Director of Retirement Products
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA)
in VA

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Benetech, Inc.
in CA, CO, DC, IL, MD, WA

Client Account Manager
Pacific Portfolio Consulting, LLC
in WA

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28th Annual Ohio Employee Ownership Conference
April 24, 2014 in OH
(Ohio Employee Ownership Center)

Employee Benefits - How and When Government Entities Should Report Them -- Recorded
April 25, 2014 WEBCAST
(Internal Revenue Service (IRS))

Tax Forms Workshop: 5500 and More - Bloomington
May 2, 2014 in IL
(SunGard Relius)

Tax Forms Workshop: 5500 and More - Cleveland
May 2, 2014 in OH
(SunGard Relius)

Getting It Right - Know Your Fiduciary Responsibilities
June 17, 2014 in TN
(Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), U.S. Department of Labor)

Getting It Right - Know Your Fiduciary Responsibilities
July 13, 2014 in WI
(Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), U.S. Department of Labor)

View All Webcasts and Conferences

Text of IRS Notice 2014-24: Health Insurance Providers Fee; Procedural and Administrative Guidance (PDF)
"This notice provides a temporary safe harbor for covered entities that report direct premiums written for expatriate plans on a Supplemental Health Care Exhibit (SHCE). A covered entity may apply this temporary safe harbor for purposes of reporting direct premiums written on Form 8963, Report of Health Insurance Provider Information, which is used to calculate the fee imposed by Section 9010 of the [ACA].... [T]his notice provides a temporary safe harbor for 2014 and 2015 for a covered entity that reports direct premiums written for expatriate plans on its SHCE that include coverage of at least one non-United States health risk." (Internal Revenue Service [IRS])

[Advert.]

4th Annual Prevention & Wellness Congress - May 7-8 - San Diego

A revolutionary agenda that moves beyond Wellness 101 and lays out the framework for real discussion and real idea exchange through real employer experiences. Challenge the way you think about wellness and reposition your program. BLINK3 for discount.

IRS Issues Guidance on Health FSAs
"The guidance makes it clear that an employer may apply these remedies in any order as long as it follows that order consistently. The employer should seek to recover the overpayment in the same year it is made. If the employer tries all of the methods for recovery and still does not successfully recover all of the improper payments, the employer may treat the amount as business indebtedness and report it as taxable income to the employee on a Form W-2." (Ballard Spahr)

IRS Informal Guidance Sheds Light on the Health FSA Carryover/HSA Eligibility Dilemma
"[The] IRS informal guidance generally confirms the following: If you otherwise constitute an 'eligible individual,' but participate in a general-purpose health FSA ... solely as a result of a carryover of unused health FSA amounts from the prior year, you lose your 'eligible individual' status; If you participate in a general-purpose health FSA solely as a result of a health FSA carryover ... you are disqualified from contributing to an HSA during the entire carryover year[.]" (Winston & Strawn LLP)

IRS Gives Ex-Pat Health Plans Limited Exemption from ACA Reporting Rule
"Notice 2014-24, provides a temporary safe harbor for an entity that reports expatriate health insurance plans on its Supplemental Health Care Exhibit (SHCE). For the 2014 and 2015 fee years, Notice 2014-24 will allow such an entity to exclude 50% of its direct premiums written for expatriate plans in reporting total direct premiums written to the IRS for purposes of determining its ACA Section 9010 Health Insurance Providers Fee." (Solutions Law Press)

Law Removes Deductible Limits for Small Group Plans
"[By] law, HSAs can only be offered to those whose health plans have a minimum deductible of $1,250 (individual) or $2,500 (family) in 2014. While those requirements could be satisfied under the ACA's (now repealed) deductible limits on small-group plans, advocates of consumer-directed health care contended that allowing higher deductibles provides greater flexibility to tailor health insurance with account-based plans, opting for lower premiums with higher deductibles, for instance." (Society for Human Resource Management [SHRM])

[Advert.]

How Will Your Benefit Plans Navigate Today's Stormy Seas?

BOSTON, May 4-7. Earn 15.5 HRCI credits. 45+ expert-led sessions on such critical issues as ACA's play or pay rules, private exchanges, avoiding ERISA litigation, retirement plan fees and much more. Register by April 11 and save $100.

Four Factors Shaping Higher 2015 Healthcare Premiums
"The following four considerations will factor into insurers' 2015 pricing: [1] The risk pool may differ somewhat.... [2] The risk mitigation program -- risk adjustment, reinsurance and risk corridor -- continues but at lower funding in 2015.... [3] Narrow provider networks were a key reason 2014 exchange rates ended up lower than most had predicted, and will continue in 2015.... [4] Insurer positioning next to the lowest rates is an important strategy to be competitive." (Healthcare Payer News)

Young Workers Not Flocking to Employer-Sponsored Health Plans
"Young workers in the U.S. signed up for employer-sponsored health plans at a lower rate than last year, a surprising result that helped keep overall workplace enrollment rates flat.... Take-up rates among workers under 30 fell 1.4 percentage points from 2013 to [2014] Over the past five years, that rate has declined by 7.6 percentage points to 62.1% of those eligible." (The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)

Employees' Class Action Challenges Wellness Incentive Under State Wage Hour Law
"A pharmacy chain is being sued over its requirement that employees undergo a 'wellness exam' or pay a $600 surcharge on their health plan contribution. The lawsuit, filed in California state court as a class action, characterizes the surcharge as an illegal 'wage deduction,' and contends that employees who did take the exam should have been compensated for the time and expense of doing so." [Watterson v. Garfield Beach CVS, LLC, No. RG14717292 (Cal. Super. Ct., filed March 13, 2014) (Thompson SmartHR Manager)

Bringing Mental Health Care Coverage Into Balance
"Critics have argued that parity legislation alone is not enough to fix other underlying problems in how our health system provides access to treatment of mental health and substance use disorders.... Much of the debate in implementing parity is around determining equivalence of services between mental health/substance use benefits and medical/surgical benefits.... While the ACA expanded the reach of the [Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA)] both by direct application to the individual market and to issuers in the individual and small-employer market through the EHB requirement, some plans and benefits are still excluded." (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)

CalPERS Shift in Contracting Strategy Reveals Kaiser Permanente Weakness
"CalPERS will save $21.3 million after most of its members moved into lower-cost health plans during open enrollment. Members had more plan choices because CalPERS added Anthem Blue Cross, Health Net, Sharp Health Plan and UnitedHealthcare to its list of HMO options. Previously, the CalPERs contract had exclusively been held by Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente. The purchasing coalition decided to expand competition based on a member survey that showed many were price sensitive." (HealthLeaders InterStudy)

The Willis Health and Productivity Survey Report 2014 (PDF)
"68% have some type of wellness program.... 54% are implementing a high deductible health plan in an effort to address rising health care costs. 64% provide employees with tools and resources to become better consumers.... 44% use third-party wellness vendors. 78% of organizations with a wellness program said that they used some sort of incentive to drive participation. 49% of those with a wellness program reported a measurable improvement in either medical costs or health risks." (Willis)

ERIC Urges HHS to Rule That Self-Funded Plans Should Not Be Subject to HIPAA Certification Requirements
"ERIC urges HHS to modify the rules to provide that self-funded plans should be able to comply with the certification requirement by confirming to HHS that they conduct Covered Transactions exclusively through one or more entities that either (1) are covered entities themselves, and thus are directly required to comply with the HIPAA transaction standards, or (2) have agreed contractually that they will comply with the transaction standards." (The ERISA Industry Committee [ERIC])

Text of Comments by U.S. Chamber of Commerce to CMS on Proposed Regs for HIPAA Certification of Compliance (PDF)
"[T]he Chamber submits this comment letter to urge HHS to significantly revise the improper and unfounded extension of certification of HIPAA compliance to employers offering self-insured plans.... The majority of employers offering self-insured plans (as well as those employers offering fully-insured plans) do not regularly perform the standard transactions which these HIPAA requirements are designed to govern. Therefore, these plans must be permitted to rely on the certification of the third party entities with which they contract to perform these transactions." (U.S. Chamber of Commerce)

Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance: 'Job Lock' Is Not the Problem -- 'Insurance Lock' Is
"We get our health benefits from our employer because they are non-taxable. If employees bought health insurance on our own, we would pay premiums with after-tax dollars.... But while there may be some job lock due to employer-based benefits, the problem has become way overblown in public discourse ... The real problem with our employer-based health benefits is 'insurance lock'. Until recently, and even now only for very large employers, an employee could only get his health-insurance policy from one insurer: The one chosen by his employer." (John Goodman's Health Policy Blog)

Restrictive Covenants in Equity Compensation Award Agreements
"Roughly, one-third of companies have placed restrictive covenants on their most recent equity grants, with prevalence not much dependent on company size. This is consistent with my guestimate -- when you exclude California company participants. The restrictions most often include non-competition, non-solicitation and non-disparagement. Most respondents apply the restrictions to all award recipients, as opposed to only select senior executives. The most common consequence/remedy for a violation is a clawback of realized gains from a specified period prior to the violation." (Winston & Strawn LLP)

Great-West Financial Acquisition of J.P. Morgan Retirement Plan Services Great-West Financial

American Academy of Actuaries Joins National Coalition to Bolster Importance of Retirement Planning to Public American Academy of Actuaries

Greenberg Traurig Names New Co-Chair of its Global Benefits and Compensation Group Greenberg Traurig, LLP

New NBCH Tool Helps Employers Assess Quality of their Pharmacy Benefit Management Programs National Business Coalition on Health

American Health Strategy Project Businesses Lead the Way in Worksite Health Promotion National Business Coalition on Health

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