... are expected to increase the cost of coverage ..., there is concern that employers may respond by cutting back on health coverage for part-time workers or by increasing the proportion of part-time workers employed, the latter of which has already been seen[.]"
(Employee Benefit Research Institute)
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Both Sides Misleading on Health Premium Costs
"Both the Republican National Committee and the Obama administration are making misleading claims about health insurance premium costs. An RNC ad falsely implies that the federal health-care law is responsible for all of the $1,300 average increase in family coverage premiums last year. But the administration makes the misleading claim that families 'could save up to $2,300' on health care costs per year by buying insurance through exchanges called for by the law."
(philly.com)
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Outcomes-Based Wellness Plans (PDF)
"Most employers turn to an outcomes-based wellness program when they do not see the expected results from programs that offer incentives merely for participation."
(McGraw Wentworth)
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ObamaCare Is Not the End of the World: Look Beyond the Partisan Screaming
"Yes, ObamaCare is expected to cram 30 mil.lion uninsured people into the current non-system. Complementary elements of the law make it illegal for health insurers to kick any of us out if we get too sick or stop paying our bills if we get too expensive. And if an insurer makes too much money in the process, it needs to refund a portion. Aside from these four economically intertwined health insurance market reforms, most everything else about ObamaCare is business as usual."
(The Health Care Blog)
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Trends in State Mandated Benefits, 2011 (PDF)
"[The] most recent report ... has identified 2,262 mandates enacted as of December 31, 2011, an increase in the last two decades of 166 percent."
(The Council for Affordable Health Insurance)
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[Opinion]
Supreme Court Should Defer to Congress' Decision to Pass Health Care Law
"Congress has no interest in requiring broccoli purchases because the failure to buy broccoli does not push that cost onto others in the system.... [T]he only question it must answer in this case is modest: Did Congress have a rational basis for concluding that the economic effects of a broken health care system warranted a national solution? The answer is incontrovertibly yes."
(The New York Times; free registration required)
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[Opinion]
Obamacare Is Going Down
"[The author] would handicap it at 65% unconstitutional.... This is mostly going to be about Justices Kennedy and Breyer, but we always knew that. Each asked tough questions. Justice Kennedy appears to want to find it unconstitutional, but wants to think more ... Justice Breyer appears to be the opposite, but struggling."
(REDSTATE)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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[Guidance Overview]
March 2012 Employee Benefits Update (PDF)
In this update: Compliance Deadlines and Reminders; Fee Disclosure Compliance Tools; Treasury Regulations on Lifetime Income Options; Final Summary of Benefits and Coverage Regulations; and Guidance on PPACA Automatic Enrollment.
(Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c.)
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Press Releases
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