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Chicago area TPA firm
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Hub International Limited
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Pinnacle Financial Services, Inc.
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American Trust & Savings Bank
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The Segal Group
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Cadillac Tax: How to Reduce Your Exposure Now and Save Money Later
December 8, 2015 WEBCAST
(Employee Benefit News)

Underbelly of Benefits Administration and Technology: Five Questions That Make You Go "Hmmmmmm"
December 10, 2015 WEBCAST
(Business Insurance)

What You Need to Know as an Internal ESOP Fiduciary
June 28, 2016 WEBCAST
(National Center for Employee Ownership [NCEO])

S Corporation ESOPs - Administrative Issues
August 2, 2016 WEBCAST
(National Center for Employee Ownership [NCEO])

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[Guidance Overview]

CMS Issues Reminder of Monday Deadline for Transitional Reinsurance Program Payments (PDF)
"If you chose the two-part payment option, ensure that the second collection of the 2014 Benefit Year Transitional Reinsurance Program contribution is scheduled for ACH withdrawal on or before 11/16/2015.... The deadline for Contributing Entities to submit the annual enrollment count and schedule payment for the 2015 Benefit Year Transitional Reinsurance Program contributions ... is no later than 11:59 p.m. ET on 11/16/2015." (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [CMS], U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS])  

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[Guidance Overview]

Why Employees Should Plan Now to Use Health Flexible Spending Arrangements in 2016
"FSAs provide employees a way to use tax-free dollars to pay medical expenses not covered by other health plans. Because eligible employees need to decide how much to contribute through payroll deductions before the plan year begins, many employers this fall are offering their employees the option to participate during the 2016 plan year. Interested employees wishing to contribute during the new year must make this choice again for 2016, even if they contributed in 2015. Self-employed individuals are not eligible." (Internal Revenue Service [IRS])  

[Guidance Overview]

IRS Health Care Tax Tip 2015-74: Insurance Providers and Employers -- Understanding Electronic Filing Requirements for ACA Information Returns
"ACA Forms 1094-B, 1095-B, 1094-C and 1095-C are classified as information returns under the Internal Revenue Code, which provides that any person, including a corporation, partnership, individual, estate, or trust, who is required to file 250 or more information returns must file such returns electronically. The 250 or more information return requirement applies separately for each type of return and separately to each type of corrected return." (Internal Revenue Service [IRS])  

[Guidance Overview]

ACA Reporting for Union Employees
"First, it is important to understand that union employees are included in the calculation of the total number of full-time equivalent employees (FTEEs) for ALEs and Aggregate ALE Groups. Therefore, an employer with ten non-union full-time employees and forty union full-time employees would have a total of fifty FTEEs and qualify as an ALE subject to the reporting requirements under the ACA. It is ultimately the employer's responsibility to file Forms 1094-C and 1095-C, even when an employee participates in a multiemployer plan, such as a union plan. However, an employer may work with and seek assistance from the union in order to compile the necessary information and complete the forms." (Schneider Downs)  

[Guidance Overview]

EEOC Proposed GINA Rule on Wellness Program Incentives Brings Progress But Also Perpetuates Errors
"[T]he EEOC continues to assert that it has the authority to define what a 'reasonably designed' wellness program is.... Introducing a 'similar' definition means that the EEOC intends to adopt a different standard than the one previously adopted by Congress in the ACA or the Departments of Labor, Treasury and HHS in the Tri-Agency Regulations. Moreover, by importing the 'reasonable design' requirement from 'health-contingent wellness program,' the GINA Proposed Rule (again as in the ADA Proposed Rule) imputes the burdens previously associated only with health-contingent wellness programs to all wellness programs, which exceeds what is required under the ACA and the Tri-Agency Regulations." (Seyfarth Shaw LLP)  

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Employer Survey: 2015 Best Practices in Health Care
"Last year, only 31% of employers said they were making changes to avoid the tax, up from just 20% the year before. This year, 83% said they are giving it at least moderate attention, with the vast majority (58%) giving it great attention.... 96% expect to increase their focus on employee well-being, and 94% expect to develop or enhance a culture where employees are responsible for their health.... Tax-advantaged account-based health plans (ABHPs), an upstart idea at the millennium, are now omnipresent across every industry. Eighty-six percent of employers plan to offer them in 2016, up from 54% five years ago." (Towers Watson)  

Seventh Circuit Rules ERISA Does Not Preempt State Law Prohibiting Discretionary Clauses
"[T]he Seventh Circuit affirmed a ... holding that Illinois's ... regulation ... prohibiting discretionary clauses in insured employee benefits plans offered or issued in Illinois, was outside the scope of the preemption power of [ERISA].... The court rejected MetLife's 'hyper-technical' argument that 'the discretionary clause in this case is not actually in an insurance policy but in an ERISA plan document,' as it created an 'artificial distinction.' ... The Seventh Circuit clarified that the distinction between the discretionary clause not being inserted in the group policy by MetLife but rather by agreement with the employer did not change the fact that it was a policy provision purporting to reserve discretion[.]" [Fontaine v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., No. 14-1984 (7th Cir. Sept. 4, 2015)] (Bloomberg BNA)  

Court Says Limitations Period Started When Absence Classified as Non-FMLA, Not When Fired Years Later for Too Many Absences
"An employee who was fired after accumulating 12 unauthorized absences over a period of seven years, in violation of her employer's attendance policy that was based on a system of progressive discipline, could not pursue her untimely FMLA suit, which asserted that three of the absences were protected by the FMLA. In an issue of first impression, the Seventh Circuit ruled that the FMLA's two-year statute of limitations began to run when the three contested absences were deemed unauthorized, not when she was fired years later as a consequence of her overall attendance record." [Barrett v. Ill. Dept. of Corrections, No. 13-2833 (7th Cir. Oct. 20, 2015)] (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business)  

Data Driven Decisions in Private Exchanges
"[W]ith growing recognition that employee cost-shifting may well have reached a tipping point, current employer attention has shifted to healthcare consumerism, employee empowerment and the use of incentives. Yet despite sizeable employer investments in these approaches, substantial opportunities remain to improve appropriate consumer use of existing healthcare services.... Aggregated and integrated data from a broad array of sources represents the next step toward understanding and addressing the factors that contribute to poor compliance with evidence-based care." (Buck Consultants)  

How Do You Measure the Health of Health Care Markets?
"One of the challenges of reporting the results was that there are no simple overarching takeaways, nor is there the 'shock and awe' effect that we have seen in the many mainstream exposes on unexplained variation in health care. The distribution of high and low prices did not fit any particular geographic pattern, and there were markets where inpatient prices were high and outpatient prices were low, and also markets where the reverse was true.... While it is possible to identify better- and worse-performing markets from these data, it was quickly evident that there was no way to 'rank' health markets on a single scale, as performance in the different domains did not fit together neatly." (Health Affairs)  

Highly Valued Startup Zenefits Runs Into Turbulence
"Since late summer, Zenefits has frozen hiring in certain departments as sales teams have repeatedly missed targets ... It has cut the pay of some employees and dozens of people, including at least eight executives, have left or been fired ... Founded in 2013, Zenefits calls itself a software firm, but its business is primarily health-insurance brokerage -- acting as a middleman between companies and health-insurance providers. Zenefits gives away its human-resources software -- which helps manage benefits and other tasks -- to small businesses so that it can sign up their employees for health benefits, collecting about $450 in commissions for each 'insured life,' including employees and their dependents." (The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)  

An In-Depth Look at Montanile v. Board of Trustees
"[T]he Department of Labor, which is supporting the participant's argument that the plan cannot recover under ERISA, has made a few suggestions that plan sponsors and fiduciaries should heed: Subrogate.... Investigate.... Monitor.... Expedite." [Bd. of Trustees of the National Elevator Industry Health Benefit Plan v. Montanile, No. 14-11678 (11th Cir. Nov. 25, 2014; oral arg. Nov. 9, 2015)] (Mayer Brown, via Employee Benefit News)  

Is a Severance Policy More Like an ERISA Plan, a Writing Desk, or a Raven?
"[If] the administration of a severance policy requires a measurable amount of discretion, you can bank on it being treated as an ERISA plan.... Having a severance policy governed by ERISA is not a crisis, but an opportunity. Instead of waiting for a court to apply those factors and decide for you, why not just go ahead and make sure that your severance policy is an ERISA plan? Yes, it's true that ERISA requires administrative hurdles, but these are relatively straight-forward ... These administrative requirements are outweighed by ERISA's advantages." (DLA Piper LLP via Lexology)  

[Opinion]

Your HR/Benefits/Payroll is Leaking -- and Your Broker May be Causing Some of the Leaks
"Think about the number of vendors an employer may have in the HR/Benefits/Payroll areas.... Technology Solutions ... Advisors ... Service Providers ... Now we are seeing all kinds of additional products entering the market including financial wellness programs, employee discount programs, employee gifting programs, college planning services and many more types of companies hoping employers will offer their services to the employees. Many of the programs, when rolled out, fail, because the employers are already overwhelmed and for the employee there is information overload." (Joe Markland)  

Tom Wildsmith Becomes President of the American Academy of Actuaries
American Academy of Actuaries

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