Administrator - DC Plans
for American Pension Advisors, Ltd. in IN

Retirement Security Education Counselor
for Prudential in NJ

Director, Product Development
for Prudential in NJ

Customer Service Associate - Part time
for Prudential in PA

Corporate Paralegal - Employee Benefits & Compensation
for Smith Anderson Law Firm in NC

Retirement Plan Administrator
for United Retirement Plan Consultants in RI

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"Brokerage Accounts and 404a-5: Making Sense of the Rules" Web Seminar
Nationwide on August 9, 2012 presented by SunGard Relius

"403(b) Plans for 401(k) Practitioners 2012" - A 3-part Web Seminar
Nationwide on August 14, 2012 presented by SunGard Relius

The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) Compliance Assistance Webcast
Nationwide on August 2, 2012 presented by U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA)

Apprenticeship Plans and Fiduciary Responsibilities Webcast
Nationwide on July 26, 2012 presented by U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA)

CFDD

 

[Official Guidance]

Updated Self-Compliance Tool from DOL for Determining Compliance with the Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) and Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) Coverage Mandates (PDF)
Recently updated by the DOL. "This self-compliance tool is useful for group health plans, plan sponsors, plan administrators, health insurance issuers, and other parties to determine whether a group health plan is in compliance with some of the provisions of Part 7 of ERISA. The requirements described in the Part 7 tool generally apply to group health plans and group health insurance issuers.... If you answer 'No' to any of the questions [in Part II] below, the group health plan is in violation of the mental health parity provisions in Part 7 of ERISA." (Employee Benefits Security Administration)

Take the Hassle Out of Enrollment   [Advert.]

BeneCom creates effective enrollment communications. And with our 20 years of experience behind you, communications is one less job you have to worry about so you can get back to what matters most ̶ your employees!

[Guidance Overview]

Ten Things You Didn't Know Were In The Affordable Care Act
"So you think the Supreme Court upheld a law that requires most people to buy health insur.ance? That's only part of it. The measure's hundreds of pages touch on a variety of issues and initiatives that have, for the most part, remained under the public's radar." (Kaiser Health News)

[Guidance Overview]

Reinhart Employee Benefits Update, July, 2012 (PDF)
Articles Include: IRS Eliminates Signature for Extending the Form 8955-SSA Filing Deadline; Highway Act Includes PBGC Premium Increases and Pension Liability Stabilization Provisions; IRS Audits Defined Benefit Pension Plans for PPA Compliance; Accounting Standards Board Approves Financial Statement Changes for Governmental Defined Benefit Plans; Supreme Court Agrees to Review U.S. Airways v. McCutchen Reimbursement Case; HHS Issues Proposed Regulations on Data Collection for Essential Health Benefits and Accreditation of Qualified Health Plans; The Departments Provide a Cost-Sharing Calculator for Coverage Examples on SBC; IRS Provides Sample Language for Code Section 83(b) Election to Include Property in Income (Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren s.c.)

[Guidance Overview]

CCIIO Updates List of Group Insur.ance Products for Benchmarking Essential Health Benefits
"It is important to remember that self-insured group health plans that are not grandfathered under the Affordable Care Act in 2014 will be required to provide minimum essential coverage that is affordable in order for the employer to avoid the shared responsibility penalty (tax), and that such plans are not mandated to provide essential health benefits. If the employer provides insured coverage that is not grandfathered, the insur.ance policies will be required to provide essential health benefits and meet the minimum essential coverage requirement." (Haynes and Boone, LLP)

[Guidance Overview]

PPACA Presents Special Challenge Concerning Part-Time Workers
"Some employers have temporary or seasonal employees whose hours fluctuate. This raises the question: are they part-time or full-time employees? The question is important because seasonal and part-time employees could qualify for coverage tax credits, and the PPACA generally requires employers with an average of at least 50 full-time employees ('applicable large employers') that do not offer the opportunity to enroll in minimum essential coverage to full-time employees and have at least one employee receive a federal tax credit for coverage through an Exchange to pay a $2,000 annual fee for each full-time employee (minus the first 30), as calculated on a monthly basis." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

The Business of On-Site Employee Health Clinics - July 24-26 - Chicago   [Advert.]

The Next Phase of Worksite Clinic Innovation: Maximizing the clinic’s potential means not just offering acute medical care, but integrating the worksite clinic into the foundation of a strategic health and wellness roadmap.

[Guidance Overview]

Supreme Court's Ruling Means Employers Need to Focus on Health Care Law Compliance (PDF)
"Plan sponsors should move forward to address the more immediate compliance requirements that are effective in 2012 and 2013.... The responsibility of complying with [the requirement to provide the Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) to participants] ultimately rests with the plan sponsor. Sponsors of insured plans should confirm that the insurer [or third-party administrator, for self-insured plans] is furnishing SBCs in a timely manner and take action if it is not.... [This] may be difficult for plans in which coverage for services such as prescription drugs or mental health benefits has been carved out with a specialty vendor. In those cases, the plan sponsor may need to prepare or coordinate SBCs, incorporating the necessary details." (Buck Consultants)

Trying to Shed Employees and Duck Health Care's Employer Rules? Don't Bother.
"In the wake of the Supreme Court's health care decision, several companies with 50 or more full-time workers have embarked on a quest. Their aim: Get below 50 and dodge the employer mandate." (CNNMoney.com)

Oceans Apart: The Higher Health Costs of Women in the U.S. Compared to Other Nations, and How Reform Is Helping
"An estimated 18.7 mil.lion U.S. women ages 19 to 64 were uninsured in 2010, up from 12.8 mil.lion in 2000. An additional 16.7 mil.lion women had health insur.ance but had such high out-of-pocket costs relative to their income that they were effectively underinsured in 2010. This issue brief examines the implications of poor coverage for women in the United States by comparing their experiences to those of women in 10 other industrialized nations, all of which have universal health insur.ance systems. The analysis finds that women in the United States—both with and without health insur.ance—are more likely to go without needed health care because of cost and have greater difficulty paying their medical bills than women in the 10 other countries." (The Commonwealth Fund)

Republican Attorneys General Push to Block Contraception Coverage Mandate Despite Supreme Court Ruling
"Seven states trying to block part of the federal health care law that requires contraception coverage will continue with their lawsuit despite last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld most of the law, according to Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, who is leading the case. The federal lawsuit is challenging a rule that requires contraception coverage in health care plans—including for employees of church-affiliated hospitals, schools and outreach programs. The suit argues that the rule violates the rights of employers that object to the use of contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs." (The Washington Post; free registration required)

Federal Auditors Doubt Legality of Medicare Bonuses
"Government auditors ... questioned the legality of a costly Medicare bonus program, escalating a running skirmish in the broader battle over President Barack Obama's health care law and its consequences for seniors. In a letter to the administration, Government Accountability Office General Counsel Lynn Gibson wrote that the nonpartisan agency remains concerned about Medicare's legal authority to undertake the $8.3 bil.lion Medicare Advantage quality bonus program. Launched well after the overhaul passed, the bonus program effectively restored some of the cuts that the legislation made to popular private insur.ance plans within the giant health care program for seniors and disabled people." (AP via Yahoo News)

Small Companies May Not Be Only Employers Seeking to Shed Group Health Plans
"Large employers plan to continue offering health benefits after the health-insur.ance exchanges provided for under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) begin operating—whether that's in 2014, as the law currently requires, or later, as seems more likely. At least, that's what those employers are saying now." (CFO)

[Opinion]

A Better Health Insur.ance System Would Improve Individual Insur.ance Policies, Eliminate Employer-Sponsored Group Coverage
"American families need better options for health insur.ance. A health insur.ance system needs to be accessible, portable and inexpensive, just like other forms of insur.ance. In contrast, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandates a one-size-fits all, overly-generous plan that, combined with the requirement that people can sign up anytime, will prove to be very expensive ... The economy provides a wide range of insur.ance products ... which Americans choose to buy without mandates. The health care insur.ance industry can produce the same options if government can be an enabler rather than a provider.... [A] fully functional, market-based approach to health insur.ance....entails individuals purchasing their own plans and cutting employers-as-middlemen out of the picture." (National Center for Policy Analysis)

[Opinion]

Less Bark, More Wag—It's Time to Fix Health Care
"The legal distinctions among a mandate, a tax, a penalty, or a credit, and between federal and state powers, are important legally and constitutionally. But they are irrelevant in economic terms for this law.... Let's stop playing lawyer and get back to economics and policy. Opponents: Return to articulating the disastrous economic and health-care effects of this law. And articulate better ways to solve the mess. Supporters: Try to make this Rube Goldberg contraption work. Good luck." (Bloomberg)

[Opinion]

Seeking to Preserve Obamacare, Chief Justice Roberts Eviscerated It
"Conservative lawyers consoled themselves in defeat by focusing on the silver linings in Roberts' legal rationale, but there is no such consolation from the conservative policy perspective. And while liberals were initially elated that the court had left the law standing, they, too, are anguished. The central goal of the law was to increase access to health insur.ance toward their holy grail of universal coverage, but Roberts destroyed that by making enrollment in private health insur.ance and the Medicaid expansion optional." (Galen Institute)

[Opinion]

Text of Comments by Buck Consultants to Actuarial Standards Board on Proposed Revision of ASOP No. 6, 'Measuring Group Benefit Obligations and Determining Retiree Group Benefits Plan Costs or Contributions' (PDF)
"[I]f the commitment of employers who do not have material experience to affect the pool is only to provide what is effectively deep discounted merchandise, why should we as a profession require them to ignore that discount? If these employers can no longer reflect the community rated premiums in their obligations, the measurement of those obligations will increase significantly, while the underlying cost remains as it had been previous to the change in the ASOP. That could cause some employers to reduce or eliminate the retiree medical benefits that they currently provide. Other employers could be harmed by the unexpected huge increase in their liabilities, which could potentially cause other financial difficulties (for example, reduction in bond ratings or breach of loan covenants)." (Buck Consultants)

[Official Guidance]

Listing Standards for Compensation Committees and Disclosure Regarding Compensation Consultant Conflicts of Interest: A Small Entity Compliance Guide
"Under the new rule, the exchanges will be directed to prohibit the listing of an equity security of certain issuers that are not in compliance with Section 10C's compensation committee and compensation adviser requirements. Smaller reporting companies are exempted from these requirements.... Small entities that have equity securities listed on an exchange and that are not smaller reporting companies would generally need to comply with any new standards adopted by the exchange pursuant to Rule 10C-1 if they wish to maintain their listing on the exchange." (Securities and Exchange Commission)

[Guidance Overview]

Higher Income Workers Face Extra Medicare Tax Next Year
"On June 11, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued the first set of guidance, in the form of 20 FAQs posted on its website, regarding the additional Medicare Tax that is effective beginning January 1, 2013 under new Code section 3101(b). This informal guidance is designed to facilitate system changes and payroll compliance, and provides some limited relief with regard to the withholding requirements. The [linked article] provides a brief summary of the tax, and the responsibilities imposed on employers and employees to comply with the new provisions. [The authors] note that, in 2013, higher income taxpayers may also face the additional 3.8% tax (new Code sec. 1411) on certain 'net investment income.' Both of these new taxes were created under the 2010 health care reform law." (Groom Law Group)

Dewey Partners Mull Settlement with Bankrup.tcy Estate
"Former Dewey & LeBoeuf partners, stung by demands that they repay as much as $103.6 mil.lion to compensate the bankrupt firm's creditors, said Thursday they are considering whether to pay the hefty sums.... The terms of the clawback plan were laid out during a meeting in New York on Wednesday. They called for 709 former partners to give back a portion of the $455 mil.lion the firm distributed to partners since 2011.... At least five of the former partners said that the compensation figures listed in the emails conflicted with what they believed they were actually paid in those years. Two former partners said the changes could materially affect their decisions to pay up and settle." (Reuters)

Cypen & Cypen Newsletter for July 12, 2012
Covers employee benefit developments with an emphasis on governmental plans. Topics in this issue include: Funded Status of U.S. Pensions Rebounds; Pension Interest Rate Stabilization; PBGC Premiums; Phased Retirement Authority; Why Chief Justice Roberts Dared Not Invalidate Obamacare; Enforcement of Ordinance Blocking Pension Fund From Suing City Blocked; Pension Legislation Is Win-win for U.S.; Large Public Employee Retirement Systems Show Record Earnings; Goldman's First Take on Pension Highlights, Challenges and Changes for 2012; SEC Commissioner Addresses Public Pension Attorneys; Wisconsin Retirement System Ain't Broke (So Don't Try To Fix It); Geographic Differences and Trends in Employment-based Retirement Plan Participation. (Cypen & Cypen)

A Call for Papers
(University of Michigan, Stephen M. Ross School of Business)