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[Guidance Overview]
Affordable Care Act Guidance on Temporary Reinsurance Program Fees
"The final rule implementing the three risk-spreading mechanisms that was published earlier this year by the Department of Health and Human Services ... is likely to result in additional costs to plan sponsors for health benefits, and potentially additional administrative obligations. Further HHS guidance will be issued this fall regarding the exact assessments payable by insurers and TPAs."
(The Segal Company)
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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!
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Hackers Steal, Encrypt Health Records and Hold Data for Ransom
"The Surgeons of Lake County, located in the affluent northern Illinois suburb of Libertyville, revealed last month that hackers had burrowed deeply into its computer network, infiltrating a server where e-mails and electronic medical records were stored. But unlike many other data breaches, the hackers made no attempt to keep their presence a secret. In fact, they all but fired a flare to announce the break-in, taking the extreme step of encrypting their illicit haul and posting a digital ransom note demanding payment for the password. The doctors turned the server off and notified the authorities, refusing to pay."
(Bloomberg Tech Blog)
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Tackling Rising Health Care Costs in Massachusetts
"Despite rising numbers of uninsured individuals nationally, the number of uninsured residents in Massachusetts dropped from 10.9 percent in 2006 to 6.3 percent in 2010.... On August 6, 2012, Massachusetts passed a new law designed to contain health care costs.... Massachusetts has several distinct advantages that could facilitate cost savings,... [including] a high rate of insur.ance coverage, which alleviates the burden of uncompensated care, and a statewide all-payer claims database, which enables state officials to monitor and report on variations in payments and volume of services."
(The Commonwealth Fund)
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Small Employers More Likely to Change for Health Reform
"Five statistical studies (microsimulations), 19 employer surveys and three mixed studies were included by GAO in its new overview of predictions about how employer plans will react to health reform. The research was unanimous in saying that reform will: (1) have a more dramatic effect on small employers; and (2) prompt employers that continue providing coverage to adopt more expensive benefit designs, according to the GAO overview."
(Thompson SmartHR Manager)
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Managing Employee Numbers: Planning for the Application of the 'Employer Penalty'
"Beginning in 2014, 'applicable large employers' will be subject to a penalty if one or more of their full-time employees obtain a premium credit through a health insur.ance exchange. Because the employee counts for purposes of determining in an employer is an applicable large employer and calculating the penalty are based on the prior year employee numbers, employers who are planning on adjusting employment figures to maintain, or reduce, the employee count, to avoid penalties should take action in 2013."
(Troutman Sanders)
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Is Your Health FSA an 'Excepted Benefit'? If Not, It May Be Subject to PPACA
"If the benefit credit can be cashed out by the participant, then all contributions to the health FSA are considered to be salary reduction amounts and the health FSA will not fail the maximum benefit condition. However, if the credits cannot be cashed out or can only be partially cashed out, then the health FSA will fail the maximum benefit condition unless the amount of the credit that can be directed to the health FSA does not exceed $500. If the health FSA fails the maximum benefit condition, it does not qualify as an excepted benefit."
(Troutman Sanders)
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Health Care Reform Compliance Checklist for Plan Sponsors
"This [article is] a checklist that provides a summary of the principal requirements under the Act, beginning with those that first became effective in 2010 and continuing through those that will become effective in 2018."
(Snell & Wilmer L.L.P.)
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Health Care Costs Decelerated in June
"Data released ... by S&P Dow Jones Indices for the S&P Healthcare Economic Composite Index indicates that the average per capita cost of healthcare services covered by commercial insur.ance and Medicare programs increased by 5.78% over the 12-months ending June 2012. This is a deceleration from the +6.06% annual growth rate recorded in May 2012 and +6.11% rate in April 2012."
(Healthcare Town Hall)
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The ACA at 2-1/2 Years—What Employers Should Expect Now
"significant pieces of the reform architecture were left to the [Department of Treasury, the DOL and HHS] to frame out in regulations and new disclosure forms, and a good deal of it has yet to be determined. Furthermore, presidential politics suggest that much of the needed regulatory pieces will not be issued until after the November election. Nonetheless, even with the current structural deficits, it is still sensible for employers to take stock of the ACA after two and a half years in operation, and to consider how to navigate its likely new rules in 2014."
(Jones Day)
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Healthcare Costs at Colleges and Universities Still Increasing, Although at a Lower Rate Than in Recent Years
"For the 354 [educational] institutions completing this year's survey, the median total premium costs for the three most common healthcare plan types (PPO, HMO and POS) increased 6% for employee-only coverage and 6.7% for employee + family coverage; comparable increases last year were 7.3% for both types of coverage. Median annual plan premiums increased to $6,396 for employee-only coverage and to $16,840 for employee + family coverage. The percentage increases in costs are less this year than in the preceding two years."
(College and University Professional Association for Human Resources)
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[Opinion]
A Nonpartisan View of the Uncivil Wars Over Health Care Law and How They Have Affected the Three Branches of Our Government, Particularly the Self-Inflicted Wounds of the Supreme Court
"These battles have engendered great animosity among the participants, that have damaged the institutions in ways that have, at the least, greatly damaged their prestige and authority to perform their responsibilities, but—more seriously—have diminished their ability to carry out their Constitutional duties to govern, to legislate, and to adjudicate.... The price to be paid by the country at large for all this cannot be ignored. Serious efforts must be made to capture the key benefits of the present ACA while tempering its frightful excesses and budget-busting costs for government, business and individuals. This must be bipartisan solution, or the jockeying between the parties will continue indefinitely."
(Alvin D. Lurie, Esq. via BenefitsLink.com)
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[Opinion]
Louisiana Breaks New Ground in Controlling Health Care Costs
"[A]utomatic enrollment in health coverage programs yielded significant administrative savings for the state of Louisiana, as well as improved access to care for eligible residents.... The number of uninsured children in the state fell from more than 58,000 to just over 42,000. The proportion of uninsured, Medicaid-eligible children declined from 5.3 percent to 2.9 percent. For each dollar spent developing necessary infrastructure, $15-$22 in administrative cost savings resulted."
(Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
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[Opinion]
State Policy Decisions in Exchange Implementation
"While there are a number of functions and standards that are required for a state to obtain HHS approval of its exchange plan, there are certain areas in which a state has significant flexibility to customize its exchange to best meet the needs of its residents."
(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
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[Opinion]
Comments on Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Medicare Secondary Payer and 'Future Medicals'
"[The] Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) [is] taking thoughtful and deliberative steps to incorporate public comment on improving the process by which beneficiaries can ensure that the interests of Medicare are satisfied in the course of a settlement proceeding. However, we ask that any final rule regarding the Medicare Secondary Payer process and future medicals clarify that all requirements of the final rule apply solely to Medicare beneficiaries. This final rule should not alter, amend, or expand the current liability standards of settling insurers and self-insured companies[.]"
(U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 15 other Employer Organizations)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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Bill Clinton Tried to Limit Executive Pay. Here's Why It Didn't Work
"[T]he big flaw in 162(m) was its broad exemption of 'performance-based' pay. The $1 mil.lion cap only applied to traditional salaries, bonuses and grants of company stock. Stock options (that is, stock grants that take time to vest and are meant to provide a performance incentive to workers) and other performance incentives are considered performance-based pay and are deductible even in excess of $1 mil.lion. So, unsurprisingly, businesses starting paying executives more in the form of stock options, such that fully 55 percent of deductible executive pay was 'performance pay' between 2007 and 2010."
(The Washington Post; free registration required)
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Czech Upper House Upsets Government With Tax, Pension Vetoes
"The upper house of Czech parliament vetoed bills on tax hikes and pension reform on Thursday, posing a threat to the centre-right cabinet's objectives to cut the deficit next year and boost savings for retirement.... The tax bill would ... cancel caps on health insur.ance paid by employees ... The pension reform bill is only a technical measure allowing the government to push ahead with a plan to allow Czechs to send part of their social insur.ance payments into private retirement funds instead of to the government which redistributes the money immediately to current pensioners."
(The New York Times; free registration required)
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Can the Government Incentivize the Purchase of Private Long-Term Care Insur.ance?
"[T]he literature to date has little empirical evidence on whether the government has been successful in expanding the private long-term care insur.ance market.... [S]tate adoption of these programs increased the incidence of having long-term care insur.ance by 3 percent and decreased Medicaid use among respondents by 18 percent. [There is also] an increase in private long-term care insur.ance policies that provide nursing home care and a decrease in plans that provide in-home care."
(Center for Retirement Research at Boston College)
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Excess Pension Assets May Now Be Used to Purchase Life Insur.ance Benefits
"[MAP-21] allows transfers of excess pension assets to a life insur.ance account, under the same rules that apply to retiree health accounts. The life insur.ance account is used to cover current retiree liabilities based on life insur.ance premiums and must be separate from a retiree health account.... Although only one transfer of excess pension assets may be made in any tax year of the employer, a transfer from a plan to both a health benefits account and a life insur.ance account in the same tax year is treated as a single transfer."
(Bloomberg BNA)
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Access To and Use Of Paid and Unpaid Leave (PDF)
"In 2011, 90 percent of wage and salary workers had access to paid or unpaid leave at their main jobs, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Twenty-one percent of wage and salary workers took paid or unpaid leave during an average week. Workers who took leave during an average week took an average of 15.6 hours of leave. Fifty-six percent of wage and salary workers were able to adjust their work schedules or location instead of taking leave or because they did not have access to leave in 2011. Seven percent of workers made such an adjustment in an average week."
(U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
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Press Releases
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