Insurance

Fired special needs therapist denied unemployment

01/24/2014

A former special needs therapist has lost her bid for unemployment compensation after a supervisor testified that the therapist told students she needed therapy herself because of the way the students behaved. The incident occurred while the supervisor was observing the class.

IRS issues integration rules for HRAs and FSAs

01/24/2014

You can go some way toward meeting the Affordable Care Act’s requirements that your group plan provide minimum value and is affordable by setting up health reimbursement accounts or health flexible spending accounts for employees. But according to new IRS guidance, these accounts must be integrated into your group health plan.

Status of Health Flexible Spending Accounts, Health Reimbursement Accounts and Health Savings Accounts under the Affordable Care Act

01/22/2014

The ABCs of HRAs, FSAs and HSAs: It can be difficult to pick your way through the alphabet soup of group health plan add-ons, such as HRAs, FSAs and health savings accounts (HSAs). To help you along, this chart lists the characteristics of these accounts and how the health care reform law affects each.

Looming ACA issues in 2014: Nondiscrimination rules & Cadillac tax

01/21/2014

Employers subject to the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2015, have some complicated issues to sort out: How will yet-to-be-settled nondiscrimination rules and the looming “Cadillac tax” affect their benefits plans?

Workplace lexicon: Value-based insurance design

01/14/2014

This is the insurance industry’s lingo for a system of carrots and sticks that rewards patients for undergoing medical procedures with a good track record of success (think flu vaccines and hypertension treatment) and penalizes them for treatment of questionable value (hip-replacement surgery and many kinds of high-tech imaging, for example).

More small businesses might drop health benefits

01/13/2014

The Affordable Care Act probably won’t prompt many large employers to drop health insurance benefits, but small businesses are more likely to do so than they were last year, according to the National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans.

Boomers ‘terrified’ of out-of-control health care costs

01/08/2014

More than three in five (61%) pre-retirees now say they are “terrified” of what health care costs may do to their retirement plans, according to a new Harris poll.

ACA out-of-pocket limits delayed for multiple-provider scenarios

01/06/2014

The Department of Labor has announced an exception to the general yearly out-of-pocket expense limits under the ACA.

ACA: Employers, nondiscrimination rules and the Cadillac tax

01/03/2014

For most employers, the substantive provisions of the ACA have been implemented. But employers subject to the ACA’s employer mandate, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2015, have some complicated issues to sort out: How yet-to-be-settled nondiscrimination rules and the looming “Cadillac tax” will affect their benefits plans.

High-deductible plans curb health care cost growth

12/27/2013

In the past four years, the cost of health care in the United States grew at about half the annual rate it did from 1990 to 2007. What accounts for the cost slowdown? Economists attributed much of the bending cost curve to the rise of high-deductible health insurance plans.