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Employee Benefits Jobs
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Webcasts and Conferences
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[Guidance Overview]
Two November Deadlines for Self-Insured Health Plans
"[1] If your company sponsors a self-insured health plan, you are supposed to apply for a Health Plan I.D. (HPID) on [the CMS website] by November 5, 2014. Small plans (with less than $5 million in annual claims) have an extra year (until November 5, 2015) to apply.... [2] If your company sponsors a self-insured major medical plan, you must register on www.Pay.gov and submit a form and enrollment count by November 15, 2014, for the reinsurance fee. During the registration, you must schedule a payment date (on or before January 15, 2015) to pay all or part of the reinsurance fee."
(Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP)
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[Guidance Overview]
Can a Plan That Fails to Cover Inpatient Hospitalization Services Provide Minimum Value?
"Whether these plans were 'intended,' or whether they are consistent with Obamacare, is irrelevant. Under currently applicable laws and regulations, these plans appear to work as advertised. Moreover, no employer is required to do anything more than the law requires; and any employer that does risks putting itself at a competitive disadvantage relative to those that do not. The regulators are free to change the rules. Despite a high likelihood that they are aware of these plans, however, they have not yet seen fit to act."
(Mintz Levin via Lexology)
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[Guidance Overview]
What Employer Shared Responsibility Does Not Say
"The key thing to remember as one looks at the complexity in the [employer shared responsibility] determination of full-time employee status, is that while the complexity is necessary to determine full-time employee status to know whether the 'A' Tax applies, not every slip up in calculating if an individual is a full-time employee will necessarily result in a penalty under the 'B' Tax or in failure to satisfy the safe harbor to avoid the 'A' Tax. With that quick review of the big picture, consider what the regulations do not say... and what that means for an employer."
(Winstead PC)
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[Guidance Overview]
California Employers May Get Ill Over California's New Mandatory Paid Sick Leave Law
"An employee who, on or after July 1, 2015, works in California for 30 or more days within a year from the commencement of employment is entitled to paid sick days. An employee accrues paid sick days at the rate of one hour per every 30 hours worked. Exempt employees accrue sick days based on the lesser of their normal work schedule or a 40-hour workweek. An employee can use accrued paid sick days after being employed for 90 days, after which day the employee may use paid sick days as they are accrued."
(Mintz Levin)
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[Guidance Overview]
Social Security Numbers for ACA Compliance: The Search Is On
"What is a reasonable effort to obtain a Social Security number? [1] Reporting entity requests Social Security number at the time the relationship with the covered individual is established. The request may be made orally, in writing (including on an employment application) or by e-mail. [2] If the number has not been provided, the reporting entity must request it again by December 31 of the first year of coverage. [3] If the number still has not been provided, the reporting entity must make another annual request by December 31 of the following year. [4] If the reporting entity followed these steps, it has acted in a responsible manner and does not need to try again. The covered person's date of birth may be used instead."
(International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans [IFEBP])
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[Guidance Overview]
How the ACA Affects U.S. Territorial Employees (PDF)
"Employers should be pleased by the greater flexibility they have in designing benefit programs for their territorial employees. Although their plans may have to meet ACA benefit mandates, employers generally will not be adversely impacted if they fail to offer affordable, minimum value health coverage to these employees. In addition, because it is unlikely that a territorial employee would ever be considered full-time for purposes of the shared responsibility provisions, the tracking and reporting obligations of these employees should be minimal."
(Buck Consultants at Xerox)
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What Can Employers Do to Reduce the Cost of Obamacare?
"Surprisingly, firms that are large enough to self-insure can satisfy the mandate without covering hospitalization! They can also avoid paying for mental health care and even emergency rooms visits. Yet insurance for small firms and individuals does have to cover these things."
(John Goodman, in Forbes)
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Daddy Dearest? Some Considerations Concerning Paid Parental Leave for Fathers in the United States
"[M]erely 10-15% of U.S. employers provide paid parental leave for fathers, despite the fact that many new dads would welcome this benefit. A few U.S. states, like California, offer some paid parental leave for fathers, but these states remain the outliers in the union.... Many European countries offer paid parental leave for fathers and more and more European fathers are taking advantage of these benefits. Sweden, for example, offers up to 40 weeks paid leave and according to the Economist, close to 90% of Swedish men take paternity leave."
(Mintz Levin)
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Can an Employer Terminate an Employee for Working a Second Job While on FMLA Leave?
"If you want to prohibit an employee from working a second job and tighten up your FMLA compliance, it is critical that you maintain a uniformly-applied no-moonlighting policy that prohibits work while on FMLA leave and any other form of leave. Additionally, the policy should be distributed and available to all employees, and they should be reminded of it when leave begins.... [If] you learn that an employee is working another job while on FMLA leave, you should: [1] Confirm these facts and inform the employee that you are aware of the second job; [2] Confirm the employee' s acknowledgment and agreement that your policies prohibit moonlighting; [3] Determine the duties of the other job and compare to his regular job; [4] Compare the job duties with any medical restrictions as outlined on the medical certification form."
(FMLA Insights)
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Are Americans Finding Affordable Coverage in the Health Insurance Marketplaces?
"Adults with low or moderate incomes were more likely to say it was easy to find an affordable plan than were adults with higher incomes. Adults with low or moderate incomes who purchased a plan through the marketplaces this year have similar premium costs and deductibles as adults in the same income ranges with employer-provided coverage. A majority of adults with marketplace coverage gave high ratings to their insurance and were confident in their ability to afford the care they need when sick."
(The Commonwealth Fund)
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Health Care Costs Follow Health Risks and Can Be Mitigated Over Time Through Incentivized Workplace Wellness Programs
"The study was designed to evaluate the impact of UPMC's health management and wellness program, MyHealth, on the health and health care costs of its own employees ... [T]here were significant improvements in health-risk status as well as increases in the use of preventive and chronic disease management services ... The findings are particularly meaningful since healthcare workers are a prime target for improving population health and mitigating rising healthcare costs."
(UPMC Health Plan)
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Employer Wellness Programs: Mind, Body, Spirit -- and Wallet
"All health-contingent wellness programs, whether activity-only or outcome-based, must satisfy the following criteria: Frequency of Opportunity to Qualify ... Size of Reward ... Reasonable Design ... Uniform Availability and Reasonable Alternative ... Notice of Availability of Reasonable Alternative."
(von Briesen & Roper, s.c.)
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Year-to-Year Variation in Small-Group Health Insurance Premiums
"There is considerable fluctuation in small group insurance premiums year-to-year. [This] state-by-state analysis ... illustrates that since 2000, double-digit premium increases in the small group market are common.... Nationally, premiums for the average small group insurance plan increased 5.5% annually between 2000 and 2013. Thirty-four states saw average annual increases of 10% or more for employers with fewer than 10 employees [in] at least one third of the years since 2000."
(Urban Institute, for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
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Understanding Premium Changes on the ACA's Health Insurance Marketplaces
"In an effort to provide real-time information on premium increases or decreases, researchers ... are building a national database of plan offerings on the individual and Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) marketplaces in 2014 and 2015. [They] will collect data on premiums, cost-sharing (deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses), and key elements of benefit design, such as which benefits are covered and to what degree.... [E]arly estimates of premium increases should be interpreted with caution, since they're calculated before consumers make substitutions, and [the authors] expect the substitution effect to be substantial."
(The Commonwealth Fund)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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ERISA at 40: Successful Middle Age or Midlife Crisis? (PDF)
40 presentation slides. Topics: [1] A brief look at ERISA's achievements and midlife challenges; [2] Challenges to retirement plans; [3] Plan investments; [4] The future of employer stock in qualified plans post-Dudenhoeffer; [5] Multiemployer plans; [6] Effect of ERISA on health and welfare plans; [8] "Qualified" nonqualified plans -- a look at nonqualified plans in the ERISA era.
(Morgan Lewis)
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What's a Fair Sharing Rate for CEO Pay?
"Comparing an organization's sharing rate to an industry sample or peer group can be a good indicator of whether the organization is a relative bargain in terms of providing a return on a company's investment in executive compensation. To help provide some benchmarks with regard to typical sharing rates in U.S. companies, we reviewed both earned and realizable pay for a sample of 360 chief executive officers in the S&P 1500, as well as the shareholder value created by the same companies over the three-year period from 2011 to 2013."
(Towers Watson)
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Press Releases
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Additional useful links:
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David Rhett Baker, J.D., Editor and Publisher
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