Retirement Planning Consultant R20010479
Transamerica Life Insurance Company
in CA

Senior Benefits Attorney
The Air Line Pilots Association, International
in VA

Employee Benefits Associate
Wiggin and Dana LLP
in CT

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[Official Guidance]

Text of IRS Publication 5258: ACA Information Returns (AIR) Submission Composition and Reference Guide (PDF)
131 pages; March 15, 2018. "The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to all types of external transmitters about composing and successfully transmitting compliant submissions to IRS."
Internal Revenue Service [IRS]

[Advert.]

Develop skills, knowledge and expertise with ECFC's certification program

Flexible compensation is constantly evolving as new regulations, laws, and interpretations affect the discipline. Become a leader and take the steps to become certified as a Flexible Compensation Specialist.

[Guidance Overview]

IRS: Male Sterilization and Contraceptives Are Not an HSA Preventive Care Service
"[E]mployees who enrolled in HDHPs that are required to cover these services would not be eligible to contribute to an HSA. Doing so would make them subject to excess contribution penalties.... The mere fact that the plan covers these items and services is enough."
HUB International

What Employers Need to Know About Protecting Employee Health Information
"HIPAA generally does not apply to employee health information maintained by an employer.... Even when HIPAA does not apply, employers still have other legal obligations to protect the confidentiality of employee health information in their possession."
Ogletree Deakins

Beware the Employer-Paid COBRA Continuance Bear Trap
"[It's] the end of COBRA continuation (usually 18 months) that creates the loss of coverage triggering a special enrollment period in the individual marketplaces/exchanges, not the end of employer-paid COBRA.... [I]ndividual policies only can be purchased during the annual year-end open enrollment or if a special enrollment period is triggered."
Employee Benefit News

Medicare and COBRA Enrollment
"The interaction between Medicare and COBRA can be a minefield for employers and former employees alike. This article provides a brief overview of how these two bodies of law interact and some potential pitfalls."
HUB International

[Advert.]

Online Learning Course: COBRA

Even with ACA coverage easier for individuals to obtain, group health plans must continue to offer COBRA coverage. This course explains technicalities of COBRA, including who is entitled and how to administer.

How Healthcare Sharing Programs Compare to Traditional Insurance
"[R]ising health insurance premiums [have] increased the popularity of alternatives to traditional health insurance, including so-called healthcare sharing programs.... [This article] provides an in-depth explanation of what healthcare sharing programs [are], a review of the most popular healthcare sharing programs and ministries, why healthcare sharing programs are not for everyone, and the kinds of situations where they might at least be considered."
Nerd's Eye View

The CSR Saga: An Appropriation That Really Would Lower Spending and an Incorrect Baseline's Perverse Effects
"The debate over whether Congress should make an appropriation for CSR payments is tangled up in a discussion over how to properly assess the net federal cost of such an appropriation. Providing an accurate cost estimate for a CSR payment appropriation requires assuming what the budget impact would be if Congress does not make such an appropriation. It also requires a clear understanding of what the market response would be to permanent suspension of CSR payments."
Health Affairs

The ACA's Contraceptive Mandate: A Loss in Massachusetts
"On March 12, 2018, Judge Nathaniel Gorton of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts found that the Commonwealth failed to show that it had standing ... and dismissed the Commonwealth's suit. More specifically, Massachusetts did not identify any particular woman likely to be harmed by the new rules, nor did it identify any particular employer who planned to avail itself of the broadened exemption, nor did it show that Massachusetts itself faced injury." [Massachusetts v. HHS, No. 17-11930 (D. Mass. Mar. 12, 2018)]
Mintz Levin

[Opinion]

Impact of Prior Authorization on Patients and Physicians
"Our policymakers are still fixated on managed care, but their tool of prior authorization provides just one more demonstration on why the private insurers and their managed care excesses have to go.... 86 percent of physicians report that the prior authorization burden has increased over the past five years -- since the implementation of the [ACA]. That is a burden for both patients and their health care professionals that we need to dump."
Physicians for a National Health Program [PNHP]

Press Releases

Benefitfocus Launches BenefitsPlace to Unify the U.S. Employee Benefits Industry
Benefitfocus

Ascensus Expands into Consumer Directed Healthcare and Employee Benefit Administration Markets with Agreement to Acquire Chard Snyder
Ascensus

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