Senior Consultant
for Segal/Sibson Consulting in NJ

Executive Director
for Taft-Hartley Benefit Funds in NY

Client Service Team Manager
for Charles Schwab in AZ

ERISA Consultant
for Retirement Plan Consulting Firm in MO

Retirement Plan Administration, Senior Manager
for Jones & Roth, PC in OR

Implementation Project Manager
for The Newport Group in FL

Regional Sales Director
for July Business Services in IL

401(k) Administrator/ Consultant
for Southfield based TPA Company in MI

Daily Recordkeeping Manager
for A TPA Firm in Arlington, TX in TX

Retirement Plan Administrator
for Third Party Administrator in Southern New Jersey in NJ

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NAGDCA - 403(b) Pre-Conference Workshop
in California on September 30, 2012 presented by NAGDCA (National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators, Inc.)

NAGDCA Annual Conference
in California on September 29, 2012 presented by NAGDCA (National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators, Inc.)

ERISA Advisory Council Public Meeting
in District of Columbia on August 28, 2012 presented by U.S. Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA)

CFDD

 

[Guidance Overview]

Q&A on the Health Flexible Spending Account Limit Decrease to $2,500 in 2013
"The limit will be indexed for cost of living adjustments (COLA) after December 31, 2013. The COLA increase will be in increments of $50 and may not increase each year based on the CPI-U index amount. As with the 401(k) deferral dollar limit COLA, the HFSA $2,500 limit COLA will require a periodic change to employee communications and payroll systems to reflect the new increased dollar limit, if employers wish to increase the dollar limit with the COLA." (TRI-AD)

Understanding the Impact of Health Care Reform on Employers   [Advert.]

This seminar will give you the information you need to move forward in addressing the issues, and insight into upcoming changes. Learn about the latest developments including what is currently being enforced. Discounted pricing for BenefitsLink readers.

Health Care Reform: More Than One-Fourth of Americans Expect to Pay the Mandate Tax
"Twenty-six percent of Americans expect to pay the individual mandate tax associated with health care reform, according to a national poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation conducted in late July ... Yet under the new law an estimated 2 percent of Americans will likely wind up paying the 'individual mandate,' a penalty levied upon those who don't carry any insur.ance ... Wording may be part of the issue. When the same poll asked if they expect to pay a health reform 'fine,' only 12 percent of respondents answered in the affirmative." (The Huffington Post)

Republicans Grill IRS Chief on Health Care Subsidy Ruling As Commissioner Defends His Agency
"House Republicans on Thursday grilled the head of the Internal Revenue Service on the agency's decision to apply the health care law's tax credits in states that decide not to carry out a key provision of the statute. Commissioner Douglas Shulman defended the IRS rule that applies the tax credits to federal insur.ance exchanges, which are the bodies that will be developed to allow those without health insur.ance to buy it. He testified at a House hearing.... The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation have interpreted the law in the same way as the IRS." (The Washington Post; free registration required)

Some Health Insur.ance Premiums Will Rise Under ACA
"The federal health care overhaul will cause insur.ance premiums to rise, in some cases substantially, for Oregonians who buy their own insur.ance or get their coverage from a small employer ... [P]remium changes will vary widely from person-to-person or family-to-family once the law takes effect in 2014.... [I]ndividuals who buy their own coverage will pay 38 percent more on average. Premiums for people who get coverage from an employer with 50 or fewer workers will rise by 4 percent on average ... About 175,000 people get coverage in the individual market and 210,000 from the small group market in Oregon, according to state data." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Executive Forum on Creating A Culture of Health - October 8-9, Chicago   [Advert.]

Shifting organizational norms and behaviors to embody a true Culture of Health results in an exponential rise in employee health, engagement and performance. Gain perspectives to restructure resources and chart next steps in transforming your workforce.

Small Group Health Insur.ance Enrollment Declines
"While small group enrollment declined more than one percent, the total number of small employer insured groups, as reported by health plans, declined eighteen percent (18%), from 2.03 mil.lion small groups in 2010 to 1.67 mil.lion small groups in 2011.... Historically, a primary budget concern for small business owners has been the price of health insur.ance. The perception that small business owners paid significantly higher premiums than larger employer groups appears unfounded, according to the analysis. Based on 2010 and 2011 data, small group adjusted premiums per member per month were $4.17 and $4.86 less, respectively, than what large groups paid." (InsuranceNewsNet)

Generic Drug Savings in the U.S. 2012 (PDF)
"[G]eneric drug use has saved the U.S. health care system approximately $1.07 tril.lion over the past decade (2002 through 2011) with $192.8 bil.lion in savings achieved in 2011 alone. Considering that the government's share of health care spending will soon exceed 30 percent as the oldest baby boomers become eligible for Medicare, the money saved by using generic medicines is critical to bending the cost curve and providing sustainability to our health care system.... [W]hile overall health care costs continue to grow at a rate higher than national economic growth, the growth in drug spending is slowing (only 1.2 percent in 2010), driven by 'continued increase in the use of generic medications.'" (Generic Pharma.ceutical Association)

Remember Managed Care? It's Quietly Coming Back
"Under pressure to squeeze out costs, some of the U.S.'s biggest health insurers are quietly erecting more hurdles for patients seeking medical care. The companies are in many cases reaching back to the 1990s and boosting the use of techniques that antagonized patients and doctors alike. Today's approaches are tweaked, but may feel familiar to many: Insurers are rolling out plans with more restricted choices of doctors and hospitals, and weighing new requirements for referrals before patients can see specialists." (The Wall Street Journal)

Sixth Circuit Decision Highlights Why Your Welfare Plan Document Matters
"The employer had a practice of allowing employees on STD leave to continue coverage as if they were active employees, but this practice was not written into a plan document or the stop-loss policy. The stop-loss policy included COBRA and FMLA coverage provisions, but specified that if COBRA was not timely offered by the employer (during the period specified by law), no stop-loss coverage would be available. The [Sixth Circuit] Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's holding that no stop-loss coverage was available for expenses incurred under the former employee's COBRA coverage because she was not an eligible participant under the terms of the employer's plan or stop-loss policy (neither of which included coverage for the STD leave period). Because the STD leave period was not provided for in the plan documents, the court concluded that the COBRA coverage the employee had elected was not timely offered. And that specific exclusion for late COBRA notice provided an alternative basis for the court to uphold the denial of insur.ance coverage for her claims, regardless of whether or not she had been an eligible participant." [CLARCOR Inc. v. Madison National Life Insur.ance Co., No. 11-6177 (6th Cir. July 31, 2012)] (Littler Mendelson LLC)

Timeline of Highlights for Employer Group Health Plan Compliance with the Affordable Care Act
"Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld essentially all of the provisions of the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act ("ACA"), employers are faced with looming deadlines to bring their group health plans into compliance with the ACA's numerous new requirements. [At the link is] a timeline of the highlights of the upcoming deadlines for compliance with the ACA that apply to non-grandfathered group health plans." (Epstein Becker & Green, P.C.)

[Opinion]

New Estimates of Gaps and Transitions in Health Insur.ance
"Large numbers of Americans experience gaps in their health care coverage. Eighty-nine mil.lion people—36 percent of Americans ages 4 to 64—were uninsured for at least one month between 2004 and 2007, including 23 mil.lion Americans who lost coverage more than once. To minimize disruptions in people's care and exposure to high costs, policymakers should consider steps to stabilize public and private coverage as they implement health reform." (The Commonwealth Fund)

More Disclosure Requirements Coming for Executive Compensation
"In a move that further weakens executives' influence over the setting of their compensation, public companies will soon face new requirements that they disclose any conflicts of interest involving their compensation consultants in their proxy statements.... Robin Ferracone, CEO of the executive compensation consultancy Farient Advisors, says the new standards are no surprise. 'The SEC didn't depart much from what the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act called for so my sense is that most of this has already been taken into account by public company boards.'" (Treasury & Risk)

Montana Court Says Obesity Is a Disability Per Se
"[The Montana] supreme court decided that obesity can be a qualifying disability, even without an underlying physiological cause—a departure from most federal appellate courts' interpretations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.... [T]he court turned to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's ADA compliance manual for guidance. While the commission notes that being overweight, in and of itself, is generally not an impairment, 'severe obesity, which has been defined as body weight more than 100 percent over the norm . . . is clearly an impairment.' If an individual's weight meets that threshold, 'there is no explicit requirement that the obesity be based on a physiological impairment,' the court explained." [BNSF Railway Co. v. Feit (Mont. July 6, 2012)] (Thompson SmartHR Manager)

Executives on Maternity Leave May Have Fewer Protections
"Because of the potential hardship on companies whose top-level executives are absent for several weeks, Congress adopted a 'key employee' exception to FMLA that permits an employer to deny top dogs their old jobs back if restoration would cause 'substantial and grievous economic injury' to the company. The average employee, on the other hand (that is, the eligible employee), is entitled to 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave for the birth of a child.... [However,] California workers who contribute to the State Disability Insur.ance fund are entitled to six weeks of partial pay each year while taking time off from work to: (1) bond with a newborn baby, adopted or foster child; and (2) care for a seriously ill parent, child, spouse or registered domestic partner." (Thompson SmartHR Manager)

Cedar Brook Financial Partners Welcomes Compliance Specialist David Anderson
(Cedar Brook Financial Partners)

Unified Trust Announces New Territory For Institutional Consultant
(Unified Trust Company, NA)

PenChecks Taps Ray Zittlow as Midwest Regional Sales Director
(PenChecks, Inc.)