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Recent legal challenges have focused on constitutional issues, but health care reform is expected to create new reasons for benefits and employment-law litigation, according to a reform expert. Reform rules fraught with legal risk include: (1) pay-or-play requirements, (2) claims appeals and external review, (3) essential benefits; and (4) retiree medical rules. Another area of […]
Employers in Maryland have 10 months to adjust their employee benefit policies, plan documents and plan language regarding dependents before a law legalizing same-sex marriage goes into effect. But that comes with a couple of caveats: (1) the law may be repealed before it even goes into effect; and (2) if it does go into […]
Employers with employees who seek coverage under their benefit plans for their same-sex spouses would be justified in wondering exactly what they should do under federal law. The federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is still in force, but the Obama administration will not enforce or defend it. And now another court has found it […]
Employers in New Jersey won’t have to adjust their plans, documents and policies to accommodate same-sex spouses any time soon. But Maryland may be a different story. The New Jersey Senate on Feb. 13, and the Assembly on Feb. 16, passed a bill that would have made same-sex marriage legal in the Garden State. But […]
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released its budget request for the federal fiscal year (FY) 2013 on Feb. 13, as part of the budget proposal President Obama sent to Congress. The DOL budget request for FY 2013 is $12.0 billion, down from $12.6 billion for FY 2012. The department’s press release emphasized this reduction, […]
An important component of health reform implementation is the imposition of an “essential benefits” package (of health goods and services that insurers of groups and individuals must cover). Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), that benefit package will be de rigueur (1) for policies sold on exchanges and (2) insurers of small […]
Your employees might be disappointed when they learn their tax exempt transit benefits are no longer $230 next month. Commuter benefits for mass transit are a top benefit offered by companies. But the monthly $230 cap for mass transit is set to be cut nearly in half to $125 a month in just six days – […]
The quest to escape the upward premium spiral has hurt some small employers. Some have been hurt by fly-by-night Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangements (MEWAs) that ended up being unable to pay claims, says the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). In its quest to stop such MEWAs, DOL is proposing new enforcement and oversight rules. DOL […]
Employers are increasingly likely to provide paid leave to working mothers, new Census data suggests. The U.S. Census Bureau report, released in early November, doesn’t look directly at employer policies. Rather, it analyzes trends in women’s work experience before their first child, identifies their maternity leave arrangements before and after the birth and examines how rapidly […]
Have you filed a Form 5500? It may be tempting to procrastinate or more — but you do so at your own peril, because the IRS has upped the ante in a new project to increase compliance. The IRS Employee Plans Compliance Unit (EPCU) is conducting the Form 5500 Non-Filer Project, an effort in which […]