BY HENRRY GOLDMAN   New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a $100 million plan that he said would provide affordable “healthcare for all,” reaching about 600,000 people, including undocumented immigrants, low-income residents not enrolled in Medicaid and young workers whose current plans are too expensive. The plan, which de Blasio dubbed “NYC Care,” will offer public health insurance on a […]

BY PETER DEBELLIS   It’s no secret that the U.S. labor market is tight. At present there is less than one job-seeker per job opening in the United States—a situation that is causing organizations of all sizes to reevaluate their rewards strategies. As the new year unfolds, organizations are facing a number of profound and fundamental changes. […]

BY JACK CARVER   As employers struggle to craft benefit packages that appeal to the broadest number of workers, a recent case study proposes a radical solution: let employees figure it out through a game. The case study was developed by Janet McNichol, the director of human resources at the American Speech-Hearing-Language Association (ASHA) in an effort to craft a […]

BY Conner Insurance   Overview Many employee benefits are subject to annual dollar limits that are periodically increased for inflation. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently announced cost-of-living adjustments to the annual dollar limits for various welfare and retirement plan limits for 2019. Although some of the limits will remain the same, many of the […]

BY Conner Insurance   Overview On Oct. 23, 2018, the Departments of Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Treasury (Departments) issued a proposed rule that would expand the usability of health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). Effective in 2020, the proposed rule would: Allow HRAs to be used to reimburse the cost of individual […]

BY JAY HANCOCK   With workers harder to find and Obamacare’s tax on generous coverage postponed, employers are hitting pause on a feature of job-based medical insurance much hated by employees: the high-deductible health plan. Companies have slowed enrollment in such coverage and, in some cases, reinstated more traditional plans as a strong job market […]

BY Dan Cook   If anyone knows more about millennials than an actual millennial, it’s Brian Weed, CEO of Avenica. Founded in 1998, Avenica’s personnel services are focused exclusively on recent college graduates and the companies who are looking for such talent. “Our goal is to place recent college graduates on the right career-track, finding […]

BY Dan Cook   In an ironic post-election development, a key piece of the original funding mechanism of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could finally be dispensed with because of the House of Representatives power shift. The excise tax on employer health plans–known colloquially as the Cadillac Tax–was designed to fund the subsidies […]

BY Conner Insurance   Overview The Affordable Care Act (ACA) imposes a fee on health insurance issuers and self-insured plan sponsors in order to fund comparative effectiveness research. These fees are widely known as Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) fees. On Nov. 5, 2018, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published Notice 2018-85, which increased the […]

BY Nick Otto   For employers, both large and small, being knowledgeable about regional health challenges —such as high costs or poor quality — can give them an edge when it comes to crafting the best benefit policies to attract and retain talent. They have help from new research out from personal finance site Wallethub, […]