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Director, Benefits (Administrator III)
University of Oklahoma - Norman
in OK

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Overview of the QHP Certification Process
February 13, 2014 WEBCAST
(Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS))

Essential Community Providers and Network Adequacy
February 20, 2014 WEBCAST
(Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS))

ERISA Litigation Update 2013/2014
February 20, 2014 in CA
(Western Pension & Benefits Council - Orange County Chapter)

403(b) Plans for 401(k) Practitioners (3 parts)
February 25, 2014 WEBCAST
(SunGard Relius)

Accreditation
February 27, 2014 WEBCAST
(Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS))

East Coast Defined Contribution Conference
March 2, 2014 in FL
(Pensions & Investments)

HSAs, HRAs, and Consumer-Driven Health Care
April 9, 2014 in GA
(Thomson Reuters / EBIA)

ERISA Compliance for Health & Welfare Plans
April 9, 2014 in GA
(Thomson Reuters / EBIA)

COBRA Compliance for Group Health Plans
May 23, 2014 in MN
(Thomson Reuters / EBIA)

View All Webcasts and Conferences

[Official Guidance]

Text of IRS Q&As on Employer Shared Responsibility Provisions Under the ACA
"Q&A 34. In order to be eligible for the relief, an employer must certify that it meets the following conditions: [1] Limited Workforce Size.... [2] Maintenance of Workforce and Aggregate Hours of Service.... [3] Maintenance of Previously Offered Health Coverage.... Q&A 39. For 2015, if an employer with at least 100 full-time employees (including full-time equivalents) offers coverage to at least 70% of its full-time employees, and, nevertheless, owes an Employer Shared Responsibility payment, how is the amount of the payment calculated? ... Q&A 40. I am a small employer with 30 employees. How do the Employer Shared Responsibility provisions affect me?" (Internal Revenue Service)  

[Advert.]

6th Annual Leadership Summit on Consumerism Through Health Plan Innovation

Insights and experiences from leaders at Medicare Advantage plans, commercial under-65 plans, providers of voluntary and specialty benefits, and plan sponsors/employers. Practical solutions, actionable tools. March 11-12, Orlando. BLINK3 for discount.

[Guidance Overview]

Text of Treasury Department 'Fact Sheet' on Final Regs Implementing Employer Shared Responsibility Under the ACA for 2015 (PDF)
"To ensure a gradual phase-in and assist the employers to whom the policy does apply, the final rules provide, for 2015, that: [1] The employer responsibility provision will generally apply to larger firms with 100 or more full-time employees starting in 2015 and employers with 50 or more full-time employees starting in 2016. [2] To avoid a payment for failing to offer health coverage, employers need to offer coverage to 70 percent of their full-time employees in 2015 and 95 percent in 2016 and beyond, helping employers that, for example, may offer coverage to employees with 35 or more hours, but not yet to that fraction of their employees who work 30 to 34 hours.... The final regulations provide clarifications -- many of which are based on comments on the proposed regulations -- regarding whether employees of certain types or in certain occupations are considered full-time[.]" (U.S. Department of the Treasury)  

[Guidance Overview]

Second Verse, (Almost) Same as the First: Feds Issue Final Play or Pay Regulations
"The final regulations provide that seasonal employees are those for which customary annual employment is six months or less. Employers utilizing a 12-month measurement period for employees meeting the 'seasonal' definition should be able to avoid play or pay mandate obligations with respect to them. The final regulations retain much of the proposed regulations' structure for determining full-time status for variable hour employees[.]" (Lockton)  

[Guidance Overview]

They're Back! Final Regs on Employer 'Pay-Or-Play' Mandate Released
"The final regulations do not provide safe harbor relief for employers hiring independent contractors. Instead, employers need to determine who their employees are based on a common law standard without regard to rules, such as 'section 530 relief' applicable in the employment tax area. The regulations also do not provide any specific relief for employers in 'high turnover' industries. Employers who hire workers through staffing agencies need to consider a new rule." (Proskauer's ERISA Practice Center)  

[Guidance Overview]

IRS Proposed Regs Address UBTI Calculations for VEBAs and SUBs
"The proposed regulations: [1] Limit the amount of exempt function income that VEBAs and SUBs can set aside in calculating UBTI. [2] Clarify and replace regulations on this issue that were proposed in 1986, which are withdrawn under the new proposed regulations. [3] Add examples reflecting IRS positions taken in the new proposed regulations." (Practical Law Company)  

Final ACA Employer Mandate Rules Issued; Regs Phase in Some Key Provisions
"The final rules apply to about 4 percent of employers in the [United States]. Employers with between 50 and 99 full-time employees and those with 100 or more employees are about equally divided into 2 percent each of the total number of U.S. employers, Treasury said in a news release issued with the rules.... The final rules particularly seek to give relief to the subset of employers just above the 50-full-time-employee threshold who need slightly more time to be able to adjust to providing employee health-care coverage, in many cases for the first time[.]" (Bloomberg BNA)  

Portion of Health Law Mandate Delayed Again
"Businesses with more than 50 employees but fewer than 100 will have an extra year to phase in health insurance coverage of employees who work more than 30 hours a week, Treasury Department officials announced Monday.... Volunteer firefighters, part-time teachers and adjunct professors who teach less than 15 hours a week will not be counted as full-time employees ... 'While about 96% of employers are not subject to the employer responsibility provision, for those employers that are, we will continue to make the compliance process simpler and easier to navigate,' said Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Mark J. Mazur." (USA TODAY)  

Summary Plan Descriptions Used as Plan Documents Pose Risk
"Despite the risks associated with noncompliance, 66 percent of respondents said they have a formal compliance strategy and 69 percent said that they have teams devoted to governance, compliance, or to both ... Nearly a third of employers said that they have neither a governance nor a compliance team ... About half of the companies with a combined compliance and governance function or with one function or the other used their summary plan descriptions as plan documents[.]" (Bloomberg BNA)  

CBO Answers Frequently Asked Questions About Its Estimates of the Labor Market Effects of the ACA
"Q: Will 2.5 million people lose their jobs in 2024 because of the ACA? A: No, we would not describe our estimates in that way.... The reason for the reduction in the supply of labor is that the provisions of the ACA reduce the incentive to work for certain subsets of the population.... Q: Why did CBO revise its estimates of the labor market effects of the ACA? ... When we decided to focus on the labor market more intensively for this year's projections, we undertook a more comprehensive analysis of the labor market effects of the ACA.... Q: Are you sure that CBO's current estimates of the labor market effects of the ACA are accurate? A: No, we are not sure that our current estimates are accurate, because our estimates are always uncertain." (Congressional Budget Office)  

Senators Ask IRS to Clarify Enforcement of Individual Mandate
"Please describe the methods the IRS intends to use to enforce payment of the tax.... [D]oes the IRS anticipate taking the tax from a person's refund would be an effective method for ensuring compliance with the individual mandate tax? ... Will individuals who completed all the steps to purchase health insurance, but were not enrolled due to a website error be required to pay the tax? ... How does the IRS intend to verify the coverage gap did not exceed the three-month threshold?" (Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, U.S. Senate)  

Text of New Hobby Lobby Supreme Court Brief: 'Contraceptive Mandate is One of the Most Straight-Forward Violations of RFRA This Court Is Likely to See' (PDF)
"Understandably eager to avoid the merits, the government directs considerable effort to driving an artificial wedge between the corporate Respondent s and their owners. But that distinction is illusory; both the corporations and their owners are entitled to relief under RFRA. Corporations frequently engage in religious exercise, as even the government concedes in the case of non-profits, and no constitutional right turns on a corporation's tax status. Ultimately, whether it is the individuals, the corporations, or both who are exercising religion, the government cannot simply wish away the reality that its policies substantially burden Respondents' religious exercise in a wholly unjustified manner." (The Becket Fund)  

In 2020, Workers Will Decide Health Benefits Using Private Health Exchanges
"Right now ... national marketplace penetration for private exchanges is about 3 percent ... Large companies with more than 250 employees have been particularly cautious.... The impetus to move to an exchange, at least among larger employers, won't come from claims savings but rather the opportunity to offer a wider array of health plans to employees and to offload some of the benefits administration now handled by human resources departments." (InsuranceNewsNet.com)  

Forget Obamacare for a Minute. Here's Some Good News About Health Policy
"In 2013 the rate of medical inflation was 2 percent, down from 3.2 percent in 2012. [BLS] reports that the 2013 increase was the smallest since 1949.... CBO estimates that if the cost of healthcare grows at an annual rate just 0.5 percent below the rate it is now assuming, federal debt in 2038 will be 94 percent of GDP -- 14 percentage points below the 108 percent of GDP estimate in its baseline projection." (Tax Analysts)  

CBO Says Premium Support Works
"The CBO finds that, in a new competitive system of health plans, private plans can offer the same benefit and services as traditional Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) plans -- at a lower cost to taxpayers. Moreover, depending on the competitive bids among plans and the payment structure, the report also reveals that competition can drive lower beneficiaries' premiums and out-of-pocket expenses would decline." (John Goodman's Health Policy Blog)  

COBRA: Ready for the Antiques Road Show?
"There are ways to comply with COBRA that can yield a return on your time and energy -- and shift the landscape at the same time.... Start using the new updated COBRA notice.... Update your COBRA enrollment materials. Add language about the health insurance exchanges." (Human Resource Executive Online)  

[Opinion]

Kline, Roe Statements on Latest Unilateral Obamacare Delay
"'Another unilateral delay of the employer mandate further proves the president's health care law is a threat to our nation's workplaces,' said Chairman Kline.... Rep. Roe [said,] 'The president still refuses to give the same protections to families as he's giving to big business, but he's also refusing employers the certainty they need to get back to doing what they do best: running their businesses.'" (Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives)  

[Opinion]

Did AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Violate HIPAA?
"What remains debatable then is if a 'distressed baby' qualifies as 'personal health information' (PHI) in the case of two AOL beneficiaries. It probably isn't a violation, but at least some of that legal nuance may depend on whether Mr. Armstrong knew the identities of both beneficiaries (prior to Ms. Fei's public disclosure). It's certainly conceivable he did [.]" (Forbes)  

[Opinion]

White House Holding 45 Million Hours of ACA Paperwork Including the Individual Mandate
"Currently, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the White House is reviewing an avalanche of new [ACA rules] ... In total, these 28 paperwork burdens total more than 45.7 million burden hours.... Although, the Treasury Department imposes roughly twelve times the amount of paperwork of HHS, current reviews at OIRA contain twice as many health care requirements. With more than 4,100 federal health care forms and growing, it's clear the ACA is placing incredible strains on the regulatory system." (American Action Forum)  

[Opinion]

The Real Health Reform Debate Starts Here
"Given declining trends in labor force participation, any policy that decreases labor supply should cause some concern. That being said, this is not something that is unique to the ACA. It is difficult to imagine how we can sever the link between employment and insurance through any type of insurance reform without providing tax-subsidized coverage through exchanges and thereby reducing labor supply." (The Health Care Blog)  

[Opinion]

Text of American Benefits Council Letter Asking CMS to Keep Medicare Advantage Rates Flat in 2015 (PDF)
In 2014, Medicare Advantage rates were reduced by 6.7 percent. We understand that additional significant rate cuts are under consideration for 2015. We are concerned that further rate reductions could detrimentally affect retirees in the form of higher out-of-pocket costs, less coverage and fewer provider options for retirees. To avoid this result, we respectfully request that rates remain flat for 2015." (America's Health Insurance Plans [AHIP])  

[Guidance Overview]

Do You Need Shareholder Approval for Your Incentive Plan in 2014?
"If the corporation's equity or annual incentive plan was last approved by shareholders in 2009, the plan(s) must be submitted to the shareholders for re-approval in 2014 in order to ensure that future awards qualify as performance-based compensation under Section 162(m).... Corporations should carefully review their proxy disclosures to ensure that they do not suggest or imply that the corporation's plan and awards will qualify as performance-based compensation under Section 162(m).... [C]orporations should establish and/or update grant procedures to ensure that awards are made in compliance with the plan's terms and that award limits are properly monitored." (Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC)  

Understanding the ISS Pay-for-Performance Assessment (PDF)
"ISS conducts a three part quantitative evaluation and a qualitative assessment of the alignment between CEO pay and company performance. Understanding how the ISS tests work and anticipating the results allows companies to be proactive in: [1] Drafting disclosure to make a compelling case for their pay for performance story and to facilitate a favourable qualitative review by ISS. [2] Engaging with shareholders to counter a potential negative ISS vote recommendation." (Meridian Compensation Partners, LLC)  

New Name, New Focus for Former CPI Qualified Plan Consultants
CUNA Mutual Group

Security Benefit Debuts New Crediting Option for Leading Fixed Indexed Annuity
Security Benefit

P&I Announces First-ever Global Conference: World Leaders In Retirement Industry To Explore Challenges And Opportunities
Pensions & Investments

MassMutual Retirement Services Unveils 2014 RetireSmart Seminar Series
MassMutual Retirement Services

WageWorks and Summit Health Partner for Wellness
WageWorks Inc.

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